Josh Homme issues video apology after kicking female photographer at gig

The band were performing at the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas show at The Forum in Inglewood on Saturday night (9th December) when Homme kicked Chelsea Lauren’s camera as she took photos of him.

Lauren shared footage of the kick on social media, writing: “Thanks to @joshhomme @queensofthestoneage I now get to spend my night in the ER. Seriously, WHO DOES THAT?!?”

> Thanks to @joshhomme @queensofthestoneage I now get to spend my night in the ER. Seriously, WHO DOES THAT?!? #joshhomme #queensofthestoneage #qotsa #qotsafamily #concertphotography #musicphotographer > > A post shared by Chelsea Lauren (@chelsealaurenla) on Dec 9, 2017 at 11:38pm PST

“It was obviously very intentional,” Lauren told Variety afterwards. “Josh was coming over and I was pretty excited, I’ve never actually photographed Queens Of The Stone Age before, I was really looking forward to it. I saw him coming over and I was shooting away.

“The next thing I know his foot connects with my camera and my camera connects with my face, really hard. He looked straight at me, swung his leg back pretty hard and full-blown kicked me in the face.”

Confirming she will file a police report, she said: “I feel like if I don’t do anything, he gets to kick people in the face and not get in trouble because he’s a musician. That’s not right.”

> Thank you everyone that has reached out with supportive messages. A small update, as I'm being flooded with questions: My neck is a sore, my eyebrow bruised and I'm a bit nauseous. The doctor released me early in the morning. Here are three images. Two of them as Josh looked at me, smiled and then kicked me. The other one is later after he cut his own face with a knife. I was in the pit in tears - and he just stared at me smiling. Assault in any form is not okay, no matter what the reasoning. Alcohol and drugs are no excuse. I was where I was allowed to be, I was not breaking any rules. I was simply trying to do my job. I hold nobody accountable for this but Josh himself. KROQ has nothing to do with this and I will always support them. The irony is someone had thrown an ice cube on to the very slick catwalk before the QOTSA set. I was afraid that one of the band members might slip and hurt themselves so, when the lights went dark, I used my arm to wipe down the runway so nobody would hurt themselves. Thank you to @variety for their immediate concern and care with this matter. As of now, nobody from QOTSA has reached out to me. #queensofthestoneage #QOTSA #JoshHomme > > A post shared by Chelsea Lauren (@chelsealaurenla) on Dec 10, 2017 at 11:22am PST

Lauren later shared a series of images of Josh on Instagram taken just seconds before the kick, writing: “Here are three images. Two of them as Josh looked at me, smiled and then kicked me.

“The other one is later after he cut his own face with a knife. I was in the pit in tears - and he just stared at me smiling.

“Assault in any form is not okay, no matter what the reasoning. Alcohol and drugs are no excuse. I was where I was allowed to be, I was not breaking any rules. I was simply trying to do my job.

“I hold nobody accountable for this but Josh himself.”

> pic.twitter.com/JCtdOAFEbq > > — QOTSA (@qotsa) December 10, 2017

Homme has since issued an apology via Queens of the Stone Age’s social media channels, saying: “Last night, while in a state of being lost in performance, I kicked over various lighting and equipment on our stage.

“Today it was brought to my attention that this included a camera held by photographer Chelsea Lauren. I did not mean for that to happen and I am very sorry. I would never intentionally cause harm to anyone working at or attending one of our shows and I hope Chelsea will accept my sincere apology.”

Hours later he posted a video to Twitter, saying: “I’d just like to apologise to Chelsea Lauren. I don’t have any excuse of reason to justify what I did. I was a total d*** and I’m truly sorry and I hope you’re ok. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life and last night was definitely one of them.”

Also apologising to his band mates and family, Homme said: “I wanna be a good man, but I think last night I definitely failed at that. … I’m gonna have to figure out some stuff, I think.”

> pic.twitter.com/LUdxsTQE6P > > — QOTSA (@qotsa) December 11, 2017

Lauren has since thanked Queens of the Stone Age fans for their support, writing: “Thank you to the #QOTSA fanbase for being a solid group of people overall and standing up for what's right regardless of your fandom.  It is not falling on deaf ears and I really appreciate every message. Seriously, thank you.”