Josh Homme Allegedly Kicked a Female Photographer In the Head

Last night (Sunday, December 10), during a Queens of the Stone Age performance at the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas concert in Inglewood, California, Josh Homme kicked a female photographer near the stage in the head. Chelsea Lauren, the photographer who was injured, uploaded video footage of the incident to her Instagram page:

The footage clearly shows Homme kicking out into the crowd. In an interview with Variety, Lauren said that she had seen Homme coming towards her, and began taking photos, when "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."

Alongside photographs which clearly show Homme looking directly at her, and which she states were taken just before she was struck, Lauren also released a statement about the incident via Instagram. She wrote "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."

Of course it's important to give a performance, but that should never put anyone at risk. Behavior like this often puts female fans from going to rock shows, and if a genre is going to posit itself as somewhat counter-cultural, the bands playing in it should never deter people from showing up, whoever they are.

In response to the incident, Homme issued the following apology via the Queens of the Stone Age Twitter account:

He has also posted two Instagram videos further apologizing, in which he states: "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."

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