Josh Homme Kicks Female Photographer In The Head During Performance

UPDATE 12/11/17: In a video posted to the Queens of The Stone Age's social media accounts, Josh Homme took full responsibility for the incident that happened Saturday night. Homme said, "Hello, last night (12/9/17) at a Queens of the Stone Age performance I kicked the camera of a photographer, and that camera hit the photographer in the face, and that photographer's name is Chelsea Lauren." Homme then apologized to Lauren for the incident.


Queens of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme is in trouble over an incident that happened on December 9th during a Christmas concert hosted by the Los Angeles radio staton KROQ. During QOTSA's performance Homme can be seen kicking photographer Chelsea Lauren in the head. In an interview with Variety, Lauren said, "I saw him (Homme) coming 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."

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

Minutes after the incident with Lauren happened, Homme pulled out a knife and cut his forehead (pro wrestlers refer to this as "blading"). Photographs of Homme flipping off the audience while bleeding from his forehead can be found in Laurens post above.

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

Homme took to Facebook today to apologize for the incident. He claims that he was "lost in the performance" and was not aware that he had kicked Lauren at the time. The whole statement can be seen below.



In an update Lauren posted on Instagram, she described herself as having a sore neck, a bruised eyebrow and that she felt  nauseous. About the incident, she said, "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." Lauren says that she plans to file a report with the police on Sunday.

Earlier this year, Homme was sued for allegedly assaulting an autograph hunter in Detroit while he was on tour with Iggy Pop.