Photo: Daniel Quesada
'It's magic, you know'. It isn't. It's just Eagles of Death Metal being welcomed on stage by the Pilot classic for the biggest gig they've ever played.
Not that you'd know it. Jesse Hughes makes guitar changes so smooth you might never see him coming - they're smoother than the shiny bonce of the bearded guitarist on the left in fact, as 'Don't Speak' ricochets around the Forum.
But pulling the zipper down on Jesse's latest body of work reveals EODM's most appealing whole so far. It's their magnum opus, Hughes' most voluptuous offering to date - and, by god, so much easier without complexity, as he says.
With a cheekier element, that feels less like the night might lurch into a hazy stoned-out fog and more into a red-hot den of sleaze and leather - whatever tickles your fancy, I suppose - the simple Queens of the Stone Age-lite riffs roll one into the other.
"For the sake of our relationship," Hughes implores, "this is our largest crowd we've ever played on our own. Like, I got a dick bigger than…". I didn't quite catch the end, but whatever it was, it proved extremely popular.
Hughes might often represent a throwback to that sort of male office misogyny - the type that'll tell a girl what a grand job she's doing before giving her a quick 'complimentary' slap on the derrière - but it doesn't seem to matter, faux preaching and all. And nor should it - not when we're all in on the shoulder-shimmying act.
Because the evening has a certain subversive appeal. It has the underground feel of a cult going against the mainstream in its full-on embrace of old-fashioned cock-rock. Amen to that, I say.
