Paris-based music journalist Jean-Pierre Sabouret was in the Bataclan, the rock venue in the 11th arrondissement on the night of the terrorist attack that resulted in the deaths of 89 people. Hundreds more were injured, many seriously, on what was an horrific Black Friday for music.
A rock writer since the early 1980s, Sabouret has contributed to French publications such as Hard Rock Magazine, interviewing major stars of the calibre of Bruce Springsteen, Prince and the late Irish guitar wizard, Rory Gallagher, who was a particular favourite of his. The Bataclan is a venue he knows all too well, having attended dozens of shows there over the years. He had been looking forward hugely to seeing Eagles of Death Metal in action.
"Some of the most memorable gigs at the Bataclan included Motörhead, Journey, Velvet Revolver, The Band, Stone Temple Pilots and tons of others," he recalls. "The very last time I interviewed Rory Gallagher was in the dressing room right there, before his show at the Bataclan."
Sabouret had gone along to the Eagles of Death Metal show on that fateful night to review the concert and to take some photographs. “At first, I was up at the front, near the stage with my girlfriend taking some pictures,” he says. “Then, I was at the bar hanging out with some friends who had recently got married and who were just back from their honeymoon. It was a typical gig for me.”
But not for long…
The band had performed their Duran Duran cover, ‘Save A Prayer’, and were playing, ‘Kiss The Devil’ when the terrorist attack began. Sabouret had, a few moments earlier, taken another photograph before the first burst of gunfire rang out inside the venue. “For about two or three seconds – not much more – we were thinking, it was like a Kiss concert, with fireworks or whatever,” he says. “And then we heard shouts and we were seeing men firing guns and everyone falling down on the floor. For some reason, there was quite a lot of light, just when they started shooting – I’m not sure why, because a minute beforehand when I took a picture, it was quite dark.
“It was a really terrific gig up until then,” he adds. “Actually, one of the things I wanted to do this weekend was to write the review, as if nothing had happened. Because some stupid people have been saying that this was a satanic metal band and that they deserved to be attacked, which makes me mad.”
He remembers that the band stopped playing and, clearly grievously spooked by events in the auditorium, left the stage in a hurry. “They were best placed to see exactly what was going on – plus of course they knew the noise was definitely not special effects,” he reflects. “The attackers had come in the main entrance, but they apparently knew a bit about the place because one was coming up the stairs near the entrance and another was near the bar blocking the way out, so they had formulated a plan.”
“We Cried Together…”
Panic affects people in different ways. Some people turn and run. But not everyone.
“People were totally frozen around me,” Jean- Pierre says. “And then there were lots of us trying to get up this very small stairway nearby to escape. A few people were in front of me, including a pregnant woman and her husband or boyfriend. There was a sort of door nearby. Nobody knew if it was a room or anything. I was the one who opened the door – and it was just a tiny space full of electrical cables, fuse boxes and switches that sort of thing. I took the woman and the guy inside with me and then a few more people pushed in behind us and we closed the door. Just as soon as we were in there, the gunmen came along. They were just outside.”
It must have been utterly terrifying. Can he recall what was going through his mind during that time?
“I was most worried about my girlfriend, who had been down at the front. And also about my two friends, who I’d just been with at the bar. I was thinking – this is not possible! And I thought how terrible it would be if they were all killed. So I took out my phone – I honestly didn’t really care about the light from it alerting the people who were wanting to kill me. I sent a message to both my girlfriend and to my friends. It was something like, ‘please tell me you’re not dead, please tell me you’re alive’.”
The good news came pulsing back, the phone vibrating in his hand. His girlfriend had miraculously escaped into a building across the road from the emergency exit. “She was now in a flat with a girl who was good friends of a RAID guy [French Special Forces} and she was able to communicate some information to them. The other friends had also escaped earlier. They had run for it, after the attackers had emptied their weapons for the first time.”
Did he have any idea at that point just how many people had already become victims of the attackers? “Well, I knew that the place was packed – it holds around 1,500 people, so really I was thinking that, considering the number of bullets they shot, that there were a lot of people killed and injured.”
One of the most astonishing things is just how long the attacks went on for.
“It didn’t stop for nearly an hour,” Jean-Pierre recalls. “First it was shooting like mad, guns going off like crazy – and then it would happen every one or two minutes.”
After a couple of hours locked in this tiny room, the word finally came through that the terrorists had been killed and that he could leave his hiding place. The small group pushed the door open and blinked their way towards a new terror. The scenes they witnessed in the aftermath were truly horrific…
“What can I tell you? he says. “It was even worse than you can possibly imagine. I had to walk through the auditorium to get out, but I’m not sure there is the need to describe to you in any detail what I saw there. It was a truly terrible scene of the kind no one should ever have to witness.”
Jean-Pierre was held for a period in a secure area outside the Bataclan, before being brought to the police headquarters to make a witness statement. Eagles of Death Metal, it turned out, were being interviewed ahead of him.
“I saw some of the band members there, which was good,” he says. “Matt McJunkins firstly – and then we saw Jesse Hughes and Julian Dorio and the rest of the band. We hung out there for a while with them. We cried together and there were lots of hugs, kisses and tears. We had a lot of time to talk to one another, which I think was a very good thing compared to some of the people who’d had to go home alone.”
"He Was Shooting People…
A friend of Jean-Pierre’as, Maggy (May) Ledent, got married recently. She went to see Eagles of Death Metal with her new husband. It was a real family occasion for them.
“My sister and brother-in-law were there too,” she recalls. “My husband and I are really big fans of the band and the gig was very significant for us. They were the soundtrack of our first night together and the song ‘I Only Want You’ was the first dance at our wedding.
“I had worked in some magazines with Jean- Pierre in the past and so we had a chat when we met at the bar about twenty minutes earlier. We were still standing next to the bar, just in front of an emergency exit – which is kind of weird now thinking about it. My little sister is not very much into rock music and she asked should we go upstairs. I said, ‘no we’ll stay here’.
We heard something like fireworks going off during ‘Kiss The Devil’. Then I said ‘Oh my God, it’s not fireworks’. Within about ten seconds my husband said ‘get down, get down, get down’ and he pushed me on the floor. I saw my brother-in-law had jumped on my sister to protect her. I still didn’t really fully realise what was happening. Then I saw one of them [the attackers] very clearly. He was shooting people in a circular kind of way. And the first thing I thought was: he’s so young, maybe about 19 or 20. The second thing I thought was that he had nothing in his eyes, no expression at all. He was shooting people at the front of the bar.
“I was very frightened. I thought I was going to die,” she adds, before pausing. Clearly, the memory is still very raw.
“Suddenly the exit door opened and I was in the middle of a rush towards it. It just happened. Everybody was running: I’d heard my husband say ‘run’ but I couldn’t see him. They were coming after us, still shooting – and I saw people falling down just next to me. My husband appeared right in front of me outside and again he said ‘We have to run now’. We didn’t look back: we just went as fast as we could. We were shouting at people in cafes saying ‘You have to leave now, there are people shooting in the Bataclan’. They thought we were drunk or something.
“We jumped in a taxi, and went back to our house, which is about ten minutes from the Bataclan, turned on the TV and we couldn’t believe what was happening in Paris. In the taxi we had heard that there were other attacks in the city and that scared us badly, so we turned off the lights in the house. I sent a message to Jean-Pierre and he sent me a text saying they were still inside. So for two and a half hours we waited. We were on the phone to the police at the same time.”
It was a close brush with death. Maggy knows that she was lucky to survive.
“I can’t believe I wasn’t shot, nor were my husband, my sister or my brother-in-law. It’s kind of a miracle that the four of us survived, as well as our friends. We just can’t believe it,” she says quietly.
"Music Is Freedom…
More than anything, Maggy wants Paris, and the French people, to defy the intimidation and brutality of the terrorists. It would be wrong, she believes, to let them dictate the way people live or to break the bonds of solidarity that are so important to French democracy.
“I see a real change in Paris now,” she observes, “and it’ll take a lot of time to calm down and get back to something like normality. We have elections in two weeks and I’m scared that the fascist parties in France will play on people’s fears, which of course is one of the whole points of the terrorists’ action.
“I will go out to gigs again,” she promises. “Music is freedom and Eagles of Death Metal have now become a symbol of that freedom. They can’t take that away, ever. I’m kind of sensitive right now and it’ll be hard for me to go back out – but I will.”
Jean-Pierre Sabouret has already been at several gigs in Paris since the attacks. He too is defiant, insisting that he has no intention of allowing the awful events of that night to curtail his love of live music in any way.
“When you fall from a horse you have to jump right back up or you’ll have a lot of anxiety for the rest of your life,” he says, and pauses. Life can teach you hard lessons, but the most important thing is that you must not allow it to break you. “I’m a biker and I’ve had a few accidents, so I know how it works,” he adds. “We’re now in this state of emergency which is something I don’t really agree with. If we don’t go on as normal and try to rebuild things, it’s a victory for the terrorists and that is the last thing we want.”
The spirit of liberty, equality and fraternity lives on.