The Calling’s lead singer Alex Band is speaking out about his alleged abduction, severe beating and robbery following a performance at a festival in Michigan on Sunday.
Band told Access Hollywood that he left his hotel to get cigarettes in the middle of the night when the incident occurred.
“I’m walking away from the parking lot of the Best Western, behind me comes a car and I figure it’s going to pass me, but I kind of hear it slowing down and just as I turn my head and catch like the front of the van, I get pulled backwards from my shirt. And then [I was] grabbed by two guys by either arm. And I’m pulled into like this minivan without seats or anything. The seats were taken out,” he told Access.
“The first thing they did was take a police baton and smash my face so that I couldn’t see, because they didn’t want me seeing who they were,” he continued, recounting the harrowing event.
The 32-year-old singer said the initial violent act leveled him.
“That first hit… it did me in. Some teeth, my lips were all ripped open. It cut like a chunk of my chin off, so I got like 15 stitches here… I was like elephant man,” he explained.
The singer recalls the people in the van telling him, “Give us some of your, give us some of that Hollywood money.”
Fearing for his life, Band gave the men what they asked for.
“I gave them my phone, my wallet, I had like $1,200, so they scored. And they didn’t ask to take my jewelry. They didn’t want to take my watch. It’s a very expensive watch. I even offered it to them later on when they had a gun to my head,” he told Access.
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When allegedly pressed for more money by the men, Band said things got even scarier
“At this point they pulled the gun out. And then they said, ‘This is a loaded gun.’…And I was like, ‘OK, this is about to get really serious.’ So he put the gun to my head and again, [and said] ‘I want more money.’ And I was just like, ‘I don’t have any more money.’ And that’s when I took my watch off,” he continued.
Band pleaded with the men and even confessed that he had just found out he was going to be a father.
“I was like, ‘I’m begging with you, I’m pleading with you guys’” he recalled.
The men then told him it was his “lucky day” and tossed him out of the van.
“They kicked me onto the train tracks, so I broke my lower back” he told Access.
Despite his ordeal, Band told Access that he has empathy for the men.
“My heart went out to, in some weird way, to these kids,” he explained. “Do I still want them in jail? Yes, because this has been a nightmare. But at the same time… I still feel for people.”
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