Beginning with the seminal hardcore punk band The Misfits through to the black metallic sounds of Samhain and onto the dark imagery and bluesy sounds of Danzig, Glenn Danzig has had an illustrious 30 year career thus far. And as a songwriter, his songs have been covered by such diverse artists as Johnny Cash, Metallica, Guns N' Roses, Roy Orbison and Evan Dando, just to name but a few.
Aside from his musical output, he is also a comic book publisher -
Verotik, martial arts expert, photographer, film maker and label owner. Out spoken on a range of issues, Glenn Danzig is never afraid to speak his mind as the following interview will testify to. In the wake of the recently released double-CD set titled,
The Lost Tracks of Danzig which documents 26 previously unreleased tracks spanning the entire career of Danzig's namesake band,
Joe Matera spent some time with the dark lord himself,
Glenn Danzig for this exclusive interview for Ultimate-Guitar.
Ultimate-Guitar: The Lost Tracks of Danzig has been a long time coming, in fact you first made mention of it back in a 1999 interview, why did it take so long for it to surface?
In that interview I did talk about kind of maybe finding the time to do it somewhere down the line. But I got busy with other things and projects and just needed to find the time to do it.
Aside from the tracks that appear on this release, are there any other tracks in the vault that you have that may surface in future?
No that is it. There are songs that didn’t make it onto this record but that is it as far unreleased songs go. I tried to pick what I thought was the best and they were it. I think with anything else, I’m not really interested.
There are a few covers included such as T-Rex’ Buick McKane and David Bowie’s Cat People. According to the liner notes your philosophy on covers is “unless you are bringing a new dimension to a cover, why bother?”
Yeah usually when I’m doing a cover I try and make sure that I can bring something new to it and also make it a metallic Danzig song. So that is what I try to do. I try and bring a new element to it and give it a whole new leash of life and hopefully I accomplish it by doing what I do.
You just announced several upcoming East and West coast dates?
I don’t really tour that much, well hardly at all really, I do a couple shows here there and that’s it. The reason is I don’t like being in a bus. What you’ll see with these upcoming dates is that there are for example, four shows on the East coast and they’re all within four hours of each other. So I’m actually going to be there for like four or five days and then fly home. So that way I don’t have to sit on a bus and be away from home too long, same thing also with the dates out on the West coast. I did something similar as an experiment last year where I just toured out here for two weeks. I did a few shows and then flew home or drove home as sometimes I could just do that. So that is what we’re doing again. There will be no mid west dates, no Southern dates…it is pretty much just those dates.
What approach do you use when it comes to the songwriting process?
It is different all the time. Sometimes I will write a drum beat sometimes I will write a vocal melody, sometimes I will write a guitar riff or chord pattern or sometimes I even bang it out on a piano. But it is always different. When I’m writing songs I just sit there and if a song sucks, I will throw it out. I don’t waste time on it and I don’t have any ego about like 'it is my song so it has to be good’. That is bullshit. Everybody writes shitty songs and I try to be honest enough with myself that when I write a song and if it is shitty, I toss it in the bin and that is it. If it sucks, I get rid of it. So I try and do the weeding out process very early on and then when I go into the studio, sometimes I may think I have a good song once I begin working on it, but may realize later that it is just going nowhere so I will just stop working on it and that’s it.
How does the lyrical content come together for you?
Again it is always different, sometimes a song will come to me in ten minutes and sometimes it is a pain in the ass and then sometimes it comes a little easier, but it is never the same.
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| "When I'm doing a cover I try and make sure that I can bring something new to it." |
When you go into the studio do you already have envisaged in your head exactly what you want the song to sound like?
Yes pretty much so. Sometimes it ends up getting better where it will sound even better than what I imagined.
Once the songs have been written, do you allow much input from the other musicians?
They pretty much bring their own unique style to it. I show them all the parts and then they take it from there.
Having worked with guitar players such as Tommy Victor and John Chris, what sort of qualities do you look for in a guitarist?
With guy like Tommy Victor it is easy as I just go 'Tommy you’ve got to squeal a note there’ if he’s not already squealing it if you know what I mean. So it is very easy working in the studio working with somebody like Tommy. With John Christ though, it was a little harder because his sound was never really distinct. He didn’t have a distinct sound like Tommy Victor has got. When you hear that Tommy sound you know it is Tommy. So it was a little hard with John.
When was the last time you spoke to John?
I haven’t spoken to him in years. I last saw him out at a show and it was 'hi, how are you doing?’ It was all very cordial.
You currently have a movie called Ge Rouge in production.
It is not in production yet. Well, it was but we pulled it from the production company because they never got their act together. And so we’ve been shopping it around to other production companies now.
So when do you think it may finally surface?
Who knows?
You’re also working on a road rage movie as well?
I’m currently writing a lot of scripts and one of them is this…well I can’t tell you too much about it now, but it is about some stoner kids who go out on the road and cut drivers off and pull them off the road and beat the crap out of them. It’s just these crazy stoner kids who get fucked up and drive around all day waiting for people to do all these fucked up things to and all they listen to is stoner rock, black metal and death metal music.
Awhile ago it was mentioned that a project with Jerry Cantrell and Hank Williams III was being planned?
I’m not doing any projects with either of those guys. Jerry and I have talked about us doing this blues record in the past but our schedules just got too crazy. He reunited with the Alice In Chains guys and I think they’re working on a record at the moment and then they also toured last year pretty extensively. I haven’t talked to Jerry in while about it so I don’t see it happening anymore. It would be nice if it did and maybe it will one day, but I don’t see it happening right now.
You’ve also written and released recently a book called Drukija?
Yeah I always wanted to write a thing based on the Countess of Bathory. But I wanted to make it even crazier and so I did. It is not a comic book as such, it is more like cut pages of my free verse narrative together with illustrations and it is pretty brutal stuff. There is one page where she has got the girl cut up from the belly up to the sternum and she’s holding the heart but it is still all connected. The girl is still alive and she is holding the heart up.
There is some very violent imagery happening there.
It depends on your outlook though. I don’t see black as being bad and white as being good. That is kind of a Christian way of seeing things. I’m not a Christian so I am not biased. A lot of time people will say this and that, and that they’re not being biased, but by saying just what they’re saying, they’re actually Christian biased. You really need to get past that whole Christian thing. And for me I have and that is one of the reasons why it is so hard for me to talk to people sometimes because they’re still very much Christianized.
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| "You really need to get past that whole Christian thing." |
Magazines like Rolling Stone have never really understood bands like The Misfits and yet today they’re covering bands and putting them on the their covers, bands who obviously owe their musical roots to The Misfits.
Rolling Stone just hated The Misfits because I would call them on their shit. Punk was the big moving force in music and yet they acted like it was nothing and didn’t do anything and or meant anything to them. Yet here we are all these years later and they’re covering all these bands that have stolen stuff from the original punk bands; hair styles, the music, chord patterns everything. You know, the backup choruses that I put in The Misfits are copied every fuckin’ day. And they just didn’t give any credence to it as if it didn’t really mean something or mattered and even to this day. You know, punk was never really mentioned in Rolling Stone until Sid killed Nancy. It’s just an old hippy magazine really who love putting Beyoncé and Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera on their covers. So why would I care about a magazine like that? It is not a real music mag anyway.
You’ve always seemed to be on the receiving end of the PMRC [Parents Music Resource Center]?
Yeah Al Gore and his wife wanted to band rock music. That is the reason we have the PMRC in the first place. That was their concession as they wanted to ban music from it even being written. People don’t seem to understand that and so people kind of wash that under the rug. But it can’t be washed under the rug, it is really important thing, freedom of speech especially in music and the creative arts, is fuckin’ important!
Have things ever gotten out of hand particularly with the moral crusaders?
I do remember once on one of the Danzig tours we were playing, a bunch of Christians had come to picket our show and our fans just beat the shit out of them.
As an artist do you believe that drugs can make you more creative?
I did all the drugs and shit when I was younger, so I got it all out of my system. So to answer your question, no I don’t think they do. I think you think that they do but they really don’t. I think drug addicts are losers.
I read an interview with Jerry Only recently who was asked about whether a Misfits reunion with you was possible and all he replied to the journalist’s question was “no comment”.
Yeah because he knows it is not true. Recently we were doing a show in New York and I’ve got Doyle’s [Doyle Von Frankenstein] band on the bill, because I also produced their record and Jerry was trying to say we were coming to New York to do a Misfits reunion show. So we had to go online and say that it was not true and that we were doing our own show. He does it all time to try and get people to come to his show. It is kind of sad really.
What is your relationship with Rick Rubin these days?
I have no relationship with him whatsoever.
Finally, what are your views on the internet and the whole downloading issue?
I hate downloading. I think it used to be a good thing but it’s now out of control. And I think it will probably signal the end of bands as you know it. That is what I think. If people stop buying CDs, people won’t be able to afford to record and play and tour.
2007 © Joe Matera
