GLENN DANZIG On What He Looks For In Concert Experience: 'I Wanna Be Knocked Off My Socks'

During a recent appearance on the "Talk Is Jericho" podcast, Glenn Danzig spoke about his decision to retire from touring completely after finishing out his fall 2015 North American dates with SUPERJOINT. He said: "I stopped touring back around 2005. And then the manager said, 'Well, what if we just do, like, a regional tour here on the West Coast and you fly home all the time?' 'Cause my problem isn't being on stage; it's the bouncing around on the bus and not being near my stuff and being able to… We talk about the creating and all that other stuff, and doing all this other stuff I wanna do, and you can't really do it on the road. So I said, 'Okay, we'll try it. Let's go out for two, maybe three weeks, and I'll fly home every couple of days.' And that worked. And so, then they said, 'Okay, why don't we try something a little more like you go out to the Midwest and back, and you fly home — same thing; two or three weeks.' I tried that, and that worked. So then, I think it was around 2008, they said, 'Okay, let's try the whole country and you fly home all the time.' And then that worked. So I said, 'Okay, I can do this, if we can do it that way.' So then, when it came time to tour, I would do that. This last tour, it didn't work that way, and I wasn't able to fly home as much as I wanted to, just because of routing. And I won't take flights that stop places; I wanted [to fly nonstop]. So it didn't work out that well, and I did two runs in the States on this last thing like that, and I just said, 'That's it. I'm done.'"

Glenn added that he won't stop playing shows altogether, as he plans to sporadically get back up on stage when the time is right.

"I'm not gonna stop performing; I'm just not gonna tour anymore," he said. "So maybe I'll fly here, do a show, and then fly home. Or I'll do local shows here in Southern California or Northern California, whatever, but it's not gonna be… I'm just not gonna do that thing. And maybe three or four years from now, I don't know, we'll revisit it if I can fly home, or maybe just do a regional kind of thing."

The MISFITS, DANZIG and SAMHAIN icon went on to say that his dislike for touring has only grown as he has gotten older.

"When you're younger, you don't care," he said. "But as you get older, your priorities change and things are different. And you're doing lots of different stuff, and you wanna be able to still do all that different stuff now, and it's not as important [to be on the road so much]. If you can do all the things you wanna do, then, of course, you're gonna wanna do it, but if you can't…"

Danzig did make it clear, however, that his passion for performing is still as strong as ever. "There's nothing like being on stage and sending out that energy and getting it back from them, 'cause then it just amplifies and you turn it out into something even more powerful," he explained. "And then they send it back, and you send it back. It's pretty intense; it's cool. 'Cause we're not doing a Tom Petty show; we're doing a crazy… Sometimes our pit is insane, and then you get everybody else on the sides that's not in the pit going out of their minds. To me, I love… I'm helping them, and they're helping me. And I'm forgetting about all of my crap I have to deal with, and hopefully they're doing this experience and forgetting about all their crap too, and they can leave that concert just, like, 'Wow! Man, that was great.' You know — exhausted emotionally, physically, whatever, but they had a great time, an experience."

He added: "I don't wanna just do a concert; I want people to have a great experience, something that they can't get anywhere else. That's what I look for when I go to a concert — I wanna be knocked off my socks."

As previously reported, Danzig, Jerry Only and Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein will reunite as MISFITS for first time since 1983 to headline this year's Riot Fest.

The reunion, billed as "The Original Misfits," will take place at the Riot Fest in Denver and Chicago. The first show is scheduled for September 4 at Denver's Riot Fest And Rodeo, while the second will happen at Riot Fest And Carnival, set for September 18 in Chicago.