MISFITS' JERRY ONLY: GLENN DANZIG 'Promotes Himself As The Devil'

Eric Blair of "The Blairing Out With Eric Blair Show" conducted an interview with MISFITS mainman Jerry Only on November 13, 2010 at the Galaxy Theatre in Santa Ana, California. You can now watch the chat in two parts below.

On the forthcoming MISFITS album, "The Devil's Rain":

Jerry Only: "It is, in my opinion, probably on the more classic-sounding MISFITS records. It has a little bit of everything in it. Dez [Cadena, guitar] wrote a couple of songs [where] the timing is off the map — [they're] super-thrash; we wrote a song called 'Dark Shadows' that is hopefully gonna be in Johnny Depp's film. We're submitting it to [director] Tim Burton. We've sent stuff to Tim before. When he did 'Mars Attacks', we sent him the 'Mars Attacks' song off the Geffen record and he was already done editing and he sent back a nice letter saying he liked it. And then we sent him the 'Fobidden Zone' for 'Planet of The Apes', which he left that whole part out of 'Planet Of The Apes', so the thing was there was no 'Forbidden Zone'. So this is our third shot at bringing something in. It's a ballad, and it's a really strong ballad. And that's kind of my focus now — trying to hit hit songs out of the park, do something that's just gonna be huge from a commercial standpoint and the media, and just totally up our game writing-wise. We recorded it in Colorado with Ed Stasium, who did all the RAMONES stuff. Ed is a magician; he has all kinds of fantastic backing vocals. My daughter does one of them, actually, on one of the songs — it's about Juarez, Mexico where all the girls have been missing; it's called 'Where Did They Go?' We have a song called 'Sleepwalking', which is kind of like a chain-gang kind of thing, where we just keep building it and building it and building it, which is kind of rare; usually, we come out and do a song that 's got a structure to it — this is wind; it just builds itself up. We've got a song called 'The Monkey's Paw'. 'The Monkey's Paw' is kind of the love song of someone who wants to bring back their deceased lover from the dead. 'Land Of The Dead', which we put out with [former drummer] Robo, we re-did that; that's on there. And 'The Devil's Rain' itself is, in my opinion, a real masterpiece. It was recorded in Colorado where we took all the rain and the thunder and built it into the song, so all the sound effects were produced in Colorado. And the last song, which is called 'The Death Ray', when we first did it, we used 'War Of The Worlds', we used 'Star Wars' sounds, and we called Paramount [studios] and they just wouldn't get off their ass and do anything, so we actually went out and recreated all the sounds. The 'War Of The Worlds' raygun is Ed with a bottleneck thing playing guitar with all this reverb. Those lightsavers you hear crashing are me and my son banging rocks off a metal bleacher out by the football field. And he has this other thing that's like the 'Jingle Bells' that he slowed down and it sounds like when the Martian ships are moving down the road. So that's how our album ends — our album ends with a 'War Of The Worlds' battle scene between humans and Martians, and it kind of covers everything."

On "The Devil's Rain" cover artwork, which being created by Marvel Zombies cover artist Arthur Suydam (who also worked on MISFITS' 2009 single, "Land Of The Dead"):

"'The Devil's Rain', the concept is that a bunch of people sold their souls to the devil and 300 years later, they've come to collect them. And the way they are collected is through the devil's rain — the devil's rain melts them. So the cover is basically going to be a melt job of MISFITS being stuck in the devil's rain."

On former MISFITS bandmate Glenn Danzig:

"I like Glenn; I never really disliked Glenn as a person. But we do have a lot of influence on people and I won't — for profit or for fame — jeopardize the safety of my fans to make money and to promote something that I don't think is right for them. Glenn got into this whole Satanic outlook and I wouldn't throw that on my kids and I won't do that. If Glenn wants to go to church and repent, I guess we're good to go. . . I don't think Glenn is the devil and I think he kind of promotes himself as the devil, and, to me, that seems absurd. It just seems to me that if kids are buying all this crap, it's like [he's] marketing something that shouldn't be marketed, in my opinion. I'm not about that. I was brought up totally Catholic with my grandmother. I see these kids at the show — they look up to me. We keep a clean program; we don't party, we don't drink, we don't have hookers in here and all that stupid shit. We're a family band, and we kind of keep the American dream nice and solid and real. And the kids like that . . . I'm not saying that Glenn is anti all that stuff, it's just that when you have albums [with titles like] 'Son Of Satan' and all this kind of stuff, it's a message that a lot of kids may take the wrong way and a lot of kids may get hurt because of it. And a lot of kids may argue with their parents over the subject matter that they're bringing into the house and have a bad relationship with their folks. Why? Is that something I would want to impose upon them? Make them have a bitter relationship with their parents over my music? No. . . The thing is you can go see a horror film — something really gory and bloody and all kinds of stuff — and have a good time with your friends. It doesn't mean you're gonna behave as such. And that's the difference between me and Glenn — Glenn is trying to impose the behavior aspect upon the people in real life. And thing is we're a sci-fi band — we've got subject matter from here to Kingdom Come — and we don't need that. Glenn's very talented. I don't think that musically we're in the same zone anymore. But look, I've got a lot of respect for Glenn. I always thought that Glenn had a lot of talent. And I just think that Glenn... I don't wanna say he's misguided, but I think that he's got a message that's not productive for the people who get it."

Part 1:

Part 2: