This Music Leaves Stains: The Complete Story of the Misfits

by James Greene Jr.

  Glenn filled out the vocal position alongside bassist Jerry Byers, guitarist Ronnie Damato, and drummer Allen Becker. For Glenn, singing Top 40 rock songs was a fun way to blow off steam, and according to those around at the time there was no question the rich baritone for which he would later gain esteem was already almost fully developed. Talus existed for about a year before various members lost interest. Byers remained passionate about playing, though, so he sought out two other musician friends: Steve Linder, who by this point had become known around Lodi as an accomplished guitarist, and drummer Jim Catania, as cherished for his percussive skills as he was for his valid driver’s license and car (“Nobody had wheels back then, so he was the guy!” Linder recalls). When it came time for this youthful trio to find a vocalist, Byers immediately called Glenn Anzalone.

  Upon his admission Glenn christened this nascent outfit with a seemingly nonsensical name: Koo-Dot-N-Boo-Jang. His band mates were perplexed by the voodoo-ish moniker but accepted it for its originality. Koo-Dot quickly adopted a serious approach, practicing three nights a week and eschewing all social activities (even their increasingly impatient girlfriends) to perfect their takes on hits by rock n’ roll pioneers Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley as well as more contemporary material by the likes of Free, Led Zeppelin, and the J. Geils Band. Glenn in particular tried to be as professional as possible—on the Zeppelin songs, the nascent singer refused to ape Robert Plant’s famous carnal screams for fear of damaging his own vocal chords. The young singer also tried to get his Koo-Dot band mates to work on original material, but the creations or ideas he presented were usually labeled as too dark or off-the-wall for the bar band scene (one of the original songs that Koo-Dot did perform, courtesy of bassist Byers, was a tongue-in-cheek testicular ode called “My Nuts or Your Nuts”).

  Such rejection was not always easy for young Anzalone to hear. “Glenn was very sensitive,” says Steve Linder. “You couldn’t mess with one of his originals. He took himself very seriously. One time, we were arguing about something related to our band, and he just snapped at me—‘The only thing I have is my voice!’ You know, some shit, he could dish out but he couldn’t take it.”

  During their heyday, Koo-Dot-N-Boo-Jang would play a variety of backyard parties in and around Lodi; the band’s shining moment, though, came nearly a year in when they were hired to perform at a function hosted at the local Catholic Youth Organization hall. Although many priests at the venue were perplexed by the band’s odd name, which the rockers were not wont to explain, Koo-Dot drew a decent crowd and put on a good enough show that they were invited back for another event. Unfortunately, by that time Byers and Catania had grown bored with the material and had given up on Koo-Dot-N-Boo-Jang.

  Linder and Glenn soldiered forward, recruiting bassist Tony Leek, drummer Manny Martinez, and guitarist Charlie Jones for another covers act. Feeling more assured as a singer and front man, Glenn demanded that this new outfit perform more of the fringe proto-punk material he was growing to love. This included such songs as former Roxy Music singer Bryan Ferry’s arrangement of the Bob Dylan classic “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and “Walk on the Wild Side,” a gritty depiction of inner-city life wrapped in an FM-friendly melody and delivered by Velvet Underground figurehead Lou Reed (“We even did those really high ‘doo-do-doo’ parts!” Linder recalls with an embarrassed laugh). The rest of the band was more interested in sticking with the meat-and-potatoes hard rock they had always loved, but they appeased their talented front man nonetheless.[49] Glenn’s foremost allegiance in the area of hard rock and/or heavy metal was to genre founders Black Sabbath. He would later cite Sabbath’s 1970 debut as one of the most influential and important records he ever purchased,[50] often citing it as the very first record he purchased of his own accord. Creepy, impenetrable dirges like “The Wizard” and “N.I.B.” may have been panned by critics at the time for being too doom-ridden but they certainly opened up a whole new universe for millions of frustrated adolescents at the tail end of the flower power era. Black Sabbath was also the first concert that Glenn ever attended; the dour rockers played New York City a handful of times when Glenn was just fifteen, usually performing at the city’s Fillmore East.[51] The future Misfit remembered the show in a 2010 interview: “I remember that me and my friend were at this show and we were the littlest kids there. It was oversold and the crowd was rocking back and forth so we just started punching and kicking people—that’s the kind of kids we were.”

  Musically, Glenn enjoyed his first experience with Sabbath, though was somewhat dismayed that the band were not quite as good live as they had been on record.[52] Unfortunately, Glenn’s musician friends did not hold Black Sabbath in the same reverence and could not be convinced to cover any material by the decidedly evil group. Also shot down by his band mates were songs by Glenn’s other perennial obsession, Detroit’s legendary Stooges.[53] Led by outrageous feral animal Iggy Pop, who would mark live performances by smearing himself with peanut butter and sometimes slashing his chest with broken glass, the Stooges released three albums of brutal, sexually charged rock n’ roll before splintering apart amidst a druggy haze in 1974. Primitive freakouts like “Dirt” and “TV Eye” were too raunchy and/or liberated for the general populace at the time; thus, Glenn would have to be content with strumming the handful of chords that made up the Stooges’ depraved, subservient 1969 ode “I Wanna Be Your Dog” endlessly at night on his own guitar alone in his bed room.[54]

  This third and final cover band featuring Glenn Anzalone would perform a handful of gigs at dive bars around town under a variety of different names. At first, they were known as Orex; later, they became P.O.N.Y. (an acronym for something lost to time); and still later, Prostitutes. In concert the band tried to set themselves apart from other more staid acts by wearing scuba gear or wrapping their bodies in cellophane. Dubious gimmicks and ongoing identity crises aside, Orex/P.O.N.Y./Prostitutes was relatively enjoyable for all involved until a bit of unsavory back-channel gossip broke them apart for good. Linder struck up a friendship with Glenn’s younger brother Scott during this third’s band’s run; one afternoon, Scott revealed that Glenn had said Linder was the worst guitarist he’d ever played with. Naturally, Linder was painfully wounded. “I got so upset,” the guitarist says, “that I went [to the practice space] and took my amp and never wanted to talk to [Glenn] again. And I never really did.”[55]

  Steve Linder’s defection and the subsequent dissolve of this name-shifting covers band didn’t bother Glenn very much; by March of 1977 the singer had had his fill of performing other people’s material. The punk rock movement was beginning to galvanize in his proverbial backyard thanks to a Queens quartet known as the Ramones, who became the toast of Lower Manhattan by dressing in matching leather jackets, pushing their distorted guitars to eleven, and writing twisted two-minute pop nursery rhymes about abusing household toxins (“Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue”) and attacking toddlers (“Beat on the Brat”). The Ramones’ fierce gnawing sound and incredible velocity became the sonic template for all punk bands to follow, as would their image of arrested adolescence—the four members made sure the world believed they were real siblings with the surname Ramone (they weren’t) who each loved all-American activities like baseball and surfing (in truth, only guitarist Johnny Ramone liked baseball, and only bassist Dee Dee surfed).[56]

  Meanwhile, thanks to some cross-pollination between key figures in New York and London, England was seeing a simultaneous (albeit more newsworthy) uprising of raw rock n’ roll sounds lead by a controversial band called the Sex Pistols. The Sex Pistols’ debut single “Anarchy in the U.K.” was a mad waltz celebrating disaster topped off by the ear-clearing caterwaul of singer Johnny Rotten. An expletive-filled appearance on a morning television program in December of 1976 sealed the band’s fate as British tabloid fodder for the remainder of their natural existence. Though questions would eventually arise over just how legitimate this band’s calls for civil unrest were (they had, after a
ll, assembled in a trendy London clothing shop co-owned by future fashion icon Vivienne Westwood) there’s no denying that the Sex Pistols offered a colorful, humorous alternative to mainstream rock with a string of explosive singles that shoehorned lethal amounts of energy back into rock n’ roll.[57]

  Sensing the right atmosphere, Glenn Anzalone decided to give up his long-term career goal of being a renowned comic book artist so he could focus on forming a wholly original punk rock band that might navigate him away from the Garden State’s apparent dead ends. Aside from experience, Glenn had age on his side. Already in his early twenties, the square-jawed singer did not possess the same blind, confused anger that was the hallmark of so many younger punks of the time. He was angry, certainly, about life and Lodi and popular music and movies, but he was also more rational and determined and able to approach things from a more nuanced perspective. Glenn knew his punk band had to stand out, and more importantly, he had the raw talent to make them do so. Other punks mumbled, gurgled, or shrieked; the young Anzalone, in contrast, was discovering he could create rich sounds very much like his vocal heroes the Righteous Brothers, Jim Morrison, and Roy Orbison, with equal tone, sustainability, and range. He could legitimately sing, despite having never taken a lesson in his life. Years of studying pop art had also given him great insight into visual presentation. Glenn was certain whatever he did would be quite different from whatever else was going on—and more macabre.

  1. Bryan Walsh, “The Electrifying Edison,” Time, July 5, 2010, http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1910417_1910419_1910460,00.html.

  2. Jeanne Donohue, “Family/Boardwalk Tradition: Salt Water Taffy,” The Press of Atlantic City, June 8, 2006, http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives? p_product=AC&p_theme=ac&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=11224176B7C4EAA0&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM; “History of the Campbell’s Soup Company,” CampbellSoup.com.au, accessed August 1, 2012, http://www.campbellsoup.com.au/about-campbells/our-history.aspx.

  3. “Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact,” The New York Times, October 31, 1938, http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70A17FB3D5F1B7A93C3AA178BD95F4C8385F9.

  4. Barbara Gill, “Lindbergh Kidnapping Rocked the World 50 Years Ago,” Hunterdon County Democrat, 1981, http://www.nj.com/lindbergh/hunterdon/index.ssf?/lindbergh/stories/demcovr.html.

  5. “The Hindenburg Disaster,” Airships.net, http://www.airships.net/hindenburg/disaster.

  6. Everett Rosenfeld, “Jersey Shore Attacks, 1916,” Time, August 1, 2011, http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2085822_2085823_2085948,00.html.

  7. Ian Zanni, “10 More Roads That Will Scare You Stupid,” ListVerse.com, February 6, 2011, http://listverse.com/2011/02/06/10-more-roads-that-will-scare-you-stupid.

  8. Andrea Allison, “The Devil’s Tree,” Paranormalstories.blogspot.com, February 26, 2010, http://paranormalstories.blogspot.com/2010/02/devils-tree.html.

  9. Kelleigh Dotson, “New Jersey’s Devils Tower Is Haunted,” Suite101, June 13, 2009, http://suite101.com/article/new-jerseys-devils-tower-is-haunted-a124961.

  10. Dave Juliano, “The Jersey Devil,” Shadowlands.net, http://theshadowlands.net/jd.htm.

  11. Randy D. Ralph, “Ramapough Mountain People ‘The Jackson Whites,’” Netsrider.com, January 2, 2001, http://www.netstrider.com/documents/whites.

  12. Frank D. Cipriani, “Welcome to the Gatherer Institute,” Gatherer.org, http://www.gatherer.org.

  13. William H. Sokolic, “Underdog Gives Woman New Leash on Life,” Courier Post, April 17, 1999, 2B.

  14. State of New Jersey Commission of Investigation, “The Changing Face of Organized Crime in New Jersey: A Status Report,” May 2004, 105–121.

  15. Linda Stasi, “Story behind the Real ‘Sopranos,’” New York Post, June 23, 2010, http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/story_behind_the_real_sopranos_6WwWzB3HbtEfL63vKrxrFN.

  16. Paul Brubaker, “Bada Bing Club Is Auctioning ‘Sopranos’ Memorabilia Online,” Herald News, August 25, 2007, http://www.northjersey.com/page.phpqstr=eXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3JmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3MTg2MTAy.

  17. “Welcome to Satin Dolls, The Original ‘Bada Bing!’ Club,” SatinDollsNJ.com, http://www.satindollsnj.com/satindollshome.html.

  18. “Frank Sinatra Obituary,” BBC News, May 16, 1998, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/special_report/1998/05/98/sinatra/67911.stm.

  19. Richie Unterberger, “The Four Seasons,” VocalGroup.org, http://www.vocalgroup.org/inductees/the_four_seasons.html.

  20. “History,” KoolAndTheGang.com, http://www.koolandthegang.com/history.

  21. Maggy Patrick, “Summit High Hosted Velvet Underground’s First Show,” SummitPatch.com, January 28, 2010, http://summit.patch.com/articles/summit-high-hosted-velvet-undergrounds-first-show.

  22. Adam Bernstein, “Les Paul, 94, ‘Wizard of Waukesha’ Invented Guitars That Changed Popular Music,” Washington Post, August 14, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/08/13/AR2009081301768.html.

  23. Jocelyn Y. Stewart, “Actress, TV Horror Hostess Vampira,” Los Angeles Times, January 16, 2008, http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jan/16/local/me-nurmi16.

  24. Elena M. Watson, Television Horror Movie Hosts: 68 Vampires, Mad Scientists and Other Denizens of the Late Night Airwaves Examined and Interviewed (Jefferson, NC: MacFarland, 2000), 1–5, 265.

  25. Randall Clark, At a Theater or Drive-In Near You: The History, Culture and Politics of the American Exploitation Film (New York: Routledge, 1995), xi, 77, 129.

  26. Stephanie Boluk and Wylie Lenz, Generation Zombie: Essays on the Living Dead in Modern Culture (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011), 5.

  27. Tom Brinkman, “It’s a Violent, Violent, Violent, Violent World,” BadMags.com, http://www.badmags.com/bmviolent.html.

  28. Pennies From Heaven, DVD, directed by Norman Z. McLeod, Columbia Pictures, 1936.

  29. Robert Johnson, The Complete Recordings, compact disc, Columbia Records, 1990.

  30. Joel Whitburn, Top Pop Records 1940–1955 (Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research, 1973).

  31. I Put a Spell on Me, DVD, directed by Nicholas Triandafyllidis, 2001.

  32. “‘Monster Mash’ Singer Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett Dies at 69,” Foxnews.com, April 26, 2007, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,268765,00.html; “Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett R.I.P.,” NewYorkNightTrain.com, May 1, 2007, http://www.newyorknighttrain.com/2007/05/01/bobby-boris-pickett-rip-mad-scientist-who-brought-the-monster-mash-to-life; Monster Mash: The Movie, DVD, directed by Joel Cohen, Prism Pictures, 1995.

  33. “Guide Picks—Top 10 Ten Tragedy Songs (The Fifties and Sixties),” About.com, http://oldies.about.com/library/weekly/aatpteen.htm.

  34. “Behind the Music: Alice Cooper,” television program, VH1, originally aired May 2, 1999.

  35. Greil Marcus, Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island (New York: Knopf, 1979), 294.

  36. “Blue Cheer,” AllMusic, http://www.allmusic.com/artist/blue-cheer-mn0000059537.

  37. Steven Taylor, False Prophet: Field Notes from the Punk Undergroud (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2003): 49.

  38. Stephen Thompson, “New York Dolls,” AllMusic, http://www.allmusic.com/artist/new-york-dolls-p5019.

  39. Kevin W. Wright, “The Indigenous Population of Bergen County,” BergenCountyHistory.org, http://www.bergencountyhistory.org/Pages/indians.html.

  40. Joseph R. Klett, “Using the Records of East and West Jersey Proprietors,” NJ.gov, 2008, http://www.nj.gov/state/darm/pdf/proprietors.pdf.

  41. John P. Snyder, “The Story of New Jersey’s Civil Boundaries: 1606–1968,” Bureau of Geology and Topography, 1969, p. 80.

  42. Scott Fybush, “77 WABC, Lodi, N.J.,” Fybush.com, May 27, 2005, http://www.fybush.com/sites/2005/site-050527.html.

  43. “Richard N. Anzalone,” Obituaries, Bergen County Record, May 3, 2002.

  44. Tom Russel, “Glenn Danz
ig Interview,” Clyde 1 Radio, BBC, September 3, 1992.

  45. Dennis Diken, personal e-mail to the author, June 7, 2012.

  46. Jeff Kitts, “The Dark Knight Returns,” Flux 1 (September 1994): 50.

  47. Steven Linder, telephone interview with the author, May 25, 2012.

  48. “Bronze Age of Comic Books,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age_of_Comic_Books.

  49. Linder, telephone interview.

  50. Mariana Zogbi, “Danzig on Thin Ice,” Metal Mania (Spring 1989): 25–27.

  51. “Tour Date Archive,” Black-Sabbath.com, http://www.black-sabbath.com/tourdates.

  52. Tom Russel, “Glenn Danzig Interview,” Clyde 1 Radio, BBC, September 3, 1992.

  53. Linder, telephone interview.

  54. Glenn Danzig, “Afterword,” The Stooges: Head On: A Journey through the Michigan Underground (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2011), 147–148.

  55. Linder, telephone interview.

  56. End of the Century, DVD, directed by Jim Fields and Michael Gramaglia, Magnolia Pictures, 2003.

  57. The Filth and the Fury, DVD, directed by Julien Temple, FilmFour, 2000.

  Teenagers from Mars

  2

  One of the great values of the Misfits is the sound of struggle . . . [it’s the sound of] people expressing their art in the middle of artlessness.[1]―JR, Rosemary’s Babies

  From day one, Glenn Anzalone’s new musical project would be called the Misfits, a name borrowed from the final film of his true Hollywood obsession, Marilyn Monroe. It was an apropos choice considering the rocky path this band would eventually go down: Directed in 1961 by John Huston, The Misfits has always been known just as much for its troubled production as for the weary desert romance it put on screen. Monroe was in such terrible shape from her drug and alcohol abuse that production had to be halted at least once. A doctor was eventually hired to look out for her as well as co-star and fellow boozehound Montgomery Clift. Huston himself also regularly imbibed while directing The Misfits, sometimes falling asleep during shots, sometimes gambling away portions of the budget with the film’s extras.[2] Clark Gable, the marquee name of the film, insisted on doing every rigorous stunt scripted for his character despite his questionable condition—Gable was a weak sixty years old, severely damaged inside thanks to years of heavy smoking (the intense hundred-plus degree heat of the Nevada desert did the aged star no favors either).