This Music Leaves Stains: The Complete Story of the Misfits

by James Greene Jr.

  Earth A.D.’s most interesting moment might be the moderately paced “Bloodfeast,” which, either by design or its proximity to so many speedier songs, sounds almost like a pagan ritual. Here is where Danzig specifically shines, double-tracking his voice in various places to give it an even spookier cadence. At two and a half minutes, “Bloodfeast” is the album’s longest song and, as such, acts as a fine palette cleanser before the explosive closer “Hellhound.” The band sounds most furious on this final track—you can practically feel the cramping in Doyle’s hands as he forces those powerful crunches from his instrument. The album ends as it began, with a final squeal of feedback that drifts into silence after one last cymbal crash.

  The keen production work of SST Records mainstay Glen “Spot” Lockett helped Earth A.D. avoid sounding as muddled or uneven as other hardcore records of the time. Many years later Danzig would praise Lockett—who had already helped tame the outrageous noise of Black Flag, the Minutemen, and the Descendents on a handful of classic recordings—for helping capture what the Misfits truly sounded like in concert. Indeed, Lockett’s work helped find the correct space between the murky Misfits recordings of their nascent years and the weird sheen that hung over Walk Among Us. Earth A.D.’s cover art, which is just as striking as its sonics, is a Marc Rude etching depicting the band members and their followers as a pile of fetid zombies writhing around some sort of abandoned mausoleum. The art more than anything signaled to fans that Earth A.D. was no cheesy B-movie shtick—this was the actual horror, the meat and potatoes, the visceral unrest generally reserved for Glenn’s bold lyrics.[36]

  Earth A.D.’s shift in tone caught punk fans off guard, many of whom felt the band was simply jumping on the hardcore bandwagon to compete with the rapid likes of Bad Brains and Minor Threat. From the latter band, singer Ian MacKaye in particular was disappointed with the Misfits’ new direction. “You know, I believed them before that,” says MacKaye. “The music was something coming out of deep expression. Earth A.D. . . . I felt it was just too fast.”[37]

  The lack of humor or camp value in this second Misfits record also bothered fans who reveled in the group’s earlier classic dime-store Halloween presentation. The change in tone could be a reflection of how the horror film genre itself was being transformed at this time. 1978’s Halloween, the first of the modern masked man murder scares, heralded the arrival of the take-no-prisoners slasher films and paved the way for a slew of shallow, gore-filled imitations such as My Bloody Valentine, Slumber Party Massacre, and the long-running Friday the 13th series. That same year the highly controversial I Spit On Your Grave hit screens and instantaneously offended mass audiences with its graphic depiction of rape and revenge-based violence; of course it inspired numerous copycats, including Charles Kaufman’s Mother’s Day and the infamous Italian production Cannibal Holocaust. Even science fiction films were feeling the effects—see the 1981 David Cronenberg classic Scanners about a group of telekinetics who invade a corporation and explode human heads like casaba melons. There was also The Evil Dead, the horror comedy best remembered before its sequels for offsetting its cartoony yuks with the horrifying concept of violent sexual assault by sentient trees.[38]

  One of the biggest mainstream horror hits the year of Earth A.D.’s release was the film adaptation of Stephen King’s frightening novel Cujo, a movie that does little more than trap two people in a car they cannot exit lest they be torn to fleshy ribbons by a giant rabid dog. Cujo, while not be as bloody or gruesome as most entries in the canon, showed just how much horror had changed in recent years. At this point it was all about pure, unrelenting terror. The relics of Hollywood’s golden fright era that built their chills mostly on strange voices, ornate costumes, and romantic origin stories were now just that—relics, corny black-and-white spookfests that were more about atmosphere than actual horror, doomed to the prison of late-night television for the rest of eternity. Even Romero’s 1968 lynchpin Night of the Living Dead, the film almost solely responsible for the genre's shift, seemed staid by this point in history. Perhaps afraid of falling into the same trap, the Misfits reinvented themselves as a more visceral (and less chuckling) beast.

  Certain sects of Misfits fanatics outside the punk realm appreciated the band’s newfound direction, and the development of heavy metal bands such as Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, Nuclear Assault, and Exodus would prove the ultimate value in Earth A.D.’s dark hardcore tear. It is impossible to imagine the fury of Reagan-era platters like Metallica’s Ride the Lightning, Slayer’s Reign in Blood, or even a later work like Pantera’s 1990 Cowboys From Hell existing without a guideline such as Earth A.D. Metallica would become particularly taken with the guiding hand of the Misfits as they fought to distinguish themselves from their long-haired competition, coloring their later work with several strong dabs from Danzig’s pallet. By the early 1990s, historians would go so far as to dub Earth A.D. the speed metal bible, the work all speed metal dreamers should look to for inspiration and final rulings.

  Not bad for an album that was more or less recorded in one eight-hour stretch. As the story goes, the band entered Santa Monica’s Unicorn Studio at midnight after a gig in Los Angeles. The exhaustion does show in some places on Earth A.D.’s finished product—there are a couple of sloppy drum rolls on Robo’s part, and the forty-second “Demonomania” barely has any reason to exist (apart from the hilarious opening declaration of “Look upon me, I am the beast!”). Danzig himself was so worn out during the session that he slept through the majority of it, rousing himself only to provide the titular cue in the middle of a newly recorded version of “Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?”[39] The rest of the vocals were recorded a year later, though the band kept Danzig’s original low-volume grunting in “Mommy,” ostensibly as some sort of weird joke.

  1. JR, telephone interview with the author, June 12, 2012.

  2. “Misfits Interview,” Forced Exposure, no. 5 (January 1983).

  3. “Misfits Interview,” Flipside, no. 31 (1982).

  4. “Crucifucks live [2/2] in Kalamazoo MI 1982,” posted by souldonut666, March 10, 2007, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZw4xQpnB2k.

  5. Alex Ogg, “Everything Went Black,” AllMusic, http://www.allmusic.com/album/everything-went-black-mw0000192996.

  6. Henry Rollins, Get in the Van: On the Road with Black Flag, 2nd ed. (Los Angeles: 2.12.61, 2004), 94.

  7. “Misfits—Santa Monica Civic 1983,” posted by drinkyeflaggons, December 3, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=EdUcVbiAiU4.

  8. Steven Blush, American Hardcore: A Tribal History (Port Townsend, WA: Feral House, 2010), 58.

  9. Ian MacKaye, telephone interview with the author, January 28, 2011.

  10. Rollins, Get in the Van.

  11. “Misfits Time Line,” Misfits Central, http://misfitscentral.com/misfits/timeline.php.

  12. Geri Nible, “Jerry Only Interview,” Feh, no. 12 (September/October 1994): 24–27.

  13. Mike IX Williams, telephone interview with the author, October 2, 2012.

  14. Jay Yuenger, “Misfits Arrested in New Orleans,” Jyuenger.com, http://www.jyuenger.com/?p=4365.

  15. Williams, telephone interview.

  16. “Punk-Rock Musicans Arrested in Cemetery.” The Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA), October 19, 1982.

  17. Yuenger, “Misfits Arrested in New Orleans.” Williams, telephone interview.

  18. “Misfits Time Line,” Misfits Central.

  19. The Misfits, Evilive, Plan 9 Records, 1982, seven-inch vinyl record.

  20. Mike Stax, telephone interview with the author, March 29, 2011.

  21. “Misfits—Santa Monica Civic 1983.”

  22. “Misfits Time Line,” Misfits Central.

  23. “Samhain: ‘We Don’t Want to Be Called a Hardcore Band,’” Hard Times 1, no. 1 (August 1984): 1–4. Stephen Blush, “Glenn Danzig,” Seconds, no. 44 (October 1997): 34–44.

  24. “Samhain,” Hard Times, 1–4.

  25. Mike Stax, “All Hell Breaks Loose:
The Jerry Only Interview,” Ugly Things, no. 12 (Summer 1993): 23–24.

  26. James Greene Jr., “Lyle Preslar Sets the Record Straight about U2, MTV, and Tesco Vee,” Crawdaddy.com, April 16, 2010, http://www.crawdaddyarchive.com/index.php/2010/04/16/minor-threat-s-lyle-preslar-sets-the-record-straight-about-u2–mtv-and-tesco-vee.

  27. “Misfits Time Line,” Misfits Central.

  28. Stax, “All Hell Breaks Loose,” 24. “Samhain,” Hard Times, 1–4.

  29. “Brian Keats Drummer, Near Death,” Rayon’s Blog, January 12, 2010, http://www.myspace.com/rayon/blog/524678595.

  30. Todd Swalla, e-mail interview with the author, September 2010.

  31. “Brian Keats Drummer, Near Death.”

  32. “The Misfits—Live at the Graystone Hall,” posted by Honkofthewall, September 6, 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7O8jBUABjw.

  33. “Back Porch Video: The Misfits Play Greystone Hall and Meet Mrs. Gibb,” Fourwaymirror.com, July 7, 2009, http://www.fourwaymirror.com/2009/07/back-porch-video-misfits-play-greystone.html.

  34. “Brian Keats Drummer, Near Death.”

  35. Sal Cannestra, “Kryst The Conqueror: Ex-Misfits Metal Meltdown,” Jersey Beat, no. 40 (Summer 1990).

  36. The Misfits, Earth A.D./Wolfs Blood, Plan 9 Records, 1983, vinyl record. D. X. Ferris, “Danzig’s Blackest of the Black Tour Promises to Melt Your Face Off,” The Dallas Observer, October 30, 2008, http://www.dallasobserver.com/2008–10–30/music/danzig-s-blackest-of-the-black-tour-promises-to-melt-your-face-off.

  37. MacKaye, telephone interview.

  38. “Horror Film: 1970s–1980s,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_film#1970s.E2.80.931980s.

  39. “Misfits Time Line,” Misfits Central.

  Green Hell

  6

  Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.—Michel de Montaigne

  “Die, Die My Darling” was the aptly named Misfits single Glenn Danzig issued via Plan 9 Records in May of 1984 after the band’s demise. A threatening staccato march in which the protagonist threatens an unknown victim with a future of entrapment in “an oblong box,”[1] “Die, Die” would prove a powerful final stamp for the band and would in time become one of the most revered Misfits songs (the single’s flipside, a grinding werewolf ode entitled “We Bite,” juxtaposes the famous beat of its A-side with pure unrelenting speed). With the Misfits officially behind him, Glenn focused his efforts on Samhain, whose lineup finally solidified in former Rosemary’s Babies drummer Eric Stellmann, né Eerie Von (a name taken in part from horror periodical Eerie), on bass and Steve Grecco Zing on drums;[2] the guitar slot was filled by Minor Threat’s Lyle Preslar, fulfilling his oral agreement to play in whatever “new thing” Danzig put together after the pair’s planned supergroup with Brian Baker, Chris Gates, and Mark Stern fell apart. “[We] began recording an album in New Jersey,” Preslar later told Crawdaddy! regarding Samhain’s earliest steps. “I thought that the sessions went pretty well musically . . . I was playing a lot of different stuff on the songs and getting away from the strict power chord riffing that I did in Minor Threat.”

  Preslar as a guitarist was oft heralded for the explosive passion he brought to his playing; personality-wise, however, he was oceans away from Danzig and the brooding, twisted vision the singer hoped to put forth in Samhain. Promises were allegedly made to Preslar that this new outfit would not be a sequel to the Misfits; so he was dismayed upon arriving to Manhattan’s Rock Hotel for the band’s first gig in his regular outfit of T-shirt and jeans to see the rest of Samhain adorned in what he would later dub “ridiculous” costumes (complete with eyeliner). The guitarist was further aggravated that specific pieces of equipment he requested for the show were not present; Danzig apparently had his own ideas concerning how Preslar’s guitars should sound.[3] Preslar’s tenure with Samhain ended that night; shortly thereafter Mourning Noise guitarist Pete “Damien” Marshall stepped into his place.[4] Little love was lost between Preslar and Danzig’s camp. “[Lyle] just didn’t fit in and he didn’t put out,” Eerie Von recounted later that year. “He didn’t want to do anything . . . his idea of getting into a song was moving the neck of the guitar around. ‘You guys are going to love me because I’m playing an A minor arpeggio. Later you’re going to say that I was amazing.’”[5]

  Pete Marshall, who also played in the Whore Lords with former Misfit Joey Image and Humpty Keg, was more enthused to be working with Danzig, as were Samhain’s other two members.[6] The Misfits, regardless of their successes and failures in the general punk rock realm, remained nothing short of awe-inspiring heroes to the handful of outsider youths who remained parked in Lodi and surrounding areas. Stellmann relished this second opportunity to collaborate musically with Danzig, as his decision to stick with Rosemary’s Babies in 1982 after being offered the Misfits drum chair yielded no greater success. Zing, however, may have been the most excited of all; the nascent drummer had burned many hours in front of the Caiafa garage where the Misfits practiced, dreaming about what it might be like to be included in that fold. Decades later Zing wrote that Danzig’s personal invitation to join Samhain “floored” him and that he couldn’t sleep that evening because he was so worked up about the situation.[7]

  The name “Samhain” refers to an autumnal festival held by the Celts in medieval Ireland circa the 900s, a festival comprised of tribal celebrations that marked the end of the year’s “light” harvest period and the coming of the “dark” winter period. Over the course of several days Celts would partake in various solemn rituals involving bonfires and livestock believed to cleanse its participants. Centuries later scholars would tag this annual event as the Celtic New Year; this term has been adopted by both the Celtic League and existing Celtic nations.[8] Samhain’s correct Gaelic pronunciation, depending on your dialect, is either “SAH-win,” “SOW-win,” or “SOO-win.” At first, Danzig and his band mates attempted to have their followers use that centuries-old pronunciation, correcting friends, interviewers, and concertgoers. Alas, it quickly became clear that the phonetic way of speaking the name would prove less headache-inducing for all parties involved, so the band stuck with “Sam-HAYN.”[9]

  Samhain’s debut record Initium was unleashed that September. The album took a more ethereal, obtuse approach, giving the instrumentation room to breathe with slower tempos while employing various atmospheric techniques such as heavy reverb, chimes, and simulated moments of paranormal activity (the title track opens Initium with a simulated maelstrom of ghostly winds that almost seem to be speaking; atop the din Danzig angrily intones that he is “the end” and “now is the pain”). The band would later comment that this style reflected a “darker, blacker understanding of the world, why it works the way it does . . . and has for endless centuries.”[10] Plodding chants like “Samhain” and “The Shift” surely sounded like a pagan celebration. Samhain also proved their more dramatic devotion to darkness via their lyrics, not just in subject matter (ritualistic sacrifice, occult practices, biblical struggles) but in the delivery. “Feel thine end dark, we who live are ever dead, Cerberus, Cerberus!” Danzig snarls in the spine-tingling “Macabre.” Later, “The Shift” culminates its evil reverie with an ascending spiral of vocal calls Danzig can’t seem to get out of his body fast enough.

  Yet Samhain retained a mighty edge to their music and could rock just as hard as any of their underground contemporaries—“Black Dream” tears into the listener with its jagged opening riff, and the jaunty “He-Who-Could-Not-Be-Named” was just speedy enough to be incredibly fun. A similar but somewhat odd moment (one that suggests Samhain were perhaps hedging their bets) comes in Initium’s reworked version of the Misfits’ “Horror Business”; the song is repurposed as “Horror Biz” and speeds along several miles faster than the landmark original.[11] These purely punkish moments proved that goth was only a slightly fair term to apply to Samhain. If anything, this band was horror punk of a different, more serious strain. This notion is reinforced by Initium’s start
ling cover art, wherein the band’s logo, replete with ornamental cow skull (swiped from an obscure Marvel comic called Crystar Crystal Warrior), sits atop a dimly lit photo of the group drenched in horse blood procured from an upstate slaughterhouse.[12] “Tortuously great power punk from [Danzig] and two new warlocks,” Flipside hailed upon Initium’s release. “The songs all keep in the ‘horror’ motif like the Misfits . . . but this new band seems to be full of more honest vigor.”[13]

  On stage, the imagery was more or less the same as well—black leather, combat boots, etc.—plus the occasional gratuitous dousing of stage blood. Danzig himself gained a noticeable amount of muscle mass during the Samhain years, due to an increased interest in bodybuilding and nutrition. The singer also let his devilock grow into a shaggy mess that often obscured his entire face. As a result, Glenn looked more ursine and threatening during this period than ever before.

  Samhain’s less playful approach was a turn-off for Misfits diehards who appreciated the latter band’s implied sense of glee. The common complaint was that Glenn’s sense of humor died when he formed Samhain, the singer fully embracing demonic imagery and alleged occult practices as an entire lifestyle. Danzig’s true dedication to the pagan arts was often called into question, though. To this day, even some of his former cohorts question whether or not he truly “lived it” (Glenn’s famous complaint about the Caiafa brothers). “That’s an odd statement,” said Marshall in response. “Even back then I know Glenn [stayed] at his parents’ house, and that allowed him to hang out and wear black clothing and write songs and stuff. He wasn’t off in a cave somewhere.”

  As he did in the Misfits, Glenn retained complete control over Samhain’s songwriting, recordings, image, and performing techniques—Marshall remembers being scolded by Danzig occasionally for not adhering exactly to the rhythms and nuances of specific guitar parts even years into playing them. Fed up with the uneven business of fielding his work out to record plants, Glenn sometimes forced Samhain to press their own vinyl in his bathroom, a laborious process that could take several hours.[14] Rumor has it the singer even pressed his own bootlegs of out-of-print Misfits singles and live shows to sell for extra money without a serious loss (something Bobby Steele did openly and flagrantly with the Live ’79 bootleg he hawked at his own Undead gigs[15]). The evidence to suggest Danzig bootlegged his own material are the unofficial releases themselves; often, the sound quality is as good or even better than the original distributed recordings.