METAL MANIACS, 12/99
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Metal Maniacs:  A lot of people were upset W/the direction of 5-Blackacidevil.

Glenn:  Yeah, it caused alot of controversy, alright.

MM:  Maybe we could adress that alittle bit.I've always been under the
impression, and it's been
proven time and time again, that true artists always change.

GD:  I've done it my whole career.It's always been expand and grow or die.And
you'll see alot of
bands that just die because they don't do anything different or at least
take the initiative to try and
expand their sound.That album worked exactly the way I wanted it to,
basically, it shook alot of
stuff up.People either loved it or hated it, and we got alot of new fans
from it's release.Hey,
maybe some of the people who only liked "Mother" droped out, and I've always
said those fans
are okay, when you get this big MTV exposure, but they're not peranent
fans.The core following
you have is your most important thing, and if you always stay true to them,
you'll be alright.And
that's what I feel I did.Most of those people really liked the record, and
anyone who didn't, they
probably didn't see it as just another album in a long career, and they
probably took off.Which is
fine too.

MM:  But you're a singer!I mean, the reason I got into you in the first place
was because, like no
metal singer before you, you were a punk/metal cross between Jim Morrison
and Elvis Presley,
for Chrissake.It was the voice.Always the voice.And the voice on that last
album was submerged in electronica.

GD:  Not all of it.

MM:  Practically all of it!

GD:  Okay, sure, there was alot of that, yeah, but there's also alot of me
singing."Ashes" is me
singing I wrote the song "Come to Silver" for Johnny Cash."Hint of Her
Blood," too.I mean,
there's a ton of them on there.I think people who wanted to dog it would
pick up on just that
electronic element, which is fine with me.I love the record, I've had people
tell me how much
they love the record.I've had people who hated Danzig before come up to me
and say,"Man, I
always hated your stuff but the last record I love," and alot of punker
friends came up to me and
say,"Hay, man, that's you best album."Which is good, because than I know my
core people are
going to love it, or hate it.Love or hate, that's what I want, I don't want
that middle ground where
they go,"Aw' it's okay, I could live without it," that kind of thing.I want
people to either love or
hate.

MM:  You've gone from punk to metal to doom to gothic to indusrial.Who is your
core
audience?Can the same person who liked Samhain like Danzig?Can the same
person who liked
the Misfits like Danzig?

GD:  We have alot of fans who like it, who corectlly see it as this artists
whole legacy, and,
therefore, if they're into the artist, they love all of it.Because lyrically
it's still treading the same
stuff.I'm branching out into different areas of it, but I'm still keeping it
dark, staying true to what
it's about, and yeah, it's nice, I've had a long career.Alot of artists have
a career spanning a year
or two years.I've had 20 years now.So that's nice.There's not alot of
artists in that position, and
I'm pretty lucky.

MM:  Artists who do survive that long never do it W/out alienating some of
their earlier fans and
causing artistic controversy.Everyone always want their favorite artists to
be just like they were
when they first discovered them.

GD:  Exactly!And that's exactly why many artists make the same album over and
over again.But
y'know what?In my case, it's not like I purposely set out to create
controversy.I just wind up
saying and doing things that a lot of people are scared to do.I'm not scared
to put out an album
that may not be a comercial success.I don't care.The art is first, and
delivering what I feel is
going to be a record my fans are going to like.Who cares about the label?I'm
an artist, and I
understand that music today is all about hit-and-run records and MTV, but
that's not the kind of
artist I am, and that's not how I started out and that's not how I'm going
to finnish up either.

MM:  On your new record, 6:66 Satan's Child, some tracks sound like they are
produced by a
different producer, some are basic, some are industrial, some are dark and
atmospheric, as if you
had 3 producers.

GD:  Peter Lorimer and I produced it.Jay Gordon and Amir Derakh mixed seven
songs, and then
me, Lorimer and Cameron Webb mixed five tracks.

MM:  It's been three years.What took so long?And what was the mindset to go
from pure
electronica to some electronica and back mostly to metal songs?

GD:  It's actually weird.I recorded that last record very organically, and
this record is the first
time I've ever recorded my vocals digitally.The last one was right to
standard two-inch tape.This
one I recorded W/a mic and in a booth, but through a computer, and that's
how the overdubs
were done on this record as well, on ProTools.The last one was an
all-traditional studio.What I
tried to do W/this record is take all my favorite elements from Danzig 1
through 5 and the Thrall
EP, put it all together and add a couple of new flavors.

MM:  I particularly love the more atmospheric stuff.It sounds so good.

GD:  That's fantastic.That's the best compliment you can get.For me, at
least.That's what I listen
to.If I listen to a Johnny Cash record or if I listen to Elvis or somebody
like that, it's gotta have
atmosphere.Jim Morrison from the Doors, that's all atmosphere.

MM:  As long as you mentioned Morrison, one of my idles, what do you think
about the vocal
comparisons to him and other singers of the past that invariably people will
liken you to.

GD:  You'd be surprised at some of the comparisons.Of course, I've always
heard the Presley and
Morrison thing, but then I've heard the weirdest ones, like Roy Orbison and
Robert Plant, which
I don't think I sound anything like.Maybe Chris Cornell sounds like Robert
Plant but not me.

MM:  Of course not, you're a darker, lower singer.

GD:  Exactly, yet I've heard some of the wildest weirdest stuff and I'm just
like...alright, the Elvis
thing, Evil Elvis, whatever, and that Morrison thing, some of the bassier
singers, I can
understand that, but man, for some of the comments out there, I've been
like,"Man, are these
people hearin' the same record I'm hearin'?"[laughing]

MM:  You did a great heavy metal version of Elvis Presley's "Trouble," from
the movie King
Creole.

GD:  I loved the song.It's his best movie.I also remember being alittle kid
and seeing Jailhouse
Rock on television.I didn't know who Elvis was at that point, it's not my
era, but I reme,ber
seeing it and going,"This is awsome."The whole scene where he is singing in
jail.That was a
way cool movie.That's probably one of his best movies too.I like Elvis
alot.I like his Back To
Memphis record the best, his comeback record where he proved he could
actually sing.

MM:  Haven't you been performing "Trouble" since your Samhain days.

GD:  Yeah, right.And on the Samhain boxed set there's going to be two versions
of it.One studio
and one live from our very first tour.The studio version has some sampling
and keyboards and
stuff, and was done back in '86.

MM:  And as far as your other comparison, Jim Morrison, the great thing about
him was you never
knew what to expect from him at live shows.He was crazy.And usually drunk or
tanked on
LSD.Doors shows were circus-like affairs with an element of danger and
unpredictable
wildness.You have a certai element of that at your shows.Sometimes your
audiances just don't
know what to expect.

GD:  Well we don't do a set show.No one says,"Okay, Glenn, at the beginning of
the song you
have to be here, and here's your mark for this,"like Metallica and other
bands like that, 'cause
we're not blowin' off pyro.Same as it was in the Misfits or Samhain, it's
just like I'm on
overdrive and that's it.I don't know where I am half the time.That's thet
way I like it.It's got to be
unpredictable, spontaneous, crazy.And I like to feed off the energy from the
audience
too.Sometimes it's like the more crazy they get, the more crazy I get and
it's kind of a symbolic
thing, it's really wild.

MM:  Hasn't that element of your stage show been deluted by fame?

GD:  No.Not at all.The only way it has changed is that now there's more
people.There's more
craziness.The thing is, Danzig is a professional band and the Misfits
couldn't play, you know
what I mean?Everyone takes pride in being musicians and going on stage and
putting on a great
show and performing the song as fantastically as they can on stage, and
giving people what they
want, which is a great live show.

MM:  Wasn't there some acrimony when you left the Misfits?

GD:  Well, I never really left the band, it just dissolved.It wasn't
together.The guys tried to do
some other bands that didn't work, they had a Christian band for a
while.Jerry Only is really thee
only origional guy.Jerry's brother Doyle came in for the last year of the
Misfits.So that didn't
work, and a couple of years ago they put this thing back together and I
wanted no part of it.

MM:  Why not?

GD:  I'd just come so far and I felt that it shouldn't be screwed with and it
was a moment in time
and you can't go back.There'd been a lot of...Jerry and I...uh, I don't like
Jerry and I'm sure he
doesn't like me, and I don't really want to go back to that.It was a freeing
up process for me,
when that thing was finally over, and I did Samhain.If I wanted to call
Samhain the Misfits I
would've, back in the day, because nobody would've used the name, but it was
better to go
on.That's how I feel about this too.I think rather than drag the name
through the mud, I'd rather
Jerry just did the Jerry Only band or created a new band, you know what I
mean?They don't have
the singer, the guy who wrote all the songs.But I felt that way about Black
Flag too.Once Chuck
was gone, that was part of the heart of Black Flag and no other line up
could do it justice.They
could loose this guy or that guy,but once they lost Chuck, one of the
founding guys in the band
y'know...

MM:  The year 2000 will see a fullblown Danzig renaissace.The boxed
set, all the
re-releases of the previous albums, the re-release of the Hollywood record,
the new
record.What's behind this huge Danzig renaissance?

GD:  Basically, I got my deal set up W/me and Kristoff, who I
actually met in Germany when he was in charge of BMG there.Slayer, David
Bowie, Guns 'N Roses, he handled all of those, so we eventually hooked up, I
did my label W/him, went through ADA, and it's great.So far it's fantastic.I
was going to be just happy W/selling to me core audience and that'd be
great, and I'd go on the road and everything.Now it's all blown up.It's
cool.It's a lot of work but it's a lot of fun.What happened was in my
settlements W/Hollywood and American Recordings president Rick Rubin, I got
all the rights back to all my unreleased stuff, a real backlog!The Rubin
stuff includes every live recording from the begining until Danzig 4,
unreleased tracks and all the home videos,and videos that have never been
released.We did a documentary movie on Danzig III that never came out, I'm
getting all of that back.All the clips from "Mother" are from that
documentary.I also got tons of stuff back from Hollywood records, all the
videos, all the
records, the EP that Jim Foetus did for us, the remix EP.When we re-release
Blackacidevil
we're going to put three extra tracks on it that no ones ever heard, same
thing W/the Foetus remix
EP, we're going to throw some other remixes on there.I did a song for the
X-Files, for the
soundtrack, and we've got remixes of that song which are awsome, so we're
not just putting it
back out there'll be lots of extra stuff.And the classical record, I did the
Black Aria thing, that
going to come back out, so it's cool, it's nice.Danzig has never done a live
record, except for the
four songs on Thrall, so right after Danzig 6, a double-live record.

MM:  Wow!That's a shitload to look forward to!What was it about "Mother," if
you had to look
back and conjecture, that flirted W/the MTV-type mass adulation?What was it
about that song?It
was your only flirtation W/mass-appeal rockstar superstardom.[laughing]

GD:  I don't know![laughing].When it first came out in '89 or whenever it was,
they wouldn't play
it for anything.We had a regular video for it and they hated it.They got all
these calls, all these
kids loved it but these moms hated it, and then like six years later, all of
a sudden radio started
playin' the hell out of it, and we were touring on a record and we didn't
really know, we don't
see everything while on tour, so we came back and that record, when it
debuted that week, I
think soundscanned at #142.You know what I mean, it's an EP, big deal, blah,
blah, blah-I had to
fight W/the record company to put it out.By the time we came off the road on
Thrall, because we
did two go-'rounds in America and then we went to Japan and Australia and
New Zealand, and
by the time we came back, the record company was like,"You are not going to
believe this, but
'Mother' is just goin' crazy at radio."And I was like,"What do you mean?"So
it was a shock thing
but the record company loved it.At the end of the day it went Top 5 radio,
the box was playing it
30 times a day, and MTV had to make it a Buzz Clip, they had to add it.

MM:  So how did it change your life, if indeed it did?

GD:  It just changed my life, um, not so much in the way I do records or
anything but what
happened was, all of a sudden, all of these people knew who Danzig were, as
opposed to our
audience, built over X amount of years without getting any airplay, any
video play, nothing, and
it was cool when we went in and did the shoot at Irvine Meadows, this is a
place where Bon
Jovi and all the big bands played that were saturated on MTV and radio, and
we had none of
that, and we went in and sold this place out.This was in '92.So that was
cool.And then seeing the whole thing, a year later, just explode, it was
great.

MM:  You've worked up such an image through the years.You're like a heavy
metal godfather!Yet
after having lunch W/you today, I realize that you're also a regular guy who
likes wrestling.

GD:  Well, pretty much that's it![laughing]This is the one side of me, we're
talking about wrestling
and we're talking about all this crazy stuff, and that's part of me.But this
is me.Like, You're not
gonna see me in a football jersey walkin' around the house.This is it.I
don't put on a costume and
go on stage, and then take it off.So yeah, Glenn Danzig is a guy who reads
mafia hit journals.One
of my favorite books is the Contract Killer by Jimmy the Greek, the
killer.He was a real mafia
hit man.I dig horror novels-I told someone the other day that when I was six
years old I was
reading Edger Allan Poe.This is just me.It's not an act.There are other
sides to me too.I like to
joke around.Everybody thinks I'm just this serious guy.

MM:  That's because you've got this heavy duty public persona called Danzig to
live up to.

GD:  It can be heavy duty, but I love laughin' and I love havin' a good time.

MM:  Are you a family man.

GD:  No, no, no, no!I'm not married.I have no kids.I'm never going to get
married.

MM:  You're dressed today in all black, leather jacket, black shirt, black
pants, black shoes, black sunglasses, black hair, finely coiffed-

GD:  Just slicked back.

MM:  Like an old 50's rocker.It's good to see that Glenn Danzig, the
individual, is real to his
vision and not an act, and that he's truly intrested and fascinated W/the
underbelly of human
existance, as it were, with the dark side, and that fuels your art.

GD:  Inertesting wat to put it, but you know what?, I don't think all of it's
the underbelly.I see stuff
that's really crazy and dark, like this whole thing about the Columbine
shooting.I don't really
wanna get political or anything, but what about China having all our nuclear
secrets, and now
they're threatening to blow up the world if they don't get Taiwan
back?Doesn't anyone care about
that?You're talking about hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people
destroyed, and the
people that don't die are going to be maimed and disfigured for life-that's
a little more important
to me than two assholes shooting up a school.I'm not saying the other things
are trivial but
compaired to what kind of devistation and destruction we're looking at, it
is trivial.It may be
cold hearted to say but lets put it in perspective.This is a major problem
and it's a potential
world changing event.

MM:  Yeah, and who do you think might have sold the Chinese the nuclear
secrets in exchange for campaign funds.

GD:  That is the most scary thing, because it was you and me we'd be long
gone, they might even
kill us on the way to jail.We ain't getting any justice out of that, so this
is a very scary thing to
me.And I'm trivial to someone like that.We all are.This is a global
problem.It's too late now but
it still needs to be adressed.

MM:  So you're a news hawk?

GD:  I guess you could call me that but I also read a lot theology.I love
reading about how
indeviduals have changed the course of the world.I mean, look at
Hitler.Hitler was one guy in a
long line through a world of people who have really changed things.And
people have helped
these people along the way.It's not like just one guy is responsible.That
guy got there because
people put him there.We could go through the whole long line-Coligula,
Kruschev, Idi Amin, you know what I mean?

MM:  Exactly.I'm fascinated W/one asshole named J. Edgar Hoover who probably
did more to
negatively affect American history than any other single individual.Had
there not been a Hoover
the mob might've been cut down in it's infancy 'cause he refused to
acknowledge it's existence
when it was vulnerable.All the presidents durring his reign of terror were
petrified of him
becaue of the files he kept.Kennedy miught never have been assassinated.The
list goes on and on.

GD:  When you start reading about all this stuff it's like, you're reading it
and you're seeing it
happen, but sometimes when you try to tell people stuff, they just will not
listen."I don't want to
know!I don't want to know!"It's really funny.Growing up my dad was an
ex-marine and you
couldn't say anything negative about the government, and then he started
seeing first hand the
government screw over the vets, the American Legion and stuff, seeing how
the government had
promised these guys everything and now these guys are laying in hospitals
and the government's
turning it's back to them, like "Fuck you."And my dad started becoming an
activist for veterans
rights.So all of a sudden, stuff you could never say to him before, he
started seeing first hand and saying"Wow, you know what?..."He had buddies
who died.It took him to his 50's to see the light.

MM:  That's rare.Usually you get set in your ways at that age.

GD:  No, but now he was experiencing it and he was seeing people come in and
talkin' about it
and then I guess they started letting Vietnam vets into the American Legion
and he started hearing the horror stories about all that, and then he had to
try and start fighting for there rights.The gov't
would refuse to say that there was such thing as Agent Orange at one time,
and now you've got
Gulf War Syndrome and now we're finding about all this other stuff.It's this
thing with the
government-deny, deny, deny-when all the evedence is there you can't deny it
anymore.

MM:  Like with Waco.Then they finally say,"oops."

GD:  I hate all political parties, right?But have you seen the Fox Republican
Network?It's just
democrat-bashers on there.It's not called the "Republican Network" but it
might as well be.It's
just 24-hour news and all it is is pretty much democrate-bashing.I guess
they're right in one
way-no one else is caring about this China thing.No one else is caring about
all this ther stuff.So, in one aspect they're right, but in another aspect
they go too far.I want balenced viewpoint.Not
negative, not positive, just objective.Let the people make up their
minds.But in this society it's
not going to happen.

MM:  Thanks so much for taking the time to spend the after noon here
W/me.What's that you said
at lunch today?I thought it so funny I almost spit out my crabcake when you
said it.

GD:  [laughs]Oh, you mean when I said that Britney Spears and Ricky Martin
should be
exterminated?

MM:  That's it, that's it![laughing uproariously].Musically speaking of
course!Well, I dunno,
maybe we should save Britney Spears after going through all that trouble to
have a teenage
boobjob.

And with that, the so-called super serioso Glenn Danzig breaks into the
wildest smile you'll
never see on his face.

-interview by Mike G