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Glenn Danzig – or Glenn Allen Anzalone on his birth certificate – has been a musician for almost 50 years. Born on June 23, 1955 in Lodi, New Jersey, he's fronted highly-influential punks Misfits, Samhain and Danzig and written songs for Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison, too. Not only that but he includes film director, actor, comic book publisher, record producer and meme legend on his CV. He's learned an awful lot during his seven decades on earth, and during this 2018 interview, he distilled his worldview into nine salient points.
Martial arts changed my life
"Jeet Kune Do made me look at things differently; Bruce Lee’s art isn’t just fighting, it’s about philosophy and philosophy about fighting. I started learning it in 1992 after getting an introduction to one of his core students. That alone was a journey, a process, to try and get somebody to think you were worthy enough to train. I eventually earned a teaching degree; he wanted to give it to me a couple of years later but I didn’t accept it because I didn’t think I could answer enough questions that the students would have, like I had. Later on, I took it because I felt I could answer those questions. It changed my life a lot."
The church doesn’t like questions
"I don’t know if what I believe in is a religion. I believe in self, of course, and empowering yourself. I definitely believe in a positive and negative energy. But when I was growing up, I always had questions for the church and they didn’t like that, because they don’t have answers for a lot of them. If someone doesn’t have a proper answer for your question, you’d probably be called a rebel or a troublemaker or difficult or things like that. They don’t want you to question; whoever is in power just want you to shut your mouth, pay your taxes and go away!"
The New York punk scene was vicious
"When punk came out, there were hippy bands and MOR bands who were cranking out music for FM radio. It was stale, so punk was a radical change. The first shows I went to could get crazy. The New York scene was always kinda violent and a little harder. It got different as it progressed and it got angrier. You had to be really into it because you were going to get confronted and get into a lot of fights. That’s just how it was."
Surprise people
"I’m a big fan of [comedy star] Fred Armisen and first met him at Rob Zombie’s birthday party. Rob said he wanted to meet me because he was a big fan too. At that point, I’d only seen his work on Saturday Night Live but I thought he was a genius. After the Skeletons tour, he emailed me and asked if I wanted to be on the show Portlandia. The script was hilarious and I flew up that evening. The episode turned out great. There was a lot that was cut out; in the script, the guy was supposed to be a vampire and teaches him how to be a one too, get a long in the world and have fun."
You can never have enough comics
"I started collecting comics as a kid. I couldn’t get them at the newsstand because I couldn’t afford them, so I’d buy them at the flea market. Over the years, I had to re-buy stuff because early on in my career I had to sell them to fund my record label. I gravitated more to the monster and extreme superhero comics. In America, we’d have Superman, Batman and Archie. Of course, there was Spider-Man and Marvel, but it was all guys in underwear trying to save the world. That wasn’t what I was about. Being a fan of European comics and Japanese comics, I noticed they’d run the gamut of adult comics, extreme comics, normal comics; so I started my comic company Verotika, which is still going. We’re getting ready to go into film with this stuff."
It’s good to sing Misfits songs again
"There’s a lot of people who wear the Misfits skull and don’t know what it means. Someone just told them it’s cool. Of course, over the years a lot of disservice was done to a lot of that stuff; these shows set that right and let people see the real original Misfits. Who knows how long we’ll do it. We’ll do a show here and there, probably a show or two a year. We’re not milking it. If we feel like doing a show and someone makes us a good offer, we’ll go do it. That’s really where it is right now."
Beware of the government
"I have a collection of true crime books. True crime changes with history and we now know true crime is the government [laughs]. Not just in the US, but the world. We now know that a criminal agency posing as the government controls the world. When you realise that, you have to figure out whether you want to forget about it and move on, or should you be pissed off about it, or both? That is the question that people have been trying to answer now for the last couple of decades, knowing what you know now and realising your whole history is a lie."
Working with legends can be incredible
"After I wrote a song for Roy Orbison [Life Fades Away], I got a call asking if I’d like to write one for Johnny Cash. I was like ‘Fuck yeah, I’d be honoured!’. When he sang Thirteen back to me, it was cool. Later on, he asked me to write him some more stuff. I wrote Come To Silver but I never gave it to him as I left American [Recordings]. We sang and played it together a couple of times at Rick [Rubin’s] home studio but I don’t know if we’ll ever put it out. It was an incredible experience. When he started singing without a mic, his voice just filled the room."
Be cool to me and I’ll be cool to you
"With fame, you just deal with it. I started to notice things begin to change around 1988. More people recognise you and you deal with them on a one-on-one basis. If they’re cool, they’re cool. If they’re assholes, you ignore them and if they won’t let you, you deal with it."
