REBEL MEETS REBEL: BRANDAN SCHIEPATTI INTERVIEWS GLENN DANZIG
Bleeding Through’s sanguine vocalist talks voodoo, booze, and Glitter with the legendary Misfit
By Dan Epstein
Illustration by Simon Bisley
Standing outside a Los Angeles delicatessen, waiting for Glenn Danzig to arrive, Bleeding Through frontman Brandan Schieppati admits that he’s a little nervous. Though Bleeding Through have opened for Danzig in the past, Schieppati has never actually met his hero before, and he’s well aware of Danzig’s reputation for being a difficult (if not downright hostile) interview subject. “Even my friends who know him have told me not to get my hopes up,” he says uneasily.
But the moment Danzig appears, it’s clear that the man is in an unusually sunny mood. Perhaps he’s relieved to be taking a brief break from juggling his many projects—in addition to completing the classically influenced epic album Black Aria II (which should be out by the time you read this), he’s also been assembling a collection of Danzig outtakes titled The Lost Tracks of Danzig (both discs will be issued by his own Evilive Records), writing the script for the upcoming horror film Ge Rouge, and signing off on Japanese toy manufacturer Medicom’s new “Three Faces of Danzig” figures, which represent the Misfits, Samhain, and solo phases of his impressive 30-year career. Or maybe he’s just happy to be able to shoot the shit over some chicken strips and onion rings with a respectful young acolyte like Schieppati.
“I’m gonna try to keep my questions modern, because I want to know what you’re doing now,” Schieppati begins. “I know you’re probably sick of talking about the Misfits.” “You can ask me whatever you want,” Danzig answers, smiling behind mirrored aviator shades.
SCHIEPPATI Tell me about this New Orleans voodoo flick you’re working on.
DANZIG It’s based on the Verotik comic Ge Rouge. [Verotik is Danzig’s comics imprint.] It takes place in a time period in America that nobody’s ever done a good movie on—the early part of the twentieth century—especially incorporating voodoo into it, you know? It’s pretty violent. I’m trying to make it a cross between all the crazy, gory, and wild movies that I like, like the triadic mafia movies, and an epic Martin Scorsese or John Boorman film. I have a final script that I still have to tweak here and there.
SCHIEPPATI Is your music taking a backseat to movies now, kind of like a Rob Zombie thing?
DANZIG No, music’s first. In fact, I’ve already started working on the music for this movie, laying down voodoo drum tracks and weird sound effects. I did a show with Hank III [country punk Hank Williams III who was the bassist for the now-defunct Superjoint Ritual] on 6/6/06, and it was a lot of fun. I was gonna do this thing with [Alice in Chains guitarist] Jerry Cantrell, depending on when our schedules would line up again, but I’m starting to think that I should do it with Hank, because the stuff we came up with was fucking incredible. It might fit the Ge Rouge movie because it’s very minimal, creepy, eerie blues stuff. I played the tapes of our rehearsal for a couple of people, and they were like, “This is serial-killer music!” I was like, “Okay, cool!” [Laughs]
SCHIEPPATI So the thing with you and Jerry Cantrell isn’t going to happen? It would be so cool to hear you guys do something bluesy together.
DANZIG Well, we’ll see. He’s trying to do this Alice in Chains reunion thing. I’m sure we’ll touch base in a month or so or whatever, but who knows where his head will be at and my head will be at by then? He’s a great guitar player, though. He played on a couple of tracks on [Danzig’s 1996 album] Blackacidevil, and it was really some incredible guitar work. He was like, “Can I do another take?” And I’m like, “Why?” [Laughs] Alice in Chains was always my favorite band from that era. They always had a darkness to them that I liked. I don’t like that many singers, but that guy [Layne Staley] could sing. It’s a shame that the whole scene was very steeped in heroin… I don’t do drugs, you know? I’ve just seen so many people die and get fucked up and lose their focus and their path. Drugs are just a waste, you know?
SCHIEPPATI Yeah, you’ve never been known to be a big drinker or partier. [Neither has the straightedge Schieppati.]
DANZIG I don’t drink hard liquor, because when I was younger I got in a lot of fights, went to jail a bunch of times, and the next time I was going away for a long goodbye, you know? I was lucky—I did all my drugs when I was a little kid. Like, I started when I was 10, and I stopped when I was 15. I kept drinkin’, though, but I would never drink before a Misfits show. That was always a rule I had, because I always hated seeing drunk people onstage. Occasionally, if I’m with a friend, I’ll have a drink, or possibly two, but I try to keep it to wine or champagne. There’s a drink I really like, if I know I’m not doing anything, called Black Velvet. It’s champagne mixed with Guinness. You mix it together until it’s golden brown, and it’ll fuck you up!
SCHIEPPATI Tell me about The Lost Tracks.
DANZIG It’s a two-disc set, and it’ll be a minimum of 24 songs, but it looks like it’s going to be 26. There’s stuff originally recorded for [1998’s] Danzig. There’s a song that was originally a Samhain song called “Pain Is Like an Animal,” and there’s an early version of “When Death Had No Name.” There was going to be a version of “I’m the One” with kind of lounge bass and drums, but Rick [Rubin, the record’s producer and the head of Danzig’s former label American] never turned it over to us, and I could never find a cassette version to work from, either. There’s a couple of songs from [1990’s] Lucifuge on there—“You Should Be Dying,” “Cold, Cold Rain.” [From 1992’s] Danzig III, there’s a cover of T. Rex’s “Buick McKane,” another version of “When Death Had No Name,” and bunch of stuff from [1994’s] Danzig 4, like “White Devil Rise.”
SCHIEPPATI I’ve always wanted to know: What exactly happened between you and American and Rick Rubin?
DANZIG We weren’t getting paid. During the recording of Danzig 4, we asked Rick, “We’re selling millions of records. When are we gonna get paid?” He said, “I think you have to sue me, but don’t take it personal.” What do you mean, don’t take it personal? [Laughs] He’s a nice guy, but at the end of the day, I’ve gotta think about me and my band. They’ve gotta eat, they’ve got bills to pay, and I’ve gotta make sure that they’re taken care of. I was like, “We’ve got a problem here, and we need to fix it. I’m sure we can work it out.” And his response to me was just not acceptable, so we ended up leaving. I mean, there were a lot of bands that left that label—we weren’t the only one.
SCHIEPPATI You’ve maintained yourself in such good shape over the years. What’s your regimen?
DANZIG It’s tough, because I like cake and candy a real lot. I don’t eat any fried beef—all the beef I have is cooked over fire, and I prefer my chicken that way, as well. I don’t really eat dark meat. I only eat white meat.
SCHIEPPATI What was high school like for you? What was it like growing up?
DANZIG It was difficult, because I wasn’t really challenged intellectually. I could just fuck off and still get Ds and Cs and Bs. Early on, even before high school, I was into [19th-century writer and master of the macabre] Edgar Allan Poe, and from there I went on to [French Decadent poet Charles] Baudelaire and things like that.
SCHIEPPATI Did you get picked on by jocks back then? Were you a jock?
DANZIG I wasn’t a jock. I was into sports when I was a kid, but me and my friends were kind of the scrappy dogs of the neighborhood. We didn’t have rich moms and dads, so we couldn’t play on the Little League baseball team. I remember once we went down to Babe Ruth tryouts, and we smoked everybody there. I was into pitching, and I got up there and was throwing fastballs, knuckleballs—everything. But none of us got picked, because none of our dads were in Kiwanis or whatever, so we went down the next time and went, “FUCK YOU!” That was basically my childhood. [Laughs]
SCHIEPPATI What got you into music? What band lit a fire under your ass to become a musician?
DANZIG In the beginning, it was Elvis. I remember my mom was at work, and I’d ditched school and was at home watching TV, and Jailhouse Rock came on. I was like, This is cool! And then, my brother was a road manager for a bunch of the bands that were starting to come out of New York in the late Sixties. He had this record by [San Francisco rock act] Blue Cheer, Vincebus Eruptum, and it was the heaviest music I’d ever heard. When they came out on stage, they literally had a wall of Marshall amps—not like now, where bands just have a bunch of empty stacks—and they just came out and played this nuts, violent, crazy music. So that started it for me. I was getting into music more, roadie-ing, and starting to play bass in bands, because it’s easy—four strings, you know? And right about then, I was at the record store, flipping through records and looking for something new, and all of a sudden I pull up this record. The cover has a girl with a Satanic hood, and it says Black Sabbath. I was like, This has gotta be good! I brought it home, and the first song is like [sings opening notes of “Black Sabbath”], and I’m like, “AAAAAAHHHH!!!” It changed my fucking life!
SCHIEPPATI What’s your favorite punk record?
DANZIG I’d have to say that first New York Dolls record [1973’s New York Dolls]. They looked like trannies, but they were obviously dudes, and they came on with that punk attitude of “fuck you”—they’d pour champagne on peoples’ heads. Also the Ramones’ first record [1976’s The Ramones]. Pere Ubu’s “Final Solution” [from 1985’s Terminal Tower] and the Adverts’ “One Chord Wonders.” Not the album version, but the single version on Stiff [1992’s The Stiff Records Box Set]—that says it all. Just four chords, over and over, played by people who can’t really play, but they can really play these four chords over and over! [Laughs]
SCHIEPPATI What new punk bands are carrying that on?
DANZIG None of the new punk bands are doing it. [Laughs]
SCHIEPPATI You know what? I totally fucking agree with you! So, what kind of guilty pleasures does Glenn Danzig listen to? What’s something that somebody wouldn’t expect you to listen to?
DANZIG It can’t be ABBA, because I always talk about ABBA. They were a pop band, and they wrote good pop songs. As a matter of fact, even if you’re in a punk band, you might want to listen to a couple of ABBA records and pull those songs apart, to see how the parts are constructed and work together, because that’s some good composition! Hmm, what’s a guilty pleasure that I listen to? [Thinks for a few seconds] Gary Glitter! If you go to an English football match, you’re probably gonna hear at least three or four Gary Glitter songs, and there’ll be these crazy skinheads with their scarves on, just going out of their minds. There’s a reason why Joan Jett did a bunch of Gary Glitter songs—they’re really good!
SCHIEPPATI I’ve just got one more thing to add. You know how you were saying that you got that first Black Sabbath record and it changed everything for you? I was 10 years old, and I went into my brothers’ record collection and pulled out the first Danzig record [1988’s Danzig] and the Misfits’ Earth A.D. record [from 1983], because I liked the covers so much. I went and listened to them on the shitty little toy record player my brother gave me, and those fuckin’ records changed everything. So now that I have this opportunity, I just wanted to thank you for making those records. I’m doing what I’m doing right now because of them.
DANZIG [Giving Schieppati a hearty handshake] Hey, that’s the nicest thing I’ve heard all day! Thank you!
