13. Daniel Russell, “Horror Business: An Interview with Jerry Only of the Misfits,” MyKindaSound.wordpress.com, http://mykindasound.wordpress.com/interview/horror-business.
14. “Discography of Official Misfits Releases,” Misfits Central, http://misfitscentral.com/misfits/discog.php.
15. Eerie Von, “Liner Notes,” The Misfits, Caroline Records, 1996, compact disc set.
16. Frank LiCata, telephone interview with the author, March 21, 2011.
17. Mark Prindle, “Jerry Only—2003,” MarkPrindle.com, http://www.markprindle.com/only-i.htm.
18. Rich Lockney, “Jerry Only Interview,” TVCasualty.com, http://tvcasualty.com/articles/a_jonly.html.
19. LiCata, telephone interview.
20. “Misfits Time Line,” Misfits Central, http://misfitscentral.com/misfits/timeline.php.
21. Jim Catania, telephone interview with the author, November 5, 2010.
22. Dave Achelis, telephone interview with the author, July 2, 2012.
23. Daniel Russell, “Horror Business: An Interview with Jerry Only of the Misfits,” MyKindaSound.wordpress.com, http://mykindasound.wordpress.com/interview/horror-business.
24. LiCata, telephone interview.
25. Stephen Blush, “Glenn Danzig,” Seconds, no. 44 (October 1997): 34–44.
26. Steve Huey, “Jello Biafra: Biography,” AllMusic, http://www.allmusic.com/artist/biafra-mn0000322642.
27. Dead Kennedys, In God We Trust, Inc., Alternative Tentacles, 1981, seven-inch vinyl record.
28. Peter Buckley, The Rough Guide to Rock, 2nd ed. (New York: Rough Guides, 1999), 275.
29. Kenneth Anger, Hollywood Babylon: The Legendary Underground Classic of Hollywood’s Darkest and Best Kept Secrets (San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1981).
30. “Song and Name Information,” Misfits Central, http://misfitscentral.com/misfits/songname.php.
31. LiCata, telephone interview.
32. Claude Bessy, “The Misfits,” Slash 2, no. 2 (November 1978): 28.
33. LiCata, telephone interview.
34. Catania, telephone interview.
35. Jay Yuenger, telephone interview with the author, January 4, 2011.
36. Mike Stax, telephone interview with the author, March 29, 2011.
37. Stax, “All Hell Breaks Loose,” 11.
38. LiCata, telephone interview.
39. “Vintage Photos,” Misfits.com, http://www.misfits.com.
Horror Business
3
I remember the Misfits jumping off the record player as super dense, bright, exciting music. ―Bruce McCulloch, The Kids in the Hall[1]
Twenty-something drummer Joe Poole was one of many New Jersey natives in 1978 who spent his days working in the Garden State (in his case, at a racetrack) and his nights bumming around New York City, looking for excitement. In November of that year the baby-faced Poole, who hailed from Englewood, crossed paths with Jerry Only and Glenn Danzig at Manhattan’s Libra Studios. The latter pair were of course looking for a percussionist for their band, and Poole was always open for playing with new people. A week later Poole visited the Caiafa family garage for an official audition. The Misfits were impressed with Poole’s primitive pounding and invited him into the fold. Liking the material, the drummer accepted, at first changing his name to the glam rock-sounding Joey Pills before settling on the slightly more opaque Joey Image after a nudging from his new band mates.
The vacant Misfits guitar slot would be filled shortly thereafter by a figure some felt was contentious right off the bat. “I was dead against [Bobby Steele],” Joey Image told Ugly Things in 1993. “I didn’t dig the way he played from the get-go . . . he had a ‘twang’ in his guitar. He just wasn’t good for the band, but Glenn thought he was alright . . . it was Glenn and Jerry’s band . . . I was a part of it but it seemed they made all the decisions and shit.”[2] Rail-thin guitarist Robert Kaufhold went by the nickname Bobby Steele in reference to the metal leg brace he had worn as a child to help overcome his crippling spina bifida; adolescent bouts with polio and a spinal cord tumor further weakened Steele, forcing him to walk with a cane intermittently from his teenage years on.[3] A veteran of several bands including The Living End and Parrotox (which counted among its ranks Smithereens bassist Mike Messaros and future developer of blood-soaked video game hit Mortal Kombat Bill Pidgeon), Steele was playing with the Whorelords in 1978 when he placed an ad in New Jersey music trade paper The Aquarian looking for an established act to join that already had management and a record deal. Danzig saw the ad and, despite the Misfits meeting neither of those requirements, responded.
At first, Steele was dubious. “All I knew about the Misfits was ‘Cough/Cool’ and I was kind of like, ‘I don’t know if I want to fucking play in that kind of band,’” Steele would later recall. “But [I thought], ‘Okay, I’ll give it a shot’ . . . it was a good gamble, because they didn’t sound anything like that record [anymore].” Steele became immediately enthused by the band’s dark, intense take on punk rock and corresponding imagery. He easily envisioned the Misfits becoming the new, more credible version of Kiss.[4]
Despite Image’s misgivings, Steele proved a great fit for the band with his fierce determination and guitar tone awash in angry fuzz. Emboldened, a spirit of togetherness was forged between this Misfits lineup, and the music similarly gelled. This can be heard in a bootleg live recording of the group’s December 20 gig at Max’s Kansas City in Manhattan (only their third performance together). A relaxed confidence permeates the material as the band swings through twelve songs, barely missing a beat as they flex their prowess. The menace is there, but so is a sense of fun. To wit: Danzig giggles to himself when the band momentarily fudges the newer “Horror Business,” and the set ends with a thirty-second rendition of the Elvis holiday standard “Blue Christmas” that smashes right into “We Are 138.” “Blue Christmas” is tailor-made for Danzig’s vocal range, and he gives Presley’s soulfulness a serious run for its money in the one verse he sings.[5]
As impressive as their chops were, the Misfits of this era quickly gained a reputation in the New York punk scene for their somewhat outrageous and rowdy behavior. Mocking the People’s Temple massacre at Jonestown that had taken place just two weeks earlier, Danzig capped off a December 3 gig at Max’s Kansas City by splashing the crowd with grape-flavored Kool-Aid. The following March, Max’s banned the Misfits for life after Steele allegedly beaned an audience member with a glass bottle during the band’s performance. Slightly more embarrassing was Steele’s interaction with John Lennon at the Mudd Club five months later—soused beyond belief, the Beatle-worshipping Steele inadvertently vomited all over his hero’s feet just seconds after introducing himself. In August, Danzig and Only were jailed for one night after they were caught throwing bottles from a balcony at Manhattan’s bohemian hangout the Chelsea Hotel.
Creative savvy was not lost because of these melees. In fact, the Misfits made one of the smartest decisions of their career during this period. Centered on the flyer promoting the March 28 Max’s gig that resulted in their banishment was a highly contrasted photo of obscure screen villain the Crimson Ghost.[6] This criminal mastermind, bedecked in red robes and identity hidden by a frighteningly accurate skull mask, starred in his own serial for Republic Pictures in the late 1940s. If The Crimson Ghost series was remembered for anything in the late 1970s it was for the presence of future Lone Ranger star Clayton Moore as one of the titular character’s sneering lackeys.[7] Eerily enough, Bud Geary, the uncredited actor behind the Crimson Ghost’s mask, was killed in a car accident nine months before the serial premiered and would never get to see his ghoulish performance onscreen.[8]
Danzig and Only found the picture of Geary in his costume one afternoon while searching for images to silkscreen on T-shirts.[9] They decided to adopt the creepy grinning skull as their de facto mascot, and one of rock n’ roll’s greatest brandings was born. The decaying, bleach-white visage of the Crimson Ghost proved beyond striking, a
wordless calling card perfectly projecting the base fear and haunted house mystique of the Misfits’ entire oeuvre.
The Crimson Ghost would reappear on the cover of the next Misfits single, “Horror Business.” While more muddled production-wise than “Bullet,” “Horror Business” is just as arresting as its predecessor. The opening chords of the title track might as well be stabs from the very knife Danzig sings about sinking into the listener. Allegedly based on the unsolved murder of Sex Pistols groupie Nancy Spungen, the Misfits never suggest who the protagonist is supposed to be but makes it clear that the victim’s stabbing was no accident as they howl the chorus (“With you, I’ll put a knife right in you!”) over delicious waves of overdriven guitar and Joey Image’s hissing cymbals. And yet, despite its gratuitous violence, “Horror Business” (the title a grim play on Chuck Berry’s 1956 tale of pedestrian beleaguerment “Too Much Monkey Business”) offers a bluesy feel at times, almost as if nothing more is at stake than the melody. By the time the song is hurtling through its conclusion of several consecutive refrains it almost feels like a campfire stomp between a gaggle of old, grizzled friends.
On the single’s flip side, “Teenagers from Mars” presents more stuttering riffs under ominous declarations from a conquering alien race unconcerned with human suffering as they “land in barren fields” to inseminate our females (“We take your weak resistance and throw it in your face,” Danzig spits in his UFO conqueror persona). A third song, “Children in Heat,” roars along more on its raw adolescent rage than the gross-out visuals of bloody urination and presents another fiery performance by Steele. Released in August of 1979, “Horror Business” was greeted by the growing Misfits fan base as an instant classic, even if it didn’t exactly spell everything out in layman’s terms.[10]
“The first [Misfits] singles just knocked me out,” says Minor Threat’s Ian MacKaye. “They were so interesting and mysterious. I had no idea what to make of them. The legend was [the Misfits] played [live] only on Halloween. We also heard they were all crippled, y’know, because Bobby Steele had a cane and you didn’t see any pictures of them back then. [And Glenn] was deeply talented, a genius as a kid. His lyrics puzzled me. ‘Paint my mirrors black for you’—what the fuck does that mean?”[11]
“Horror Business” represented a watershed moment for both the Misfits and the subgenre of horror punk they spearheaded. Though it was always obvious that the band had a violent edge, this single made clear a platform dedicated firmly to the macabre, the supernatural, the grotesque. From the Crimson Ghost staring out at the listener beneath the blood red “HORROR” on the cover to the flip side where black-and-white portraits of the individual band members shared space with a rendering of Lon Chaney as the Phantom of the Opera to the aggressive music held within—this was the ultimate marriage of Ramones and Romero. To drive the point home even further (almost to the brink of self-parody), various copies of “Horror Business” were stuffed with an insert claiming the band had recorded the single in a haunted house and that “strange voices and noises” defying any explanation were heard when the group mixed the tracks later at a New York studio.
Of course this story was hooey. “Horror Business” was recorded at C.I., the same studio where the band completed their shelved debut album a year earlier,[12] though Joey Image would later note the session was not without incident. Tensions rose when Danzig demanded the band record as many songs as possible during the allotted studio time in an attempt to save money; Steele, meanwhile, had difficulties keeping his “twangy” guitar in tune.[13] Compounding the tension was the sudden appearance at the session of Ann Beverly, mother of Sid Vicious, who had overdosed just a few months before while out on bond for the alleged murder of his former lover (and “Horror Business” inspiration) Nancy Spungen. Jerry Only had attended the small party Vicious hosted in February at his new girlfriend Michele Robinson’s Greenwich Village apartment just hours before he died on February 2. Upon learning of Sid’s death the following morning, Only reached out to Beverly and subsequently brought her to the studio.[14] A potentially awkward situation to be recording a song about a perceived murderer with said murderer’s mother standing just a few feet away, but maybe not: Prior to Sid Vicious’s death, the rumor about town was that the Misfits were in the running to potentially back the bassist-turned-singer on his eagerly anticipated debut solo album.
Playing second fiddle to a washed-up junkie would have been a massive step back for the Misfits, whose identity in concert was quickly becoming as wickedly ghoulish as their music. Danzig had taken to dressing in a skeleton costume for live shows complete with face paint meant to emulate the Crimson Ghost logo. Bobby Steele and Jerry Only created a punk zombie look by wearing tight black clothing with matching (often smudged) eye makeup. Only also dyed his electric blue hair back to black, greasing it up and letting it grow—especially in the front, where his punky spikes were drooping down into a point just above his nose. This hairstyle, later adopted by the other band members, would be dubbed “the devilock” by a disapproving Lodi mother.
As much as his appearance was influenced by a bare-bones love of horror, Danzig also drew inspiration from Japanese manga character Captain Harlock. A bit character created by famed artist Leiji Matsumoto who was spun into his own animated television series in the late 1970s, the space pirate Harlock was a slender rogue who donned a black jumpsuit with a large skull and crossbones across the chest to fight interstellar corruption. The character’s hair was a thick shock that hung in his face to obscure his identity as well as various facial injuries incurred during his battles. Captain Harlock starred in various films, comic books, and television programs over the years but never crossed over to American shores in the same manner as Astro Boy or Akira. Regardless, the Captain made an indelible impression on Danzig, who soon crafted his own skull and crossbones T-shirt that aped Matsumoto’s design and made sure his devilock was always a tad wider and hairier than that of his musical counterparts. It should be noted, however, that Danzig’s favorite Japanese animation character has long been the feisty red-winged superhero Devilman, the Hell-spawn alter ego of a meek young boy the singer once claimed he “could related to . . . on a personal basis.”[15]
The Misfits of this era also proved their knack for showmanship by preceding their live performances with projections of classic horror movies (usually the wretchedly awful Plan 9 from Outer Space) on flimsy sheets of paper they would kick their way through to start the show.[16] This style of theatrics was borrowed directly from the interactive spook shows of the 1960s wherein cinemas used electric seats or costumed employees during movies like The Monsters Crash the Pajama Party to give the audience an extra scare or two.[17]
Such ghoulish flair extended even to the Misfits’ press releases. A typed two-page biography circulated by the band shortly after the release of “Horror Business” is strewn with all sorts of unverifiable (and often laughable) yarns concerning the band members. To wit: Danzig “almost died when he was born at Hackensack Hospital”; the black rings under Jerry Only’s eyes are “the result of a rare pigment defect . . . which left his face permanently discolored in that area”; Bobby Steele is related to British actress Barbara Steele and spent his youth “skinning live cats”; Joey Image (here still referred to as “Joey Pills”) has “been intimate with every young female in New York he’s met.” The music of the Misfits was of course powerful enough that it didn’t necessitate or warrant such outlandish boasting, but the band clearly felt otherwise (Only has the best quote when he comments that his family is “bigger than a breadbox and twice as empty”).[18]
On Halloween of 1979, the Misfits released the logical “Horror Business” follow-up single “Night of the Living Dead,” though they weren’t entirely thrilled about it. An error during the mastering process gave songs on the “Dead” discs an extraordinarily bass-heavy sound, reducing the guitar to a thin, trill background noise. Thankfully, the band’s songwriting muscles remained strong. The title track swings w
ith a sick sense of glee as Danzig outlines a zombie uprising that most assuredly “ain’t no fantasy,” a dreadful situation where humans are being “ripped up like shredded wheat.” In place of a proper chorus, “Night of the Living Dead” features an elongated chant of “No-oh-oh,” as if the band themselves are decrying this undead apocalypse before them. The B-side offers “Where Eagles Dare,” a crude pounder whose blustery chorus challenges you to take it seriously (“I ain’t no goddamn son of a bitch! You better think about it, baby!”). The final song, “Rat Fink,” finds the Misfits being goofy for no real discernible reason, covering novelty nebbish Allan Sherman’s parody of the country standard “Rag Mop.” Still, they manage to give the dumb thing some bite.[19]
That evening the Misfits hawked copies of their latest single at the door of their Irving Plaza gig. The show itself was said to have been among the group’s best. The Misfits had shown up early to decorate, festooning Irving Plaza with all manner of rubber bats, fake skeletons, and plastic jack-o-lanterns. A giant version of Glenn’s hand-drawn Misfits logo hung above the stage as the band performed; the set ended with Joey Image smashing his black Ludwig drum kit to pieces.[20] Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, this would be the final American performance for this version of the Misfits. They were about to embark on a foreign adventure that would effectively place a stick in their fast-moving spokes.
The Misfits were not the only punks in the late 1970s toying with ghoulish imagery, though they were by far the most distilled. The Cramps, who settled in Manhattan after forming in California and spending some time in singer Lux Interior’s hometown of Akron, Ohio,[21] sang celebratory tales of werewolves and zombies in a bed of Hasil Adkins–inspired “psychobilly” guitar riffing (though the group’s sexual undercurrent would always be stronger than its devotion to the macabre). Los Angeles bands like T.S.O.L., 45 Grave, the Flesh Eaters, Kommunity FK, and Christian Death focused on a grim, discordant, and echoey musical offering very much in line with overseas goth proprietors such as Bauhaus and Joy Division. The artwork associated with these self-dubbed “death rock” bands also skewed European—the cover of Christian Death’s 1982 debut Only Theatre of Pain features a sketch of an emaciated ghoul akin to any given figure from the German Expressionist movement; similarly, the front of T.S.O.L.’s 1981 virgin effort Dance with Me depicted the Grim Reaper in front of a severely disturbed grave, his hands clasped, a layer of fog obscuring the landscape. The Angelino death rockers had their brief flashes of humor—45 Grave’s first single was a cover of Don Hinson’s 1964 “Monster Mash” cash-in “Riboflavin-Flavored Non-Carbonated Poly-Unsaturated Blood”—but for the most part, there was little correlation between these depressed outfits and the rowdy punk showmanship of the Misfits.[22]
This Music Leaves Stains: The Complete Story of the Misfits Page 6