Ten Minutes With Danzig
Oct 22, 2015 10:03AM ● By James Walmsley
He’s been commodified by Fiend Skull-sporting mall punks, trolled by message-board activists for his oft-polarizing remarks, and cold-cocked by camera phones ever at the ready to record his next punch to the face.
It's enough to make the ex-Misfits, ex-Samhain, and current Danzig frontman seek comfort in his pre-Internet past.
“There is no punk rock anymore because everything is too PC — punk rock by its very nature, especially then, was to be un-PC and say the things that nobody would say and do the things that nobody would do," Danzig says in a fit of nostalgia from his LA home. "We did it all.”
Enter Skeletons, the singer-songwriter's highly anticipated covers album due out this November, which will offer a glimpse into the 60-year-old's formative years. Ranging from Elvis to the Everly Brothers to ZZ Top, the record's tracks will bleed into Danzig's live set, he says, when the band headlines the "Blackest of the Black" tour on Oct. 25 at the Sokol Auditorium.
The rock spectacle will also feature ex-Pantera frontman Phil Anselmo's band Superjoint, and metal bands Veil of Maya, Prong, and Witch Mountain.
"I'm excited to play [Omaha]," Danzig says in his staple New Jersey accent, "'cause it's probably going to be my last Danzig run for a while."
As for the much-discussed album's cover design, it's a cover in itself of David Bowie's Pin Ups album cover, which is also a covers record (say that one 10 times fast), and it also marks the first time Danzig has donned corpse paint since his Misfits days, he says, eliciting perhaps the wrong kind of nostalgic reaction from his fans.
"It's [Pin Ups] a really good covers record as covers records go and I wanted to do a take on that, so instead of Bowie and Twiggy, you have me and Kayden Kross in 'skull face,' which I thought was pretty cool and really fun," he says with a forced laugh that seemingly destroys all Misfits implications. "So that's really what that whole idea was about."
