Few things conjure the spirit of the season quite like some good, old-fashioned evil (in the form of music, that is), especially the kind that sends a chill down your spine. This Saturday (October 19), as part of the weekend-long Shadows of Salem Horror & Paranormal Con, original Danzig guitarist John Christ will be appearing at the Chianti Lounge in Beverly to perform and tell stories from his life in music for a unique evening that’s billed as “Confessions of Christ.”
Today, the Glenn Danzig-led collective is known as an outlet for its namesake, one with a rotating cast of musicians. But the first four records, beginning with 1988’s self-titled effort and culminating in the somewhat uneven Danzig 4 in 1994, Danzig was a band. Along with Christ and his iconic pinch harmonic squeals, bassist Eerie Von and drummer Chuck Biscuits created some of the most memorable songs in the catalog – including anything the frontman did with Samhain or Misfits. “Twist of Cain,” “Snakes of Christ,” “Long Way Back from Hell,” “How the Gods Kill,” and of course the monster hit “Mother,” are unassailable hard rock anthems, whether there’s autumnal vibes or otherwise.
Christ left Danzig in 1995 over all too familiar financial and personal clichés, a shifting musical landscape as well as Glenn wanting to scratch an industrial itch, and to most people, he appeared to have vanished from the scene. While that’s not entirely true, Christ faced some disillusionment with the industry, got involved with providing trucks to television and movie sets, and almost lost his life in a horrific highway accident in 2004.
These days, he’s teaching guitar at a college in his home state of Maryland and making the occasional appearance at cons, surprised – shocked even – at the enduring legacy and interest in his time axe-slinging for Danzig and, briefly, Samhain. It’s a far cry from the immediate aftermath of his exit from the group.
“I felt like I was blacklisted, because everybody who loved me during Danzig stopped taking my phone calls when I was gone,” Christ says.
Ahead of his appearance at Shadows of Salem, the guitarist sat down for an hours-long interview with Vanyaland for a 617 Q&A (Six Questions; One Recommendation; Seven Somethings). Throughout the chat, he was never without an acoustic guitar, often casually noodling as he spoke and at other points illustrating how people think he played “Dirty Black Summer” then showing how it was actually done. Along the way, Christ talked about his last days in Danzig, getting involved with the horror and comic convention scene, and having to relearn guitar after being unable to play for a half decade.
:: SIX QUESTIONS
Michael Christopher: You’re coming to the Shadows of Salem Horror and Paranormal Con. Are you a big fan of horror?
John Christ: I enjoyed it, but I wasn’t a fanatic as a kid. I was the youngest of five, but I was one of the younger kids in the neighborhood. So, all the older kids, they were all going crazy over Night of the Living Dead. But I was too young to see it. And when I saw The Exorcist in the theater, that was terrifying. I mean, I was maybe a dozen years old or something. I went with some friends because my parents wouldn’t let me go see it, and it was just the music and the intensity of it, and they sucked [you in]. You bought it, you bought the story.
I didn’t see Night of the Living Dead until later, but I’ll never forget, I was in fifth grade, and my fifth grade English teacher was a young guy, and he saw a Night of the Living Dead, and he said, “It’s the scariest movie you’re ever going to see.” So, I remembered those two. And my group and crowd, we enjoyed the stuff, but we weren’t hardcore, “We gotta go to this, we gotta go to that.” But when they had splatter flick drive-in things, we’d get somebody with a big Chevy and three or four of us would jump in the trunk, and they would drive us in, and we would take our Boones Farm wine and popcorn and listen on the car speaker and do all that. I was like the tail end of that generation.
What was the best Halloween costume that you remember having?
Jason. So, I had the coveralls, and I had a machete, and I had the mask and all that kind of stuff. And the first [Friday the 13th], the one that just kind of had… it was almost like a canvas sack with the eye holes. And that was so spooky because when you were at a party or something and you’re wearing it, you feel disconnected from the people. And I had these boots that had four-inch heels in ’em, so people didn’t recognize me. It was 6’-4” and it’s way taller than I was, so I could show up at parties, and nobody knew who I was and really scaring the heck out of people. I definitely got off on that. I’m like, “Yeah, there’s something to this evil.”
Which then played into the music later on.
Back when Danzig was getting rolling, Glenn and [producer] Rick Rubin were going to WWF matches – old Vince McMahon stuff. And that was part of the idea for our early shows where Eerie and I would soak our heads in water and take our shirts off before we went on stage so that when we headbang, the lights would [see the] spray of water everywhere, which is what the professional wrestlers were doing. When they got punched, they swung their head, you’d see all this spray come off.
And I probably got more into this stuff once I was in Samhain, because Glenn was really into comic books, and Chuck was really into art. He just drew and painted all the time. He read a lot, and he was up on all the serial killers and all that weird stuff. And Glenn and Eerie knew pretty much the directors and producers of all the big horror movies and all that kind of stuff.
***
How did you get involved in the con circuit?
When I first started doing these cons, I’m like, “Nobody cares about Danzig anymore. They remember ‘Mother,’ they don’t remember anything else.” And people were like, “You really believe that?” I was like, “Yeah.” And one of my friends said, “Dude, you are so full of it, you have no idea.” I’m like, “What do you mean – idea about what?” He goes, “There are all these metal bands over in Europe and stuff that have been copying your style for 20 years and you don’t know.” And I’m like, “No.” He’s like, “You got to get out there. Just do one and then see what happens.”
And the first one I did, Eerie Von showed up. And I hadn’t seen him since 1995. We had dinner, we were talking. And the first night, Birmingham, Alabama, we came out and we started with “Twist of Cain” and a couple other songs, and I stopped and I said, “I guess people are wondering where the heck I’ve been since 1995.” And I said, “But first, before I tell you, I just wanted to say that this is the first time that this BC Rich guitar and I have been on the same stage playing these old songs since May of 1995.” So, it’s crazy.
Eerie Von was the coolest-looking bass player you could see on the planet Earth. He’s the one that, when I joined Samhain, he said, “Alright, Glenn and I were talking. Throw away all your blue jeans, any t-shirts of any color, throw it all away. I’m going to print you new t-shirts. I’ll take you shopping.” And he bought me jeans, boots, buckles, hair dye. They made t-shirts, showed me how to cut the sleeves and the necks out of ’em, the triple wristbands for our arms, all this… I was like, a military guy being socialized into punk rock.
I did a convention in Cincinnati last month, and we put a band together and we played a VIP party, and it was a lot of fun. Guys worked really hard [and] we were able to play some stuff.
[Christ begins playing the intro to “How the Gods Kill” on his guitar]
My favorite part was when he goes, [sings] “Cannot end this mourning / Of my life / Show me… how the gods kill,” everybody in the crowd was singing along. I was looking around trying to make eye contact with everybody in the audience. I was singing, I catch their eye, and we would sing along, and that’s the only thing I remember from the show, but that’s all I needed. I didn’t meet two of the band guys until we got onstage, and somehow, we pulled it off because they loved the music. I wrote the music, and the fans remembered the music, and it worked. You know what I mean? It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t supposed to be, but the fact that there’s an original guy with the original guitar and the sound was there, and the fans were singing along, and it’s like, I’m like, okay, we got to get more of the music in these cons.
People still talk about that lineup and how untouchable those first four records are.
And I’m just discovering it. I’m like, “Oh, I want to get out there,” because at the booth, I get to meet people that were standing in line outside the record store in August of 1988 when Danzig one came out. And I ask ’em all, what was the first song? And they’re like, [plays the opening riff to “Twist of Cain”]. And it blows me away. I had no idea. My last U.S. summer tour, Suicidal Tendencies, Danzig, and Metallica. I mean, who gets that? So that part of it I’m proud of, but as you get older, you just go, “Man, we got to the base camp of Everest, but we never got to summit.”
What do you think, as a band, made you stand out from the rest at the time?
It was the energy, the combined energy of the four guys with Rick Rubin and that whole massive village that supported Def American. The first record was Def Jam. It was CBS, it was East Coast, New York. Then Rick and Russell Simmons split. Russell took Def Jam, Rick went to L.A., started Def American, hooked up with David Geffen, opened up his record company across the street from Geffen Records. As the infrastructure grew, the money came in. And when the money came in… Each record, we got a little bit better advances and budget, and we spent more and more, and the sounds got better, and the production got better, and the band got better. And the songwriting, we were grooving more. We had more of an identity.
The first one, Rick had to pull it all together from four completely different personalities, five including his. And so, he stripped us bare, taking people to boot camp, stripping ’em down, socializing ’em, throwing ’em together until they fixed it, made it work, and then herded the cats, got ’em into the studio, let ’em explode. Boom. That was Danzig one, right? Danzig II. Everything was disruptive. We moved to L.A., different atmosphere, different writing, atmosphere, geography, the L.A. scene, the industry, the energy out there was West Coast. And we settled in on this dark bluesy thing. Glenn and I, that’s where we found the common ground was in the old [plays some old blues licks]. Willie Dixon and all that.
***
People were saying metal was dead in the wake of grunge, and yet the live “Mother” was one of the biggest hits and most played videos of 1993.
It was after the third record was out that Beavis and Butt-Head started playing stuff from our first album, and there was a feud with them [on the show]. “I think Glenn Danzig could kick Axl Rose’s ass.” [Label executive] Mark [DiDia] goes, “I got an idea. We’re going to remix and master “Mother.” We’re gonna do a studio version and a live version, and we’re going to pitch it to Beavis and Butt-Head three months later, boom! Metallica calls. “We want you to come on tour.”
It was Beavis and Butt-Head that broke us. A silly little show. I’m getting phone calls from my friends back East, you know, guys my age that never grew up, that just thought Beavis and Butt-Head was the greatest show that they’d ever seen in their life, And I’m just laughing. I’m going, “You got to be kidding me. You don’t like this stuff, really?” And they’re like, “You got to see it. They’re playing you. They’re playing reruns of this episode three or four times a day on the weekends.” I’m like, “Are you kidding?” And it’s funny. I teach at a college and my students know Beavis and Butt-Head. They’re coming around again.
When did you know it was over?
Actually, after the third record, we were mixing the third record, I think, and I don’t remember the exact event. There was a series of things that were going on, and there were some contractual things that had gone on behind the scenes. And Eerie and Chuck and I were unaware of the legal maneuvers that were going on behind the scenes. And later we found out that there was this unspoken gag order that nobody was supposed to let the three of us know what was going on.
There was a lot more money coming in than we were told, and there was a lot more money going to other people that we never saw. And whenever that was brought up, then it was like, “Well, why don’t we just dissolve the band right now?” And everybody goes, “Huh.” There’s a record in the can. You’re working on videos. The tour is already booked, and… You can’t just stop the machine. “We’ve been with you from day one. What the F is going on?” So, you start to get lawyers, you start to do things behind the scenes without rocking the boat too much, hoping that they’ll go, “Okay, you’re right. You know what? Let’s work this out.” And it didn’t get worked out.
It went downhill from there, through the making of the next album?
When we were working on pre-production for Danzig 4, industrial music had already peaked and was starting to go away. And Glenn got a whiff of it. And the stuff he was writing was just droney, and they were just grooves. Nothing was planned out. We got to the studio and the songs still weren’t done. They weren’t ready. The pre-production was a joke. And I’m like, “The music is getting worse.” It wasn’t getting better. I was still trying to get better as a writer and a player, and a musician and performer and all this kind of stuff.
And some people already thought they were Elvis, and they were better than anybody else that anybody, and they didn’t have to practice. They didn’t have to try. They didn’t have to work. They just were. And I’m like, “If we were selling 20 million records…” But we’re not, we’re selling 300 to 400,000. That ain’t shit. Our debt is multimillion dollars. We’re not going to recoup, and our mechanicals are going to pay for it? It doesn’t add up. But when we signed with Warner Bros., the owner of Warner Bros. said, “Give me another ‘Mother,’ and you’ll all live in Malibu. And Glenn said, “I’ll do everything but that.”
And I was done.
Do you miss playing those Danzig songs on a regular basis?
On a regular basis? No, because when I play my own stuff and my [solo] Flesh Caffeine stuff, it’s just there’s so much, the guitar work is so different. I mean, the old stuff is great, but now I changed some of the ways I play it. Before it was pounding, it was pushing the limits of the strings and the guitar and the picks, because I would play so hard that I would just bang the guitar out of tune just from force. And now it’s like I test the guitar to find out. The guitar tells me, I listen to the instrument, it tells me what it can take. So it’s just like you’re driving a car. If you’re racing a car, you have to know what its max is.
***
You mentioned the last time you saw Eerie. What are the last times you’ve talked or interacted with Chuck and with Glenn?
I interact semi-regularly with Glenn’s attorneys. Whenever I do a show or interviews or somebody wants to play with me, and we do all Danzig stuff… One of the first cons I ever did, the promoters of the convention made a banner and used an old Danzig logo on it, and that was on a Friday at eight o’clock. At 10:30, I went up to my hotel room and I had cease and desist letters already, and I hadn’t done anything in 25 years. [laughs] So I said, “Maybe I’m doing something right.”
And then it happened again, and I didn’t realize, because people haven’t seen any of the original guys besides Glenn. Glenn’s been out there doing the same thing for the last 20 years. God love him. He’s keeping it alive. He’s doing his thing. He’s got some cool players that come back and forth, and I’m happy that they got a gig, but they weren’t in the original band. They didn’t write the songs. They don’t have any skin in the game. They’re covering somebody else’s stuff, right? It’s never going to be the same. So when one of the OGs is out there doing anything, there’s a little buzz.
Chuck was seen recently at the No Values in Southern California, the big punk rock festival. And word started spreading that he was on campus at a vendor booth, and he made it a couple hours. Then he said, “I got to get out of here.” It started to get intense. That was never his thing. He wasn’t comfortable. I mean, he likes some attention, but if it starts to get gnarly, he’s looking for the door. I get it. He’s managed to stay off the grid for a long time. I lost touch with him, and when the band broke up, I was the messenger. I didn’t say, “This is what’s going to happen.” I said, “This is what people are saying. So I want you to be prepared.”
And our relationship has never been the same, because then weeks later, everybody was getting sued and it was ugly, but then everybody was covering their own ass. I would talk to an occasional friend who had been in touch, and so many rumors flying around that he had died and all that stuff. And I was just like, “Well, just get a Merry Christmas to him, A happy birthday.” I quit drinking in ‘89 on his birthday, and I didn’t have another drink for over 12 years. So, I’ll never forget April 20. So, I’ve been in loose coded communications, no direct emails, text or anything like that. I know that he’s okay, and he’s still the same Chuck that he always was. And there’s always, in the Danzig front, because of the “Danzig Curse,” there’s always the threat of some sort of litigation.
Tell me about the 2004 accident. What happened and what do you remember?
I was on a movie set one day with a biker that I was hanging out with. We were riding bikes, and I met a stunt driver. He said, “I’ve been driving trucks since I was 13 years old, and I was intrigued by this guy, and he had a guitar in his truck. I started hanging out with this guy. I said, “I always wanted to drive trucks, to learn how…” And he goes, “I tell you what, you teach me how to play guitar. I’ll teach you how to drive a truck.” And he did. I got my license right before 9/11.
And so, my partner’s dad had a trucking business and an equipment business, and they would sell old stuff to the auctions about a hundred miles away. We would drag equipment back and forth. I’m driving a 1971 garbage truck that had the 30-foot bed that tilted up with the two big doors that swung open in the back. Remember those old style where they were filled with tires and rubbish, and then the whole thing lifted up? It was too tall to fit on a low bed. We didn’t have the equipment to pull the wheels off. So we drew straws. I got the short one, so I had to drive it.
About 50 miles away, my partner’s following me in a truck. The front tire explodes, blows the doors open. The explosion was so loud. The truck hits the center divider and crosses three lanes. The tire blew up, so the steel wheel hit the concrete and just spun to the left. Yanked the wheel out of my hands, shattered my left hand. I went right for the K-rail [Jersey barrier], hit the K-rail at 50 miles an hour, head-on. The truck rolled over onto the K-rail and ejected me into oncoming traffic. I got hit by a car going the other way before I hit the ground.
The truck rolled over, spilled diesel all over the place. Shut down both sides of the 60 Freeway the Friday before Mother’s Day, and my partner was behind me, saw the whole thing. He said it happened in like three seconds, and he thought I was smashed under the truck. He jumped out of his pickup, ran over, and crossed traffic – three lanes – to get to me. Both sides had stopped. They didn’t know what the hell had happened because when a big tire explodes like that, there’s dust and metal and debris everywhere. I was trying to keep it upright and straight, but I couldn’t do it. And I still blame myself for not popping the emergency brake. I think it could have stopped it, but I didn’t react. To this day I have nightmares.
My partner said, “It happened so fast, dude.” He goes, “I was pulling for you. I thought you almost had it. And then it just swung to the left, hit the K-rail, exploded, rolled over. I thought you were under the truck.” He goes, “I’m running around looking under the truck, out of the corner of my eye. I see a crowd on the other side of the freeway. They’re surrounding you. I hopped the K-rail, run up… There’s blood coming out of your eyes, your nose, your mouth, and your ears, and you’re squirming trying to stand up.” The only thing I remember is him putting his knees on either side of my head and saying, “Do not move.” And I said, “I’m hot. I’m hot.” And I thought I was hot because the sun was on my face, but I was hot because I had road rash and the skin was scraped off of my arms and my legs. So, he said, “A helicopter’s coming. An ambulance is coming. Don’t worry.”
[long pause]
That was my first helicopter ride.
[long pause]
I had punctured lungs, broken ribs, broken scapulas, collarbones, toes, sprains, and skull fracture. That was fine. What they didn’t tell me was my guitar fingers were hanging on by the skin. I didn’t know that my hand was broken for two weeks because they were worried about my spine. All I saw was a ceiling, and people would come in and lean into my view. The only thing I remember was I had planned, my girlfriend and I were going to fly to Baltimore to surprise my mom for Mother’s Day. And I remember seeing my mom, and I’m going, “Happy Mother’s Day.” And she’s like, “What?” I said, “Am I in Baltimore?” And she goes, “You’re in California. You were in an accident.” And I said, “You’re in California? It must be bad.” And she’s like, “You’re alive. That’s all that matters.”
My brain damage is that I say – I almost did it again. People would come into my hotel room. I meant hospital room. I always confuse the words “hotel” and “hospital.” To this day, it’s been 20 years. This year is 20 years. And so there are certain things that I still misidentify. And it’s not until I’m talking to somebody, and they pause and I go, “Oh, wait a minute. I said the wrong thing.” There are still synapses that aren’t firing, but the trauma center was amazing. And they said, “You’re banged up, but you’re young. You’re strong. You’re going to walk out of here. It seems bad now, but we’ll fix you up.”
But I walked out. It was months later, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Stints in rehab, losing 50 percent of my body weight, being carried from bed by male nurses and bathed. And they worked for weeks to get the blood out of my hair. And being disrobed by men and women in crowded rooms and people working on you and MRIs and CAT scans and two-piece braces, hand braces, knee braces, speech therapy four days a week just to get my driver’s license. Once you have a brain injury, you’re flagged.
How long was it from when you got out of the hospital and then picked up a guitar again?
A year and a half. I tried it [at] six months, and it hurt so bad that my nose started running and my eyes were tearing up, I couldn’t play. Because the old messages that I was sending to my hand weren’t getting there. The pinky and the ring fingertips are numb. So no, I can feel pressure and I can feel smooth or rough. I can feel sharp, but I can’t feel heat or cold, and I can’t feel thickness or thinness.
I was like, “This is never going to happen.” And it was probably three years before I started just playing basic chords again. But I didn’t tell anybody, only my wife knew. And then I met a couple of different people that were out of the loop, and some of ’em were guitar players, so I would teach them, help them, and then I started playing their guitars. And then I started noticing a little bit of improvement, and eventually, it started to become a day-to-day thing. And I just said, “It’s going to happen. It has to happen.” There’s nothing else I know how to do. So, it was 2009 before I could play well again.
:: ONE RECOMMENDATION
This is for rock and roll fans, but across the board, one thing that we all share in common is we all remember what? Our first concert. What was your first concert?
The Who. 1989.
Where?
Veterans Stadium in Philly.
Who were you with?
My cousin Ed.
Right? And you probably have more details. I guarantee you, anybody you meet walking down the street that looks like you’re in a rock and roll, that’s your opening line. If you’re ever in a conversation and you don’t know what to start with, “Hey, what was your first concert?”
[Note: Christ’s first concert was REO Speedwagon, with UFO and Molly Hatchet supporting, in 1978.]
:: SEVEN OF SOMETHING
Of Glenn’s three bands, you’ve been a part of two: Danzig and Samhain. The only one you had nothing to do with is the Misfits. If given the chance, what seven songs of theirs would you love to sink your guitar into?
I mean, always “London Dungeon” and the original “Halloween II” and the second version of “Horror Business” that we used to do [in Samhain]. “Die Die, My Darling,” “Green Hell,” and “We Are 138.” “Last Caress.”
Jerry [Only, Misfits co-founder and bassist] sent me music back in 2010 about playing with the Misfits, and I really wanted to do it, and then – boom – my divorce started. I just left him hanging. I never got back to him. And I’ll always regret that. He had told me at one point that he went through a bad divorce, and he knew what it was like, but I haven’t had a chance to sit down to him face-to-face and shake his hand. But I’ve been to Jersey, Lodi Pizza, and I’ve told the guys, “Tell Jerry I’m sorry, man. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know what I was doing.” It’s like, I would love to do something. Just get in the studio with those guys, watch them work, hold back quietly, and then say, “Strap it on, boys. Hang on. Watch this.”
CONFESSIONS OF CHRIST :: Saturday, October 19 at Chianti Restaurant and Lounge, Beverly, MA, 285 Cabot St., in Beverly MA :: 9 p.m., all ages, $30 :: Event info :: Advance tickets