i think the misfits were famous long before metallica came along.
Metallica was playing the East Coast and recording in the New York/New Jersey area for John Zazula's Megaforce records in 1982, (
Kill 'Em All came out in 1983) so odds are decent that Metallica may have actually seen the Misfits play. Glenn and Jerry agree on one thing only: the Misfits barely ever had an audience in the old days, which is why Glenn, aside from animosity to his old friend, has expressed no interest in reforming that band. Last year's Danzig solo release,
Skeletons, is an album of covers and more like Misfits material than anything else he has done and bluntly, it's terrible. The only saving grace is that the just-released video for his cover of
N.I.B. has lots of topless and barely dressed women- watch it with the sound off.
It was Cliff and his Crimson Ghost tattoo and shirts on the
Master of Puppets tour that had so many people asking about them and also what prompted Rick Rubin to seek out Samhain, convince Glenn to drop ambience for blues rock in 1987 and created his most successful, eponymous band. After four albums, Glenn and Rubin parted ways over- wait for it- royalties and the band began falling away and he has never recaptured that level of success. I have every Danzig album and most of his solo releases and if I lost the ones post-Rubin the only one I would miss is
Deth Red Sabboth, which was Glenn's most "classic Danzig" effort. It's telling that when Glenn emptied his vaults for outtakes from the Rick Rubin era,
The Lost Tracks of Danzig outsold all of the band's post-
4p (fourth album) output combined.
i don't think i have heard the jerry version of the band. but i like this.
There have been multiple incarnations, each straying progressively further from what the Misfits were. Doyle, Jerry's brother and guitarist, left the Misfits for good a few years ago and now orbits the Danzig camp fronting his own band. The first "reunion" tour with Michale Graves was a very credible effort, with a good album,
Famous Monsters and Graves ably being belting out 'fits classic without being a Danzig wannabe or parody. After that the band devolved and began relying on various projects for publicity while milking the band's decaying 70's legacy. Jerry and Doyle were supposedly partnering with a revived US-made Acoustic amp company (before Guitar Center bought out the name and began selling them; anyone remember the post from the crazy guy who owned the name in the amps section here a few years ago?) and selling their own line of guitars and basses which were supposedly manufactured in a family owned factory in New Jersey, but aside from a single magazine review bass, I don't think they were ever built.
