The question remains: Why?

 

It's no secret that I (over)think about Danzig's career and music, like, A LOT. But the recently uploaded footage of the 1995 Pinkpop performance, with the band in top form 2 weeks before the last show ever with John and Eerie has me really questioning what the fuck happened and really; WHY?

Danzig was one of the few major label successful metal acts that survived the early 90's grunge explosion. Pantera, Megadeth and Metallica, although changed, all had huge albums after Nirvana and company killed the excesses of the 80's; and Danzig had the big hit with "Mother" in the fall of 1993- AFTER Nirvana's In Utero was released. Stay with me here, The Danzig Self-Titled and Thrall-Demonsweatlive, the two records that Mother appears on, were both certified Gold in 1994 with the Self-titled in March of that year and Thrall that fall, after Cobain's suicide and Nirvana's end. 

"Cantspeak," the second single off of October 1994's 4p hit #40 in the US Alternative Airplay charts in February of 1995. Sure, it didn't hit the highs of Mother, but it still charted, and 4p hit #29 on the Billboard top 200. For reference, Danzig III: How the Gods Kill debuted at #25, II: Lucifuge at #74, and the Self-titled at #125- This is not a big slide down and Danzig going into 1995 had a lot of momentum coming off the heels of a tour supporting Metallica in the summer of '94, a five-week headliner with Type O Negative and Godflesh and an upcoming 7 week headline tour with the up and coming Marylin Manson and Korn. 

Then something happened and by all accounts it was a slow burn. The band drifted apart and Chuck Biscuits was out permanently in the summer of 1994. The band played all of the 4p tour with Joey Castillo from Wasted Youth on drums and those shows are SCORCHINGLY good, as demonstrated by the Pinkpop performance above and the Argentina live broadcast from Obras a week before the lineup would have their last live showing. 

The band, as is, had beaten the metal downturn, they had videos in rotation on Beavis and Butthead, MTV Buzzbin and were charting. Then the band, was done and Glenn somehow decided to try his hand at being Trent Reznor. Danzig 5: Blackacidevil is such a misstep Debuting at #41 on the Billboard charts but quickly falling and Hollywood records famously dropping Danzig due to their Disney ownership. Also, when the cd was rereleased in 2021, all 10,000 copies were actually the original 1996 cd in new packaging. Danzig's new musical currency for the rest of the 90's was practically worth nothing, the crowds were smaller and Danzig: 6:66 Satan's Child got to reap the (lack of ) benefits of 5, debuting at #149. It would take until 2010's Deth Red Sabaoth for a real chart position again at #35. That's a lot of years and records to recover lost ground. The musical choice of Danzig 5 still boggles my mind, as I've mentioned in past blog posts, it was the first real time Gleen seemed like a follower, rather than a leader, plus it was like when Industrial was over and Nu Metal was rising fast. I mean, Glenn toys with Nu Metal eventually too, but those albums are arguably much better. 

I'm rambling a bit- but I think a 2024 interview with John Christ over at vanyaland.com sheds the best light on why all of this happened:

"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.

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."

And I'll leave this post with still a million 30 year old questions in my mind and something Eerie Von posted in a comment on facebook more than a decade ago

"I don't know why Glenn is the way he is."