MAXIMUM ROCK N ROLL #151 part 1, December 1995
----------------------------------------------

BACK FROM THE DEAD?
JERRY ONLY TELLS ALL ABOUT THE PAST AND HEADS INTO THE FUTURE

MISFITS

    Glenn Danzig and Jerry Only started the Misfits in '77, and split up
in '81 without ever approaching the popularity that their fans knew they
deserved.  After the band broke up they were discovered, and their old
records and memorabilia became hugely collectable.  Danzig who was the
band's main songwriter, controlled the band's posthumous releases without
the approval of his former bandmates.   Earlier this year a legal settlement
was reached regarding ownership of the band's name, recordings, and
merchandising rights.  Jerry Only visited the Bay area in June for
promotional appearances, and did interviews with 3 local college radio
stations, KZSU, KALX and KUSF.  We thank everyone at those stations, and
especially KZSU on the campus of Stanford University, for their assistance
in providing this interview.  Mel Cheplowitz

This interview was originally broadcitst on KZSU on June 3rd, 1995

MRR: How did the Misfits start?
JO: In April '77 I ran into Glenn and a drummer who was a mutual friend of
ours, and me and Glenn met through him, and formed the band and got things
going. Funny thing was Glenn had a show booked before he even had a band. 
So within a month of getting my own guitar I was playing a show at CBCB'S.
Glenn sang and played keyboards, and I was playing my stock Rickenbacher
that you hear on the "Static Age" album. We weren't visual at all. We didn't
have our real "Famous Monsters" look that we sport today. Our drummer was a
drunk jazz guy. It really wasn't taking off. We were hanging out at CBGB's
and Max's and places like that.  We were watching bands like the Ramones and
Blondie and other bands beginning to ignite. Me and Glenn kinda looked at
each other and said I think we need aguitar in this band. A buddy of mine,
Frank, AKA Franche Coma, I was playing basketball with in high school, he
was a year older than me, was playing guitar.  The thing was, he didn't know
any songs, and he's been playing guitar for years.  I went up to him and I
said if anybody is gonna play this new Misfits stuff it better be somebody
who doesn't know anything else, because we don't want "Freebird" riffs in
the middle of our new band.  Frank played this wood colored Explorer, it was
pretty funny.  Our "Static Age" album was recorded 8 months after our first
show, so  we kind of grew into our image real quick.  The music just totally
exploded and we came up with this album in just nine months, and it's all
our classic tunes.  We took the album around, and nobody on the planet
wanted to put out this album, and it really freaked us out because this
album was great.  You'll see.  Wait till this album comes out and I'll bet
that it will outsell any of the Misfits albums that were out so far.
"Teenagers From Mars" was on the "Static Age" album, and if you listen to
all the old Misfits stuff we always did 'Teenagers ..." and "Children In
Heat" together.  We always do "Ghouls Night Out" and "Horror Hotel"
together, it's a given. You go from "Static Age" into "TV Casualty" without
thinking about it.  So "Teenagers..." was put on this "Static Age" album,
and "Children..." wasn't even written yet.  The "Teenagers..." on here is
the original take, then after that Bobby Steele and Joey Image had joined
the band, and since this album didn't come out, and we'd already put out
the "Bullet" EP we needed to put something on Plan 9 to keep moving.  So we
put this album on the shelf, and went into the studio with real cheap money
and blew out "Horror Business", and on the back you have "Teenagers/
Children", which is the first take of "Children...", but the second take of
"Teenagers...". So the "Static Age" version of "Teenagers..." has been
sitting in a safe deposit box in Hackensack for 17 years.

MRR: Wasn't there a "Teenagers From Mars" single where only 5 copies were
pressed.
JO: We were going to make a single of it with "Static Age" on the other
side.  We went to this place where they cut acetates and we had 5 cut.  We
didn't like the way they sounded when we listened to them on the turntable.
We cut out these clear purple acetates, one of them has "Teenagers..." on
both sides, and we didn't like the way they sounded so we thought maybe we
shouldn't put this out after all.  People say there is a "Horror Business"
album with only 5 copies, but that's not true, I think it might be a scam to
set you guys up for a bootleg.

MRR: Your bass playing really stands out on this (the yet unreleased "Static
Age" album he brought, with the original recordings of "Teenagers...", "We
Are 138", etc.)
JO: This was a stock Rickenbacher.  If you listen to it, it has a standard
Rickenbacher sound, and at the time I was playing with my fingers instead of
using a pick.  What you'll hear is a real clean crunchy type sound, and it
stands out.  This was the early days, before the skull and all the flash.
I was playing bass when I was a senior in high school, that was in 1977.
I used to play all kinds of sports in High School, and as my senior year
kind of unwound I just kind of said to myself maybe I should just enjoy the
last couple of months I've got in school, and a buddy of mine and I were
talking about bands one day and he was talking me in to playing a guitar.
He said "Oh you should really play.  If you love music you're missing the
boat." I said that after football and all that stuff I'm going to kick back
a little.  He said then play the bass cause there's only 4 strings and you
won't have to learn all those fingering positions.  The music store loaned
me a Dan Electro which was a plastic bodied piece of crap.  I took some
lessons on that, and I finally got my guitar the end of March.

MRR: It differs from "Legacy..." on which  Glenn's playing a Fender bass.
JO: Yeah he played a Fender!  Oh, slap me in the face!  We're making our
own guitars now.  We have maple and mahogany wings on them, and they were
sounding real good.  We made one for Vivian Campbell from Whitesnake.  We're
using carbon graphite now, we're using real stealth technology, you know,
android type equipment.  We made the prototypes, and wait till you see the
new shapes we've got.  We've been hiding them from the public because we
want to make sure we've got all the patents on them because this is the new
regime as far as music goes.  It's moving along, we're having a great time
with our music and artwork and equipment.

MRR: Why didn't "Static Age" come out when you recorded it in '78?
JO: The New York scene at the time was, Television, Patti Smith, you know
all this artsy fartsy crap.  The album that we did was pure guts and had
this very raw New York punk type sound to it.  We played it for very many
different record companys and they just blew it off.  Nobody wanted to take
that kind of a risk and put it out on the boards.  By the time we got to
the "Walk Among Us" album we figured it was better to go with the "Walk
Among Us" stuff which was new for us.  We felt it was always stronger for
us to go out with the material we were working on at the time.  So "Static
Age" kind of got lost in the sauce.

MRR: All the guys and gals wanted me to ask about the one and only time the
Misfits played in San Francisco...
JO: Oh, we were here before that... (ed.  The Misfits played S.F. twice in
1981.  The first was a poorly attended show at the On Broadway upstairs from
a Black Flag show at the Mabuhay.  The "opening act" was a showing of the
then little knonvn film "Plan 9 From Outer Space", and as the film ended
the band literally burst through the screen as they launched into their set.
Henry Rollins came on stage and joined the band in an encore of "We Are 138".
A day later the Misfits sold out the Sound Of Music, playing with Toxic
Reasons and Pope Paul Pot.  The Elite Club show a year later was the
promotional tour for the "Walk Among Us" album, which was set up by their
record label and was badly promoted.  Following Sid Terror's Undead, and
the Flesheaters, the Misfits played 5 songs before being forced off stage.)

MRR: What about the infamous Elite Club show where Doyle hit a kid in the
head with his guitar?
JO: Yes, What about it?  Well, a total mismanagement on all levels.  You
know the thing is you don't want to go to the shows where people get hurt
and things go wrong.  You try and avoid it and try to keep the level where
people aren't gonna get hurt, and can take it to the extremes and still have
a good time without drawing any blood.  There are those few times when things
like that happen.  We don't promote that, we don't look forward to that.
Bad karma.

MRR: What about the kid getting smacked over the head?
JO: Well, the thing was we were playing a place that had a bunch of kids
that were in all day and they were underage and they were serving beer to
them.   They were getting really rowdy and there were about seven bands
before us.  They were throwing a lot of full cans and stuff.  We don't come
to a show to be target practice, and we are not road kill.  We're not gonna
stand there and be abused.  There was no security, and we were our own
security.  Even Jello Biafra jumped sides on us soon after, but that's
pretty much the deal.

MRR: Doyle is your little brother of 5 years.
JO: Yeah.  He joined the band in 1980 when he was i6.  He was ready to play
with us before Bobby, when he was 14, but my Mom wouldn't let him not go to
high school and be in a band.  I told her we had potential, but she just
didn't buy it. (laughs) So by the time Doyle was 16 we started doing those
tours when we started coming out here during the Summer.  When Doyle got out
of school we would try to go on the road and get back before school started.

MRR: What inspired the Misfits, Did you watch a lot of horror films?
JO: Well Glenn used to, I used to work all day long. (laughter) Glenn had
the privilege of watching the movies.  He actually wrote 99.9% of all the
lyrics.  Me and my brothers always collected monster models and watched
monster movies.  When me and Glenn first started the band we didn't realize
that that's the image we deserved to have or really wanted.  We were trying
to be musicians, but as you go out and play and people don't appreciate you,
after a while you say bullshit I'll do what I want.

MRR: Mike Stax from Ugly Things magazine is here and he did a big interview
with you.
JO: Yeah.  I said if were going to do it let's take our time and do it right.
He had his chronological order pretty well set.  The things he was asking me
were pretty much in order, and as he would ask me things, a lot of things
would pop back into my head.  And I would say each week we'd knock off around
6 months of Misfits history.  I think if you sat down to do that interview
all in one shot it would have taken around 40 hours.
Mike: If you want to get the Ugly Things interview with Jerry issue send me
6 bucks to, 405 West Washington St. "237, San Diego, CA 92103.

MRR: The next issue of Ugly Things (#13) had an interview with Joey Image.
JO: We had a lot of problems with Joey, but I'm not going to stand here and
knock the guy all over for you and tell you a bunch of shit that really
shouldn't be repeated.  It's your standard rock and roll saga of crap.

MRR: One thing I read about in Mike Stax interview is the time you came out
of the coffins.
JO: We were doing this show at the Irving Plaza and we built these 8 foot
coffins that had these lids on them.  We were supposed to open with
"Halloween" and come flying through the coffins, knock the lids off and go
right up to the front of the stage and start playing.  Now Bobby Steele has
a bad leg, he's got one leg that just does not function, and I said wouldn't
that just stink if we've got this big Halloween show planned, and me and
Glenn come flying out of our coffins, and Bobby gets stuck in his.  What
are we gonna do, "time out", and dump the coffin out on the ground and pull
him out.  In later years I heard Bobby set up the same prop just to prove he
could do it.  I think Bobby should just be very thankful that he was in the
Misfits, and can go around saying that he was, and in my opinion that's the
extent of Bobby's hype.  I don't want to take nothing away from Bobby, but
at the same time I don't want to have to deal with him.  Hejust doesn't
bring anything to the table for us, and if anything he made us play less
than we were.

MRR: Mike mentioned in his magazine that you guys had gone through kind of
a Spinal Tap situation with drummers.
JO: Well the thing with a drummer is it's not so bad in the studio having a
drummer who has problems playing the drums.  It's in a live situation you
really can not be looking over your shoulder or looking for the drummer to
come across.  You're either there or you're not, and in our case when we
play live the drtimmer's got to lock me and Doyle down, because we're both
so loud that if Doyle's amp goes out I don't even know it.  Black Flag left
Robo flat... we scooped him up.  Robo was good I guess, but he wasn't the
best drummer for us.  I think Googy was the best drummer we had by far.

MRR: Wasn't the Misfits break-up caused by problems between Googy and Glenn?
JO: In the end I found out that Glenn was right, Googy drives everybody up
the wall, but at the time Robo had quit the band because him and Glenn were
fighting, we had a show in Detroit, and we had a tour of Germany lined up
for "Earth A.D."  In the States we weren't making very much money, but
Germany had offered us a big paycheck, like $2,000 every night for like
12 nights in 18 days, so Plan 9 needed the money and we needed to go to
Germany to get this money to put out "Earth A.D.". Nobody in the States
wanted to put it out.  We found Aggressive Rock in Germany to put it out.
So Robo splits a month before we're supposed to go to Germany.  So I called
up Googy and explained the situation and told him we had 5 or 6 new songs
which I could teach him in 2 weeks.  He said "OK, but I want to get paid",
and I think that was the chime that struck terror in the hearts of men,
because Glenn refused and said he'd rather quit the band than play with
Googy.  I said if I'm going to Cermany I'd have to do a months work in a
machine shop.  So he would have to break in a drummer from scratch learning
35 songs.  So he picked a kid because of the way he had his haircut.  Now
I don't know how you choose drummers around here, but we try not to look at
the hair before we hear how they play the kit.  Halloween was coming, and
the Necros, a band from Detroit booked us at a show there, and they went out
in the freezing cold and hung up flyers for our show.  The kid bombed out.
I got totally disgusted because we'd wasted 2 of the 4 weeks before going
to Germany.  We looked like a bunch of jerks in Detroit, it's one show.  I
was willing to swallow it and go back to Googy, but Glenn refused even after
what happened.  That's when I knew the ego thing was bigger than the music,
and no one should be bigger than their music.  We kinda sat back and said
well hey look, if people's personal problems are bigger than what the band
needs to do, then there's a total problem here you know, because the band
always came first, because it was a band, and it was a unit.  Me and Doyle
used to practice with a drummer in our garage, and we didn't have a good
P.A., and it was cold.  We used to practice in sub-zero temperatures, and
we would practice for hours.  We understand, OK Glenn can't come down and
sing because it's freezing.  Our point was, look we play with the drummer
in the freezing cold.  Who plays the drums should really be our decision,
and it shouldn't be based upon who you can get along with, and who you can't
get along with.  It should be based upon who can do the job, and who can't
do the job.  We were in a position that every time Glenn had a problem with
somebody, he was going to sell out the band, and our music was going to
suffer then it really wasn't worth doing.  The disintegration of the Misfits
was a shame.  Looking back on it maybe I should have been a little more
diplomatic about it, and not been so hot headed, but my music was suffering,
and my music was being wounded.  And there was no way I was going to get up
in the morning and play music I didn't believe in.

MRR.  How did you feel about the band's thrash phase prior to the break-up.
JO: The Misfits should not be following cracks in the road, it's not like
water running downhill.  Just because at the time somebody's going to the
left, just because at the time it seems like the right move, if that's not
where we're going then who cares.  We go where we go.  We're out there
breaking new ground, breaking new frontiers, that was the main wedge of our
band.  We were able to bust through solid walls just because of the way we
would hit 'em, and do our own thing.  I'm not saying the Misfits shouldn't
have been thrash oriented in the future.  I'm just saying the later releases
of that nature should have been much more thought out, and much more involved
with the progression of the "Walk Among Us" stuff, which to me was IT!  We
had arrived once we did "Three Hits From Hell", that's the best 45 on the
planet!  It has the right look, the right sound, the right feel.  It is your
black and white B-movie from the '50S with an '80s type beat.

MRR: What about the Misfits compilation thing ("Legacy Of Brutality") that
came out on Caroline?
JO: That's an abortion.  The Misfits had distinct eras, Tyrannosaurus Rex
did not eat the Dimetradon because they didn't live in the same million year
span.  We have our own eras.  The "Static Age" era had Mr. Jim on the drums
and Franche Coma playing guitar.  That was one era.   Then after that you
had the Googy and Doyle era ("Walk Among Us").  Then you had the Doyle and
Robo era ("Earth A.D."), so it was pretty much based upon drummers, which
is not a very good way to substantiate different points of origin on, but
that's pretty much what ended up happening.  When Glenn went to deal with
Caroline he just took enough stuff to fill up the CD and really put no
thought whatsoever into packaging.  It was just like let's get another
Misfits release and put it out on the counter, the last one sold good, let's
put out another one.  It's a shame cause out of all the bands in the world
we've got a soap opera as far as band members and things that happened in
our career.  To take things out of context in our band is like really making
a mess out of everything, I mean you can't put it back together.  I would
have nver put that album out the way it was.  It has good songs, but no
thought behind it.  IT's an abortion of Misfits stuff all stuffed into one
can.  Don't buy it.

MRR: When Misfits start playing again, is there a chance of getting Glenn
back?
JO: For those of you out there who are big Danzig fans we asked him if he
wanted to sing for our band and he said he wasn't interested.  We gave the
guy the option to jump back in and be friends and let bygones by bygones.
Music shouldn't be based around money or politics.  Music should be a bunch
of people that really do great songs together doing them together for the
pursuit of having a good time.  We offered him this back.  He's very happy
in his world, I would imagine.

MRR: So what's the new lineup?
JO: We're in contact with Dave Vanian from the Damned right now who may wind
up being our singer, so we're trying to put together this main front and
get our music back in line.  He kind of fits everything we're looking for.
Me and doyle.  We've got a drummer named Dr. Chud, he's from Lodi, New
Jersey.  He's an old stand in.  We're gonna see how Dr. Chud meshes once
Vanian joins the band and if we need a different drummer we'll consider.
But up until now we're going with that lineup.

MRR.  Can we look for some new material soon?
JO: Yeah, as a matter of fact Caroline is putting out the "Static Age"
album. (Expected to be part of a CD boxed set in February '96, and released
on its own later in the year on both vinyl and CD.) For people who have the
"Legacy Of Brutality" album and say well I've heard that stuff on
"Legacy...", well Glenn rerecorded my bass on that stuff.  It's our biggest
seller, maybe because Glenn's on the bass, I don't know. (laughs) There
should be a boxed set of five of the original Plan 9 45's, "Bullet", "Horror
Business", "Night of the Living Dead", "Halloween" and "Three Hits from
Hell".  It's all coming back out.  We took a lot of different thoughts from
the bootlegs we've been buying from our lawsuit which was a while back.  We
showed them to Caroline and they figured let's go with the old Plan 9 stuff.

MRR: How was it getting the Misfits name?
JO: It was a struggle.  We got dragged through a system and we got burned by
crooked lawyers, and the list goes on and on.  But, what really winds up
going on is that if you really want something you just hang with it.  We
wanted our name, that was the main important thing, and we got it and now we
think our future's ahead and not behind.

MRR: And how did Glenn Danzig feel about that?
JO: Well, he wasn't very happy about that... (laughter)

MRR: And that was most of the trouble in getting the name back?
J0: Well, yeah.  The thing was Caroline and Glenn were out there running
with it and we had no input on our own stuff.  You don't want to be a
musician and have people putting out your records and designing stuff for
you and not promoting you or making you look like you feel you should.  All
that's gonna change.  We're gonna have a whole new catalog coming out.
Don't buy the bootlegs, save your stuff, everything's coming back out.

MRR: All that stuff7 We should see that pretty soon in stores?
JO: It's all coming. (The first "new" release is a compilation due 11/7/95.)

MRR: What about the lawsuit and bootlegs and getting the Misfits name
again...
JO: Well, we felt that was our main concern.  In the past you look at all
the Misfits products that came out, we never made a dime off it.  Even when
we were in our lawsuit against Caroline we had to buy up all these bootlegs.
That's why I know what real crap they are, and the amount of money you've
got to spend for them is totally insane.  But there's a lot of different
concepts that came out of the bootlegs, hey this has got a good cover, or
hey look at this sleeve.  In a lot of it was educational and some of it we
may even boot the bootleg stuff and put it in our catalog in the format that
these guys came up with.  There's a lot of heavy bootlegging going on out
there.

MRR: I know there's quite a bit of them.
JO: Yeah.  They come out on different vinyl and some of them are re-versions
of older bootlegs so they are actually booting the boots.  We came up with
this idea.  What we wanted Caroline to do was to go out and buy every
bootleg that's out there and put them on a DAT and put them into a computer
so this way you could send a blank tape.  It would be like a library of
boots.  You send in a blank tape and we bust you out a bootleg for like five
bucks.  Now the bootleg that's going for like 50 bucks sits on the shelf.
The only way to really beat out a bootlegger is to sell more product then
they can and get the stuff out there.

MRR: Which is basically all the new stuff coming out is gonna do.  You can
just wing on over to the record store and pick all that stuff up.
JO: Right.  For like "Bullet" and that kinda stuff there's a lot of different
akes that we did that never were released. So when you do buy a record, say
with "Horror Business" on it, if there's three or four takes from "Horror
Business" you might get them this time.  That's what I'm pumpin' to do. I'm
pumpin' to drop out all the different versions and give background on each
one; where it was recorded and when and the line-up and stuff like that. I
know we've been through about a million different line-ups throughout our
career.

MRR: Hmmm. What have I got?  Well, you answered my question about Kryst the
Conqueror already.
J0: Right, right, off the air.  The Kryst thing we did when the Misfits name
was locked down in court and we really couldn't get much done.  So what
Doyle and I did, we sat back and wrote an album that was musically a step
above the stuff that we do now.  It had a lot of riffs in it and a lot of
good drum cuts.  It was kinda like Iron Maiden meets the Misfits through
Motorhead's amps, or something like this.  We went out and hired a singer
that had a real Viking-type, godly voice.  We were trying to form ourselves
in the image of the Lord.  We went out and got this guy that had these
really great vocals, and he wasn't into doing the project on a full time
basis.  His head was in some other stratosphere, so we went ahead without
him and put out the album.  Well, not the album, the EP.  But the album will
come out.  There's a song called "Wherever I Roam" on there.  We made the
misfortune of handing the tape out to a few friends at an And justice For
All show.  We were shocked to find out that there was a song called
"Wherever I May Roam" on the album that came out after that.  We were a
little frustrated with that.

MRR: Burned again.
JO: Burned again.  Well you know, you try to be nice to people and do the
right thing, and it doesn't always work out that way.  So, what are you
gonna do?

MRR: What do you think about a lot of Misfits covers going around?  A lot of
bands play Misfits tunes...
JO: They're good tunes to cover.  We cover Iggy Pop tunes.  That's the one
thing we used to do.  We used to do "Search and Destroy" and "I Got a
Right".  We did a Black Flag tune, we do "Rise Above" from time to time.
You find songs that just kind of niche you, fit your band and you say wow,
wouldn't that be cool to play.  And it's nice when you know the people who
are doing the songs so they can show it to you the right way instead of
sitting down and trying to figure out the damn thing out.

MRR: Did you show Metallica?
JO: Well, they actually wound up showing me. (Laughter) They didn't actually
take my song per se, but they did take my idea.  We ran into a problem with
them.  We went down to see them at a place, took us about three hours to get
to them.  We took them all kinds of stuff.  They pretty much snubbed us and
let bouncers hassle us all night.  I'm not very appreciative of the
hospitality that they show.  Don't come to my show if that's how you're
gonna treat me.  That's all I've got to say. (Laughter).

MRR: How do you feel about the popularity of your old songs, like the Guns
And Roses cover?
JO: A lot of the songs that are covered are really good songs.  It's nice
to see other bands appreciate them, it would be nice if other bands could
actually be able to play them. (laughter) I heard the Guns And Roses
"Attitude" and I totally wasn't impressed with it, but I was kind of happy
that they did it.

MRR: There are so many devoted Misfits fans and everything even though you
guys haven't played in quite some time now, since about '83.
JO: I think that the loyalty is based on the honesty of the music.  When we
were doing the Misfits you got to realize there was no money in the scene
whatsoever.  Any place you went you were always getting to the next place by
the skin of your teeth.  You had to sleep in the van, buy new tires, you
know, it was really hard.  I think one of the reasons we're as big as we are
is because we tramped through that stuff, and kept grinding and doing our
music the way we wanted.  Another thing that I thought was really important
about our band is that we'd do shows where 20 or 30 people would show up,
and we'd play like it was the last show we would ever get to do.  I think
people respect you for that.

MRR: The songs hold up well too.
JO: I try to stay away from politics in music.  Social problems are only a
matter of time.  Things we might have written about in 1978 no longer apply,
so why waste your time writing music about a social dilemma that has nothing
to do with the big picture of eternity.  The "Phantom Of The Opera" movie,
what's that, from 1920 or something, I just saw the original of that 2 or 3
weeks ago for the first time and I thought it was great.  If you can bridge
80 years then that has a lot to say about your creativity and your subject
matter.  We totally don't want to be involved with social problems, or
politics, or violence.  I mean violence has got nothing to do with it either.
It's a waste of time, waste of energy.

MRR: Well, if the Grateful Dead can go on forever, so can punk rock.
JO: Yeah, well, it is the living dead.  It's a timeless thing that we do.
I don't think that we're locked into any era or we're locked into any trend
or stuff like that.  I'm trying to avoid this new punk wave.  I'm trying to
get as far away from this punk revival as I can.  I mean, even though we
belong we don't belong.  We have nothing to do with all the bands that came
out and died away and are trying to come back.  We are what we are.  We don't
have a category.  I'm very sorry for those of you out there who say that you
can tag us and say that they hang in this pile with these bands.  We're gonna
try and do a lot of great things with our music and our band now.  With our
line-up I think we can be very versatile.  If you listen to songs like
"American Nightmare" it's not punk, but it's great.  You can't say that it
stinks.  And "London Dungeon" is a slow song, but it's good.  My favorite's
"Astro Zombies".  I like "Hate Breeders" a lot too.  That's the kind of
stuff we're gonna try and get back to.  We're gonna try and get back to the
stuff that has the tunes that you walk out of the place hummin' when you
leave.  That's just it, we don't want to suffer the fate of this punk
movement, because a lot of it's just bullshit coming back the other way.
I'm not sayin' were blowin' it off.  At the same time, I don't want to be
locked in to the kind of thing were we've got to go out and play with a
whole bunch of nostalgic type bands when we're trying to do new stuff.
We're not trying to walk in our old shadow, we're gonna create new shadows.

MRR: Everyone in here is pokin' at me and asking me to ask you if you
believe in Satan.
JO: (Laughter) Well, I believe in God, so I guess I do.

MRR: Let's talk about jerry Only these days.  You live out in the country
in NJ.
JO: Yeah.  We're about an hour out of Manhattan up in Northern NJ.  We've
got a ski slope in our town and horse riding and all that kind of stuff.

MRR: And you've got some little ones running around.
JO: Yeah we do.  I've got a daughter that's gonna be 13, and my son's gonna
be 10.  I did the family thing all the while we were out of this.  It rounds
you off and it makes you a lot tougher.  It's fulfilling.  I would have
hated to have been locked into music for the last 20 years and not been able
to have a family.  My family's at the point now where my kids are starting
to hang out with their friends so it's real nice for me to walk back into it
exactly when I walked back into it.  I don't regret it.

MRR: So when you get back together there will be Misfits tours and all?
JO: I might as well let you guys know about this.  We're trying to redo
Chiller Theatre.  We've got a guy who we're shooting TV pilots all summer
long.  What we're gonna do is we're gonna have a horror show on where we
host it and we have guests in the middle, like painters, like Basil Gogos
or Boris Valejo, or sculptures and prop guys who make masks and stuff like
that.  We're gonna try and bring on all the different aspects of horror
movie making and bring on guests and show all these old 50's B movies.  Not
the real corny ones, the real cool ones like "The Crawling Eye" and "Hideous
Sun Demon", and "Horror Hotel" and stuff like this.  We're gonna give you
guys all kinds of background information on them.  It's not gonna be like
the Elvira thing which was kind of corny, where she's always making fun of
them.  We ain't doin' that.  We're actually making it like a documentary on
each movie, and try and bring in a guest for it that coincides with what the
movie is about.  We've got a buddy of ours who runs a horror show convention
out in NY that we just did (Chiller Theatre), so he has all the old tapes
and all the background.  We have a guy who shoots music videos is gonna come
up and do it with us, Drew Stone out of NY.  We're gonna try and sell it to
TBS or TNT or somebody.  Maybe we won't be playing right away, maybe we'll
be on TV.  That's the angle we're trying to take.  We're looking to play for
Halloween.  We're gonna bring Dave Vanian in right after we shoot these
pilots if everything looks good.  We're gonna try and play the Limelight in
NY for Halloween.

MRR: The Limelight that is, in NY?
JO: Yeah, it's an old church.  For you people out in San Francisco that
have never heard of it or never seen it, it's huge.  It holds about 1500
people.  If MGM would have come to me and said "here is 20 million dollars,
build us a place to film a video of you guys in," I would have built this
church.  The church is perfect.  It's got all its own lights and sound.
It's got all these cat walks.  Right behind the stage is a 30 foot stained
glass window.  That's probably where we're gonna try and do this thing.
We're excited about it.  We were gonna strap grenades to the outside of it
for the end of the show and just pull the wires.  It has the right vibe for
the show.  We were in town (S.F.) all weekend long.  As we were going around
S.F. we were checking out all the different venues.  We feel that probably
the best thing for us to do when we come back to town is to book two nights
at the Great American Music Hall.  It's fantastic.  It's got the right look
about it.  It doesn't hold as many people as we would like, but the acoustics
in it seem to be fantastic.  The thing just rings.  You stand in the middle
of it and you clap your hands, and you can hear the sound throughout the
place.  I don't know how their PA is, we might have to bring in a little
extra PA.  It seems to have the right feel.  The big thing about the Misfits
coming back, especially if we've got Dave, who's got this vampire thing
going on, which is our thing, is it's gonna be a tour where we do a big city
city on the weekend and promote all week long going into it.  We'll pretty
much pick a place that appeals to the kids and also appeals to the image of
the band.  It's not how many tickets can we sell, it's where do we want to
play, not where should we play to make the most money.  We don't really care
about that, it's just a matter of coming out.  We want to make some really
great videos.  Maybe bring a few new songs to the table when we do come to
town.  You know with our new restrictions (agreed to in the lawsuit
settlement), as far as the old music, we can't make videos of the old Misfits
tunes.  If you want to hear the old Misfits tunes you've got to come see us
play them, or you won't get any new versions of them.  I kinda like that, but
at the same time we can't video them, so we will be videoing new songs that
we write.