Analysis: Danzig TV Special Will Be Awesome, Won’t Go Far Enough

A lot of people would advise Glenn Danzig about his reputation thusly: Why fight it? Sure, he’s gotten sucker-punched (it happens), he might’ve tangled with neighbors (it’s New Jersey), and he’s been man enough to tote supplies for a cat’s shitbox (he’s real). So what, the dark, riveting persona of his prime has decayed a bit and what leaks out of his personal life kinda draws him in cartoon proportions. Big deal. He’s done a great job of not sucking in concert and not really caring about getting punked a few times. Move along, they’d say.

I’d urge him to go further: Play with it. His old vibe is built on mystique and is unsustainable in the internet age. That means his public goofs have actually freed him from maintaining his glower and flex; now he need not withstand barbs from the peanut gallery — he can subvert them. That’s where the Danzig Legacy TV Special comes in: Filmed in May 2012 and completed this week, it is helmed by a guy who works on Metalocalypse and features performances of material from Glenn’s years in The Misfits, Samhain, and Danzig. It’s modeled on the historic Elvis ’68 Comeback Special but I hope that they’re not attempting a similar tone: It’d be better to not grab for respect, but to fully embrace the silliness of a 58 year-old rager and his brilliant inventions. Yes, it’s time to ham it up. Glenn might dismiss me as a conceder, an appeaser, a guy urging him to give the haters a little wink so they’ll let up; that’s debatable. But what is indisputable is that Glenn would be as awesome at being a human as he is at being a ’50s horror alien.