Although Jerry Only claims otherwise, just about every other member of The Misfits (1977-1983) has stated emphatically that Glenn Danzig wrote The Misfits songs; without him there would have been no Misfits nor any of those songs.  There should be no debate over it, no one but these men were there, no one but these men were part of the process.  Why do so many choose to believe one guy over five?  That's not saying there may have been some collaboration but even Jerry himself has stated that he set up The Misfits™ songwriting process (all band members voted on the songs that would appear on an album) so that one man couldn't make all the decisions like it was in The Misfits...that one man of course being Glenn Danzig.

"I've written every single Misfits song that there is.  In my mind they're not Misfits songs.  I'm the one who wrote em down and worked em all out.  And then..."Okay, here is how to play them guys."~Glenn Danzig, December 1984

"Yeah, but don't forget that I wrote all the songs for The Misfits and I write all the songs for Samhain."~Glenn Danzig, 1986

Black Market #2, June 1985
BM:  Do you find a lot of people expecting and asking you to do Misfits songs?

Glenn:  Someplaces yes, and someplaces no.  After the first tour, not much anymore.  Some of the stuff that we do that were Misfits songs or basically songs I wrote and songs that fit in with what we're doing right now.  If we
do Misfits song, it's done our ways, it's not Misfits.

BM:  Do any of you besides Glenn write or want to write for the band?

Eerie:  I think Glenn's stuff is really good.  I can't reach his level, you know?  Lyrically, maybe I can someday.

Glenn:  Basically this is the standard operating rule.  It's the same as I had with the Misfits.  It's if you can come up with something that's as good or better than I write.  We'll do it.  I have no objections.

Glenn:  The lyrics come last usually, but sometimes I do lyrics first and when it comes to doing the music, I can't teach them they lyrics so I just basically teach them the song.  We work it out if Steve wants to do a drum cut in or something, we just bounce stuff off each other.  Some of the songs that I write can be played a little slower and our guitar player can play the stuff that I can play.  Doyle couldn't play that stuff cause his hands are very big.  Like one of his fingers was two of mine and ya know he's try and do a lot of that stuff and it's just well he's real good and real fast but a lot of this stuff he just couldn't do.  I think what happened with the Misfits also is kinda a growing process, see I was growing and these guys weren't, they were getting worse at their instruments, they were actually so high by the time we got on stage, they just didn't know what was going on.


P:  Do you still get people asking for Misfits stuff?

G:  That's going to happen wherever it goes.  I'm not going to deny my musical heritage.  I wrote those songs."~Glenn Danzig, Thrasher June 1986

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4w4wmw/glenn-danzig-422-v17n5 Apr 30 201
So how do practices work when you’re the primary songwriter?
I’m the only songwriter.

Do you show up with prewritten parts? Do you say, “Hey, Tommy, here’s the new part”?
This is the same question you would ask Bowie or somebody.

Yeah, but I’m never going to get to meet Bowie. You’re it.
You’ve never been able to ask this question before?

I’ve never spoken with anybody who’s reached this point in their career.
Oh, OK. Well, basically I write the songs, I bring them down, show everybody their part, and then we play it until it sounds good.

So if at any point one of your musicians says, “I’ve got a way this could sound better,” does that constitute employee insubordination?
If it’s just a way to play the riff or the chord pattern, no. But if you’re trying to change the actual makeup of the song, yeah, that won’t fly.

For most musicians, that’s an alien concept. Every band I’ve ever known has operated on a level far below this, hashing out competing musical visions in cramped practice spaces. What’s your process for writing songs?
Sometimes I get the guitar lines, sometimes I write on the piano, sometimes I’ll write the lyrics first and then figure out the chord patterns on guitar, and sometimes I write the drum pattern first. It’s all different.

Is it all up here [points to head] or do you keep stuff on a tape recorder?
When I first started working with Rick, he made me buy not one but a couple of microcassette recorders, because I would come to rehearsal and I would go, “Man, I had this great song on the way here.” I wrote a lot of songs when I was banging on my steering wheel, driving and screaming “Fuck you!” to really bad drivers, but I would forget the songs by the time I got to rehearsal. Rick was like, “You gotta get a microcassette recorder! That could have been a hit song!”

"I just still do it the same way I always did it, I design the album covers; I write the songs; and then I take them to everybody."~Glenn Danzig, 2014, The Pitchfork Review

2017 Danzig interview
The album is very dark, very doomy, some tracks even have a Samhain vibe to them. Was that a natural thing that happened or did you want to achieve this, maybe having 25 years of ‘How the gods kill’ in mind?
Not really. I didn’t think about that. But I’m the guy who wrote all of that stuff, so it’s not by accident that it sounds like what I have done and do. I just go in and then the songs take on a life of their own. And then I start hearing things, that nobody else hears of course.


~All quotes from Doyle when speaking about Kryst the Conqueror~

 

"Yeah, it was learning how to record and write songs and pretty much that was it."

 

"...we [Jerry Only and Doyle] just needed to learn what the fuck to do so that’s what we did. It was a side project to figure out song structure and recording and you know, all that shit."

 

"It was just an attempt at writing songs. We [Jerry Only and Doyle] didn’t write the songs with the Misfits."

 

"We learned how to write some songs, kind of, a little bit."

 

"You know who really influenced me to write songs? Iron Maiden.  When I heard Iron Maiden for the first time, I’m like, “If I could write songs, that’s what they would sound like,” and that’s what got me started. That, and my cousin came over one day and said, “Do you like Van Halen?” and I’m like, “I don’t even know who that is. I’ve never heard of them.” He hands me a cassette of the first album and goes, “You listen to this and then let me know what’s up.” I had stopped playing guitar, and after I listened to that tape, I picked that guitar back up. It made me want to play."

 

From a Fall 2014 interview~

Gruhamed: Each studio album, ep and single that features Glenn Danzig reads, "All songs written and composed by Glenn Danzig".  How true is that exactly.

 

Doyle: What does composed mean?

 

Gruhamed: I would assume that it just all means that he wrote the entire thing himself

 

Doyle: It's true

 

Gruhamed: Really

 

Doyle: Yeah

 

Gruhamed: Really, okay.  I thought there was a bit of, umm, argument over who wrote what on certain albums...

 

Doyle: No, no, no, he wrote all the lyrics and he would come down with parts of songs and  then we would, we would kind of arrange them a little bit and everyday he would come down and he would, umm, sing something different. When we'd get to the studio we'd be done with our shit and we'd get to hear him sing which was, we'd all go crazy 'cause it was great.

 

http://loudwire.com/misfits-legend-doyle-wikipedia-fact-or-fiction/


"Glenn did write most of the lyrics. We chipped in with the actual music of it and we added pieces and touches to it."~Manny Martinez, 2016
 

 

~And excerpts from interviews with Franché Coma, Mr. Jim, Bobby Steele and Joey Image~

 

How involved were you with the writing of the songs on Static Age?

 

Coma: What I am saying holds true for all Misfit songs. Glenn Danzig was the writer. Yes, I or we all added a riff or the lead or a drum part, but he wrote all the songs.

 

Jim: I'm not really a songwriter, but was able to play drums on the songs, pretty much by feel.

Interview with Franché Coma (December 2003) from PunkFix~

...How much input did you have into the songwriting process?  From reading old interviews and write-ups, I get the impression that Glenn did most of it.  Would he just come in with something and tell you to play over it?  How would a normal practice session go?

FC:  Glenn wrote pretty much everything.  He knew just what he wanted on the drums, guitar and bass.  Practices were always smooth and easy.

...What's your reaction to the legacy the Misfits have left behind?  Is it surprising to you that the music is so enduring-that people are still so rabid about the band?

FC:  The legacy is a great thing.  What more could I ask for.  It does not surprise me at all that the music is so enduring.  Like I said earlier, "Glenn had the insight".


1. First off, I want to thank you for agreeing to do this interview. I’ve been a huge fan of yours for years. First off I wanted to ask you about your involvement in The Misfits. All the bio’s on the web list you with them from 1978 until 1980. You recorded six slabs of vinyl with them, (approximately thirty-five songs) did you write any of the songs?

 

Bobby Steele: No. Despite claims by others, Glenn wrote everything. The closest I ever came to ‘writing’ for them was suggesting the idea for LONDON DUNGEON, and offering the music that became WHEN THE EVENING COMES.

“Although 'another' Misfit likes to claim that he wrote the songs, I can vouch for Glenn. He must've written three songs every day when I was in the band; and at the end of the week, he'd pick the best one of the bunch and that's the one we'd do. Glenn's gotta have his own Library Of Congress section if he saved all those rejected songs – and those are probably better than half of what's coming out in horror punk these days.”~Bobby Steele, http://bravewords.com, October 2008
 

Joey Image interview with Dead City Radio Show December 9th, 2014

 

When asked about rehearsals/songwriting~

 

"Me, Jerry and Doyle would just jam out doing covers and stuff.."

 

"Glenn would just show up for rehearsals, come in say he wrote a song. You know, me and Jerry would work on it and Bobby."

 

"Yeah, that's how it was Glenn would come in, nobody was allowed to do any writing or anything so. It was basically Glenn's band, you know so, that's the way I seen it."

 

"He [Glenn] would just go this is it then we would just like, you know, work on tempos. Make up how I wanted to play it. There wasn't no, "This is how it goes.", I played what I wanted."

 

"As far as the other....all the songs, you know, I did them the way I wanted. They were structured, don't get me wrong."


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5arvBn8Ds0M


https://thevoidreport.com/2017/01/27/interview-eerie-von-reflects-on-misfits-samhain-danzig-history/
the void report: Did y’all talk about the different sound you were going for that distinguished Danzig from Samhain? Or was it a result of getting in the studio and doing the songs?

Eerie Von: It was Glenn’s natural progression as a songwriter, you know? Because, going from Misfits to Samhain the songs changed and then all of sudden with these two guys, like John who could play what ever you wanted. And so could Chuck, being a punk rock legend. It just sort of naturally happened.


Steve Zing, TVCasualty.com interview, October 1997
TV: Did he write the music and say "This is how I want the drums to go, and this is how I want the guitar to go.

SZ: Pretty much, and he did that in DANZIG and he did that in the MISFITS. He was right. You know, in a way, Glenn taught me a lot. I would have been more successful with CHYNA had I been more like Glenn at that point, because in a situation like that, you have to be controlling. Where as right now, Jerry is the controlling one there. No doubt about it.

TV: That wasn't the intent [for Chyna to sound like Samhain~zh]...

SZ: Right. I can write songs better than the MISFITS [the latter Misfits~zh] can write songs that sound like the MISFITS [songs Glenn wrote~zh], and I can write songs that sound like SAMHAIN, but that was Glenn's stuff. Glenn did it very well, and I don't want to copy him. If anything, I'm very influenced by him, I just don't want to copy him. I didn't want to have the players that were going to copy everything lick for lick. It just... to me, it made no sense.

MLB: As a live, as a live unit, you know, what a, di-did you feel like, did you guys, did you guys take a step forward when London comes on was there like any kind of a quantum leap?  Because the difference between Initium and November-Coming-Fire and even Unholy Passion and between, November-Coming-Fire, to me, sounds like a much more realized idea.  You know, songs are fleshed out, you know, a little more.  It feels more complete so to speak.

Damien: Yeah, but I, I don't think that had to do with anybody in the band that, a, besides Glenn writing the tunes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWqqBU9QPiw


http://www.commdiginews.com/entertainment/exclusive-interview-london-may-talks-about-samhain-24787/#ArZHCH9xBpmd5gFi.99

London May, Communities Digi News, by Kevin Wells Auguat 29, 2014

KW: What were the writing and recording sessions like with Samhain?

LM: It was very brief during the November-Coming-Fire era. Glenn wrote every part to every song and would show us all an arrangement in the morning and we would record it that afternoon. Thankfully, we spent more time working on the Samhain IV sessions. Glenn was playing guitar at the time so we would jam a bit more before we recorded. Still I was always a bit slow to catch on with the precise drum parts he wrote, so occasionally he used a drum machine to save time/money in the studio. He always recorded his vocals last. So, in his head all the music/arrangements made perfect sense, but to me the material was frequently confusing until I finally heard him sing over it.

"He was very specific about what he wanted, I mean he's a visionary, he's a visionary.  You know, in his head he's got everything mapped out and, um, you know he wanted the rolls to be a certain way and, you know, the beats were very...you know, even Johnny Kelly who plays with him now will say, "Man his beats are twisted, they're not drummer beats.".  You know and um, cause Glenn can play drums but he comes from a different perspective when it comes to rythym and some of the stuff that I had to learn was like really akward but it fit the song."~London May, Eric Blair, 2011


“I loved Glenn Danzig's songwriting.”, “Glenn wrote all the songs [referring to Danzig’s debut release~zh], including the majority of the parts, other than maybe the guitar solos. Although sometimes he even wrote those. He had a very clear picture of the songwriting. I remember Glenn being really excited about the song "Mother" and telling me that, content-wise, it's one that he'd been wanting to do for years and just never really found the way to do it. For him, it was a breakthrough in writing. I remember when we were recording, Glenn had laser-beam focus on all the parts. It was so much fun hearing him sing it. It was a trip. That song has got such a great vibe, and he's such a great singer.”~Rick Rubin
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/rick-rubin-my-life-in-21-songs-20160211


http://devilman138.globat.com/news/Articles/d6_joshjoey.htm
01/23/99

Joey: We take it from Glenn's ideas. Even before we were in the band he was doing that. Glenn never limits himself. He gets ideas for songs all the time. The day before we were going into the studio we were at the Guitar Center getting equipment. We were in the drum department and Glenn said "I'll be right back." He came back and said "I just wrote a song." I was like what? I said ok and by the time we got to the studio he had the song ready to go. It turned to be one of the best songs. The song is "Satan's Child."

Lazie: Glenn truly is a musical genius. The guy has been writing songs since late '75 and consistantly making killer songs. Not many people can say that. With the Misfits and Samhain and DANZIG...he lives and breathes it. It's really amazing

"It's just, you know, if you going into it you've got to just understand that the band is called Danzig, it's his band, and that's how it is and as long as you know that you're going into it. I think what happens to a lot of musicians is that they go and they think that they are gonna put their spin on it, or that this or that and, the band's called Danzig, and, you know."~Todd Youth http://www.mudkiss.com/toddyouth.htm

Tommy Victor
"Glenn pays the bills there and it's his baby and I just try to make him happy. I don't have that much creative input into making the records other than playing guitar."
http://puregrainaudio.com/interviews/prong-interview-frontman-tommy-victor-talks-touring-and-new-album-zero-days-w-audio August 1st, 2017
"With Glenn it’s different as he actually writes it all himself and I come in and try to interpret what he’s come up with."
http://www.overdrive.ie/interview-prong-dont-think-im-extremely-talented-just-sort-try-best-make-things-happen-thats-way-ive-things-long-can-remember-tommy-victor/ July 19th, 2017
"Glenn will write 12 songs and that’s it for the record.  He doesn’t care about the outcome that much, he’s just like “This is the song, that’s it.”  You know, “Fuck people if they don’t like it or not.” That’s the way he is."

SLIS:  Any idea what to expect on that?
Victor: It’s raw, I’ll tell you that much.  Glenn picked great songs to do..his personal favorites. For instance on his last album “Deth Red Saboath“, I really wasn’t heavily involved in that.  I played all the guitar on it. Glenn says he plays a couple of things on it, gives himself credit for it..like he would go in there afterwards and put a couple of overdubs and you know he’s like (imitating Danzig) “Here’s a song” – I’m in there really fast, and I’m outta there really fast.  I have nothing to do with the construction.  Circle of Snakes was different, where I had a lot more involvement in  the development of the songs, you know.
SLIS:  I always wonder about that. Every Danzig album always says ‘all songs written by Danzig‘, but he didn’t write the guitar solos…(laughing)
Victor: I know, but that’s just the way the business side of it…comes with him.
SLIS:  He’s a character (laughing)
Victor:  Yeah.  Technically, for the record, he’s right … if you go to a music lawyer… if you really wanna be a stickler on it, if you initiate the song…and then puts the lyrics as 50% of the song…legally, you can take the credit.  On ‘Saboath’, Glen told me what was going on..and I just had to learn really fast, and a lot of the solos on that were really embarrassing because…everything is a one-shot deal, it’s like, (speaking really fast) “Time for a solo! Okay, next song!” (laughing)  I spent maybe about 20 hours doing all the guitars on that record.
http://smellslikeinfinitesadness.com/an-interview-with-tommy-victor-of-prong/

"Glenn writes all the stuff, I mean I don't have any input on like music, you know." http://www.metalinsider.net/interviews/interview-prong-talk-next-album-subgenres-glory-days-of-l-e-s



Jerry Only on the other hand sort of flip flops on the issue; with differing statements giving Glenn sole credit and others stating it was a band effort;
Ugly Things #12, Summer 1993
MS: When Glenn wrote the songs, how did he present them to you at practices?
JO: He'd just bring 'em down and go, "Er, let's go from here to here..."
MS: Did he get out a guitar and do that?
JO: Not really.
MS: He'd just tell you the chords?
JO: Yeah, "E, A..." and whatever, and we would come up with the cuts and the arrangements, and stuff like that.  That's why, to an extent, it kind of bugs me that we never got any credit for anything.  Half the great cuts and drum cuts were me and Doyle and the drummer workin' those things down.  But such is life--whatta ya gonna do? (laughs)

Mark Rockpit~September 2015
“See how the band progressed.”, “Glenn would come down with an idea and I would take it and arrange it and write parts for it and get it, get it all going, get it together and then Frank [Franché Coma] would you know, I'd teach it to Frank....”, “I was there when they [Misfits 1977-1983 songs] were written, ya know.  So, the thing is, I know them.  I don't have to think about them, a you know, they're there, ya know, they're in my harddrive, you know.  Like Theme for a Jackal, you know when we wrote Theme for a Jackal, Glenn came down and he goes, "You know, I got this poem...", he says, "I want to try to put it to music.".  I said, "Well let me take a look at it.", and I looked at it and I was like, "Okay?  Uh..".  You know cause the lyrics are a little bit verbound, I said, "Alright.", well you know, I said, "Well...", you know, "What key do you want it in?", he said, "C.".  So I said, "Okay, you ready?",  and I just start playing the riff, dum, dum, dum, dum, da-ha, dum, dum, dum.  You know, and it's the same riff through the whole song and it's, you know, we wrote that together.  You know, we wrote it in like one minute and, uh, he'd just start doing the lyrics on top of it, and uh, you know, I was there so, I know them.”, “Haaaa...it's all bullshit!  Ya-n, ya-n, ya-n, you know what happened?  The guy who wrote that, wrote that on other people's...what there, what other people had to say.  Uh, so, what happened was, his father's the book publisher and they both sat down and said, "Who could we write a book about that doesn't have anything written about them?".  And they came up with that crock of shit, you know what I mean.  I love, you know fuck 'em, you know, ya know, the more people talk crap the funnier it gets.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USuspOlMmcQ&feature=youtu.be

FEH #12, p.24-27, Sept/Oct '94
Did Glenn releasing the Who Killed Marilyn solo 7" cause tensions within the band?
JO: Glenn drove a hard line and nobody bit it.  When he wanted to do it we had the whole Walk Among Us album.  Why do you do "Walk Killed Marilyn" when you can make an "Astro Zombies" or "I Turned Into A Martian" 45?  What the hell are ya doin?  "Marilyn"'s a good song.  I wrote some of it, but there were better songs that were all Glenn's.  [Jerry goes on about how Glenn wanted to assert his authority and how things stagnate when one musician does everything] That's a lot of the problem with Danzig stuff too.  I know from talkin' with the guys in the band that he's tellin' everybody what to do.  What do you got musicians for?
Yes, but Glenn, being the superb vocalist and song writer that he is, was able to hold his own with these two pillars of horror; Doyle and myself, on each side of him.~Jerry Only, Chiller Theatre #3, P.64-75, October 1995
“He [Glenn] actually wrote 99.9% of all the lyrics.”~Maximum Rock N Roll, #151 part 1, December 1995
“..., but we had Glenn at the reigns and Glenn's street goes one way so that was the problem we had. Now we're a team. We don't argue about publishing. If you read the credits on a Misfits record you see that Glenn wrote this and Glenn wrote that, you know, like if it wasn't for Glenn the sun wouldn't come up in the morning. But he didn't write all that shit. We let the publishing go to get the name back.”~Juice Magazine, 4/96
The Return of the Misfits by Jeff Jobes
"When Glenn put down the Earth A.D. stuff we were in the position where Glenn was trying to fit into a groove, he knew what he wanted before he wrote it.”~Jerry Only
"There's no getting away from it: Glenn was a founding member of the band and he wrote fifty of the songs."~Jerry Only, Seconds #44, October 1997 [The Misfits only released 54 original songs and Glenn had written countless others that never got recorded~zh]
"When we used to write with Glenn, we would work on something together so everybody would have their input."~Jerry Only, Warp Magazine (Vol. 6, No. 1), April 1997

Jerry referring to having all members write material for The Misfits™ versus Glenn writing everything for The Misfits (1977-1983);
“I think that having four people work on writing the songs is so much stronger than one.”~Cosmik Debris 1999
“If you read any of the MISFITS, they all say, oh Glenn Danzig did everything.  He created the planets, the moon, the stars, ok, but,  He didn't write "ATTITUDE" alone.  "ATTITUDE" was written by me, Glenn, and Franché Coma, who wrote the lead.  Doyle co-wrote "GREEN HELL" and didn't get credit for it.  You know, we were young when we did this, and we didn't know how the business worked.  It seems to be, in the long run, a big error, not taking the them to figure out how things worked.  Glenn was a little wiser to the game, and he knew where the money was gonna be made, and he made sure that his name is all over the place, and everything is going into his pocket.”~Jerry Only, Punk Floyd the Zine
“What you got going  is everybody  working together.  And four guys pushing one way is always better than one guy pushing, and I think that is what your going to find here is that we got a team this time."~Jerry Only, 3.7 Magazine #10, 11/96
"But to be totally honest, it wasn't the absence of Glenn as frontman that I was most worried about. With the fact that he wrote the large part of the songs in mind, I was mostly worried that that part would be the hardest."~Jerry Only, Close-Up, May/June 1997
Rich Lockney, March 21, 1998http://tvcasualty.com/articles/a_jonly.html
RJ: [For example,] in the early stuff, Glenn claims to have written a lot of it...
JO: Well...Glenn claims a lot of things. I mean, the sun was here before him, and so was the moon, and regardless of the comments, that's just the way it is. As for me, I was eighteen years old / seventeen years old when I started, and Doyle was twelve, and we didn't give a fuck about song-writing, and publishing, and money. We [didn't] care about it - we still don't care about it. So, the thing was when we wrote all the songs, for example, on "Walk Among Us", Glenn wrote most of the lyrics, however every once in a while, I'd give him a line, because he would mumble shit, and I would think that it was something. For example, in "Devil's Whorehouse", "...night-time for midnight masses" - I thought that's what he said during the practice, and I said "What a cool line". He said "Oh", and he wrote it down. It seems to me that if Glenn feels better by saying that he wrote all the material - it seems to me that if Glenn thinks that he's a better person by saying that, then god bless him. It doesn't matter much. The music was a team effort, most of the arrangements I did, and it just seems to me that if that makes Glenn a bigger guy, at, say, 5'3", then god bless him. I really don't care - I think our new stuff is better - but that's the old stuff. I don't think he wrote all the stuff. He says he did. We signed the paper that says he can have it, though.
RL: How about the new songwriting?
JO: Everybody. I like it better that way...the better songs come out that way.
RL: More representative of the band [that's playing the songs]...
JO: Yeah, for sure. And not only that. You'll find that when you've got everybody's input on a song they play it a little harder, because they had their say, it's a subconscious thing more than a conscious thing. I don't think anybody would dog a song 'cause they didn't have any input on it. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that when it's your kid and they get hit in the nose or scrape their knee, it hurts you a lot more than if it's the kid down the block.
"...the one thing we have now that we didn't have before is four guys writing songs..."~Jerry Only, Interview by Steven Gorny (Melodia), August 1997