THE MISFITS REMAINED UNDEAD:

Gorgeous Frankenstein/ex-Misfits Guitarist Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein Discusses New Band, Its Non-Player MVP, the Set List, His New Hot Sauce, His Custom Guitar, and… JERRY ONLY SUBMARINING A MISFITS-DANZIG RENUNION. HOLY FRAKKIN' SHITE.

An entire interview with Doyle follows my bla-bla-bla intro. Here goes.

The Misfits. Best band ever? I think so. Hear me out on this.

Yeah, Slayer has kicked more ass for longer. But, pound for pound, assuming you like the hardcore-metal fusion of 1983's Earth AD album, everything the Misfits did is good. They have the highest batting average of any band ever.

The band is also one of the great Behind-the-Music-style stories of any band ever.

Glenn Danzig founds the band in 1977. Shortly thereafter adds Jerry Only as bassist. Band practically invents melodic hardcore, working a horrorcore aesthetic that occasionally veered from punk into rockabilly and gothic oi!.

After series of lineups disintegrated, Only pulled his brother Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein into the band. With Doyle on board, the band also practically invents metallic hardcore with Earth AD. Much ass is kicked. Then, amid some fuck-you-no-not-for-nothing-fuck-you inter-band drama, Danzig puts down his monster in 1983 and moves ahead with Samhain, then his self-titled band.

Then things got really interesting.

Jerry and Doyle recorded some metallic songs as Kryst the Conqueror, which was OK, but not what your average fiend wants to hear.

The Misfits continued life after death as a cult sensation and skater favorite. But in 1988, Metallica covered two songs, "Last Caress" and "Green Hell." And then the Misfits were in demand.

Jerry (and Doyle) had bankrolled much of the band by working at Proedge, their dad's machine shop. They wanted to revive the name. Danzig didn't. So the two factions embarked on a huge legal cage match over rights to the name. Long story short, Danzig got sick of the fight, and let Jerry and Doyle continue with the Misfits name.

The new Misfits recorded two albums: 1997's American Psycho, which wasn't much like the old classic Misfits, but was really good on its own terms. And 1999's Famous Monsters, well, it had good parts.

The new Misfits had drama and schisms to rival the old Misfits. Singer Michale Graves was in and out of the band. Then at one show in 2000, Doyle unplugged and walked off, never to return. The band's website posted a note claiming he'd left to concentrate on his family, but he later denied that version.

After the rest of that lineup fell apart, Jerry continued the band as a three-piece, with him fronting the band. Rumors would occasionally surface Danzig and the group were planning a reunion. Which Danzig always denied them venomously, violently, and vitriolically. In fact, in 2002, I put forth a somewhat indelicate request to interview him for a Misfits piece. He quickly fired back, via the e-mail machine, "GO FUCK YOURSELF YOU EXPLOITATIVE SCUMBAG FUCKHEAD. THE MISFITS DIED IN 1983. THIS THING OUT THERE CALLING ITSELF THE MISFITS IS A PATHETIC EMBARASSING ABOMINATION." Not what I was looking for, but I understood. So, clearly, the rumors were bullshit.

Turns out, they weren't. More on that after a few words about Doyle's current band, Gorgeous Frankenstein which is touring now, which was I talked to him. Check 'em out at http://www.myspace.com/officialgorgeousfrankenstein

In what seemed like the weirdest development yet in the whole saga of the Fits, Doyle reunited with Danzig in 2005, for the Blackest of the Black Tour, in which he joined Danzig's band for a set of Misfits classics. Then the two collaborated on Doyle's kinda solo band, Gorgeous Frankenstein. The name is a hybrid of the band's stars, Doyle and his wife, former WWF/WCW/ECW wrasslin' gal Gorgeous George. She doesn't play on the album, which sounds like a heavy mix of nuFits and recent riff-tastic Danzig. But Doyle says she's the star of the show.

Anyhow, we talked a week or two ago. I interviewed him once before, a couple years back, and caught him at Chuck E. Cheese with his kids. This time, he couldn't come to the phone the first time I called – he was in a New Orleans graveyard, where the original Misfits were arrested back in the day. Anyhow, when I did get through, what he said:

DXF: What kind of set are you playing?
We play an hour, 75 minutes.

DXF: Is it stuff from the album? Do you go into your back catalog?

DOYLE: We've been playing the eight songs off our record. We're playing a couple covers. And we're playing Famous Monsters and American Psycho stuff.

DXF: Who's fronting the band? Is Gorgeous singing?

DOYLE: No, she don't sing. She's for your entertainment purposes only.

DXF: Is the singer the same guy from the record?

DOYLE: No. The singer didn't make it onto any shows. He couldn't do it. So I got Argyle Ghoulsby from Blitzkid. He's playing bass and singing. It's pretty much a three-piece musical act.

DXF: So what does Gorgeous do?

DOYLE: It's the soundtrack for her, pretty much. She dances, entertains.

DXF: What are the songs you're playing from the Misfits albums? "Forbidden Zone"?

DOYLE: No. We didn't learn that one.

DXF: "Scarecrow Man"?

DOYLE: "Scarecrow Man." "Helena." I don't know.

DXF: "Day of the Dead"?

DOYLE: No.

DXF: Really? You wrote that one, didn't you?

DOYLE: I really don't like that one.

DXF: No old Misfits stuff?

DOYLE: No. I really don't think it's our place to do that stuff.

DXF: How about you? Do you still have the devilock?

DOYLE: Yeah.

DOYLE: And do you come out in the full Misfits gear?

DOYLE: I look the same as I always looked. I'm a one-trick pony.

DXF: Do you work out a lot still?

DOYLE: Yeah. I've been working out for 34 fuckin' years. You've got to want to do it.

DXF: Do you still chew gum on stage?

DOYLE: Yeah. I have to.

DXF: What do you do now? Do you still work at Pro-Edge?

DOYLE: No. We sold that. Right now, this is pretty much all I'm dong.

DXF: What year did you sell that in?

DOYLE: 2005, probably.

DXF: This is all you do?

DOYLE: Yeah, yeah, this is what I'm doing.

DXF: Are you pretty well set after selling?

DOYLE: Not me. I didn't get anything.

DXF: Really? You were just an employee of the family-owned business?

DOYLE: I guess I was. Once it all came down to it, that's what it seemed like.

DXF: Are you looking to make this a full-time thing?

DOYLE: Yeah, I'm trying to make it a full-time thing. This is the only thing I really have any idea of what I'm doing. I really have nothing else to fall back on.

DXF: Would you like to be a permanent presence on the music scene?

DOYLE: Oh, yeah. Definitely.

DXF: To you, what do you think this project is about, musically?

DOYLE: Trying to pretty much just go out there and rock. Writing whatever I can write.

DXF: If you're trying to make a run with the band, why is Gorgeous such a big part of the show?

DOYLE: She was a featured [dancer], and I used to go with her and be her stripper tech. So I [would] watch her dance to Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie and Pantera, and she was great at it. It was awesome. Everyone was like, "Wow, you know what, if this was a rock band and if she was in it, I would really fuckin' like this if these were her songs. This would be awesome to watch. Everybody likes to watch strippers, so we might as well have one while we're rockin'."

DXF: How long have you been married for?

DOYLE: Seven years on the first of September [2008].

DXF: You two have kids, right?

DOYLE: Yeah, we do. We've got four between us.

DXF: Do you live in Vegas now?

DOYLE: No. We did. We moved from Vegas to Hollywood, and then we moved back to Jersey.

DXF: What part?

DOYLE: We're close to Giants Stadium, maybe ten minutes away.

DXF: From the first album, American Psycho, what songs do you play?

DOYLE: God, I don't know what songs are on which album.

DXF: "American Psycho"?

DOYLE: Nah, we don't do that one. I'd like to do that one, we just didn't practice it. We do "Walk Among Us," "From Hell They Came," "Hate the Living," "Crimson Ghost," "Shining," I don't know – what else is on there?

DXF: Do you think those albums get their props? Do people seem to appreciate them?

DOYLE: I have no idea. I don't even know how many of those we sold?

DOYLE: I think they get backlash because they're Misfits and it's not the same as the old band. There's always a backlash when Danzig's not on it. That's always a problem for some people. But whatever. I lot of people like that. A lot of kids think that is the Misfits; the younger kids don't even know about Glenn Danzig being in the Misfits. You'd be surprised.

DXF: Not only is it good in its own right, but it's not embarrassing. Sometimes, being good is less important than just not sucking.

DOYLE: [Laughs] I agree with that statement.

DXF: What do you think Danzig brought to the [new] disc?

DOYLE: To my disc? He brought all the artwork to it. He laid out the record sleeves and all that stuff. He got me the artist [Simon Bisley]. I gave him a sketch I drew and what I wanted it to look like, and he nailed it. And [Danzig] put up all the money, all that stuff. Helped me out a lot, you know?

DXF: How about musically?

DOYLE: Pretty much I did all the music.

DXF: Was he in the studio with you?

DOYLE: He was there when we recorded, but I wrote all the stuff.

DXF: As a producer, did he help with the music, or was he more of an executive producer?

DOYLE: He helped out with the singer, the singing, telling him this and that.

DXF: Are you going to be on the road for the fall, or will you being special stuff for Halloween?

DOYLE: I want to. We're trying to go to Japan. We're trying to make a Japan deal for Halloween. Hopefully we get to go there. It's pretty fun.

DXF: Visually, you said you're doing the same kind of look. Are you doing the makeup too?

DOYLE: The same thing. One-trick pony. I'm not Joe Fuckin' Virtuoso guitar player. I'm a one-trick pony.

DXF: The drums is [former new Misfits drummer Dr.] Chud, right?

DOYLE: Yeah. Dr. Chud.

DXF: Had you stayed in touch with him?

DOYLE: Yeah. Always had.

DXF: And what makes that guy good to have around?

DOYLE: He's a triple-threat: He sings, he plays the drums, and he writes.

DXF: Was he on the album, too?

DOYLE: He's actually – nobody's on there playing drums. I did all the music.

DXF: Anything else you want to get out there?

DOYLE: We've got a hot sauce coming out. It's called Made in Hall Hot Sauce. You can go to MadeinHell.com, I think it's called. It's a good hot sauce. It's coming out soon. And I've got guitars coming out soon, from this company called October Guitars. I make my own guitars. I've got my own model. And there's going to be a bass coming out I designed. That's coming out, probably in December. We're taking orders now, if anybody wants that guitar.

DXF: Didn't you have a bat-shaped one when you were from the Misfits?

DOYLE: That's the one we're putting out.

DXF: So if somebody had one before, it's the same kind of thing?

DOYLE: No, nobody's ever put it out yet. I've always made them myself. All the ones I've got with me, I made.

DXF: They won't be hand made, will they?

DOYLE: There's going to be a couple different models. There's going to be a player model made in China [by] the guy who makes the Dimebag and Joe Satriani models and the Kirk Hammett model. It's going to be the top of the line, but there's going to be a made-in-the-USA model that's going to be exactly like the one I use.

DXF: Some high end, some low?

DOYLE: We're going to be high-end, a middle one, and eventually we'll do one for kids who want one and can't afford the other ones?

DXF: The whole Kryst the Conqueror project, didn't you do that to test your guitars?

DOYLE: That was just a bunch of music we wrote, recorded, and said "Let's just do it." We never played or nothin'.

DXF: The intent was never to be a new band?

DOYLE: We were just learning to write stuff. That's all it was, pretty much.

DXF: Reuniting with Glenn, did that make things get a little weird with Jerry?

DOYLE: Things have been weird with Jerry since we started playing music. His name is exactly what he is.

DXF: Older brother?

DOYLE: Jerry ONLY -- Only Jerry.

DXF: So things were where they were at after the Misfits – working with Glenn didn't make it worse?

DOYLE: Did it make it worse? Maybe. I don't know. Yeah. We were actually going to do a Misfits reunion with Glenn, but Jerry put a fuckin' monkey wrench in it, so…

DXF: Really? When was that?

DOYLE: 2002. We had meetings on that. And [Jerry] kind of fucked it up, him and his manager.

DXF: Really?

DOYLE: Yeah. We were going to do it. We were going to do a record, do a tour, and everything. And he fucked it up. So let all the Misfits fans put that in their pipe and smoke it.

DXF: That's a shame.

DOYLE: That's a shame, because he fucked it up for everybody. And he continues to fuck it up.

DXF: The Blackest of the Black Tour was good.

DOYLE: Yeah. That was fun. Where did you see it at?

DXF: Cleveland. I'm a huge Misfits fan, but I didn't see the original band. And if that was just touching the bottom of it…

DOYLE: Well, we tried to do it, and he fucked it up, and there you go.

DXF: Anything else?

DOYLE: That's pretty much it. Come out to the show and have a good time.

So there you go, fellow Fiends. The greatest reunion that never was.

Yours in 138,

- Ferris