Set of the day

Eerie Von is best known as musician as bass player and founding member of Samhain and Danzig, two bands founded by his old friend Glenn Danzig, who taught him to play the bass. Since leaving Danzig, he’s released five albums under his own name most recently last fall’s “Kinda Country” in addition... more

Eerie Von is best known as musician as bass player and founding member of Samhain and Danzig, two bands founded by his old friend Glenn Danzig, who taught him to play the bass. Since leaving Danzig, he’s released five albums under his own name most recently last fall’s “Kinda Country” in addition to painting “Fiend art,” hundreds of paintings that exhibit much the same sensibility of his recordings.

He’s also been a prolific photographer for decades. His first photoshoot was in high school when he photographed the band The Misfits. The Misfits were never a huge band and were together only a few years, but they were influential, straddling horror metal and punk rock and creating a new sound.

“Misery Obscura” is Von’s first book, a collection of three decades of photographs of the bands he was in, the musicians he knew and a great look at the music scene. We talked with him recently about the book.


ALEX DUEBEN: You're primarily known as a musician, but which came first for you, photography or music?

EERIE VON: Music was always first. I didn't take my first photos until 8-9 years old, and didn't get into in for real until 12-13. I was listening to music and signing along since 5.

AD: Do you have a preference as far as black and white vs color?
 
EV: Very few people are beautiful enough to warrant a color photo. I like the spookiness, and light and shadow thing you get from black and white. You have to try harder to get what you want to come across.

I'll shoot color, if I need to, and for a while, it was hard to get black and white processed, on Tour, so I shot almost all the Danzig stuff in color, but just for convenience.

AD: Have you gone digital or still working old school, film and all?

EV: I shoot the paintings digital, for the auctions, but back it up with film. All the myspace, and facebook stuff is crappy digital, and if there's gonna be porn, or anything, digital is much safer.

But if I wanna be serious, I'll go back to film, take my time, and get it right, and not rely on fixing it after on the computer. I shot some great black and white film stuff, in Indiana the last year or so I lived there.
 
AD: You start out early in the book writing “I'm a 16 year old punk and my first photo shoot is The Misfits.” At the time did you know how big a deal that was?

EV: It was a big deal for me just because, I thought those guys were kool. I was already friends with Jerry and Doyle, and they were fun to hang out with. The band was an underground thing, didn't sell a lot of records, or draw huge crowds, they were just KOOL, and only a select group of people around the Country knew about them.
 
AD: Was a struggle to get airplay on the radio and on TV? There are a few Danzig songs that have gotten some airplay, but otherwise--

EV: If you're talking about The Misfits and Samhain, they only got played on college radio, and that was maybe once a week, on Punk/Hardcore shows that were sometimes only an hour long. Danzig got airplay all over the country. I still hear the old songs where ever I live.

MTV was another story. We didn't make the kinds of videos they were gonna play at that time. We alienated them right away with the original "Mother" video, and that hurt record sales from then on. As soon as we did the "Live" Mother video in ‘93 it was played a few times a day for a month straight, and the record went Gold. Go figure.

AD: Looking back at the Misfits and Samhain and Danzig, do you feel like the groups and the movement had an impact on music and culture today?

EV: I would say so. I can't go anywhere, where I don't see a band, or some kid who looks like he could have been back there in the old days in Lodi. There's like a hundred Horror Rock bands, and I get email everyday from someone who says if it wasn't for those bands they wouldn't have done this, or that.

Look at all the mega rich and famous bands who claim the same thing, so I would say yes.

AD: How did you end up putting together the book. Is this something you've been trying to do for a while?

EV: Yeah, I was talking about putting out a book back in the Danzig days. I always knew I'd do it sometime. I would have put it out long ago, but I guess it was meant to come out now. As you get older, all the people who were influenced start occupying positions of power, and the guys at Dark Horse were all fans, so it was a "No Brainer"

AD: The book being published by Dark Horse, which mostly publishes comics, and that may seem odd but I remember the Danzig albums from the 90s with H.R. Giger and Simon Bisley and Martin Emond artwork. Was that kind of imagery and tone of old comics an influence?
 
EV: Glenn's the comic guy. I have a descent collection, but the art side has always been his passion. The fact that the book found a home at a comic company is purely coincidental. I knew they were pretty big, so it seemed like a good move.

AD: The book felt like a real backstage tour, was that what you were going for?

EV: I was looking for a "Scrap book" kinda feel. Some of it reminds me of a high school yearbook for Fiends. Not much is known about any of those bands, so I wanted to shed some light on the subject.

AD: It’s interesting because the book feels almost like a companion to the liner notes you wrote in the Misfits box set from years back as far as chronicling the band.
 
EV: That could be the way some people see it, but I approach each thing separately, and just do what feels right. At the time, I didn't know I was going to get a chance to do the book, so the liner notes, may have the same sort of feel.

AD: Was there a particular image or something you really wanted in the book but couldn't fit?

EV: Yeah about a Hundred! We only had a budget for 160 pages, so we did the Best we could with limited space. I hope to do an expanded version or a Part 2, but I'm very happy with the end result, and judging by the emails I'm getting the fans like it too!

AD: When putting it together was there anything that stood out because you wish you could have shot it but didn't for whatever reason?
 
EV: Yeah, the whole Samhain period, on tour. I didn't own my own camera, and I was afraid to borrow my father's Nikon, so I went without. I did take it a few times, but didn't shoot like I did later on. Maybe there wasn't as much down time then. Also the month we did with Type O I didn't take a camera. I regret that.

AD: To promote the book you did an acoustic set with Lyle Preslar and Mike D’Antonio at Generation Records in New York. How did you did this come together and how did you connect with Lyle and Mike?

EV: They Both wrote forwards for the Book. Lyle is an old friend from the Hardcore days, who played on the first Samhain record, and did our first show. Mike D is one of those guys who was influenced, and we had him tell his story, and when the signing came up we just asked him to come down, and he said yes. Getting Lyle out of the house was a bigger deal.

AD: We're talking about the music days as if it’s all in the past but you released a new album in the fall. Kinda Country.  I've listened to it a few times and I really love but, it is a very different album for you. What was the influence on this sound?
 
EV: I've been writing songs now seriously for more than twenty years. I learned a lot from everyone who has written, and is writing, and I'm getting pretty good at it. I am a big Elvis fan, and his roots were country, and his later albums, almost all country, so the influence was always there.

I don't listen to a lot of modern anything, and my country influences are limited, but all my other influences are vast. A lot of people are telling me it's not that different for me. I just write songs, and when I have enough of them that might fit together, I put them on an "album", which still means a collection of something.
 

AD: It’s interesting because your previous album That’s All There Is was different from your other solo albums and more of a punk album and now you're going in a whole other direction, but it still felt like you. Is the kind of music you want to make changing or are you just want to keep trying something new?
 
EV: I'm going in whatever direction my mood, and the songs take me. I don't force it. I'll  be a Punk Rock guy until I die. and there will always be blues in everything I do. It'll always be dark, that's just how it is.

Everything I do is a part of a body of work.  I figure if you're going to be around and put out records for twenty-seven years, you have keep it interesting. I don't know what the next record, or next painting is gonna be like. I do what I wanna do, and try to please myself first, and If people like it, that's great, but I'll do it. whether anyone buys it or not.

AD: You grew up in Jersey and I know you moved back a few years ago. You spend your days making music and painting and taking photos. Looking back through decades of work to assemble this, what do you think your sixteen year old would say if he could see what you've done and where you are now?
 
EV: If I had a kid? They would make fun of me, like they're supposed to. They'd say "How come we're not rich?" They wouldn't think their dad was kool. They'd laugh, at those old photos, and the way we dressed. Later on they would realize I had a pretty kool life up till that point.
 
I just figure there's another book yet to be written, so I gotta get out there and keep doing my thing. The last 10 years I wasn't on the road, I've been painting. Every day. A couple hundred paintings, 5 records, and a book, ain't bad, in that time.

Can't wait to see what happens next.