#37, “Am I Demon,” Danzig (1988)

150 Favorite Songs: #37, “Am I Demon,” Danzig (1988)

Glenn Danzig is probably the worst person I am still an unabashed fan of. His transgressions—at least as far as I’m aware—are all of the petty variety; he’s never been accused of anything truly horrible, just being a faux-tough-guy who can’t back up his tendency to be a jerk. He’s an icon of both punk rock and heavy metal and also a whiner who once refused to come onstage for a festival performance for nearly an hour because the promoter failed to provide him with his requested French onion soup and then, when the set was cut short because of a long-established noise ordinance about which he was warned, hilariously demanded the fans he’d disregarded riot on his behalf. (I was there! It was a real bummer.) Danzig hasn’t done anything to truly disgrace himself or render his music something I’m no longer able to enjoy. I just wouldn’t want to be on an elevator with him.

But the character he plays on a record? That Danzig fucking rules. That Danzig—the one whose band name is merely his own stage name, who sings like Elvis if he were possessed by the devil, who channels Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash as a songwriter but uses those influences to create something wholly his own—is scary and intense and powerful, the way he yowls and croons within the same song, making music that’s bluesy and crunchy and exciting. It’s an amazing trick: Even now, all these years later, I can listen to “Am I Demon” and forget the French onion soup. I hear it, and I’m like…. “fuck, is he?”

“Am I Demon” might be the peak of fantasy metal, which is a kind of music I love very much. Iron Maiden may do deeper world-building, Led Zeppelin may draw more effectively from Tolkien, Ronnie James Dio may more clearly conjure imagery of the singer swinging an axe directly into the face of a goblin from horseback while his best friend, a wizard, prepares to cast magic missile on the army of creatures amassing behind him—but Danzig makes that shit sound real. Despite his punk rock origins, by the time he was fronting a band named after himself, Danzig was firmly a heavy metal dude, but the punk rock influence is clear in the way he strips away the bullshit, adds urgency to the nonsense. This is an absolutely ridiculous thing to say about a song that begins with the line “hordes of faces, empty eyes / i see nothing new / seasoned schemes of slimy curs / offer up their flu,” but Danzig’s version of this stuff is relatively unpretentious. When Dio sings about seeking the manticore or the wings of a gryphon or whatever, I feel like I’m playing D&D with a great dungeonmaster. When Danzig sings a song like “Am I Demon,” I believe demons are real.

I admire his conviction, in other words, and I think rock and roll is infinitely more interesting when some of the people making it believe their own bullshit. Danzig is certainly full of shit, but he makes me believe it, even knowing that. He’s got to be a little bit demon to pull that off.