“Mother… tell your children not to walk my way.”
The words that launched a thousand memes and plenty more ruckuses between kids and their parents. Three decades on from its initial appearance on Danzig’s 1988 solo debut, Mother remains a masterclass in gloom-rock badassery that established Glenn Danzig as more than just ‘that bloke from Misfits.’ It would be its accompanying video, though, that would secure him notoriety as a devil worshipper hellbent on corrupting America’s youth (y’know, if Last Caress wasn’t enough) and is a tale of MTV, Tipper Gore and a chicken.
Since disbanding Misfits in 1983, Danzig had built a growing following in Sabbath-meets-Elvis outfit Samhain. When Rick Rubin approached Danzig with signing the band to his nascent Def American label in 1987 – albeit with a re-jigged lineup under the singer’s own name – he knew from overseeing music videos by Beastie Boys and the Run DMC facelift of Aerosmith’s Walk This Way that a smash hit on MTV could catapult Danzig to household name status.
“Rick Rubin wanted this video shoot to go off without any problems because it was critical to the launch of his new band,” wrote Vincent Giordano, who assisted on the shoot with director Ric Menello. “He put together Glenn Danzig and Rick to begin hammering out a concept. The rough treatment was cobbled together quickly and was a crazy quilt of unusual film references and ideas to be shot in black and white.”
The video was pulled together on a soundstage over a single day and struck a balance between arch moodiness and occult kitsch. The stark shadows and textbook cinematography directly referenced classic horrors and thrillers of the early twentieth century – most notably Nosferatu and Fritz Lang’s M. Other choices, like the opening quotation from The Pilgrim’s Progress – probably sandwiched on Danzig’s bookshelf between tomes on werewolves and child murder – are pure pretentious guff. And some shots didn’t come off so well, such as when Danzig holds up a flaming fist that is covered in so much protective gel it looks like he’s yelling angrily at a blazing jelly baby (“Glenn was not happy with the end result,” admits Giordano). In other words, the video was perfect.
Posted from: https://www.kerrang.com/the-real-story-behind-danzigs-mother-music-video
