Ex-Danzig Guitarist John Christ Talks Misfits, Horror, and the Accident That Nearly Took His Life

It’s fairly normal for interviews to run a bit longer than the allotted time. Not too much, but sometimes they go over to a point where I’m thinking to myself, “Alright I really need to shut this down, no matter how interesting it is to me.” But with John Christ, guitarist best known for his playing on the final Samhain record and first four Danzig albums, it was incredibly difficult to stop.

The occasion for our talk, which was scheduled for a half hour, was for a Vanyaland 617 Q&A ahead of his appearance at this past weekend’s Shadows of Salem Horror & Paranormal Con. We ended up on Zoom for about three hours longer than that.

To say Christ has led an interesting life is one way to put it. And we covered so much throughout the chat. The main topics were his time in Danzig, when he knew it was over for that iteration of the band, and how a wild traffic accident nearly killed him, not to mention taking his livelihood. Amazingly, there are still so many stones left unturned. I hope John writes a book someday. In the meantime, here he is during our chat ripping on Danzig’s “I’m the One” after tuning his guitar.