Writing a Love Song for Halloween

I first started listening to the Misfits when I was 14. The typical age I imagine. Unless you had older siblings that blasted out “Famous Monsters” and wore replica Black Parade jackets instead of their uniform blazer to school. I was always aware they existed, but I thought they may have been too dark and heavy for my pristinely tempered ears. Ears, up until that point, that were raised on a consumption of early 00’s pop-punk, So-Cal Epitaph/Fat Wreck Chords bands and (unashamedly) Fall Out Boy. My friend Will was my guide he put it succinctly and said… 

“They’re just The Ramones if Elvis was their singer and if their songs were all about death.”

He wasn’t wrong, my head busted open and they soon became one of my favourite bands. Apart from the obvious aesthetic reasons that someone would fall in love with the Misfits - the look, the rawness and mythic allure - they unabashedly wrote pop songs. Fast, powerful, rugged pop songs with big hooks and even bigger sounds. It almost felt at times that you could interpret their impenetrably stark demonic look as self sabotage to distract casual listeners away from how primitive, exciting and ferociously bubble-gum sweet their songs were. When you distil their records to their basic form - melody, chords and structure - there’s little between that of Freddy Cannon and “I Turned Into A Martian” of Paul Anka and “Skulls”. Danzig’s knack for merging melody and the macabre has become a golden rule in my own song writing that I follow and try to emulate every time I pick up the guitar. 

Over the years I have covered Misfits songs for Halloween - “Night of the Living Dead” and “Last Caress” - and in general I have a soft spot for “holiday” songs. At 30 years old, I am still a child, and every Christmas Day morning I wake up earlier than I should and before everyone else and during that time I write daft Christmas themed songs on Logic Pro to pass the time. I may release all those half-baked ideas one day, but for now, they hibernate in a puffy winter jacket in my documents folder on my MacBook. The other tradition I hold every Christmas Day morning, is watching the festive staple “A Charlie Brown Christmas”. Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts comic strip is iconic and I believe my first acknowledgement of all things Charlie Brown was acquiring a couple of the free Snoopy toys from McDonald’s Happy Meals in the year 2000. Specifically, I remember possessing the “Joe Cool” snoopy complete with backwards cap and skateboard. Gnarly. Therefore, I have always held a deep nostalgic love for Schulz’s characters, despite not watching any of the specials until my early 20s. 

One special of the Peanuts catalogue that is overlooked due to the phenomena of its yuletide counterpart is “It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”. The autumnal special features similar feelings of being out-of-touch and on the outside of the cheer of the season, but instead of focussing on the titular character of Charlie Brown, we spend time with Lucy’s brother Linus whose Halloween tradition is out of line with that of the Peanuts gang. Linus pleads with the gang to stay with him in a pumpkin patch (that he sees as the most “sincere”) so he can greet the “Great Pumpkin” who gives presents to children. While the gang scoff and go off to “Tricks or Treats”, Charlie Brown’s sister Sally has a crush on Linus and decides to forgo a night of Halloween candy for a night of patience as she sits in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin to arrive.

How is that not the most romantic thing you’ve ever heard?!? 

While the film sadly ends with the couple being spooked by Snoopy rising out of the pumpkin patch and Sally leaving disgruntled, missing out on the Halloween fun, a romanticised ballad of how one could fall in love with someone while waiting for something that’ll never come feels like song writing material ripe for the taking. 

When it came to writing the song, I stole mercilessly from the Misfits playbook. “We Walk The Streets At Night” was the first thing I wrote down. An eerily familiar opening line for those initiated in the Misfits. The doubled up staccato-lite vocals for the verses were directly ripped off from “Hatebreeders” and if you have any sort of “woaaaahs” in any song you write, you need to write and send a cheque to Danzig immediately. Sonically, I wanted it to sound scrappy and lo-fi, which I felt I accomplished by not only layering noise upon noise upon noise but by also being fairly inept at mixing high fidelity recordings. The chords are as simple as they can be, in the key of G, with a classic 4-chord I, IV, V and VI to drive home the lovey-dovey pop. But at the heart of it, I wanted it to be a love song, written from the perspective of Linus with as much sincerity as he would hope for.

Anyway, thanks for reading and feel free to listen to the song below…

Lots of love,
All the best,
& Happy Halloween
Alex