Time & Perspective Quote by Jerry Only

Fame, in Jerry Only's telling, isn't the prize at the end of the punk-rock maze. It's the monster waiting there. By invoking Metallica as the benchmark, he’s not just name-checking a bigger band; he’s pointing at a specific kind of scale where music stops being a scene and becomes an industry with a human face stamped on it. That level doesn’t simply amplify what you are. It distorts it, then demands you perform the distortion nightly.

The line lands because it’s both humblebrag and warning label. There’s an implied alternate history in it: the Misfits (and Only himself) as arena juggernauts. But the emotional truth is that he doesn’t fully romanticize that fantasy. "We'd have had a hard time dealing with it" reads like a veteran’s understatement for the grinding machinery of touring, expectations, money, and the constant surveillance that turns every weakness into content. He frames success as "doom", flipping the standard rock narrative on its head. Not "we deserved more", but "more might have killed us."

The subtext is also about punk credibility without saying the word. For bands built on shock aesthetics, cult devotion, and a sense of being slightly outside polite society, mass acceptance can feel like defanging. Only’s admission suggests the Misfits’ mythology depends on limits: the size of the room, the intimacy of the fanbase, the ability to vanish. Metallica-level fame eliminates vanishing. It makes you a brand people feel entitled to own. And he’s saying entitlement, not obscurity, is the real horror show.