Open Caskets has expanded beyond the page with a seven-song soundtrack inspired by the graphic novel's characters, stories, and strange worlds. Created by members of the Open Caskets creative team and their collaborators, the record works as a musical companion to the book, with several songs actually existing within the stories themselves. The project began when Jack Simon, who contributed two stories to the book with his father Shaun Simon, wrote “Eternity,” a song performed by a character in one of the book's stories. That recording opened the door to a full soundtrack, with Jack ultimately taking the lead on four songs, while Neil Sabatino contributed two of his own and Shaun Simon wrote the music for the album's title track.
Open Caskets is a dark, surreal graphic novel created by Shaun Simon, founding member of Pencey Prep and co-writer of Gerard Way & Mikey Way comics including The Umbrella Academy: You Look Like Death, The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, and Collapser, and Neil Sabatino, longtime indie-rock musician, visual artist, and founder of Mint 400 Records. The soundtrack brings together Jack, Shaun, Neil, Christian Kisala, Enid Sabatino, and Jack's friend and bandmate Ty Fletcher. Jack's songs approach the book almost like an indie-rock musical, exploring the characters from their own perspectives, while Neil's contributions take very different paths, from the chaotic puppet world of “Happy Friends” to the dark trip-hop atmosphere of “I Am A Prisoner To It.” Here, Jack and Neil discuss creating the soundtrack, collaborating with family and friends, and finding new ways to bring the world of Open Caskets to life.
You contributed to Open Caskets as a writer, working alongside your dad, Shaun. How did you first become involved with the book, and what was it like developing stories together?
Jack Simon: It was fun! I became involved because my dad knew I was into writing and that I wanted to try writing a comic. I learned how to format a script and everything through helping him write and script the story Transformer, and then I had school work from college or whatever so I didn’t have as much time or headspace to help with Eternity, but I had the original idea for that one, and I wrote the song for it after my dad suggested we call the song lady “Eternity.” My dad’s a great writer and it was really interesting in general working with someone else when writing a story, because (in the little and completely unpublished writing I’ve done otherwise) I’ve always done it on my own.
The book has a pretty unusual mix of surrealism, dark humor, science fiction, fantasy, and psychological elements. What parts of that world were you most drawn to when you were writing your stories?
Jack Simon: I think the fantasy part was probably the most attractive to me, the way it’s fantasy in a modern city setting. I also like dark humor, like the end of Don Cicada is hilarious and all of Work Is Hell is fantastic and more a comedy than a psychological study really, which is funny seeing as it takes place in literal Hell! I bet if I’d been left to my own devices on Transformer and Eternity, they would’ve been lighter urban fantasy stories, and I don’t think that would’ve worked for the book, so that’s that whole collaboration thing again— it changes your result.
You and Shaun created Open Caskets, and Jack contributed to the book before becoming the primary voice of much of the soundtrack. What did you hear in Jack's writing and musical style that made you want him to take such a central role in bringing these characters to life through music?
Neil Sabatino: It’s interesting we talked about the soundtrack since we are all musicians and separately Jack and I just had different aspects of the book that spoke to us that we wanted to bring life to. Jack thought of it more as a musical and he wrote these amazing songs from the point of view of the characters for a handful of songs and then he also addressed songs that were part of the stories like in ‘Eternity’ the main character writes the song “Eternity” and becomes famous for it and in ‘Don Cicada’ a life size cicada sings a jazzy tune at a nightclub. I thought of it differently. I had been thinking for a while if “Happy Friends”, the weird puppet show that shows up throughout the book, had a theme song how would it go. I also had this instrumental song that I heard as sort of dark trip hop that I thought fit very well as the soundtrack to the vampire walking around in a snow storm that was part of the story “Coffee, Black”. I used the title “I Am A Prisoner To It” because it is the last line of the story. As well I contributed bass, guitar and keys to most of Jack’s songs with my bandmate from Fairmont and Please Be Careful Christian Kisala playing drums. I think on Jack’s songs we were able to just make them full compositions. As well I love recording and my current project Please Be Careful is still in the writing process of our 2nd record so it was fun to be involved in a recording project like this.
To speak specifically on Jack I think for a teenager he is bordering on musical genius. Like these to me sound like centerpiece songs to a musical and I loved how easily he came up with them. I think there might be big things ahead for him.
You've now taken some of those characters and stories and turned them into songs. Did you approach the soundtrack differently because you were writing from inside a world you had already helped create?
Jack Simon: When I wrote the songs, I was just thinking about the stories and what the characters must be feeling and experiencing, and that leant itself to the process and all. It’s great to have a place of inspiration for a song, like being told “you must write a song based on this story” is a fantastic restriction, because then you can get inspiration from that story that’s specific, and that can help you boil down what the song is.
“Half A World Away” and “Coffee Black” feel almost like songs from a strange indie-rock musical, where you're getting inside the characters rather than simply describing what happens to them. How did you approach writing those songs?
Jack Simon: I love your description of them! Writing an indie-rock musical would be really cool, and I’m happy you think they’re like that. I think that if I had just described what happened to the characters, I honestly wouldn’t have had as much fun writing the songs, because I’d rather have stuff inspired by the comic rather than descriptions of it backed with music. Writing songs can be very spur of the moment sometimes, and both these songs kind of had that quality when writing them. There was a night when I just thought, “Hey, what if we had a few more songs for the comic?” because at that point we were planning on just releasing Eternity as a single, nothing else, and so I just got out my guitar and started playing an A chord, then a D and etc, and I was finding the melody of Half A World Away quickly, and the lyrics came quick too. I wrote Don Cicada that same night, and showed my dad both songs the next day. Now, generally, writing two good songs like that in one night is crazy for me, but with that inspiration of the stories in my head, it came much easier, because I had the idea of what the songs should be like. Once I had the idea of what the songs should be like– what vibe they should try to capture, what feelings they should evoke, based on their characters– I was free to go wherever I wanted with them. I wasn’t tied down to anything, really, except the world of the story, which can always be expanded on. Coffee Black came about because my dad said “What if we had a song for Coffee Black?” and I was trying to figure out a jazz thing, an instrumental on piano, to no avail. Later that day, my friend Ty, the lead guitarist of my band the Mercys, came over to jam, and I said “Hey, do you wanna write a song for this Coffee Black story?” and he said yeah and we wrote it together. Ty is amazing, and when I collaborate with him for songwriting, something good usually happens with it. I fixed up some of the lyrics afterwards, which are kind of dreamy night-time descriptions of what the vampire is seeing as he walks through the streets at night, and then his experience with the girl at the diner, and that’s what we did. Ty also sang backup on the choruses for that song, making it a real Mercy marvel!
“Eternity” is especially interesting because the song is actually part of the story itself—the songwriter in the book becomes famous because of it. What did you imagine that song sounding like when you first encountered the character?
Jack Simon: Well it’s funny because the melody of that song had already existed months and months before I was involved, and before the idea of Eternity was even vaguely there. It was a song I had written called “As If,” which I liked but didn’t feel entirely pleased with, and I had put it aside for however long, and then subconsciously came back to that melody again when thinking of something for Eternity. I was thinking of the song as being a piano thing which could do well with a full orchestra, if the songwriter guy ever got to the point where he had a whole orchestra backing him. It’s also funny because, now that I’m thinking about it, I believe that that melody was actually first written on my little keyboard, which is incredibly rare for me, because almost all of my songs are written first on the guitar. I really love this song, and I like to think that Eternity is real every time I play her song, so she’s not forgotten at all, really.
“Don Cicada” has a completely different setup, with the character singing to an audience in a nightclub. What did you want the song to reveal about Don Cicada that the artwork and story couldn't?
Jack Simon: I wanted that song to do a few things. First of all, I wanted it to be Don Cicada’s perspective from the stage, hence him singing to the audience. I also wanted it to capture the vibe of the comic itself, that late night club vibe, with a jazzy feel. I love when there’s songs in movies that were specifically written for that movie, and especially if a character sings it, that’s really cool, and so both this song and Eternity were kind of me trying to do that. The theme of music is definitely there throughout a lot of the stories– Don Cicada, Lou Reed in Transformer, and Eternity’s story at the very end. Also, I think Don Cicada is an awesome story, and I wanted to write something fun and kinda silly to go with it.
The soundtrack isn't simply music inspired by the book—several songs actually exist within the stories, including “Eternity” and “Don Cicada.” What made you and Shaun want to approach the soundtrack this way, almost like creating the music that these characters themselves would make?
Neil Sabatino: This was 100% Jack’s idea. One day Shaun texted me that Jack wrote the song “Eternity” from the story. He sent me a little demo of it and it was so great, it really nailed what you’d imagine the character came up with. It makes the story more real to attach the actual song with it. This was the catalyst to write the rest of this album. I really love that Shaun who I haven’t played with in 25 years contributed the track “Open Caskets”, it’s an epic closing track for the book and this soundtrack. As a person who was there when Shaun was just able to play a few notes and now all this time later hearing a fully fleshed out composition that he wrote piano, bass, guitar, strings and drums for was great to see. It feels like coming full circle from our early years.
Your dad wrote the underlying music for “Open Caskets” while you wrote the words. What was that collaboration like, especially working on a song connected directly to the title and larger world of the book?
Jack Simon : That was great. My dad’s music on that is awesome, and I was glad to be able to do the lyrics on it. In my band, The Mercys, there’s this song we do called Doll which I wrote the words to first, with no melody, and then Ty wrote the music for it after; this one was the opposite, where the music from my dad was first and I had to come to that with words to go along with it. Both those situations are interesting changes from just writing both music and lyrics yourself, and it gives you a nice marriage between the half you did and the half the other person did, if you do it right. The Open Caskets song is great because we thought of it as being from the perspective of the counselor guy, the one who never tells his own story and who is in charge of this whole therapy session, and it’s meant to show his stress with having to deal with both these people’s problems and his own, which have something to do with “Looking at the stars in the sky.”
You grew up around music through your dad and his work with Pencey Prep, his friends in My Chemical Romance and your own band The Mercys. Did making this record feel like stepping into something you've been around your whole life, or did it feel like a completely new experience?
Jack Simon: Well it’s funny because I had almost zero knowledge of anything that either Pencey Prep or My Chem had done until relatively recently. My dad had mentioned guys like Frank and Hambone and Gerard and whoever else throughout my life, and I had met them all when I was little and used to go to Frank’s house sometimes too. Apparently kids at my high school also knew about My Chem, and I realized they were more well known than I thought. Both My Chem and Pencey Prep are good bands, but I don’t think they really have influenced me much, because I never really listened to them. As for The Mercys, yes, I’ve definitely been influenced by that a lot because being part of that band has helped me grow a tremendous amount musically, and has tremendously increased my confidence in my singing and playing. Playing shows, rehearsing, and recording with the band has given me insight into a lot of stuff which helped me when writing and recording this record. I think I should give them all a shout-out now, or they might throw tomatoes at me next practice!: We’ve got Ty Fletcher on lead guitar and vocals, Hunter Hopkins on drums, Luke Bates on bass, and me on rhythm guitar and vocals. The Mercys have been doing stuff together for a couple years, and whenever I write songs I’m confronted with the question: “Is this Mercys-level good, or no?” and if it is then I’ll show it to the band, if I’m not sure, maybe I’ll work on it more, or put it aside. Writing songs for the band and playing different types of things I wouldn’t have been exposed to otherwise, like the stuff that Ty writes, or covers we’ll do or what-have-you, has broadened my musical mind enough so that when this project needed me to write stuff that had a darkish nighttime tint to it, I was ready to do that. Also, Ty helped me write Coffee Black, as I mentioned before, which isn’t too shabby of an influence on the music at all!
You've been making music with Shaun and Christian for years, and this project also brought in Enid and Jack. What was it like watching the soundtrack develop from an idea connected to the graphic novel into something that became its own collaborative musical world?
Neil Sabatino: This was something that was really fun and that we initially had no idea how any of it would sound in it’s final stage. Jack was amazing to work with and I’ve loved involving my daughter Enid in anything I can throughout the years. She is a member of her school’s jazz band and marching band and she makes it so easy for me to work with her because I can just write out notes and she figures out how she can play stuff in multiple octaves on the flute or she also contributes backing vocals and has a great voice. She helped me come up with the intro for the “Happy Friends Theme Song” and the song is layers and layers of both of us singing and screaming in all different octaves to sound like a band of crazy puppets. For “I Am A Prisoner To It” Enid helped me make the key melody a very haunting centerpiece of the song with her flute skills. As well Jack’s friend and bandmate from The Mercy’s Ty Fletcher added a few guitar licks to “Don Cicada” and some backing vocals to “Coffee, Black”. I’m just so happy with the final product because was an afterthought of the book that came out so cool and I think really enhances the book.
The soundtrack brings together several generations of the people connected to Open Caskets, including you, Shaun, Neil, Christian Kisala, and Enid Sabatino. What was it like hearing these different people bring their own musical personalities into the same project?
Jack Simon: It was amazing. Neil’s producing, bass playing, guitar playing, the songs he wrote, and everything else he did is so perfect for the project, and he helped me figure out harmonies on a couple of the songs, which work really well, and which I would’ve been clueless on how to do otherwise. My dad was very supportive of the stuff I’d written for it, and played keys on some songs and of course wrote and put together the Open Caskets music, which is great. Christian’s drums brought the whole thing together and made it feel real and professional, as a great drummer is known to do. Enid’s vocals are incredibly unique, and I’m happy she had a part singing on Half A World Away and I think her singing on Neil’s stuff is awesome and really fits the vibe. Everybody did a great job and I’m glad I was part of it, for sure. I think in the end, the combination of all the personalities who worked on it made this whole project more of what it was supposed to be, which is this awesome collaborative thing that started as an idea between my dad and Neil.
If someone listened to the seven songs before reading Open Caskets, what do you hope they would understand about the book—and if they’ve already read it, what do you hope the soundtrack adds to their experience of those characters and stories?
Jack Simon: If they had listened to the songs beforehand, I’d hope they would understand the vibe of the comic, and how it’s filled with interesting characters from different walks of life, who are similar in that they’ve got these problems, and they’re all talking about it, basically. If they had read the book first, I’d hope that, when they came to listen to the album, they would get a deeper understanding of what’s going on psychologically and emotionally within the worlds of the characters, which of course, I mean, it’s our musical interpretation of it, so it’s not the Bible of Open Caskets, but it’s a different way to look at everything that happens in the comic. I hope that, either way, they get some laughs and some stories, artwork, and songs they like out of it!