Keith Morris Part 1: BLACK FLAG
00:00 Hello, beautiful people, and welcome back to another incredible episode or two episodes of Hardlore. That's right. We are in for two very special weeks in a row from this five-hour total conversation with one of the greatest and one of the original hardcore vocalists, Keith Morris, originally of Black Flag, and then of course famously from the Circle Jerks, off flag. The Circle Jerks just re-recreacted. recorded four songs from the original Black Flag Nervous Breakdown session with Keith on vocals. And he wanted to talk about it here on Hardlore with us and with all of you. Who knows what hardcore and what Hardlore would be without Keith, without nervous breakdown.
00:46 And luckily, we never have to find out. We're joined this week by my special guest co-host Anthony Anzaldo of Ceremony. And it is just, it is a historic conversation. So much lore, so much good stuff, so much stuff I didn't know this week and of course next week. If you like what you see, give this a like, give it a subscribe. It helps a lot. We would like to see you back next week for Part 2. It is just as good, if not better.
01:14 So please enjoy this legendary conversation with the great Keith Morris. Hello, welcome. It's Hardlord Time. How you doing, Bo? What a special week we have for you all. one of the most special in the history of this program, some would say, many are saying, I must first introduce my guest co-host, my special guest co-hosts to my left. We have the gorgeous, the talented, the good-smelling, Anthony Anzaldo in ceremony.
02:14 What an intro. That's what everybody says about you. Factually accurate, but appreciated nonetheless. Anytime. And to my right, a man who needs no introduction, but whom I will will still give one. The founding vocalist of Black Flag, the founder and vocalist of one of the greatest punk bands of all time in Circle Jerks, arguably hardcore music's first ever frontman from Hermosa Beach, California, the legendary, Keith Morris. Gentlemen, now you were talking about Anthony's cologne, you're wearing some cologne? It's unnoxious odor. See, because all I have is speech.
02:55 stick. Right. And it doesn't smell that bad right now. No, you're working. As we're sitting here, I'm sweating. Right. And it's like cold. Yeah. The room, the temperature in this room is very nice. Yes. For this weather that we're suffering through. Heat wave. Yeah. They're calling it. Yeah. Are you a speed stick guy for real? Yeah. Yeah. That's the one. You found what you liked in 1980s. And you stick to it. You speed stick to it. Yeah. Let's do this, Keith.
03:27 You ready? We're going to do this. You know, you didn't want to live to be 34 or 43, but at 71 years old, you look fantastic, your voice as strong as ever, and you still got it. Well, thank you. Those lyrics were created at a time when there was a lot of uncertainty. Sure. A lot of, like, government crap being dumped on us.
03:53 We had Reagan. you know, we had the nuclear threat. You know, plus living in the environment that we live in here in Southern California, you're spending a lot of time on the freeway. Yeah. You know, and so that would also play a role in living really fast and getting everything over. Also, it played a big role in the music that we were creating. You know, I'm not from Hermosa Beach, but I spent 28 years of my life in Hermosa Beach.
04:33 28 important years. And, yeah. And the scenario there in Hermosa Beach was surfers, guys riding skateboards. Yeah. During the summer, everybody hitting the waves, going to the beach. And when wintertime would come, and the water for some of us was too cold even with wet suits. It was time to hit the mountains and do some skiing.
05:04 So this was all a precursor to snowboarding. Uh-huh. You know, because the snowboard is basically a skateboard. Yeah. Totally. Big. Yeah. Cool.
05:15 So we were always around these characters who had stuff going on. Right. Outsiders. You know, like... Get up on the Hermosa Pier, look both ways down the coast. Where are the waves? Let's go. Yeah. You know, there was this, the mentality was we're not standing around trying to figure things out.
05:41 You know, we're not standing around with our thumbs up our ass trying to figure out which way the wind was blowing. It's like, let's just do this. And that was the mentality, I would hope. for all of the hardcore bands. You know, and the thing with hardcore is it's not really that much different than punk rock. Sure. It's just, it's punk rock with a little bit more foot on the pedal. Yeah.
06:14 Now, what do you think about what it has become today, sonically and everything? You know, I'm a fan of music. and I don't, I guess, you know, getting back to when we were talking about how we warm up our voices. Off camera. I'll look this way, so I'm not on camera. I was telling you how I was given all of these different exercises, these warm-up vocal exercises, because you're standing on stage and you've got to be able to project all the way to the back of the room. And I got really lazy.
06:56 You know, so it was, instead of just going, you know, we had this thing where you're supposed to spread your legs. Like, this is the proper way to sing. Right. Yeah. Because you're like planting your feet into the ground. Which is just unsustainable for what we do, you know? If you got a M80 shoved up your ass, yeah, you're going to be jumping around here. As we all say.
07:29 Yeah. So I got lazy with all of the vocal warmups. Well, if you don't need it, you don't need it. You think you need it? One of the things that I find is also you don't really want to hit the stage unless you're warmed up. Totally. It's because it's like an athletic situation. I sometimes go in cold and find myself warming up as it's going as we go along.
08:03 Now, when we played shows together, we had negative approach playing with us. Sure did. And John Brannon, who doesn't do vocal, I guess, His vocal warm-up is a couple of beers, a couple of cold beers and a couple of cigarettes, which normally doesn't work, but it works fantastic for him. It works for him. Because he's got a voice where it's like, that dude's just trying to peel the flesh off of everybody's face. Yes.
08:39 Yeah, warming up would actually probably hinder the objective. Yeah, that's genetic. That's unteachable. Let's go back in time here. You said you're not from Hermosa Beach. Where are you from? And how do you discover music? I'm a resident of a little town called Los Phila's.
09:04 And some of my neighbors, I have a guy named Bronx-style Bob, who was the youngest rapper to come out of the Bronx. when all of the hip-hop thing started to really happen. He's a really, really cool guy. I have a neighbor who's about three houses down. His name's Pete Weiss. He was the drummer in a band called Thelonious Monster,
09:33 who were, when we lived in Hollywood, we all traveled in the same circles. So it would be like Thelonious Monster, the guys from Jane's Addiction, the red-hot chili peppers. You know, some of our scenarios like Flea has this punk rock pedigree that nobody comes close to. And they wouldn't understand how Flea not only played in fear, he auditioned for Black Flag. I don't know why Black Flag didn't use him.
10:10 He played in the circle jerks. You played in the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Yeah. Yeah, but that was just a very, very, very spontaneous spur of the moments in our. One-time thing? Never right back? Never again. In fact, speaking of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, they're playing a show at the Hollywood Palladium.
10:33 Because Flea has the Silver Lake Conservatory of Music. And they do these benefits maybe a couple of times a year to raise money for. scholarships. And my friend Pete, he was one of the founding members of the Conservatory. It was like his idea. Let's do something for the kids. You know, we're watching all of the arts being removed from all of the schools. All of the money being removed. We don't have enough money for the kids to, we can't like buy. We don't have the high school orchestra or the high school marching band in a lot of our high schools. So they came up with the idea to have this conservatory. So I was just recently asked by Pete if I wanted to, because Fleet and Pete are
11:31 really, really tight rows, flea had asked Pete to ask me to sing nervous breakdown with them at the Palladium. And one of the things that happens is you've got to go. go to the rest of the guys and say, hey, you know, we're going to play nervous breakdown, because they all know how to play nervous breakdown. It's in all of our blood. Don't we all? Yeah. Yeah. And Keith's going to come up and sing. And apparently, because they're only one of the biggest bands in the world, the egos started to clash. And it's like, I don't want to get mixed up in any of these inner band conflicts. They can't spare a minute.
12:17 A minute for Keith, you know? And that's all it was, a minute. Yeah, you know. Get up and get off. Yeah. Now, where did we... I'll take you there. We'll go back to Los Files.
12:30 Let's go back. Let's go back. Tell me about discovering what was early punk music and how that evolved into spearheading. I'm a fan of punk rock music, just like I'm a fan. of hardcore music. I'm a fan of music. Yeah, yeah, yeah, dude. Yes. They'll never know how good that was.
12:53 Going all the way back when my sister and I would get in the Volkswagen with my mom. Sure. And the first thing we would do is we would turn the radio on. And here in Los Angeles, here in Southern California, we had KHJ and KRLA. There, one is the cleaner, friendlier, popier, happier, happier music, even though they'll play the doors, they'll play the seeds. They would play Motown. KRLA, on the other hand, was dirtier, grittier, would be stacks. That's where you would hear Otis Redding. See, you would hear the Supremes on KHJ.
13:39 Yeah. You would hear all of the dirtier grittyer. to your Sam and Dave, hold on, I'm coming on KRLA. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, that is like extreme music. You would hear,
13:52 you would hear Blue Cheer on KRLA. Summertime Blues, their version of summertime blues. That's probably, I would say, that's the beginnings
14:07 of heavy metal. Like they were like, you know, these grungy-looking, and grunge goes all the way back to like 1960 67 that's where I
14:22 first became a lover of music and so I'm extremely fortunate because we got the Beatles we got the Rolling Stones we got the Who the kinks the hollies the beach boys
14:37 what's your stance on the animals love the animals the circle jerks at one time were managed by a guy who had worked with Eric Burden when Eric Burden was the vocalist for a band called War. Yeah, and he worked with Slice Stone also, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And all of this music, I love all of it. The thing with punk rock was we went through this period where, if you turned on the radio, you were either going to hear Fleetwood Mac.
15:18 And when I say Fleetwood Mac, I don't mean the like really cool blues, heavy Fleetwood Mac when they had three guitar players. Not Peter Green's Flewwood Mac. Right. Yeah. Right. The mellow kickback, let's snort some Coke and get our hair feathered
15:38 and, you know, get the, get the, get the car fucking details. Detail. Yeah. We had this period where the music that we were being bombarded with was, it was great music. You cannot take that away from the Eagles. The Eagles have their moments. The Eagles have their place.
16:08 Fleetwood Mac. But we had this period. especially like locally, where it was pretty bleak. It was pretty barren. Yeah. We had, for local bands, fortunately, we had the runaways and we had the quick. And at one point, we had the Detroit dogs who were like a three piece who, Greg Ginn and I were highly influenced by the dogs.
16:43 And the dogs were from Detroit. And they had a, like, they, they had absorbed stuges. They had absorbed MC5 because that's where they were from. So they were surrounded by that music. Thankfully, they brought that along with them. and they were kind of a sunset strip like they played the Whiskey a Go-Go or they play all these smaller clubs
17:15 these really they weren't very famous clubs but they were surviving I mean I'm sure they were all working day jobs but they were the Detroit bands that they brought along with them in their music
17:37 but also the who they had a very very who like quality to them theatrics so they they were they were a very very big influence on black flag the punk rock thing I would spend time we had a record store on Pacific Coast Highway and 8th Street in Hermosa Beach and I would go in there at least once a week just to hear whatever they're whoever's behind the counter whatever they're playing just to see if there were any new records in the racks and they had a box on the counter by the cash register which was all 45s and in the 45 box you would find patty smith pissing in a river all of the uh same
18:38 coming out of the UK. Right. Important. You know, like the Buzzcocks, the sex pistols, the damned. Then if you went into the rack, I remember the first punk rock album I purchased was the first Buzzcox album with fast cars, I believe. So that. We also, we were extremely fortunate to have Rodney on the rock.
19:08 who was Sunday night at like 11 o'clock, and he would be playing all of this stuff. If it wasn't in any of the record stores, this was the only place you were going to hear it. So, of course, we got to hear the Ramones, we got to hear Blondie, we got to hear all of the British, the first wave of British punk rock bands,
19:33 the Damned and the Buzzcocks, the clash, the clash, but he would also play, he would also play local music. And not all of it was punk rock. I mean, he was, he was playing the runaways. He was playing the quick. He was playing the dogs. How do you then meet Greg and how does that transition into starting panic? And is that your first band? That was my first band, Panic. What happened was I was working from my day. My dad owned a fishing tackle store down by the pier in Hermosa Beach. And occasionally I would be done with my chores in the store. And I'd say, I'm going to go get something to eat.
20:26 And I was fortunate enough to be able to create my own hours in the store, unless I was told, no, you've got to be here at seven in the morning. You know, you've got to be here all day tomorrow. You know, it's Friday we need you or Saturday we need you. But I had the freedom to occasionally, if things were slow in the store, I'd take off, I'd walk three blocks up Pier Avenue. And my friend had a record store directly across the street from the mortuary. And I would occasionally watch the store for him if he had to like go purchase new records for the racks or cassettes or what have you.
21:18 At that time, he was going out with Greg Ginn's younger sister, Erica. So Erica would occasionally show up with Greg, bring Greg along with her. and she would take off with the owner of the store, a guy named Michael. And because they were in love, they would go get lunch, and then they would go out on Hermosa Pier, and they would sit on one of the benches, and they would kiss and wave at the seagulls and pigeons and everything. So they'd be gone for an hour,
21:53 and I would be left in charge of the record store. And Greg would be fingering through the record racks, and we converse. Like, what are you listening to? I would find out right after we had started Black Flag, even though we called it Panic at the time, when we started
22:19 the band, we didn't have a name for the band. What would happen is Michael, the owner of the store, would split with Erica. And I would immediately changed the whole listening vibe in the store because Michael was going through this period where it was the first two hard albums
22:42 which I'm not opposed to because they're the really good records the guys that play in the band the women's voices are amazing but it was hard he was into like all of these female vocalists so consequently one day up in Hollywood
23:01 he was eating a burger and he looked to his left and Joni Mitchell was sitting at the table next to him and started a conversation with her and he came back. I was there in the store when he got back from this excursion. And the first thing he did was he pulled because there were no Joni Mitchell records behind the counter. There were a couple out in the record bins. So he pulled them immediately and opened them. And that was what we were listening to for the next like hour and a half. Smitter.
23:39 Yeah. Yeah, he was just in awe. I mean. So his playlist in the store was basically Buckingham Knicks, who would eventually become members of the lineup of Fleetwood Mac that would sell Zillian. And zillions and zillions and zillions of records. Detail in cars.
24:04 Yeah. How fast of friends do you and Greg become that, and how fast does panic come after? Well, see, he has this music that he plays in the record store. Okay. And I doubt very highly that Greg was in it, was, wasn't interested in any of that. Sure. So I would take over the music in the record store. and it would immediately become Aerosmith,
24:34 Uriah Heep, deep purple, Black Sabbath, anything that was loud, anything that was like more in your faith, going from what Michael would what Michael would normally play.
24:49 Now, also take into consideration and this is the curveball in all of this. While I'm playing all of this, Ted Nugent, thin lizzie. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Greg is a deadhead.
25:07 Famously. So I didn't know that in the beginning. I mean, it wouldn't have started that, you know. No, it's all okay because we're all, you know, whatever you listen to is cool to you. And maybe some of it is cool to me. But that doesn't mean that we wouldn't sit here and have this conversation. Sure. You know, it's like not everything I listened to is, you know,
25:34 I would listen to stuff that punk rock people would probably tiny to the back bumper of their car and drag me through a parking lot if they knew that I was listening to the stuff that I was listening to. But I grew up with Michael in a couple of different record stores in Hermosa Beach where a lot of the music being played in these two, record stores was gentle giant. Genesis. Yes. How do you feel about Genesis?
26:10 How do I feel about them? Let me specifically, wind and weather. Emerson, Lake and Palmer. I was listening to the first Circle Jerks album, Group Sex the other day. Me too. And I don't sit around listening to the Circle Jerks. That's the last stuff that I need to be listening to.
26:29 I'm trying to figure out who we stole these riffs from. Besides Black Flag, who we stole these rifts from. And Red Cross. I get to listening to the Circle Jerks record and I'm going, that sounded like something off of an Emerson Lake and Palmer album. So I grabbed the first, I grabbed three of my Emerson Lake and Palmer. and Palmer records trying to do my detective work to get to the bottom of this. And it's a, it's a riff off of the first. You found it. Emerson Lake and Palmer out. What's the Circle Jerks
27:12 riff? Do you remember the song? No, I don't. Wow. What a trip. And I wouldn't tell you anyways, because that's up to you to do the research. Yes, that's right. That's right. I'm not doing your book for you. I grew up with that music. I love that music. I love that music. music and nobody can convince me that it's overblown because if you listen to the musicians playing that music, the real fucking musicians. The realist. Yeah, some would say. Yeah, absolutely.
27:45 You know, it's so different from punk rock. See, the great thing about punk rock is that you can do it. Yeah. It doesn't matter who you are or what you do. or where you come from, or what instrument you're probably learning to play. Yeah. Or about to learn to play.
28:10 Right. Yeah. You know, if you listen to a band like Wire, they're all guys that met in art school. So obviously, they're not like real musicians. They don't become real musicians until, like, maybe their second or third album. But it's like you get to listen to this band
28:33 and you get to listen to them grow up. Totally. You know, you get to listen to them become much better musicians. Which you're also describing the Circle Jurcher right now. Yeah, but our drummer Yeah. He didn't need to grow.
28:50 Our drummer Look, it was unreal. Unreal. He played drums in the high school band. He not punk rock. He was jazz. And that's why he had the ability to play at the speed that he played. Totally. Now, if you talk with Mike Watt, he'll, he'll, if you ask him about Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, the first record he'll tell you is Tarkas, which is their, I want to say, Emerson Lake and Palmer's second album.
29:32 Okay. But I have these albums. I never sold them. I never got into any kind of financial situation where, well, I need to, I'm a cokehead, and I've got to go to the dealer, and the dealer's not going to front it to me, so I got to sell a stack of my records. Yeah. No, you'll sell the car.
29:53 You'll sell your car before the records. I never had to do that. I never let it get that far out of hand. That's good. Yeah. But the Prague rock talked to a guy like Paul Rossler who played in the screamers, played keyboards in the screamers, and played keyboards in 45 grave. He's a big Prague head. I mean, if you're playing keyboards and you're not listening to Genesis, what are you doing? You're blowing it.
30:24 There's a whole gateway to greatness there. Yeah. Well, if you're a keyboard player, you also want to listen to the Loneous Monk. Of course. You know, why not go there? Totally. Totally. Take me to panic for me.
30:42 Okay. Greg comes into the record store. Michael happens to be there, and Michael says, Journey is playing. Speaking of Prague Rock, the first two Journey albums are actually very, very, very, very listenable if you're a Prague head. And this is before they had the guy who had his testicles removed. So Journey is playing at the Santa Monica Civic. And the band that's on, I guess, on this tour with Journey is Thin Lizzie.
31:22 So it's like, yeah, we're going to go. We're going. We're going because we want to see Thin Lizzie. Greg has the same mentality. So we're there at the Santa Monica Civic. Journey has just got, not journey, but Thin Lizzie has just got through playing. And I'm looking at Greg. He's looking at me and we're kind of the light goes on over our head.
31:50 It's like we should do something like that. Yeah. Let's, let's, he said, I, I, I, got like four or five songs. You want to hear them? I said, of course. And I was, I was extremely curious. Like, I look at Greg at that time. Greg is a complete nerd. Yeah. Greg is probably the least angriest person that I know. So what are you expecting from these four or five First off, I didn't know what to expect. I was extremely curious.
32:27 Yeah. But he's a deadhead who's not angry, you know, so it's fair to say that you're probably expecting something a little. And let's do something like, yeah, exactly. Where it's like it's not MC5, it's not the Stooges. You're at a thin Lizzie show saying this is what we've got to do. And what year is this? This was 1970. I want to say 76.
32:54 Okay. I agree to listen to his songs because, like I said, I'm extremely curious. I'm just like, this could be really interesting. Yeah. This could be eye-opening. This could be mind-blowing. I wasn't thinking like that, though. Not until he plugged in and started like trying to kill his guitar.
33:20 Yeah. Like, what the fuck is this? What a surprise. A surprise? Yeah. Oh, I was, like, taken aback, like, this guy's not supposed to have written anything, this agro. He was not supposed to be writing anything that resembles, like, I want to fuck shit up. Well, who had, you know, in 76?
33:45 Who was truly fucking shit up? Sex Pistols. The damned. Sure. You know, that the damned was, that was the first punk rock album for that wave of punk rock bands. See, for me, because of all of the music that I've listened to leading up to punk rock, I believe that the British wave of punk rock, besides the American entrant who were the Ramones for the 70s, my thing is that punk rock would spring up here and there in the form of like agro music
34:28 like the seeds pushing too hard that's a punk rock song totally um love my little red book bong bom bom bom bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb bum bum but this is the first time up here is sitting you down and being like hey look what i'm doing that you could also be doing too He asked me what I thought. I told him what I thought. He said, do you want to start a band? We had absolutely no fucking idea as to what it was like to be in a band, how to start a band. Like, do you know any drummers?
35:07 I knew three drummers. They were not professional drummers. They were just friends of mine from high school that had, drum kits. Yeah. My first thought was, I'll buy a drum kit, I'll play drums. Because singing wasn't even... No.
35:26 That was not even a thought for you. No. Not at all. Yeah. And so I asked one of my friends if I could buy his kit from him. It was like 300 bucks, which I would have no problem coming up with because I was still working my day job. And as it turns out, and I was extremely lucky.
35:49 he had stolen the drum kit from one of our other friends. Perfect. And I'm like really good buds with both of these guys. I would have I would have been dragged down every alleyway in Hermosa Beach. So because of this drum kit theft, you're like, okay, I'll sing for the band, Greg. We had a couple of rehearsals. We call them rehearsals where we have. a guitar amp with a couple of speakers and Greg would plug in the guitar and I would plug in the
36:28 mic so we were both playing same amp same amp yeah yeah yeah and we did that for a couple of times and so that was just you too yeah guitar vocals yeah and then um it dawned on me that one of my friends a beach rat who had hung out with in North Redondo played drums and he was he plays on the first black flaggy pee and he he nails it
37:05 like he just fucking you know he he hit the ball out of the park and into the parking lot with three other guys on base to win the game. So he likes what we're doing, not wholeheartedly, but his motives are completely different from ours.
37:35 What are they? His motives, he sees it as a way to impress his friends, and that allows him, to get the directions to the party on Friday night. Yeah. Girls. And girls, yes. Sex as well as drugs as rock and roll maybe. He wasn't punk rock, which was, that's what made it interesting.
38:04 Yeah. What we were doing at the time. But it was convenient. And he would eventually get kicked out of the band. Because in the beginning, we went through three bass players before Chuck Dukowski came on board. And of the three bass players in the beginning, we had Spot, who turned out to be the SST producer of all of those early SST albums. Photographer. Photographer.
38:43 Yeah. Great guy. a complete freak. I mean, the first time I met Spot, he was wearing hot pants and skating, roller skates, and playing flute.
38:58 And he had his camera, he had his camera hanging from his neck. And my mom introduced Spot to me. Wow. Because Spot was also, he not only took photos for the, We had a weekly throwaway that would have been the beach version of the village voice or the LA Weekly. Sure.
39:23 And we're the city reader, depending upon what major city you're in. And he was the music critic and he was also one of the staff photographers. And my mom had worked for the easy reader. So she knew Spot. Wow. So she introduced me to Spot, and that was his introduction into panic. After Spot, we had Raymond Petamone, who was Greg Ginn's younger brother. Now, Raymond wasn't a bass player, but he was learning to play bass. Little did he know his hands were made for something else.
40:11 Well, the thing is, getting back to a lot of. the punk rock players. A lot of them were learning as we went along. And so Raymond just volunteered to be our bass player. At one point he said, I'm not really interested in playing bass. Maybe you guys need to find another bass player. So our third base player was a friend of Brian McDolls. There were two brothers from Kansas.
40:44 Kansas. And they were living on the street, sleeping in people's backyards, you know, sleeping on whoever's couch they could sleep on, you know, whatever floor they could sleep on. It was, it was, don't even know the guy's name. We just called him Kansas. Yeah. Yeah. What happened was that Kansas and his older brother, spotted a pot tree growing in one of Greg's neighbors' backyards. They, one like late afternoon when nobody was looking, they climbed the fence and uprooted the pot tree and dragged it down the sidewalk, leaving a trail of dirt. And they Bugs Bunny. They brought it into Greg's backyard.
41:50 So it's like any four-year-old could have followed this track to where it ended up. And so Greg's neighbor is pounding on his door. I want my pot tree back. And Greg didn't know anything about it. And so the neighbor gets Greg to come out of the house. They go into the backyard.
42:17 And what they've done is they've hung the tree upside down, you know, because that's what they do with marijuana to dry it out and let it cure or do whatever that process is. And the tree's hanging in the backyard. And Greg makes the simple deduction. that Kansas and his brother had pulled this tree out of this guy's backyard. And that was when Brian was told to go. All these little, very important steps along the way. We were still panic. We hadn't changed her name to Black Flag yet.
43:04 Was panic a band that was regularly out and about playing shows? No. So panic never really left the garage. We just stumbled and fumbled along. You would have like public rehearsals sort of, right? Like you would jam and your friends would be there and some people. We would, in the very beginning, before we were a full band, when it was just Greg and I, we on a Saturday afternoon,
43:35 would have like 12 people in his living room. room just listening to this noise that Greg and I were making out of this. It's one speaker. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We would eventually, when Chuck became a member, that's when we really turned into a band. Because Chuck said, I'm not joining this band unless we rehearse.
44:01 Like, he was kind of a dictator. And it became very regimental. Which I think that people assume and project that onto Greg, but it was really Chuck. It was Chuck. That really forwarded that mindset. Chuck was the motor. Chuck was the heart and soul. Fascinating.
44:23 Which that would eventually be a big obstruction for you. What would happen is I was friends with Greg. I was friends with Brian because I brought Brian into the band. Okay. I was friends with all of the bass players. I was friends with Raymond because we all went to high school together. Erica, Greg, Raymond, myself. Now I've got to tell you the story about Robo.
44:54 Talk to them. Because Robo, Robo's story is fucking superb. We immediately after Brian Migdoll, was told to leave. We auditioned a drummer up in Pallas Verdes, up on the hill, which is
45:16 Palace Verde's and Rolling Hills are the Beverly Hills of the South Bay. So we drive up into the hills and we knock on the guy's door. His mom's there. She's sitting in the living room.
45:33 What he's done is he's cleared all of the dining room furniture out of the dining room and he set up his drum kit and his drum kit was something talking, getting back to Prague rock. This guy was a Prague rock drummer. So China, China, crash, crash, crash, ride, splash China. Crash. Something like that. Gong. Gong. Yeah. Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom. Rotosom. Okay. Yeah. Cool. Double kick. Yeah, of course.
46:10 It was like we looked at that. Triple kick. We were going, wow. You know, wow. He must be so good. And he was not very good. Perfect. And he, in our rap session, our rap session leading up to him playing along to some taped music, he seemed. like a cool guy, but it was obviously not going to work. Was he punk rock?
46:41 But we were there and we were desperate to find a drummer. To get it going. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we were so desperate. We probably would have ended up playing with him at some point. What happens is as we're driving away, we're all kind of dumbfounded. It's like, are we really going to be going?
47:06 through this drum search very much longer. And one of the guys reads Robo's ad in the back of, we have a throwaway, like it comes out like every couple of weeks. It's called the Penny Saver. And the Penny Saver basically says, this business is, they're going out of business. Everything must go. Saturday, here are all of the garage cells and the yard cells and all of that stuff.
47:46 And then there's a little section with about six, we would call them want ads or what have you. And here's one for a drummer. No name, just a phone number. I have a drum kit. I would love to play in a rock band. Robo knew nothing about punk rock What was cool about Robo He didn't live far from where we were at
48:15 He was maybe a couple of miles North of where we were at So it was very convenient for him Robo had a Clear Like Bonham kit
48:31 I forget what the drums are called Vistolite? Vistolite, yes. But he had like the largest Vistolite kick drum. 24 or something? Yeah. Yeah. 25.
48:46 But what I loved about Robo, because being a cocaine addict, Robo, Robo had a line on the best cocaine you were ever going to have. Okay. Because he had friends from Columbia. Important. Who were part of the cartel. So you guys struck gold with this guy. Well, I struck gold.
49:18 My nostrils. Yeah, you struck platinum. Yeah. Yeah. And Robo was learning about punk rock as we were, learning the songs and he loved the songs and he loved being
49:38 in the band. Did he love cocaine as well? He always had it. Well that says it's so interesting because punk is so new then. So it's like, of course you're finding all of these people who aren't into this yet.
49:54 I mean it's years. Because what is it? It's yeah, it's not this refined sort of thing yet. Okay, but if we weren't in the South Bay, if we were, say, up in L.A. or Hollywood,
50:11 we would have had an easier time finding like punk rock players. But also take into consideration at this time. See, because we never look like a punk rock band. You know, we look like
50:29 computer nerds. nerds. Yeah. Yeah. We look like the way that I would describe it, and I've described, I've made this description several dozen times, we look like the guys that if you, if you were at the Grateful Dead concert and you were out in the parking lot and you were standing next to the VW van with all of the curtains in the windows, we would be the guys. that had been smoking pod and we would slide the door open and we would all tumble over each other like something out of a
51:12 the proto's fast times at Ridgemont High the proto Spacolies yeah right yeah yeah the germs you see and you're like those are obviously punks where you yeah but if you look at you look at Pat Ruthen smear in the very beginning.
51:34 He has this, he has what is, what is the most freakyest, freaky ass afro. Yeah. With all of these different patterns cut in it, he doesn't look punk rock. Yeah.
51:50 I mean, the only thing that would, the only thing that would associate him with punk rock would be his leather jacket. We had this problem because of, what we look like, who we look like. We loved going to the mask. We loved all of the bands,
52:10 even the crappy ones. We loved all of it. We just, we love the social scene. We loved all of these people. They're all these freaky punk rock people, all of the different dyed hair. And you have to understand that. The punk rock movement on the West Coast,
52:31 Coast in Southern California, zooming in on Hollywood was a click, a click made up of maybe 150, 200 people. Sure. And of course, it would get much larger, but it wouldn't get larger until all of the people from the outlying areas started coming to Hollywood. Now, Billy Zoom, who never looked punk rock, Billy Zoom had, Billy Zoom had played with Gene Vincent. Billy Zoom was in Gene Vincent's last band. Billy Zoom was a rockabilly guy, but he was playing an X.
53:18 And that was the beauty. That's what made X so fucking awesome was that they weren't a punk rock band. They were all of these people from all of these, like Exine from Florida and John Doe from Minnesota or wherever he was from. Billy Zoom was a rockabilly dude. And he really seriously hated all of these people coming in from where we were coming from. and what we were bringing to the scene. See, we were all, like all of the Huntington dudes and the Long Beach dudes, we were all surf culture, beach culture.
54:13 And that meant that our stuff was going like this. And it was more youthful. Yeah. It was more athletic. and the Hollywood people were just kind of a London toss-off. If you look at all of that fashion, that's where all of these Hollywood punks had their starting point. They were fashion forward and you guys weren't. Okay, now here's another thing. A lot of them were like glam rock.
54:54 people. Yeah. See, because we had to listen to music before punk rock. There was all this music before punk rock. Like I said, very early on, I'm into all of this different music. You know, we've gone through Prague. We've gone through the British invasion. We've gone through all of the various music scenarios on the AM radio. I like probably 70% of all of the music that I was hearing.
55:30 You can tell in the variety of covers that you've done throughout your life, recorded or not, so much. It's a buffet. It's a buffet. Just don't say Jimmy Buffett. You got it. Never. A Jimmy Buffet. Yeah, yeah.
55:50 Pardon this interruption. I will not keep you more than two minutes. You can time me. This episode is brought to you by Timeless Coffee. It is 11 p.m. right now, and holding this bag of beans, I would compare to waterboarding, because I can smell them from here, and it's killing me that I can't have a cup right now. This is the Bad Town Blend. It comes in 10 ounce, 2 pound, or 5 pound bags, as does every blend that Timeless offers.
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57:53 and get 10% off site wide. And listen, this shit's expensive. The whole world is expensive. Everything's fucked. Gas is, I paid too much. Okay? The world is in ruins. All we have is each other. All we have is punk and hardcore music. But you have 10% off Mills Vintage USA site wide. That's right. Vic is my very good friend. Follow them on Instagram. Mills Vintage, U.S.S. Vintage. USA. You got a cool old shirt you want to get rid of. Trade it to him, sell it to him, make money, okay? Take money. Mills Vintage. Headline, front page. Code Hardlaw. Back to the episode. So how does how does Black Flag become Black Flag and what is it like to first start playing out? We didn't know that at that time you would you would record what is called a demo. which could equate to three or four songs, depending upon your knowledge of the scenario about how you're using your demo as your business card.
58:59 Totally. So you go to a club, you go to whoever is running the club, or hopefully the promoter is there, and you say, I'm in a band, this is what we sound like. Can we be the opening band on a, Monday night. You know, we'll be more than happy to play at 8.8 p.m.
59:24 Sure. You know, we have no problem being the opening band. We just, we need to be able to get a foothold in here. And so we just hammered on Brendan Mullen at the mask because we wanted to play the mask. That was the, that was ground zero. Sure. For the punk rock thing going on
59:47 in Hollywood. And we would irritate him to the point I physically got tossed out of the mask a couple of times. But then you also have to understand at that time, I weighed like 117 pounds. So it was fun to toss you out of them. They were making it again. Your mom could have tossed me out of the mask. You're a band for two years before you record anything, right? I was in the band for three years.
01:00:21 Right. For two years, we didn't. We, I want to say one of our very first shows was a eighth grade graduation party over in Laundale. It was Laundell or Hawthorne. We were invited by Stephen and Jeffrey McDonald. who were, they are still in a band called Red Cross. They're one of my favorite bands. And it's an eighth grade graduation party.
01:00:56 The girl that's throwing the party, her parents are gone for the weekend, of course. There's kids all over the sidewalk and on the lawn in front of the house. There's, like fucked up? Maybe all sorts of different things. Eight grade was crazy back now. Well, fast times at Ridgemont High. Yeah. Protos Piccolia.
01:01:21 You know, one year before going to Hothorn High. One year after money. Yeah, you're drunk off your house. So we're playing in this living room in front of about 50 kids. And it's just completely jam-packed. And we start playing. and these kids just that are losing their minds
01:01:45 and not in a good way. Like, well, we really love this. No, it's like, because they're all used to Steve Miller and Led Zeppelin and, you know, whatever is popular on the radio at that time. They're fucking hating us.
01:02:04 It was the same thing with Red Cross when they played. Now, at that time, it wasn't Red Cross. They were the terrorists. Okay. And Greg Hetson was the guitar player and the tourists. So that would be like one of our very first shows. Do you remember the actual first show? I don't.
01:02:22 Somebody does. Because somebody does. I'm not the one that remembers that. Do you remember the first great show? We played the eighth grade graduation. Banger. Bangor. In the living room. We played in it wanted to be a basement, but it was ground level. was like, like a small apartment building over by LAX, the airport. Like a boiler room or something?
01:02:50 No, it was, it probably would have been a room where the workers would have hung out to drink beer and party, you know. Do you remember the first great Black Flag Show? Would this have been pre or post-Nervous Breakdown? Like a show where you guys actually felt affirmed about what you were doing? Well, we played shows at the Hong Kong Cafe. We played a show at the music machine down on Pico Boulevard down in West L.A. Where Greg had actually gone to the owner of the club.
01:03:31 And this is getting back to the scenario with the demo. I don't know if he gave the guy the demo. So you had a demo by the time. But he talked the owner of the club into letting us open for X on a Monday night. Hell yeah. And that probably was the point where we actually got our foot in the door. Okay. Now, what happened was Greg lied to the promoter and told him,
01:04:06 We were the vegetable farmers from Bakersfield. That was the name of the band on that night. There was a point in time where none of the clubs would have us play. They wouldn't let us play. Because we would play and people from the South Bay would come up. And one of the things that would happen with these people from the South Bay was they would party a little bit too hard. They were like overly enthusiastic. So stuff would get broken.
01:04:38 Tables would get pushed over. Chairs would get broken. So we had to scramble. Like I said, Greg told this promoter, club owner, were the vegetable farmers from Bakersfield. Because Black Flag wouldn't have been able to play that show. Wow. And that was a really important show for us.
01:05:02 That got your foot in the door. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's talk about one of the most important influential punk hardcore records of all time, Black Flag's debut EP, Nervous Breakdown. What can you tell me about putting this initial batch of songs together and recording for what would be the first time? And your only time technically. Okay, well, what happened in this recording session, we recorded more songs than what came out on the EP. We had a recording studio on the corner of Hermosa Avenue and Pier Avenue.
01:05:45 So I'm really familiar with this neighborhood because growing up in Hermosa Beach, this was the neighborhood that I spent all my time in. The recording studio is up above a bar. And we load our... gear up, set everything up, we're ready to record, we start recording, and we get through recording and we hear the music from downstairs, the band that's playing downstairs coming up through the floorboards. And we're playing at a volume, like when we're actually playing the songs, we can't hear what's going on below.
01:06:36 us. But we, the way we approach this is the same way we would approach playing a gig, where we set up and we start playing. And it's like, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. I think we recorded, I want to say we recorded probably 10 songs and the engineer knew nothing about punk rock. knew nothing about what we were doing. And he was just, I think his description of the recording session was, they just kept playing. They just kept playing. They never stopped.
01:07:23 They just kept playing. Now, can you hear any of the band downstairs in these recordings when you go back and listen to them? I doubt it. I don't think we could. it didn't, it's negatively impacted. We recorded it. We didn't know that you, normally in the studio, you're not cranking it all the way to 10. Right. So this is, this is nervous breakdown. Yes. So you're cranked on 10, live to tape. Why these four songs and why not release the whole session? When it came to making these types of decisions, I was never asked. See,
01:08:05 What was happening was my friendship with Greg Ginn was slowly deteriorating. When Chuck Dukowski came into the band, he kind of was a wedge between Greg and I. I wanted to like Chuck as a friend, but it was just barely. It was kind of, I did it because I loved the band. You know, and I put so much time into the band. It's years by your first recording, which is insane. Yeah, we, we, there was a lot of learning taking that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:08:59 Spot is often credited as the producer and engineer on this record, but his role was much more limited. He was there. He was there. Yes. See, and what happened. No, he was there. And what happened, he was also working on the record.
01:09:16 Okay. With Dave Tarling, who was the studio owner, that would turn out to be spots first, like, workplace. Right. When he started producing bands. And then for a long time. Yeah. Yeah.
01:09:35 You seem easy to work with by the way that you're recounting this. Were you too easy to, like, was it your ease and your easygoingness within that group? Was that helped your, is that? Was the kindness? Did that assist your exit? What happened was at that time, I was doing a lot of cocaine. I was drinking a lot of beer. I was, I wanted to party.
01:10:02 Yeah. The band wanted to rehearse. Okay. Occasionally, I would like talk them in to partying. I mean, very rarely, but I remember one night I said, we've got to end this rehearsal early because we got to get in the car. We got to drive up to the Whiskey-A-Gogo to see ACDC. and they were hesitant. But ACDC was getting played in bits and pieces on the radio.
01:10:43 And is this their first American tour? Yeah, they were familiar with some of the music. So it was like, okay, we'll go. And we went up there and we saw them. And they, like, Robo never stopped thanking me. like they were on the let there be rock tour they were on the let there be rock tours they were on fire yeah and the guys in the band were like we're glad we did that you know occasionally they would listen to me but what was happening with Gary Chuck the Duke was that we had become
01:11:25 very regimental and it was not fun. I loved the band. I loved rehearsing because we weren't playing any shows. Our shows were so few and far between. Because you were band everywhere? Well, not in the beginning. In the beginning, like I said earlier, we didn't know how to go to the promoter and say, hey, we're in a band, you know, here's a demo, this is what we sound like. There's no blueprint for this yet. No. There's no map from how to get from point A to point B. There's no manager. You know, we're just, it's the blind leading the blind and, you know, whatever happens
01:12:09 hopefully it's something cool. Yeah. Now, let's talk about the actual songs themselves because it's important I want to dissect this. Track one, nervous breakdown. Arguably the first hardcore song on the first hardcore record. the blueprint. After years of being a band without a record, do you listen to this at the time, hear what you've done and feel accomplished with the music?
01:12:36 We were jazzed, and we were totally psyched. I'm going to give you a scenario up in Hollywood. We, I told you what our fashion statement was, the goodwill. We're roadies for Peter Frampton or you know we know Neil Young. Yeah, yeah. We don't look anything like any of the people up in Hollywood.
01:13:01 And we've been trying to become friends with these people. You know, I could only hand out so many beers. Yeah. You know, and give some of my friends, some of my new friends, little bips and baps of cocaine. We're having a difficult time becoming part of the scene. Yeah.
01:13:27 And I think a lot of people were put off by our looks. We're at a party. Somebody had played it. It was either the Whiskey-A-Gogo or the Starwood. And afterwards, because at a certain point in time, there was kind of a curfew. I mean, it wasn't a hard curfew, but the cops would sometimes show up
01:13:55 and want everybody to disperse. Somebody's having a party afterwards. And we're in this apartment. We're upstairs on fountain. And if we were taking a punk rock tour of Hollywood, I would be able to point you out where this apartment was or still is. They're having a party.
01:14:20 There's about 30 people in the space. And my friend, Fast Freddy Patterson, who is one of the masterminds of one of the first fanzines on the West Coast, a fanzine called Backdoor Man, was the DJ. Like, this is what Freddie would do. He'd show up at the party. somebody would be playing a record, he'd take it off immediately in a brash and bold statement saying,
01:15:00 fuck you, why do you have this in your collection? I mean, there was actually a scenario where we watched him at a house party tossing records out one of the windows into the swimming pool. Yeah. Like, you're not supposed to have this in your collection.
01:15:19 What the fuck? Yeah, it's bullshit. So there's like 20 records floating in the pool. Yeah. He's spinning records, but all he's doing is he's not playing an entire side of an album. He's only playing maybe one or two songs on each record. And he's gone through the box of records. So it's like, who's next?
01:15:44 Who's putting on the next record? Chuck Dukowski has a copy of Nervis. breakdown with him. Now, I couldn't tell you why Chuck was walking around with the 45. Yeah. He immediately gets down on his knees. He plops side one down, drops the needle, the whole room where everybody's talking and socializing and carrying on. All right. All of the clamor stops when that first note
01:16:25 comes out of the stereo everybody steps back I mean there are people their jaws are just you know on the floor and the first two songs is it the first two songs I think it's side A and then
01:16:42 has one song and then side B is the other three I think he plays nervous breakdown fortunately in that room were a lot of like big shots in the Hollywood punk rock scene like Brendan Mullen was there Brendan was the guy who created the mask Chris de Jardons who was the lead vocalist in a band called the Flesh Eaters he also was a music critic for Slash magazine which was like a really big deal because we only really had, we had bump, we had Slash, and we had Flipside.
01:17:28 Claude, Kickboy, Kickface, Bessie, who was the main editor and one of the music critics for Slash magazine. He was there, and he was just dumb. These people were dumbfound. I mean, of course. How can that? People in enormous positions of musical power are all forced in the scene. Yeah. To hear this.
01:17:54 Well, they're looking at us. One of the guys comes up to me and he said, you weren't supposed to make that. Nobody was. Yeah. I mean, it is like the most violent and original yet memorable, like, pieces of music. Timeless. ever. Well, one of the things is if you looked at us, we didn't look like
01:18:22 we were the guys behind that music. No. See, that music was like a culmination of not only anger, but we sing depression. We sing frustration. It was just this ball of energy. and like all of the stuff that had been happening to us that led to us creating this music. Is the scene in high fidelity where they listen to the Little Thieves record and it blows them away?
01:19:03 Is that based on Black Flag? Because you're describing that exactly and I'm wondering if they just pick that from your life. I don't know what you're referring to. There's a bunch of little fuckers that are stealing records from their store. And they leave their demo behind and they listen to it. And it's like unbelievable. Is it, is that the- John Cusack?
01:19:23 John Cusack and Jack Black. Yeah. This is your life. I don't remember that scene. Yeah. But I've seen that movie. Yeah. Reminiscent.
01:19:33 Yeah. Sounds like it. Okay. So this party's blown away by nervous breakdown. Everybody in the room are just like, what the fuck? So this guy who's been tossing records out the window all night, he flips it over to side B and plays a little thing. tossing this one into the pool. Fass Freddie is actually a good friend of mine. He's South Bay.
01:19:54 And he, like I said, had created or was one of the masterminds behind one of the very first fanzines on the West Coast. Right. And their thing was they hated all of the wamby-pamby pop music. They hated most of the music that was on the radio. They were all into Seoul. They were into stacks. They were into the Detroit sound, which was the MC5 and the Stooges, like big fans of that. One of the guys, Don Waller, who also was there,
01:20:38 Don Waller was in a band called the Imperial Dogs, who would have been like probably the South Bay, first punk rock band, even though they leaned very heavily towards the stooges, like the industrial stooges, which is the slower stuages stuff, not the raw power stuages. See, I would consider raw power to be, that could possibly be one of the very first punk rock records. Yeah, I hear that. Yeah. Now, do you find this, when this record comes out, do you find this party's reaction to kind of be the general populace's reaction as well? We're slightly paying attention, you know, like reading the fanzines to see what they're saying about this. This is your first record ever. How are you not curious about what's being said about it?
01:21:39 Well, we're paying attention to some of that stuff, but we're still getting along with. our business and keeping our fingers crossed that the record will open some doors for us. Rodney starts playing it. That certainly helps. Bless one. Huge. And we're coming to a point where I say goodbye. One of the things that had happened between Greg and Chuck being the driving forces, I was just, I was burning out.
01:22:23 I wanted to have fun. And our shows were few and far between. What had happened was, I just got tired. Tired how of dealing with them as a unit? The scenario of all of the relentless rehearsals. schedule that wasn't really leading to anything. Right. I mean, we played some shows, and some of the shows were great.
01:22:55 Some of the shows, we had one show where we played down in El Segundo at the, what basically we would refer to as the Workers' Playhouse, which was where everybody gathered Friday afternoon after the week's work. Everybody would smoke and drink and carry on and, you know, try to get laid or what have you. And we had a friend that worked for Standard Oil. So they had access to this room. The room held.
01:23:32 You could probably pack maybe a hundred people in this room. And this, does this show? after the release of Nervous Breakdown? Because I'm just so curious about... Right around the time the record gets released. So people know the songs now. But not these people. We're talking about oil company workers.
01:23:58 Sure. Who, like, the last thing that they're going to listen to is punk rock. Sure. Yeah. And yet there you are. You know, the hard rock to them would be Elton John. Right, right. Or America. And we play this room. The workers want to kill us.
01:24:20 And I somehow, after we get to playing, I've got a beer. I wander down the hall. I get stopped by probably the most beautiful woman that lives in the South Bay. And she wants to have a conversation. So we're standing in the hallway. Yeah. We're conversing. While we're conversing, the guys are just, they can't get our equipment out of their fast enough before they get killed.
01:24:52 Yeah. So they've already loaded up the van. I'm talking with this beautiful woman. All of a sudden, I'm lifted off the ground and I'm pinned against the wall. And it's like the biggest guy that was there happens to be her boyfriend. Ah. And he. boo.
01:25:11 Cox his arm back because he's going to just destroy my life. He's going to end my life right there on the spot. And she grabs him and she says, we're just talking. He's a really nice guy. Just leave him alone. Leave him alone. And in that little brief section right there, those few moments, I managed to get out of his grasp and I'm running down the hallway.
01:25:41 I've got to get out of that building. Yeah. They're starting to drive away. They're not even waiting for me because they know that when these guys get together, they're going to like lift our van off the ground and throw it into the ocean. So they're all going, forget about Keith, man. He's dead. Go.
01:26:02 Probably. That's sad. Only the singer. Yeah. So I'm running as fast as I can. They throw the back doors open. One of the guys reaches out. It's like, you know, the scene, the chase scene where the guy's going to go to prison
01:26:18 and he's trying to get a ride out of the whatever. In that parking lot, that gravel parking lot. And I get pulled into the van and we drive off and it's like, we were all going to get killed that night. Just for playing, just for being black flag. Just for playing your music. Well, you have to understand. At this time, people didn't understand what we were doing.
01:26:48 Yeah. Right. People didn't get, you know, we were pretty loud and obnoxious, very brash, very, like, rubbing brillo pads on the side of your head. Yeah. I mean, making that music in of itself is an act of rebellion. Yeah. Yes. And everybody, the majority of the people in the South Bay hated us. The city of Hermosa Beach thought we were terrorists. Because of just the bars being everywhere? Not yet. Okay. We're
01:27:22 getting there. Not until we change our name to black flag. Do we have the four bars? See, you would ask about that earlier. And because I talk in circles, they talk to talk to I talked in a complete circle. There's always a conclusion, though, I'm learning. So I've got to let you go and then you're going to get there and I'm going to love where you're going. Okay. This is what happens. Talk to me.
01:27:47 We've been called panic. We haven't played any shows. It's like guys, you know, we've got Chuck Dukowski now cracking the whip. So we've got to get serious. What are we going to call ourselves? So we're in this room. The four of us are in this room. and we're looking at each other.
01:28:07 And Greg says, how about rope? That's what Greg Ginn wanted to call the band, rope. And the three of us look at each other going, I'm not going to be in a band called rope. What are you thinking about? Rope rhymes with dope. No way. So anyways.
01:28:27 Terrible SEO on Roe. Anyways, who enters the room by Raymond Petamone? And we're having this conversation about rope and how we don't care for the name rope. Yeah. And Raymond says, how about black flag? God damn. And not only does he say, how about black flag, which like we all perk up to, like, okay, now we're, now we're on to something. But he also has the artwork for the four bars, which the four bars.
01:29:03 which the four bars equates to a black flag waving in the wind. And, you know, it's like anarchy, piracy. Yeah. It says it all. And it's to this day. It's like a cultural smoke signal that is bigger than the band. Way bigger than the band. It's crazy.
01:29:25 Yeah, I mean, it's the best logo of all time. Of a band ever. It's better than the FedEx logo. Or the D-A-TL. Well, let's not get. Let's not get it. I mean, listen, the FedEx logo is real good. It's better than the Pepsi load.
01:29:40 Yeah. I don't smoke it. You kidding? So, wow, Petibone just comes in and defines. Saves the day. And, like, defines, like, what would become the blueprint for punk imagery over the next 50 years. And then every time he dropped, and the way that his, like, philosophy with art where he's, talking about it as if he's like, no, this is important as the music to me
01:30:05 and I'm going to do something original every time they play a show or do anything is so crazy. If you're not familiar with Pettibones, if you're listening to this and you're not familiar with Pettibon's art in some way, I don't know how, but the greatest punk illustrator ever. I mean, this is a thing I think about this era of Black Flag a lot. It's, you know, you weren't supposed to be the singer. You were signed on to be the drummer.
01:30:33 And then Raymond and you become who you are, someone that we are dying to talk to. Raymond Pettibone is the brother kind of, you know, tries out to be the bass player, becomes one of the greatest visual artists ever. Spot becomes to be this like incredible documentarian and photographer and producer. And it's like all these people who are just like swore
01:31:00 around like peripherally in this orbit just like it's it's it's it's it's cosmic it's mythical circumstance it's really it's mythical the the really interesting thing about all of this yeah is that we didn't know what we were doing right that's why it was that's why think about it all the time it was the blind leading the blind it was it was that I I would think the maybe the best way to describe it was just play it as it lays. Yeah. Just let's do this and see where it takes us. And it's like we all do that to our, you know, in our own lives and our own, under our own circumstances.
01:31:43 So we weren't doing anything more than some other people could be doing. You just did it first, really? You just did it first, but also, but, and yeah, did it first and the best. Yeah. So you've now not been. in Black Flag for 47 years? I don't count the years. Okay. Yeah.
01:32:04 Or 48 years? I have been part of something called Flag. Yes. Right. Which is all of the guys that will not have anything to do with Greg Ginn. Right. Because of the way Greg Ginn conducted business, we didn't know that putting out an EP was going to turn into this record company.
01:32:31 You know, it was the very first record that Greg Ginn ever put out. See, we had a contract with Bomp Records, Greg Shaw. And it was a two-page contract that an eight-year-old could have read and understood. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we thought it was kind of a joke. we thought that it was kind of insulting. But at the same time, that's what we thought, but we didn't know what was going to happen,
01:33:08 except we weren't going to put a record out with Greg Shaw and Bomp Records, which could have been a good thing for us, but it turned into a really great thing for Greg Ginn. Yeah. because he went from creating ham radio parts and attenuators and whatever he was doing with SST originally into a record label that, you know, at one point people just, they couldn't say enough great things about a record label that had Husker Doe, Sonic U, Thinosaur Jr. The list goes on and on of just all of the great records that that label put out. The catalog is unbelievable, of course.
01:34:04 And it started with the decision you were not happy with at the time? It started with making a decision about something that we weren't happy with into Greg Gind saying, I'm going to put it out. I'm going to put out the EP. And it just blossomed into this really happening record label for all those years. And of course, you're assuming best intentions. You're of the same community. You're in a band together.
01:34:38 You've been doing this band for three years. I'm sure you had no sort of foresight that it could go or would go south. Well, he had the business mind. Yeah. Because that's what he, um, majored in at UCLA. Yeah. I tell people, um, you know, all of these people that know that he got his, um, bachelor's degree or I don't know if he got a master's or I don't think he went that long
01:35:12 to UCLA. Yeah. I think he went just long enough to get a bachelor's degree. And I, tell people that he was going to UCLA to learn how to rip people off. Yeah. Yeah. I don't like talking shit about him.
01:35:35 Yeah. So whatever I say, have you ever seen the photo? I think it was a National Geographic photo of an elephant next to a body of water. with a little bird sitting on its back. I would be the little bird. I mean, I could be a little bird with a bullhorn, but I wouldn't be saying anything that a lot of other people haven't said. Sure, totally.
01:36:10 I mean, anything that is untrue, I mean, this is a well-known. You know, I wish that it didn't turn out the way that it did, but when I left. Talk about that. Elaborate on how and why you left. The reason I left was I'd said earlier, I'd just gone tired of the situation. Like, when are we playing again?
01:36:33 You know, we're rehearsing five nights, seven nights out of the week for a minimum four to five hours. Jesus. Why are we doing this? Well, they were getting upset with me because I had created or developed a mentality that, you know what, we're not doing anything. Do I really, I like some of these new songs that were supposed to be learning, but I'm in no hurry to learn them because we're not doing anything.
01:37:09 Like I said earlier, I got to the point where I was tired. Yeah. And I just, I needed to get away from this. And one of the things that was happening, they were constantly pointing the finger at me because I was impeding the progress of the band. And in this process... By not learning the songs? Yes. And when I quit, when I walked away, or set up.
01:37:42 list was 16 songs. Four of which people had heard. Well, 16 songs, if you decided that you needed to take a leak or you wanted to go to the bar and grab a beverage, you would miss half the set. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we had like, I want to say three or four more songs that we wanted to add to the set list. But this is like a, this is an imaginary set list. There's no shows, right? Well, the thing is, two weeks after I left, they were already playing shows. Okay.
01:38:25 See, Ron Reyes replaced me. Ron Reyes lived in the church where we were rehearsed. So one of Ron's thing was to just sit out in the hallway and listen to us rehearse. and Ron had already quit he was the drummer in the Red Cross and so it was real easy they probably asked him to be the vocalist maybe a day or two after I'd left I would eventually
01:39:01 doing flag with Chuck Dukowski Chuck would tell me Greg Ginn wanted to fire me. And Greg couldn't figure out a way to tell one of the founding members that you're no longer welcome here.
01:39:27 He just, apparently he didn't have the fucking testicles to step up and say, hey, you know, you're just, you're no longer welcome in this band. But I mean, you look at where history is now and like you're part of this conglomeration with all these guys who don't want to be in that band anymore, who are psyched to do it with you. And the median age in Black Flag today is like 22, 23. They all have favorite Pokemon now, you know?
01:39:57 It's unbelievable. Yeah, exactly. So you're doing great. Yeah. This week, Circle Jerks announced the revenge of the nervous breakdown. New recordings of depression, fix-meat, revenge, and nervous breakdown. How was revisiting these songs on recorded nearly 50 years later? Well, one of the things that I love in the current circle jerks is the drummer that we play with.
01:40:28 Joey, I mean, he's just talking about it. The Joey C. The Joey C. He's a fucking monster. And this is a guy who looks forward. to play. It's like, let's play. He's the first guy out of the van when we pull up to unload the equipment because he needs to get in there
01:40:51 and set up his drums and polish his drums and hit the pad. Well, he does the pad to warm up before we play. Right. He does his pair of dittles. Love a dittle. But his thing is and he told me this when he was in Queens of the Stone Age
01:41:14 before they were going on stage he would play group sex in its entirety because it's only like 15 minutes 15 minutes yeah that was his warm up and he's I saw
01:41:32 some YouTube footage of him playing was it Jimmy King or one of the television shows. See, we're not fortunate to be able to do any stuff like that. Sure. Well, this is your first recording in 30 years. We fly under everybody's radar.
01:41:56 Right. I'm just taken aback because we're his favorite band. So it just... So there's an opportunity to finally put something down with this lineup? Well, Zander and I are chipping away on new songs. Yeah. Awesome. I have a stack of, I've got a box in my living room that's just filled with lyrics, whether it be, you know, a couple of sentences or I had a period where I thought I would,
01:42:31 I was writing love songs, which is not something that's part of the circle jerks, vocabulary. You're not known for it. Let's just say that. What I was doing was I would get the LA Times because I'm sitting down for breakfast. I would get the LA Times. And the first thing I would do is I would go to the sports section. And I would just start reading all the different stories in the sports section because I
01:43:00 am a fan of sports. And somebody would say something or the sports rights. would say something. It could be a couple of words. It could be six words. And all of a sudden, I'm, like, pulling some of these words out and, you know, restructuring the sentence. And is this the same bat?
01:43:25 Have you been working on this same batch of potential new songs since 1995? Since 1995? it's been over 30 years since we put out our last record. That's kind of being lazy for... But not for lack of trying. Hold on, now, hold on, because there's more to the story. Big time. You know, there's a few more details that need to be brought up here.
01:43:56 And that is that our guitar player at one point in time replaced Brett Gurowitz in a band called Bad Religious. They sure did, man. And you should check them out. Yeah, I won't. And, well, Brett, speaking of record labels, has a record label, and he put out an offspring record and the fucking song went through fucking, it shot up through 16 galaxies. Sure did.
01:44:26 I think it was the highest selling independent. It's still, to this day, selling probably a minimum 500 copies a month. Yeah, you can hear all about it on our episode with Brett. Go ahead and go back and listen to that. Oh, you talk with Brett? Oh, yeah, it's great. Brett's great.
01:44:43 I love Brad. Brett had a question he wanted me to ask you. You're one of the few people that still refer to him as Starbolt. That was a nickname that was given to him by Sky Saxon from the Seeds. He wanted to ask me to ask you why that nickname was given to him. Like the story behind the nickname. I don't know the entire story. I just know that Sky Saxon was a super fucking freak out of his mind.
01:45:14 But Sky Saxon getting back to, you know, how I was saying, there's the first wave of the British punk rock. Yeah. You know, with the damned and the clash and the sex pistols and the buscocks and the stranglers and a bunch of other bands. but we go back even farther. Go farther back into the 60s. There were bands that were singing peace and love
01:45:43 and let's get it on and all of this stuff. But they were still angry at the government. Yeah. You know, and it's like, like I said, the seeds push into hard. Amen. You know, what does it, what does the kids say to his parents who are grinding on him because he's not done his chores.
01:46:04 He's getting terrible grades in school. He's anti-social. You know, the kid says you're pushing too hard on me. Punk rock. Amen. But see, that's, stripping it all down, it's fucking rock and roll. And it goes, it goes, but it goes back.
01:46:30 to, I don't like what you listen to. I'm going to listen to what I want to listen to. Or make what you want to listen to. Yeah. So why depression fixed me revenge and nervous breakdown? Why not all 16 songs? I love what we recorded. Me too.
01:46:52 And that would be a bit much. Yeah. Do these four songs? That would be a little bit of the guitar. I hear it. Do these four songs connect with you more at 71 than they did in 1978? You know what? We have just as much stuff going on now that is as fucking ugly as what was going on back then.
01:47:15 Even uglier. 100%. And it's like, I'm finding myself, Henry Rollins at one point made a comment towards some of the bands. and I know that he was speaking towards me, where he was saying, you listen to a lot of these bands, and it's like reading the newspaper. All they're doing is just singing about headlines.
01:47:44 And my response to that is somebody has to do it. Somebody has to be pissed off because there's a lot of people out there that are getting fucked up. over that don't know how to speak their minds. You know, there's, there's a lot of stuff to protest. Yeah. And what better avenue than punk rock?
01:48:14 Is this group sex era that this quote is taken from? Like is he talking about vacation? He could be. I don't know. I don't know what period he's pointing the finger. I can't speak for him. I mean, as a punk, how are you not like, hey, it sucks that these headlines are great punk fodder? I don't like the headlines and I don't like the stories and I don't like what's going on.
01:48:47 What else is art for if not to express the protest? Exactly. Somebody has to protest. And what if everyone had that mindset? Yeah. You know, I can't really speak for Henry, though. It's like, no, of course. I just meant theoretically, like, you know, if we all decide, if we all adopt that mindset.
01:49:08 Rather than have that mindset, why don't we just lay flat on our faces and let these motherfuckers walk all over us? Yeah. No. Have you had many conversations with Henry since 1980 when he took over? or 81? Um, you know what? A lot of people,
01:49:31 um, when they, when they bring up Henry Rollins that, and they, they start talking about Black Flag. Um, most of the people that are familiar with Black Flag are familiar with Henry before any of the other guys.
01:49:46 Because Henry had the longest tenure in the band. Yeah. I, I, I don't like a lot of the stuff that Henry, did in Black Flag, but when Henry fucking brought out the axe and started chopping down the forest, he was capable of building some really great fucking log cabins. Yes. Yes. Well said.
01:50:12 Did you see every iteration of Black Flag? I did. And what did you think about them when you when you saw them? I saw them with Ron at the Hong Kong Cafe. And I love Ron because we were all party buddies at the church. And Dezo was actually part of the party scene at the church. And I love Dezo because Dezo's part of Flag whenever we do flag. Yeah. It's, the flag is...
01:50:50 It's a conglomeration. Yeah, but... Freebird rule, as you will, you know? We don't get to play very often because our base player is up in years. He's a couple of years older than I am. And his wife won't let him go out for any length of time. Come on now. Always got a rock.
01:51:15 It's what it is. It is what it is. It is what it is. We're doing our best. But when you're seeing them in real time, how are you taking that in? What do you, what do you thinking of these iterations of this band that you were just a part of? I saw a black flag performance at a place called the Cathay de Grand on a Saturday, excuse me, a Sunday evening. one of my friends was doing Sunday, late afternoon, early evening show.
01:51:47 I saw Black Flag play with the Bengals and a band called Green on Red. And every band was fantastic. When Black Flag played, I was in tears. I was standing against one of the posts. In the, in the basement. Like, I couldn't move. Out of. It was like I was, I was nailed to the floor.
01:52:18 Wow. Like, this shit was like, I, as I was, as I was crying and I was walking away, I was shaking my head, telling myself, or actually asking myself, why did I quit? Wow. And who's the vote? What iteration is this? It was with Henry. It was with Henry. Yeah.
01:52:40 Wow. Yeah. Wow. What a great question. Wow. So this is while circle jerks is happening. Circle jerks had been happening. Yeah.
01:52:52 Yeah. How do you look back on your time in that earliest iteration of Black Flag? Well, it was a learning period. Yeah, sure. Like I'd said, it was the blind leading the blind. So it was like, you know, whatever's going to happen, let's hope that when it happens that it's a cool, like a great thing. Yeah.
01:53:14 Well, before we get to Circle Jerks, let's talk about the songs on the everything went black comp record because, like, I think we've talked about how this is like definitive black flag to us. Like this is perfect hardcore music. Why Johnny Bob Goldstein? Was this a pseudonym you chose or? Was this given to you by Darby Crash? No, it wasn't.
01:53:36 Really? No. Why did I think that? No, we had a rehearsal space down on the strand in Hermosa Beach. And we would occasionally throw a party in this space, in the bathhouse. And Darby had a friend that lived in North Redondo. So he would come and hang out with her. And then they would get word that we were just having a gathering of our,
01:54:09 tribe down on the strand. We're going to be drinking and smoking cigarettes. We'll be playing some music in one of the rehearsal spaces. So he'd come, we would hang out on the beach. And he, he loved us. Darby. Yeah. Darby loved us. But he did not. Just like we love them. We love the germs. Because the germs were just the craziest. You know how I described the music that we recorded when we recorded the Black Flag EP? Yeah. The anxiety, depression, frustration, the anger, that was the germs. That was part of their thing, except with the germs.
01:55:09 You could also add confusion because whenever they played, the beautiful thing about the germs was that their record that they recorded with Joan Jed is one of the greatest records to come out of Los Angeles. And when I'm saying one of the greatest records of all genres, we're talking about the germs next to love. next to the birds and Buffalo Springfield and X. Nuclear bomb coughing baby. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
01:55:50 But you're at the party. He would come and hang out. Johnny Bob Goldstein. How does this? Johnny Bob Goldstein. Let's go to Chuck the Duke first. We must. We got it.
01:56:01 Chuck the Duke, which is Gary Daniels, found a Zippo lighter on the beach. and on the lighter was engraved the Duke. And at that time, Gary was going by Chuck Dukowski. So it just made perfect sense. Chuck the Duke. My punk rock name, Johnny Bob Goldstein, was a joke that I came up with. Okay.
01:56:37 I am a hillbilly. Jew. Rare. Yeah. One a million. Maybe not that rare. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's that. That's that. She's like, well, I'm the hill Billy Jew. So obviously it's Johnny Bob Goldstein. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you've got an L. P worth of just fucking gold here, man. Steen. From 1979 to 2026, obviously we know we're going to get to some flag legal drama and whatnot. You started this, you started a band with your friend, and that was it.
01:57:16 You know, that was the origin of panic. It was like, you and your friend that you met at the record store just wanted to sing and play guitar out of one amp together. And make some noise. Tales all this time, every little boy. Homes among us. Exactly. Have you, did any kind of friendship ever rekindle from 1979 to 2013 when the flag stuff?
01:57:38 Happen? The friendship that rekindled was never a friendship to begin with. And that would be me getting closer to Chuck. Interesting. Chuck was the wedge in the beginning. Yes. Wow. It was interesting.
01:58:05 So interesting. It was just a musical connection with your. and Greg and less of a personal. Yeah, but we were good friends. Yeah, okay. You know, we were like, we were like concert buddies. Yeah. So the friendship with Greg did not rekindle.
01:58:24 Yeah. And there you have it, folks. That was part one of two of our incredible conversation with Keith Morris. I really hope you enjoyed what you heard. I hope you stuck around to the end. That ending is such an incredible segue. into next week, but I didn't want to overload you with lore. You got the black flag of it all. The circle jerks of it all is coming next and there's so much to unpack. We talk group sex. We talk
01:58:51 repo man. We talk Greg Hedson and bad religion much more at length. There's so much to unpack. So thank you to Keith for joining us. Thank you to Anthony for joining me. Thank you all for sticking this far. And we'll see you next week. I can't wait. Bye.
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