Three line-ups of Black Flag in 2011, 2013 and 2023.
Black Flag is an American hardcore punk band formed in 1976 in Hermosa Beach, California by Greg Ginn, the band's guitarist, primary songwriter, and sole constant member. During Black Flag's 10-year existence, the band went through 16 distinct lineups involving 17 different musicians. Aside from Ginn, the longest-lasting members were bassist Chuck Dukowski (6 years), vocalist Henry Rollins (5 years), vocalist Keith Morris (3½ years), and drummer Roberto "Robo" Valverde (3½ years). The 1983–1985 lineup of Ginn, Rollins, bassist Kira Roessler, and drummer Bill Stevenson recorded four albums and three EPs together in a sixteen-month period. After breaking up in 1986 and briefly reuniting in 2003, Black Flag announced another reunion in January 2013. One version of Black Flag is currently touring (2024): the original band founded by Ginn known as Black Flag.
Ginn formed the band with singer Keith Morris in the summer of 1976.[1] Ginn's younger brother Raymond—known later by his pseudonym Raymond Pettibon—played bass guitar with them in early rehearsals but soon bowed out of the group to focus on his college education.[1] To fill out the rhythm section Morris recruited some of his friends, whom he described as "scruffy beach rat types who were more interested in getting laid and finding drugs than really playing".[2] By early 1977 these included a bassist known only as "Kansas" and drummer Bryan Migdol, though both would frequently skip rehearsals.[3] The band originally called themselves Panic.[2][4] Ginn's friend Glenn Lockett, also known as Spot, played bass guitar with the group during rehearsals in early 1977.[5]Würm bassist Gary McDaniel, who later adopted the pseudonym Chuck Dukowski, began sitting in with the band and soon became their permanent bassist.[2] Spot became a recording engineer and record producer, recording the band's releases over the next eight years and working with many of the other bands on Ginn and Dukowski's independent record label SST.[6] Panic changed their name to Black Flag in 1978, and released their debut EP Nervous Breakdown in January 1979.[7]
Migdol left and was replaced by Robo, a Colombian national.[7] Morris recorded basic tracks for Black Flag's second release, but left the band to form the Circle Jerks shortly before Black Flag was to embark on a summer 1979 West Coast tour.[5][8] He was replaced by Ron Reyes, who also recorded tracks for the band's second release but quit mid-performance in May 1980.[5][8] The band convinced him to return to finish recording the Jealous Again EP (1980), then replaced him with Dez Cadena in June 1980.[5][9] Cadena sang on the "Louie Louie" single (1981) and both sang and played guitar on the Six Pack EP (1981), but his voice suffered from the strain of constant touring and he expressed a desire to move to guitar.[10][11] When the band toured the East Coast of the United States in December 1980, they met Washington, D.C. native and State of Alert singer Henry Garfield, who stayed in touch with Dukowski.[12] When they returned to the East Coast that spring, Garfield jumped on stage at a New York City show and sang a song with them.[13][14] A few days later they asked him to audition in New York City and offered him the position of lead singer.[15] After settling his affairs at home, Garfield met up with Black Flag in Detroit and sang at soundchecks and encores throughout the rest of the tour while Cadena continued to sing the main sets.[16] On arriving in Los Angeles with the band, Garfield took the pseudonym Henry Rollins.[16]
The five-piece Black Flag lineup of Ginn, Dukowski, Robo, Cadena and Rollins recorded the band's first full-length album, Damaged, in 1981.[14][17] However, Robo encountered visa problems at the end of a December 1981 tour of the United Kingdom and could not legally return to the United States.[18]Descendents drummer Bill Stevenson was brought in to finish the tour with a week of East Coast dates.[18] For the first half of 1982, sixteen-year-old Emil Johnson drummed for Black Flag, playing on the title track of the TV Party EP, but quit in the middle of a U.S. tour after a fight with the band's roadie Mugger.[19] He was replaced by Chuck Biscuits of D.O.A., but Biscuits lasted only several months as he would not agree to the band's demanding rehearsal schedule.[20] With the Descendents on hiatus, Bill Stevenson joined Black Flag in early 1983 as their new drummer, and the band toured the United States and Europe.[21] Cadena left Black Flag in April 1983 to form his own band, DC3, and was not replaced.[14][22] Ginn also attempted to edge out Dukowski, desiring a new musical direction, and in the fall of 1983 Rollins took it upon himself to fire Dukowski from Black Flag in order to resolve the situation.[23] Dukowski remained involved with Black Flag, acting as their manager and booking agent.[24]
Throughout 1982 and 1983, the band had been in a legal dispute with Unicorn Records over the rights to Damaged that had prevented them from releasing material under the Black Flag name, though they had released the 1982 compilation album Everything Went Black, consisting of demos recorded during Morris, Reyes, and Cadena's stints as singer (Morris was credited as "Johnny 'Bob' Goldstein" and Reyes as "Chavo Pederast").[5][14][25] When Unicorn went bankrupt in late 1983, the band was free to release new material and recorded their second album, 1984's My War, with Ginn playing bass guitar under the pseudonym Dale Nixon.[14][26] Shortly after the album's recording, Kira Roessler was added as the band's new bassist.[27] The lineup of Ginn, Rollins, Stevenson, and Roessler was Black Flag's most prolific, releasing three more albums in 1984 (Family Man, Slip It In, and Live '84) along with two more albums (Loose Nut and In My Head) and an EP (The Process of Weeding Out) in 1985.[14][28]
Stevenson was fired from Black Flag by Ginn in late April 1985 and returned to the Descendents.[29] He was replaced by Anthony Martinez, who toured North America with the band and played on the live album Who's Got the 10½? (1986).[14][30] Roessler was fired in September 1985 and replaced by C'el Revuelta, who performed on the band's final tour from January to June 1986.[30][31] Ginn disbanded Black Flag that August.[14][32]
In September 2003, Ginn organized three Black Flag reunion shows to benefit cat rescue organizations. The lineup for these performances was Ginn on lead guitar, C'el Revuelta on bass, Dez Cadena on rhythm guitar and co-lead vocals, and Robo on drums. Pro-skateboarder Mike Vallely sang for Black Flag and drummer Gregory Moore was on the drums for one of the sets of this show when the band played the entire My War album with a pre-recorded bass track by Ginn.[33]
In January 2013, Ginn announced that he was reuniting Black Flag with Ron Reyes on vocals and Gregory Moore on drums and that the band would make a European and North American tour as well as release a new album. Black Flag has been confirmed to headline the Hevy Festival in the U.K., the Ruhrpott Rodeo Festival in Germany and the Muddy Roots Music Festival in Cookeville, Tennessee in 2013.[34][35] In November of the same year, Reyes was fired on stage and replaced by Mike Vallely from Ginn's other band Good for You.
Also in January 2013, other former Black Flag members who are estranged from Greg Ginn, former singer Keith Morris, former bassist Chuck Dukowski and former drummer Bill Stevenson announced that they would also play some shows as "Flag", playing Black Flag songs, with Stephen Egerton of All and The Descendents instead of Greg Ginn on guitar during Spring and Summer of 2013.[34][35]
Keith Morris grew up in Hermosa Beach and attended Mira Costa High School, where brothers Greg and Raymond Ginn were also students.[36][37] After graduating in 1973 he studied fine art and painting while working at his father's bait shop.[36][38] One of his co-workers at the shop was Bill Stevenson, a Mira Costa student eight years Morris' junior who would also go on to be a member of Black Flag (Morris' father befriended Ozzie Cadena, who son Dez would also later join Black Flag).[39][40] Becoming a fan of heavy rock and proto-punk groups, Morris took a second job working at local record store Rubicon Records.[41] It was here that he struck up a friendship with Greg Ginn, whose sister was dating Morris' record store co-worker.[37] Morris soon left the family bait shop and began working for Ginn's amateur radio and electronics business, Solid State Tuners (SST).[42] The two bonded over shared musical tastes, including an interest in early punk rock groups, and decided to start a band together.[43] Morris originally planned to play drums in the group, but Ginn convinced him to take the role of vocalist after witnessing his frantic energy while singing along to the radio.[44] In the summer of 1976 they began rehearsing songs that Ginn had written on guitar, with Ginn's brother Raymond accompanying on bass guitar.[1] By early 1977 Morris had recruited friends of his to serve as the rhythm section, including bassist "Kansas" and drummer Brian Migdol, and the group took the name Panic.[3] Morris performed at Panic's early shows and on their debut EP, Nervous Breakdown, recorded in January 1978.[45] Later that year he and then-Panic bassist Gary McDaniel (later known as Chuck Dukowski) took up residence at "The Church", an abandoned Baptist church the band was then using as a rehearsal space.[46] The band changed its name to Black Flag in early 1979.[47]
By November 1979, however, Morris was growing "burned out" with Black Flag's long and frequent rehearsals, and began making excuses to miss them.[48] His feelings of isolation within the band exacerbated his problems with drugs and alcohol:[48] "I was doing a lot of drugs, and I was drinking quite a bit", he later recalled, "That's like the major reason for me leaving Black Flag, because it wasn't fun, and part of my fun was to drink away the bad stuff, or party away all the things in my life that I didn't want to be a part of."[48] Tensions came to a head during the band's two-day recording session that month for a prospective full-length album, and Morris announced at the end of the session that he was leaving the group.[49] McDaniel later said that Morris quit because "he wanted to stay exactly the same. Our music was changing, and he didn't like a lot of our new songs."[50] Morris claimed to have felt blamed by the other members for slowing the band's progress: "Whenever there would be arguments, everyone would be pointing their finger at me, and it would be my fault. Like, if we weren't learning new songs fast enough, it was my fault. Coming to rehearsal after having drunk a six-pack of beer, maybe having snorted a couple lines of coke, that would be my fault. They made me feel like I was the cement shoes attached to their feet."[50] Black Flag's constant rehearsals also eroded Morris' friendships with Ginn and then-Black Flag drummer Robo: "I guess our line of communication just ceased to exist, and that's really important", he later said, "There has to be some free space, some head time, we can't be around each other in these grungy, dirty, filthy-carpet-covered rooms all the time. We needed to get out and breathe some fresh air, rub elbows with our friends in other bands, and play more shows, instead of just rehearsing, rehearsing and rehearsing all the time."[51] According to Morris, his departure was not acrimonious:
It was entirely my decision. For me, we had pretty much run our course. I love Robo, I still respect Greg, Gary kind of irritated me at times. But the fact of the matter is, when I left I felt no hatred towards them; it wasn't like "Fuck you guys, man, I don't ever wanna see you again!" It wasn't like that. Because I still lived in the church and they were still rehearsing there. They probably breathed a sigh of relief, because I was completely in the throes of being a full-blown alcoholic cokehead, and it didn't help that Robo was one of my suppliers. A couple of weeks later, I started my next group.[51]
This next group was the Circle Jerks, which included guitarist Greg Hetson, who had recently quit Red Cross, as well as drummer Lucky Lehrer and bassist Roger Rogerson.[52] Their early set list included some of Morris' Black Flag lyrics set to new music: Nervous Breakdown's "Wasted", the recorded-but-unreleased "I Don't Care", and two songs Morris had written with Black Flag but had not recorded: "Red Tape" and "Behind the Door" (originally titled "Room 13").[52] They also used some songs that Hetson had written with Red Cross, and gave them new lyrics.[52] This caused conflict with Morris' former bandmates in Black Flag: "They were extremely angry and spiteful about it," he said. "These were songs that I did with Black Flag, but I wrote the lyrics, so I can do with them whatever I want. We souped them up, we changed the notes, the tempos... The only people who were upset about this were the guys in Black Flag and Red Cross."[52] The Circle Jerks' versions of these songs appeared on their debut album Group Sex (1980). Black Flag responded by rewriting "I Don't Care" as "You Bet We've Got Something Personal Against You!" for 1980's Jealous Again EP, taking the music from their original version but changing Morris' lyrics into a screed against him, accusing him of stealing their song and lying about it, and declaring "you've got nowhere to go but down".[53]
Morris was asked by director Penelope Spheeris to sing with Black Flag for her documentary film The Decline of Western Civilization.[54] Morris declined, and ultimately both the Circle Jerks and Black Flag appeared in the film, the latter with Morris' replacement Ron Reyes singing.[54] After Reyes quit Black Flag in May 1980, Morris filled in for two shows in Los Angeles and San Francisco. "Black Flag was my first love;" he later recalled, "I've got the Black Flag bars tattooed on my heart, branded in my brain. Greg [Ginn] and Chuck [Dukowski] asked me to fill in, and I knew that I was just filling in, that I wasn't rejoining Black Flag on any permanent basis, because the Circle Jerks had made a record, it was very popular, and people really loved us, and we were selling out shows. So everything was cool, and I had no problem filling in for Ron Reyes for a couple of nights."[55]
Ron Reyes, a punk rock fan of Puerto Rican descent, dropped out of Mira Costa High school at age 18.[56] He was present for Black Flag's first performance, at the Redondo Beach Moose Lodge, and the experience left a strong impression on him:[56]
I was just blown away. Keith [Morris] was like an animal; it was so fun, to see this guy just screaming and shouting. Everything about them was so over-the-top, and so energetic; the bands I'd seen before, like X and the Germs, they just paled in comparison to the energy that Black Flag had. Those other bands, they were 'rock bands', and Black Flag were...something else. The intensity of Greg Ginn's guitar playing, I have never seen anything like that, to this day. And Gary McDaniel, y'know, he was just wild, crazy, and so intense. It was just the intensity of it all. I'd never seen anything like that before.[57]
Reyes and Dez Cadena were friends and had practiced songs together on guitar.[58] In summer 1979, Reyes moved into "The Church", where Black Flag rehearsed; He would watch the band practice and became good friends with them, particularly Morris.[59] He purchased a drum kit from a friend as a favor, and soon began drumming for a group called The Tourists, with Greg Hetson and brothers Jeff and Steven McDonald.[60] The Tourists opened for Black Flag at their infamous July 22, 1979 performance at Manhattan Beach's Polliwog Park, and the following month changed their name to Red Cross.[60][61] Reyes continued to follow Black Flag, travelling to San Francisco that fall for their first performances outside the Los Angeles area.[62] By the time Morris left Black Flag in November 1979, Reyes had quit Red Cross and was playing drums with a group called The Tracks.[63][64] Greg Ginn and Gary McDaniel approached him with an offer to sing for Black Flag.[64] "I was a little bit nervous, I guess," recalled Reyes, "but it seemed really natural; I had no experience as a singer, I'd never wanted to be a singer, but I wasn't intimidated. Because it was very clear to me from the get-go that the whole spirit of punk rock was not about experience, and talent, and chops — It was all about attitude and energy. I figured I had enough of that to get by."[64] Reyes speculated that Black Flag chose him because he was not part of the Hollywood punk rock scene:
They had quite a lot of distaste for the Hollywood scene. So I think they went out of their way to avoid that, and finding a home-grown South kinda guy was attractive to them. Certainly, I was a huge fan, I loved the band, I was at all their shows, right up the front, raising a bunch of hell with them. Black Flag was really kind of a family down there in the South Bay, it was close-knit, and I don't think they would have been interested in going the normal route of doing auditions with people they didn't know. Probably it was just being in the right place, at the right time.[65]
Reyes' first show with Black Flag was December 16, 1979, less than three weeks after Morris' departure.[65] His performance style was spirited and anarchic, characterized by the frantic energy with which he would dash across the stage and hurl himself into the audience while barking the lyrics in a howling, out-of-breath fashion.[66] Ginn also began teaching Reyes how to play guitar, with an eye towards making him a rhythm guitarist as well as vocalist, which would free Ginn up to play lead guitar and add solos to his songs.[67] Ultimately, however, Reyes would never play guitar in Black Flag.[67] He appeared with the band in the documentary film The Decline of Western Civilization and performed with them on their first shows outside of California, traveling to Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland in February and April 1980.[68][69] Having attempted to record their debut album with Morris the previous November, Black Flag made another attempt at it with Reyes in April 1980.[70] The session was unsuccessful, in part because Reyes would sometimes leave the studio mid-take.[5][70] "I was a little intimidated by the studio process", he later admitted. "Put me on stage for 20 minutes, where I could just go wild, and I loved that. But now I had to sing the song in key, in tune...And Greg was committed to a level of excellence. He would not have let us do anything that wasn't great. Some of our earlier recordings were frustrating for a lot of us."[70]
Reyes quit Black Flag mid-performance during a May 23, 1980 show at The Fleetwood in Redondo Beach, California.[71] "There was a lot of violence, and I was really starting to lose my taste for it", he later recalled. "It seemed like it didn't matter what we did up there, we could've just been up onstage masturbating and it wouldn't have made a difference; [the audience] would have kept on slamming and going around in circles and doing their thing, and that's all they cared about. I felt, 'What's the point?' ... So I just walked offstage. I remember saying something to the effect of, 'I don't really care about being the background to whatever it is that you're doing out there...' It didn't have anything to do with the other band members, I had no beef with any of them."[71] Black Flag finished the set by playing an extended version of "Louie Louie", with various audience members taking the microphone.[5][72]
Despite having quit the band, Reyes agreed to return to finish recording the tracks they had begun in April.[73]Recording engineer and producerSpot recalled that "recording the vocals in a posthumous manner [Reyes] was surprisingly cooperative and I was moved to remark: 'This is so easy now! Why didn't you quit the band before this?'"[5] Reyes later remarked that "Spot just wanted to finish the project. I don't think they had a desire that I would join the band again. I felt, 'OK, that's cool'. I still loved the band, I loved the music, I had no bad feelings towards the guys, so I was totally into it."[73] According to Ginn, "Ron was kind of apprehensive about recording. He liked to sing live, but he just hated the recording process, so it was like pulling teeth, but we finally got it done. And that's the thing about Ron, his energy was incredible onstage, he would just burst out, you know? And we finally got that performance on tape, but it took a little bit of doing, just because he wasn't ever really comfortable in the studio."[73]
Reyes had begun dating a girl from Vancouver, and soon moved there.[74] When the Jealous Again EP was released in August 1980, he was credited on the sleeve as "Chavo Pederast", a mean-spirited joke on the part of Black Flag: "Chavo" after the homeless orphan character in the Mexican sitcomEl Chavo, and "Pederast" after pederasty.[75] "At the time, I'm not even sure I understood the derogatory nature of the name, and I don't think I would have cared anyway", said Reyes.[75] "It seemed a very natural, punk-rock thing to do, and I would have done the same thing if I was in their shoes ... When I became a family man, and the meaning of that name became more apparent to me, then it was something I felt a little shame over. I found I had to explain myself, a lot, when people called me Chavo Pederast."[75]
Dez Cadena moved with his family from New Jersey to Hermosa Beach in 1974, at age 13.[76][77] His father, record producer and jazz promoter Ozzie Cadena, befriended Keith Morris' father Jerry Morris.[76] In February 1979 the 17-year-old Dez was present, along with his friend Ron Reyes, for Black Flag's first performance.[56] He continued to follow the band, hanging out at their rehearsals and attending many of their performances.[61][77] In June 1980 he was playing guitar in a reformed Red Cross when Black Flag approached him to replace Ron Reyes as their singer.[78] Cadena recalled Chuck Dukowski asking him to join the band: "He said, 'You know all the words to our songs, in a week we have to play a gig in Vancouver, why don't you become our next singer?'"[78] Never having sung before, Cadena was initially reserved, but Dukowski assured him that did not matter.[78] "Black Flag was my favorite band," Cadena later said, "and these guys were my friends, so I didn't want to let them down."[78] In contrast to the sardonic anarchism of Keith Morris and the chaotic energy of Ron Reyes, Cadena's singing was a blunt, flinty bark delivered with passion and fury, evoking vocal cords strained almost to breaking point.[78] His guitar-playing skills were attractive to Ginn, who planned—as he had with Reyes—to eventually position Cadena to also play rhythm guitar, freeing Ginn up to play lead and add solos.[79]
Cadena's first performance with Black Flag was a party at the end of summer 1980 to close out "The Church", the abandoned Baptist church they had used as a living and rehearsal space since 1978.[80] The band had moved out of the building several months prior, and on the eve of a West Coast tour invited many of their fans to demolish the property as means of provoking the police before they left town.[80]
Henry Rollins had been the lead singer of the Washington, D.C., based hardcore punk band State of Alert. He had befriended several members of the band and had invited them to crash at his house during their East Coast tour at one point. When Cadena moved to rhythm guitar from vocals, the band hired on Rollins to perform lead vocal duties. After Black Flag broke up in 1986, Rollins, who had already begun a spoken word solo career, founded his own band Rollins Band. Since 2006, Rollins has mostly left the music industry, and has focused his career on his spoken word performances, acting in films and on television, and as a television presenter.
Vallely was friends with Ginn during the years when Black Flag was not a performing band and had sung with the band during a 2003 reunion show. When the band reformed in 2013, Ron Reyes was their vocalist for the first several months. Reyes was fired mid-performance during a November 2013 show in Australia, and Vallely was invited on stage to finish the set. He has been with the band ever since. Besides singing with Black Flag, Vallely is a professional skateboarder and singer with a number of other punk bands.
Greg Ginn is Black Flag's lead guitarist, primary songwriter, sole constant member, and the only musician to play on all of the band's releases. He attended Mira Costa High School with Keith Morris, and started a mail-order company for amateur radio equipment called Solid State Tuners (SST).[37][81] He became interested in blues and jazz while studying economics and business management at UCLA, and began playing guitar at age 19, becoming a fan of the Grateful Dead as well as various protopunk and punk rock groups[82] He befriended Morris when Ginn's younger sister began dating Morris' record store co-worker.[37] Morris started working for SST, and he and Ginn bonded over musical taste and decided to start a band.[42] In the summer of 1976 they began rehearsing songs that Ginn had written, with Morris singing Ginn's lyrics and Ginn's younger brother Raymond accompanying on bass guitar.[1] By early 1977 they had named the band Panic, with Morris' friends "Kansas" and Brian Migdol on bass guitar and drums, respectively.[3]
Because Kansas and Migdol would often fail to show up for rehearsals, Ginn modified his guitar style to a percussive strum that doubled as a lead and rhythm section.[3] During the band's early years he played a transparent luciteAmpegDan Armstrong guitar that he heavily customized, caulking it to prevent blood and sweat from seeping into the electronics and hard-wiring the cord into the instrument so that the socket would not be pulled out if someone tripped on the cord.[83] He had rented storage and workspace for SST at an abandoned Baptist church, and this became Panic's new home when they were kicked out of their rehearsal space in late 1978.[46] When Panic became Black Flag in early 1979, Ginn booked their first shows under the new name himself, and released their debut EP Nervous Breakdown through his own label, SST Records (which shared its name with his electronics company).[47][84]
After the band hired Henry Rollins to be their lead vocalist, Dez Cadena moved to rhythm guitar. After leaving Black Flag in 1983, Cadena went on to front DC3 from 1983 to 1988. He spent the 1990s playing in various bands for relatively short stints before joining the Misfits in 2001. He left the Misfits in 2015 and currently appears with the Keith Morris-fronted Flag.
When Greg Ginn and Keith Morris first began rehearsing together in the summer of 1976, Ginn's brother Raymond accompanied them on bass guitar.[1] By early 1977 Raymond had bowed out of the group to focus on earning his degree in economics from UCLA, after which he became a high school mathematics teacher.[1] "I kinda played bass and learned their songs, but I was never in the band", he later recalled, "There's nothing I could do that would deaden the mind more than play bass in a punk band. Especially that band."[85] In early 1979 the band was looking to change their name from Panic, and it was Raymond—who had since quit his teaching job in favor of pursuing a career as a visual artist under the pseudonym Raymond Pettibon—who suggested the name Black Flag and designed their logo.[86]
Over the next six years Pettibon's single-frame illustrations were used for the band's sleeve artwork, posters, and gig flyers, their unsettling and provocative imagery becoming synonymous with Black Flag's music while helping to build the group's notoriety and expand their fan base.[87][88] His artwork appears on the covers of Nervous Breakdown, Jealous Again, Six Pack, Everything Went Black, My War, Family Man, Slip It In, Loose Nut, The Process of Weeding Out, and In My Head. He also did artwork for other SST releases including the compilation albums The Blasting Concept and Cracks in the Sidewalk, and released pamphlet books of his art through SST.[88] However, he had a falling out with Black Flag and SST in 1985 over the Loose Nut artwork, which had been used for a flyer several years earlier.[89] Greg Ginn resurrected it without telling his brother and turned it over to drummer Bill Stevenson to do the layout, who cut it into pieces and used them as elements for the cover and lyric sheet.[89] Pettibon became irate and ended his relationship with the band and the label, and he and Ginn stopped speaking for some time:[89][90] "As far as I'm concerned, SST is not even a part of my past. For one thing, it was dishonestly procured. I was never paid for any of that stuff. If you talk to [SST] it's like Stalinist Russia, rewriting history. Somebody is some big commissar and the next day he's purged and all traces of his existence are literally written out of the official history."[85] Pettibon later worked with Keith Morris again, providing cover artwork for his band Off! in 2010.
Jim "Kansas" Dearman
After Pettibon's exit from the group, a friend of Morris' known as "Kansas", real name Jim Dearmen, became their new bassist.[91] Described by Morris as "just this huge stoner", Kansas and drummer Bryan Migdol were not committed to the band and would often fail to show up for rehearsals.[3] This caused Ginn to modify his guitar style to a percussive strum that doubled as a lead and rhythm section.[4] Kansas left the band before the summer of 1977, and was replaced at rehearsals by Glenn "Spot" Lockett.[92]
Glenn "Spot" Lockett was a friend of Greg Ginn and a staff engineer at Media Art recording studio, and Ginn invited him to play bass guitar with Panic in rehearsals after Kansas' departure.[93] He later recalled his experience in the liner notes of Everything Went Black:
The band had a total of six songs, each of which lasted no longer than one minute. Greg showed me the simple repetitive chords..."OK, here we go, 1–2–3–4..." and BANG!! the drummer started smashing out a fast, trashy straight four-pattern beat, and the wiry little singer started bellowing and jumping around wildly, and Greg's body lurched forward as he underwent a remarkable transformation from Jekyll to Hyde...Within seconds it was over. Jekyll calmly stepped out of his Hyde as if stepping out of a routine nightmare...I was dumbfounded, shocked; my eyes wide in amazement, my mouth hanging open in disbelief. We played again. "1–2–3–4!!"...Ten minutes later we had played the entire six-song set twice.[5][94]
Spot decided that he could not commit to playing with Panic, and was soon replaced by Würm bassist Gary McDaniel.[95] Spot continued to work at Media Art and convinced Panic to record their first record there in January 1978, which produced the Nervous Breakdown EP.[5][96] The studio's senior engineer, Dave Tarling, acted as producer for the session, with Spot's role limited to "setting up microphones and later running some rough mixes for the band."[5][96]
Gary McDaniel was the bass guitarist of the band Würm, and met Greg Ginn when he sold the latter a speaker cabinet in early 1977.[97] By that summer Würm were living and rehearsing at a space in the Hermosa Bathhouse, which they referred to as the Würmhole.[97][98] Würm guitarist Ed Danky met Keith Morris and, learning that he was also in a band, invited him to hang out at their rehearsals.[97] Morris and Greg Ginn came to observe Würm and ended up renting the vacant half of the Bathhouse for Panic, sharing practice space with Würm.[95] When Spot decided that he could not commit to playing bass with Panic, McDaniel began jamming with them.[95] He fit in well with the band musically, and impressed Ginn with his outspokenness and intellectual restlessness.[95] By the end of the year Würm had broken up, and Ginn invited McDaniel to join Panic permanently.[95] "I wanted to tour, I didn't just want to play in my living room", said McDaniel, "I thought Panic's music was easy to 'get'. It came across. Later, our music became more challenging to the audience; but back then, it hit heavy and hard, and people got it instantly."[95]
McDaniel performed on Black Flag's debut EP, Nervous Breakdown, recorded in January 1978.[45] Later that year the band was evicted from the Bathhouse, and McDaniel and Morris took up residence in their new rehearsal space "The Church", an abandoned Baptist church.[46] By December 1979 McDaniel had quit his job working for a pool table company in order to commit himself to Black Flag and SST Records, and had taken the pseudonym Chuck Dukowski.[99] "It was for fun, at first, just trying on personalities," he later said of the name change. "At first I didn't use Chuck all the time, but when I quit my straight job to work on the band full-time, I made a break. I found the new name to be convenient when I had to deal with the police. And I had to deal with them too fucking much. I liked the name Chuck Dukowski — it seemed like a regular guy name."[100] Dukowski developed a prominent presence in Black Flag through both his playing—which was physically aggressive and produced powerful, thudding low-end notes—and through his intellect and passion for revolutionary thinking, which informed the band's ethos.[101] An outspoken anarchist, he would often use interviews and between-song pauses during shows as opportunities to declare his ideas and beliefs.[101]
Roessler (sister of Paul Roessler from L.A. gothic punk rock band 45 Grave) replaced Dukowski and played with the band through their mid-to-late period work (1983–85) appearing on the albums Family Man, Slip It In, Loose Nut, and In My Head.
C'el Revuelta
C'el joined the band in 1986 replacing Roesler on bass.[102] He only played on the final tour of the band in 1986. He later came back in the 2003 Black Flag reunion. He did not appear in any of the releases. C'el died on May 3, 2017, after a long battle with stage 4 brain cancer.[103]
Dave Klein
Klein is known for being a bass player in Screeching Weasel (2011–2013) and he went on tour with Black Flag in 2013. Klein left Black Flag in 2014.
Tyler Smith
Smith originally joined Black Flag in early 2013 but had to back out due to personal obligations back home. When he learned that the previous bass player left the band, he contacted Greg, auditioned again, and rejoined Black Flag.
Joseph Noval
Joseph Noval joined as the band's bassist in 2019.
Harley Duggan
Harley Duggan joined as the band's bassist in 2022. He also plays in Darkhorse Rising.
Austin Sears
Austin Sears joined as the band's bassist in 2023.
Matt Baxter
Matt Baxter joined as the band's current bassist in 2024.
Drummers
Bryan Migdol
Bryan Migdol (aka Brian Migdol) was recruited from amongst Morris' friends in early 1977 to serve as the drummer for Panic (the band that was the precursor to Black Flag).[3] He performed at Panic's early shows and was developmental in the arrangement of many of the songs which would later be recorded by Black Flag. He played all the drum tracks on the band's debut EP, Nervous Breakdown, recorded in January 1978 at Media Art Studios,[45] as well as some of the tracks appearing on the albums Everything Went Black, The First Four Years and Wasted…Again.
Disappointed with so much rehearsing and very little performing, he decided to leave the band in the summer of 1978. "Our mentality was, we were never popular, and playing music wasn't going to change that. We played because we needed to play — we played what we played because most of the time when we played, we were playing for ourselves. We did an awful lot of rehearsing, and that was because nobody wanted to hear what we were."
Colombian native Roberto Valverde replaced Migdol in Panic by the end of the summer of 1978.[104] He had entered the United States on a student visa and was living in El Segundo, working in a plastics factory.[104] He had begun playing drums in 1976 and responded to an advertisement that Panic had placed in a record store reading "Band from the South Bay looking for drummer. Into Ramones, Sex Pistols."[104] Valverde impressed Panic with his audition, setting up his transparent perspex drum kit—which happened to match Ginn's transparent lucite guitar—so that all the drums and cymbals were level, and playing with a stiff, robotic style that relied on arm rather than wrist movement.[105]
Emil Johnson
Emil Johnson was 15 when hired, although his place in the band was short lived. His only playing credit is the A-Side of the TV Party EP.
Chuck Biscuits played with Blag Flag for several months in 1982. He appeared in no official studio releases, but does appear on the live album Live at the On Broadway 1982 and several bootlegs and demo recordings. Prior to joining Black Flag he had been a member of the Canadian hardcore punk band D.O.A. After leaving Black Flag he had a few brief stints playing drums with the Circle Jerks and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, though he was mostly out of the music industry until he began to work extensively with Glenn Danzig, appearing with his bands Samhain and Danzig, and later worked with Social Distortion. He has also had short stints with a number of other punk acts.
Black Flag's fifth drummer was South Bay native Bill Stevenson. A Mira Costa High School student and avid fisherman, he frequented Jerry Morris' bait shop and ended up working there alongside Keith Morris.[40] Stevenson first auditioned to drum for Panic in summer 1978, at age 15, after Brian Migdol had left the band.[106] His audition turned into a drunken jam session including members of Panic and The Last, and the position of drummer in Panic ultimately went to Robo.[104][106] By late 1978 Stevenson had joined the Descendents, who made their onstage debut as an opening act at Black Flag's second performance, at a San Pedro community center in February 1979.[107] He would later join Black Flag as their regular drummer, and served with them from 1983 to 1985, appearing on all of their studio albums from My War through In My Head. After leaving Black Flag in mid-1985, he reformed the Descendents, and would later found the band All, and play drums with The Lemonheads.
Anthony Martinez
Anthony Martinez replaced Bill Stevenson and was their last drummer before their breakup. He played on the live album "Who's Got The 10 and a 1/2?" and the live EP "Annihilate This Week", which consists entirely of songs from Who's Got The 10 and a 1/2?
Gregory Moore
Gregory Moore is a drummer from Georgia who is sometimes credited as Gregory Amoore, or simply "Drummer". He has recorded and toured with Greg Ginn on several of his solo releases as well as Ginn's projects Gone, El Bad, and Get Me High. He performed with Black Flag at their 2003 reunion show, their tour in 2013, and on the "What the..." album. Gregory currently plays with the bands Are You A Cop, 2Ton Bridge, and Fer in Los Angeles.
Brandon received an email from Greg in early 2014 to see if he would like to audition for Black Flag. He called Greg later that night and they set up an audition two days later. Brandon learned a good number of songs and then drove to Greg's studio to audition. Over the course of a few hours, Brandon played about 15 songs. After he drove back home, he recorded two songs a day and would send them to Greg every day for a week so Greg could get more of an idea what his playing style sounds like. A week after his audition, Brandon got the call that he made the band. Brandon did not know Mike or Greg personally before he started playing with Black Flag, but he had known who they were for years. As a Black Flag fan growing up, Pertzborn was familiar with Ginn's role with the band. Pertzborn used to skateboard in his spare time and knew of Mike Vallely's career as a professional streetskater and a musician.
Pertzborn is married to Emily Vallely, who is the daughter of Black Flag lead singer Mike Vallely.[108]
Isaias Gil
Isaias Gil joined as the band's drummer in 2019.
Charles Wiley
Charles Wiley joined as the band's current drummer in 2022.
Black Flag is an American punk rock band formed in 1976 in Hermosa Beach, California. Initially called Panic, the band was established by Greg Ginn, the guitarist, primary songwriter, and sole continuous member, and singer Keith Morris. They are widely considered to be one of the first hardcore punk bands, as well as one of the pioneers of post-hardcore. After breaking up in 1986, Black Flag reunited in 2003 and again in 2013. The second reunion lasted well over a year, during which they released their first studio album in nearly three decades, What The... (2013). The band announced their third reunion in January 2019.
SST Records is an American independent record label formed in 1978 in Long Beach, California by musician Greg Ginn. The company was first founded in 1966 by Ginn at age 12 as Solid State Transmitters, a small business through which he sold electronics equipment. Ginn repurposed the company as a record label to release material by his band Black Flag.
Nervous Breakdown is the debut EP by the American hardcore punk band Black Flag, released in January 1979 through SST Records. It was the label's first release.
Dez Cadena is an American punk rock singer and guitarist. He was the third vocalist and later rhythm guitarist for hardcore punk band Black Flag from 1980 to 1983. Cadena played guitar with Misfits from 2001 to 2015, initially joining the band alongside Doyle, Jerry Only, and Robo for their 25th Anniversary Tour.
Keith Morris is an American singer and songwriter known for his role as frontman of the hardcore punk bands Black Flag, Circle Jerks, and Off!. Born and raised in Hermosa Beach, California, he formed Black Flag at the age of 21 with guitarist Greg Ginn and performed on the band's 1979 debut EP Nervous Breakdown. Shortly after leaving Black Flag in 1979, he formed the Circle Jerks with guitarist Greg Hetson; the band released seven albums between 1980 and 1995 and have broken up and reformed on numerous occasions. In 2009 Morris formed the supergroup Off! with guitarist Dimitri Coats, bassist Steven Shane McDonald, and drummer Mario Rubalcaba. Morris has also appeared as a guest vocalist on several albums by other artists.
Gary Arthur McDaniel, better known by his stage name Chuck Dukowski, is an American punk rock musician. He’s most well known for being the bass player and occasional songwriter for Black Flag.
Julio Roberto Valverde Valencia, better known by his stage name Robo, is a Colombian-American drummer. He came to prominence in the early 1980s with punk band Black Flag, and more recently has been a member of Misfits.
My War is the second studio album by American band Black Flag. It was the first of three full-length albums the band released in 1984. The album polarized fans due to the LP's B-side, on which the band slowed down to a heavy, Black Sabbath-esque trudge after establishing expectations as a faster hardcore punk band on its first album, Damaged (1981).
Damaged is the debut studio album by the American hardcore punk band Black Flag. It was released by SST Records in November 1981.
Everything Went Black is a compilation album by the American hardcore punk band Black Flag. It was released in 1982 through SST Records. The compilation comprises early songs recorded before Henry Rollins became the band's vocalist in 1981, and was initially released without the group's name on its cover, due to their lawsuit with MCA/Unicorn. Instead, the names of the group members were listed on the first release.
The First Four Years is a compilation album by the American hardcore punk band Black Flag. It was released in 1983 on SST Records. The compilation consists of all of the group's material released before Henry Rollins became the band's vocalist in 1981. It essentially collects the extended plays Nervous Breakdown (1979), Jealous Again (1980), Six Pack (1981), and the single "Louie Louie", with two tracks from various artists' compilation albums.
Wasted…Again is an album released by American hardcore punk band Black Flag in 1987 on SST Records. It is a "best-of" compilation released after Black Flag's breakup in 1986. It features various songs about drinking and beer from their discography.
Jealous Again is the second EP by American hardcore punk band Black Flag, and the third-ever release on SST Records.
TV Party is the fourth EP by American band Black Flag, released in 1982. It was self-produced with Ed Barton and originally released by SST Records on the 7" vinyl format. The title track is a satire of boredom, drinking and America's obsession with television; the original version was also released on the band's 1981 debut album, Damaged.
SWA was an American band originally started as a concept defined by Chuck Dukowski, former bassist of Black Flag, while he was still a member of that band. The name was created by assigning an alphabetical value to numbers on a gaming die, then rolling the die three times. Dukowski would later claim that the name was offered up by Joe Carducci and was accepted by the rest of the band, despite Dukowski's own discomfort with it. SWA has had the dubious distinction of being considered the "worst" band to ever record for SST Records by many label aficionados and, in one fanzine article, Steve Albini claimed that among the worst things a person could do was "listen to SWA" and "be SWA". However, others have come to the band's defense. The band existed from the mid 1980s until 1992 and released five albums on SST Records, all of which are currently out of print.
October Faction is an album by October Faction, the improvisational all-star punk rock band featuring Black Flag members Greg Ginn and Chuck Dukowski and Saccharine Trust guitarist Joe Baiza.
Würm was a sludge metal band started in 1973 by bass player Chuck Dukowski, who would later join Black Flag. They released one LP on Greg Ginn's SST Records and some tracks on compilations. They were active from 1973 to 1977 and from 1982 to 1983.
Painted Willie was an American punk rock band started in 1984 in Los Angeles by drummer and film-maker Dave Markey after the demise of his first band, Sin 34. They were active from 1984 to 1987 and released one 7", two 12 inch EPs and three LPs.
The Nig-Heist was a punk-comedy-shock rock band led by Steve "Mugger" Corbin, a roadie and live sound engineer for Black Flag and employee of SST Records. The Nig-Heist featured a revolving-door roster of members of the bands who were on tour with Black Flag at the moment. The band used to open for Black Flag on tour and recorded a 7", an LP and had tracks on compilations. They were notorious for their risqué stage antics, including band members playing naked, Mugger wearing a long-haired wig and insulting the crowd. Their songs were overtly vulgar and explicit in a funny way. Their motto was: "The band that cums in your mouth, not in your hands".
The Complete 1982 Demos is an unreleased set of demo tracks intended for a follow-up album to Black Flag's debut album Damaged (1981). The tracks recorded show the band moving in a riff-driven, heavy metal-inflected direction, away from the pure hardcore punk of the first album. Due to legal issues, the album was never recorded, though most of the tracks were re-recorded for later albums. Though never officially released, the recordings have been widely bootlegged.
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