youth

Henry Garfield was born in Washington, D.C. on February 13, 1961, and grew up in the Glover Park neighborhood of the city. An only child, Garfield's parents divorced when he was a toddler; he suffered from low self-esteem and a poor attention span as a child. He was raised primarily by his mother, Iris, who taught him to read before he entered public school; however, because of "bad grades, bad attitude, poor conduct", he was soon sent to The Bullis School, a military school in Potomac, Maryland. Garfield disliked the authoritarian atmosphere and the then boys-only campus, which hindered his dating attempts and made him uncomfortable around women for several years.According to Garfield, military school helped him to develop a sense of discipline and a strong work ethic. It was at Bullis that he began writing; his early literary efforts were mainly short stories about "blowing up my school and murdering all the teachers." Despite the relative affluence of Glover Park, for Garfield "it was a very rough up-bringing in a lot of other ways. I accumulated a lot of rage by the time I was seventeen or eighteen." Much of the rage came from problems at home, but Rolling Stone printed an interview in April 1992, wherein Rollins said he'd been sexually molested as a child, and many of his later spoken word monologues refer to an abusive father. Some of his rage came from the racial tensions at that time; Garfield was often beaten up by black teenagers because of his race.

State of Alert

After high school, Garfield attempted college, but after being discouraged by the behavior of his fellow students, who were into "beer and bongs," he left and began working in minimum-wage jobs, including a job as a taxi driver for liver samples at the National Institutes of Health. Garfield became involved in the punk rock scene after he and Ian MacKaye bought a Sex Pistols record; he later described it as a "revelation." By 1979, Garfield was working as a roadie for local bands, including MacKaye's Teen Idles. When the band's singer Nathan Strejcek failed to appear for practice sessions, Garfield convinced the Teen Idles to let him sing. Word of Garfield's ability spread around Washington's underground music scene; Bad Brains singer H.R. would sometimes coax Garfield on stage to sing with him.

In late 1980, the Washington punk band The Extorts lost their frontman Lyle Preslar to Minor Threat. Garfield joined the rest of the band to form State of Alert, and became its frontman and vocalist. He put words to the band's five songs and wrote several more. S.O.A. recorded their sole extended play, No Policy, and released it in 1981 on MacKaye's Dischord Records. S.O.A. disbanded after a total of nine concerts and one EP. Garfield had enjoyed being the band's frontman, and had earned a reputation for fighting in shows. He later said: "I was like nineteen and a young man all full of steam [...] Loved to get in the dust-ups." By this time, Garfield had become the manager of the Georgetown Häagen-Dazs ice cream store; his steady employment had helped to finance the S.O.A. EP. State of Alert They formed in October 1980 and disbanded in July 1981. They released a ten song 7" EP titled No Policy and contributed three songs to the compilation Flex Your Head, both on Dischord Records. The EP was financed by Henry since Dischord wanted to afford releasing the first Minor Threat 7" as well.

S.O.A. played a total of 12 gigs in and around the eastern US, their first on December 6, 1980, in Washington, D.C., and their last on July 10, 1981, in Philadelphia. Henry Rollins later described their performances: "All of them were eleven to fourteen minutes in duration because the songs were all like forty seconds... and the rest of the time we were going, 'Are you ready? Are you ready?' Those gigs were poorly played songs in between 'Are you readys?"Breakup and legacy S.O.A. is remembered primarily as Rollins' first band - before he joined Black Flag and then founded Rollins Band - but also as an example of early "DC Hardcore" and an influence to other bands such as Detroit's Negative Approach and New York City's Agnostic Front.Out of what was left of the band guitarist Michael Hampton went on to form The Faith in 1981 with Alec MacKaye (brother of Ian MacKaye, later in Ignition) who joined on vocals and Ivor Hansen, S.O.A.'s final drummer. Later Hampton went on to Embrace with Ian MacKaye in 1985, and One Last Wish with Guy Picciotto (Fugazi, Rites of Spring) and Brendan Canty (Fugazi, Rites of Spring).Bass player Wendel Blow went on to play in Iron Cross and Lethal Intent.State of Alert's recorded material has been re-released by Dischord on the 20 Years of Dischord compilation and the Dischord 1981: The Year in 7"s compilation which includes the entire 'No Policy' EP.

Members

Henry Rollins − vocals (October 1980 — July 1981) Michael Hampton − guitar (October 1980 — July 1981) Wendel Blow − bass (October 1980 — July 1981) Simon Jacobsen − drums (October 1980 — March 1981) Ivor Hansen − drums (March 1981 — July 1981)

Discography No Policy (1981) Flex Your Head (1982)

Black Flag

was a hardcore punk band formed in 1977 in southern California, largely as the brainchild of Greg Ginn: the guitarist, primary songwriter and sole continuous member through multiple personnel changes. They are widely considered the first hardcore punk band.In 1981, a friend gave Garfield and MacKaye a copy of Black Flag's Nervous Breakdown EP. Garfield soon became a fan of the band, exchanging letters with bassist Chuck Dukowski and later inviting the band to stay in his parents' home when Black Flag toured the East Coast in December 1980. When Black Flag returned to the East Coast in early 1981, Garfield attended as many of their concerts as he could. At an impromptu show in a New York bar, Black Flag's vocalist Dez Cadena allowed Garfield to sing "Clocked In," as Garfield had a five hour drive back to Washington DC to return to work after the performance.Unbeknownst to Garfield, Cadena wanted to switch to guitar, and the band was looking for a new vocalist. The band was impressed with Garfield's singing and stage demeanor, and the next day, after a semi-formal audition, they asked him to become their permanent vocalist. Despite some doubts, he accepted, in part because of MacKaye's encouragement. His high level of energy and intense personality suited the band's style, but Garfield's diverse tastes in music were a key factor in his being selected as singer; Black Flag's founder Greg Ginn was growing restless creatively and wanted a singer who was willing to move beyond simple, three-chord punk.After joining Black Flag in 1981, Garfield quit his job at Häagen-Dazs, sold his car, and moved to Los Angeles, California.

Upon arriving in Los Angeles, Garfield got the Black Flag logo tattooed on his left bicep and changed his surname to Rollins, a surname he and MacKaye had used as teenagers.

Rollins was in a different environment in Los Angeles; the police soon realized he was a member of Black Flag and he was hassled as a result. Rollins later said "That really scared me. It freaked me out that an adult would do that. [...] My little eyes were opened big time." Rollins also began to take "large quantities" of LSD during Black Flag tours, after bassist Chuck Dukowski urged him with the words "it will help you not be such an asshole."

Before concerts, as the rest of band tuned up, Rollins would stride about the stage dressed only in a pair of black shorts, grinding his teeth; to focus before the show he would squeeze a pool ball. His stage persona impressed several critics; after a 1982 show in Anacortes, Washington, Sub Pop critic Calvin Johnson wrote: "Henry was incredible. Pacing back and forth, lunging, lurching, growling; it was all real, the most intense emotional experiences I have ever seen."By 1983, Rollins' stage persona was increasingly alienating him from the rest of Black Flag. During a show in England, Rollins assaulted a member of the audience; Ginn later scolded Rollins, calling him a "macho asshole." A legal dispute with Unicorn Records held up further Black Flag releases until 1984, and Ginn was slowing the band's tempo down so that they would remain innovative. In August 1983 guitarist Dez Cadena had left the group; a stalemate lingered between Dukowski and Ginn, who wanted Dukowski to leave, before Rollins fired Dukowski outright. 1984's heavy metal music-influenced My War featured Rollins screaming and wailing throughout many of the songs; the band's members also grew their hair to confuse the band's hardcore punk audience.

Black Flag's change in musical style and appearance alienated many of their original fans, who focused their displeasure on Rollins by punching him in the mouth, stabbing him with pens or scratching him with their nails, among other methods. He often fought back, dragging audience members on stage and assaulting them. Rollins became increasingly alienated from the audience; in his tour diary, Rollins wrote "When they spit at me, when they grab at me, they aren't hurting me. When I push out and mangle the flesh of another, it's falling so short of what I really want to do to them." During the Unicorn legal dispute, Rollins had started a weight-lifting program, and by their 1984 tours, he had become visibly well-built; journalist Michael Azerrad later commented that "his powerful physique was a metaphor for the impregnable emotional shield he was developing around himself."Black Flag forged a unique sound early on that mixed the raw simplicity of the Ramones with atonal and microtonal guitar solos and frequent tempo shifts. Over this could be heard lyrics—mostly written by Ginn—about isolation, neurosis, poverty, and paranoia, themes which did not disappear when Henry Rollins took on the role of lead singer in 1981. Most of the band's material was released on Ginn's independent label, SST Records.Black Flag were (and remain) well respected among their underground culture, with their influence primarily in their tireless promotion of a self-controlled DIY ethic and aesthetic. They're often regarded as pioneers in the movement of underground do-it-yourself record labels that flourished among the 1980s' punk rock bands. Through seemingly constant touring throughout the United States and Canada, and occasionally Europe, Black Flag established an extremely dedicated fan base. Many other musicians would follow Black Flag's lead and book their own tours, utilizing a word-of-mouth network.

Over the course of the 1980s, Black Flag's sound, as well as their notoriety, evolved in ways that alienated much of their early punk audience. As well as being central to the creation of hardcore, they were part of the first wave of American West Coast punk rock and are considered a key influence on the punk subculture. Along with being among the earliest punk rock groups to incorporate elements of heavy metal (particularly in their later records), there were often overt freestyles, jazz (mainly free jazz), breakbeat and contemporary classical elements in their sound, especially in Ginn's guitar playing, and the band interspersed records and performances with instrumentals throughout their career. They also played longer, slower, and more complex songs at a time when many bands in their milieu stuck to a raw, fast, three-chord format. As a result, Black Flag's extensive discography is more varied than many of their punk-rock contemporaries.Throughout their ten-year career as a band, Black Flag’s experiences became legendary, especially in the Southern California area. Much of the band’s history is chronicled in Henry Rollins’ own published tour diary Get In The Van.

Black Flag were reportedly blacklisted by the LAPD and Hollywood rock clubs because of the destructiveness of their fans, though Rollins has claimed that police caused far more problems than they solved.SST Records, an independent American record label that was initially founded to release Black Flag’s debut single, released recordings by influential groups such as Bad Brains, the Minutemen, The Descendents, Meat Puppets, and Hüsker Dü. As well, SST released some albums by Negativland, Soundgarden, and, for a short period, Sonic Youth. Black Flag were involved in legal battles when they attempted more mainstream distribution for their records.Black Flag's career is chronicled in Our Band Could Be Your Life, a study of several important American underground rock groups. Many members of the grunge scene cited Black Flag's My War album as being influential in their departure from the standard punk model. Steve Turner of Mudhoney stated in an interview, "A lot of other people around the country hated the fact that Black Flag slowed down ... but up here it was really great — we were like 'Yay!' They were weird and fucked-up sounding.".Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea has a Black Flag decal on one of his signature Modulus bass guitars, and guitarist John Frusciante has cited Greg Ginn as one of his early influences as a guitar player.

Punk band Rise Against portrayed Black Flag in the 2005 Lords of Dogtown film, and their cover of "Nervous Breakdown" is on the Lords of Dogtown soundtrack. Rise Against also does a cover of the Black Flag song "Fix Me" in the video game Tony Hawk's American Wasteland. The Black Flag song "Rise Above" also appears on the popular skateboarding video game Tony Hawk's American Wasteland as well as in an episode of Freaks and Geeks. The Black Flag song "TV Party" appears on a Futurama episode Bender Should Not Be Allowed on TV. "TV Party" also appears in the 1984 film Repo Man. An Episode of the Fox Network's Millennium entitled "Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me" features a scene in which a CGI dancing baby dressed as a devil slam dances to "My War."ReIgnition Recordings released a Black Flag cover album in 2006, Black On Black: A Tribute To Black Flag. The compilation features 15 hardcore and metalcore bands,— including Most Precious Blood, Converge, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Drowningman, and Coalesce.Black Flag influenced post-metal band Neurosis, who on their album Souls at Zero pursued a slower, sludgy direction similar to the My War album. Singer Scott Kelly said of the band: "Black Flag is one of my deepest influences in life, and especially their brutally honest message of no message at all. Their music was always just talking about where they were, right at that moment."Brodie Foster Hubbard has cited Black Flag as an influence, and when he plays punk rock versions of his songs with his band The Hired Hands (members of Night Wolf), he performs wearing only black gym shorts, in tribute to Henry Rollins. Omar Rodriguez-Lopez of The Mars Volta has claimed Black Flag as an influence, saying that "...Music in English always sounded like a novelty - very much like how music in Spanish sounds like a novelty to most people - something funny and cute to me, and then I heard Black Flag and it just completely changed my perspective on what I wanted to be doing."[citation needed]Joey Castillo, the drummer for the band Queens of the Stone Age has a Black Flag sticker on his bass drum, and has cited Black Flag as an influence.[citation needed] In 2007, The Dirty Projectors released Rise Above, their own track-for-track re-imagining of Black Flag's Damaged

Studio albums

Damaged (December 1981) My War (March 1984) Family Man (September 1984) Slip It In (December 1984) Loose Nut (May 1985) In My Head (October 1985)

Live albums

Live '84 (December 1984) Who's Got the 10½? (March 1986)Compilation albums

Everything Went Black (1983) The First Four Years (1983)Studio EPs

Six Pack (June 1981) TV Party (July 1982) The Process of Weeding Out (September 1985) Minuteflag (1986)

Rollins Band and solo releases

Rollins performing with the Rollins BandBefore Black Flag broke up in August 1986, Rollins had already toured as a solo spoken word artist. He released two solo records in 1987, Hot Animal Machine, a collaboration with guitarist Chris Haskett, and Drive by Shooting, recorded as "Henrietta Collins and the Wifebeating Childhaters"; Rollins also released his second spoken word album, Big Ugly Mouth in the same year. Along with Haskett, Rollins soon added Andrew Weiss and Sim Cain, both former members of Ginn's side-project Gone, and called the new group the Rollins Band. The band toured relentlessly,and their 1987 debut album, Life Time, was quickly followed by the outtakes and live collection Do It. The band continued to tour throughout 1988; 1989 marked the release of another Rollins Band album, Hard Volume. Another live album, Turned On, and another spoken word release, Live at McCabe's, followed in 1990.1991 saw the Rollins Band sign a distribution deal with Imago Records and appear at the Lollapalooza festival; both improved the band's presence. However, in December 1991, Rollins and his best friend Joe Cole were accosted by gunmen outside Rollins' home. Cole was murdered by a gunshot to the head, but Rollins escaped without injury. Although traumatized by Cole's death, Rollins continued to release new material; the spoken-word album Human Butt appeared in 1992 on his own record label, 2.13.61. The Rollins Band released The End of Silence, Rollins' first charting album.The following year, Rollins released a spoken-word double album, The Boxed Life. The Rollins Band embarked upon the End of Silence tour; bassist Weiss was fired towards its end and replaced by funk and jazz bassist Melvin Gibbs. According to critic Steve Huey, 1994 was Rollins' "breakout year". The Rollins Band appeared at Woodstock 94 and released Weight, which ranked on the Billboard Top 40. Rollins released Get in the Van: On the Road with Black Flag, a double-disc set of him reading from his Black Flag tour diary of the same name; he won the Grammy for Best Spoken Word Recording as a result. Rollins was named 1994's "Man of the Year" by the American men's magazine Details and became a contributing columnist to the magazine. With the increased exposure, Rollins made several appearances on American music channels MTV and VH1 around this time, and made his Hollywood film debut in 1994 in The Chase playing a police officer.In 1995, the Rollins Band's record label, Imago Records, declared itself bankrupt. Rollins began focusing on his spoken word career. He released Everything, a recording of a chapter of his book Eye Scream with free jazz backing, in 1996. He continued to appear in various films, including Heat, Johnny Mnemonic and Lost Highway. The Rollins Band signed to Dreamworks Records in 1997 and soon released Come in and Burn, but it did not receive as much critical acclaim as their previous material. Rollins continued to release spoken-word book readings, releasing Black Coffee Blues in the same year. 1998 saw Rollins released Think Tank, his first set of non-book-related spoken material in five years.By 1998, Rollins felt that the relationship with his backing band had run its course, and the line-up disbanded. He had produced a Los Angeles hard rock band called Mother Superior, and invited them to form a new incarnation of the Rollins Band. Their first album Get Some Go Again, was released two years later. The Rollins Band released several more albums, including 2001's Nice and 2003's Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three. After 2003, the band became inactive as Rollins focused on radio and television work.They are best-known for the songs "Low Self Opinion" and "Liar", which both earned heavy airplay on MTV. Though the bands music may be called punk rock, it also fuses hard rock, funk, post-punk noise, and jazz experimentalism, with Rollins shouting angry, biting self-examinations and accusations over the grind."

First edition (1987-1994)

Soon after, Rollins formed Rollins Band with Haskett, bassist Andrew Weiss, and drummer Sim Cain (Weiss and Cain had previously played with Gone, an instrumental rock group led by guitarist and Black Flag founder Greg Ginn). Live sound engineer Theo Van Rock was usually credited as a band member.Critics Ira Robbins and Regina Joskow described this line-up as a "brilliant, strong ensemble ... the band doesn't play punk (more a jazzy, thrashy, swing take on the many moods of Jimi Hendrix), but what they do together has the strengths of both. The group's loud guitar rock with a strong, inventive rhythmic clock borrows only the better attributes of metal, ensuring that noise is never a substitute for purpose."

Second edition (1994-1997)

Weiss was fired following the End of Silence tour; he was replaced by jazz and funk bassist Melvin Gibbs, who'd been highly recommended by guitarist Vernon Reid; Cain and Gibbs had also both played in different versions of guitarist Marc Ribot's band.This version of Rollins Band had some of the most overt jazz leanings of the band's history: Gibbs had begun his career with the jazz fusion group of drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Rollins' obsession with the late '60s/early '70's era of iconic trumpeter Miles Davis also shaped the band's music. In this era, Rollins Band recorded with flamethrowing free jazz saxophonist Charles Gayle, though these sessions remained unreleased for some years.The first video from 1994's Weight, the schizophrenic "Liar", was a huge hit on MTV, with Rollins sporting numerous costumes (including a cop and a nun).

The band appeared at Woodstock '94, and Rollins was a guest-host for several MTV programs, including 120 Minutes.Rollins Band signed with the then new major label Dreamworks, who released 1997's Come In And Burn The album was not as successful as Weight and, after touring for Burn, Rollins dissolved the group, citing creative stagnation.

Third edition (1997-2003)

Rollins replaced the Haskett-Gibbs-Cain lineup with the rock band Mother Superior, retaining the name Rollins Band, and released Get Some Go Again (2000) and Nice (2001). They also released a two-disc live album, The Only Way to Know for Sure. This line-up was a more straightforward hard rock group: their first album featured "Are You Ready?" a cover of a Thin Lizzy song, featuring Lizzy guitarist Scott Gorham; Rollins has often expressed fondness for Thin Lizzy and its founder, Phil Lynott.In 2003, the Rollins Band released Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three. The album features a number of guest vocalists (including Lemmy, Chuck D, Corey Taylor, Ice T, Tom Araya and others) singing Black Flag's songs.

Fourth edition (2006)

In between other commitments (His radio show Harmony In My Head, his cable/satellite TV show The Henry Rollins Show, and his spoken word tours), Rollins also reunited the Haskett-Gibbs-Cain lineup.In a blog entry on henryrollins.com, Rollins admitted, "Actually we have been practicing on and off for months now, slowly getting it together ... It’s been really cool being back in the practice room with these guys after all these years."The band opened some concerts for X, and played on the first season finale of The Henry Rollins Show on August 12, 2006. Rollins told Alan Sculley of The Daily Herald that this reunion with Haskett, Gibbs and Cain would not become long-term unless the group decided to write new songs: "Let's put it this way. I don't want to go out and hit America again without a new record, or at least a new album's worth of material. Otherwise the thing will lack legitimacy ... Miles Davis would never do that. And I'm not into a greatest-hits thing. I think a band, if you're going to be around, you should be moving forward and putting in the time and working for it, getting after the art. Otherwise you're just playing retreads. ... Imagine a tree that grows canned peaches. It's nothing I want to do."

Rollins work

Studio albums Hot Animal Machine (1987) Drive by Shooting (1987)

Spoken word

Short Walk on a Long Pier (1985) Big Ugly Mouth (1987) Sweatbox (1989) Live at McCabe's (1990) Human Butt (1992) Deep Throat (1992) The Boxed Life (1993) Get in the Van: On the Road with Black Flag (1994) Everything (1996) Black Coffee Blues (1997) Think Tank (1998) Eric the Pilot (1999) A Rollins in the Wry (2001) Live at the Westbeth Theater (2001) Talk Is Cheap Vol I (2003) Talk Is Cheap Vol II (2003) Nights Behind the Tree Line (2004) Talk Is Cheap Vol III (2004) Talk Is Cheap Vol IV (2004)

Spoken word DVDs

You Saw Me Up There (1998) Talking from the Box/Live in London (2001) Up for It (2001) Live @ Luna Park (2003) Shock & Awe (2006) Live in the Conversation Pit (2006) Henry Rollins: Uncut from NYC (2007)