All language subtitles for Punk (2019) - 01x03 - Part 3

[Iggy Pop]:
Previously on Punk...

[Johnny Rotten]:
Songs like "Anarchy"

are just vital to my very existence.

Everybody was very frenetic
with excitement.

[Viv Albertine]:
Punk in Britain

was aiming to be extreme.

Tra-la-la-la-la.

We wanted to have the reins
of our destiny.

John was literally the antichrist.

And then punk took off.

[Henry Rollins]: As a kid,

basically you're loading yourself up

with combustible ingredients

that will be released upon puberty,

and so around 16...

[Keith Morris]:
...we were ready to just say

"Fuck you" to everybody.

"We're going to do what we want.

We're going to play the way we want.

We're frustrated."

[Flea]:
Punk rock was a vehicle

for a vicious animal energy,

because you'd go to see a show,

it wasn't just like you were
going to see people play music.

You were going to something
that was physically dangerous.

The cops were going to be
waiting outside

with night sticks to crack your skull.

There were riots all the time.

It was insane.

[Iggy Pop]: There were guys
who liked to wear big boots

and flannel shirts,

and some of them were just
out to kick your ass

and start a fight.

There are people
who go out lookin' for it

'cause they're good at it.

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪♪]

[Flanagan]: New York.

New York City in the '70s.

[♪♪♪]

I mean, it's really hard to imagine now.

[siren wailing]

It's two different planets.

I mean, I remember the blackouts.

I remember the garbage strike.

We had, you know, mountains of garbage,

like, 10 feet high on the street.

The whole city stank, you know.

Son of Sam.

I remember all that shit,

all the craziness
of back then, you know?

With Son of Sam free to prowl the city

and kill at will,

he created in New Yorkers
a sense of feeling vulnerable.

You have to be careful.

You have to watch where you go now

and how late you stay out.

[Flanagan]:
The Lower Eastside,

there was a lot of crime,
a lot of drugs, a lot of gangs,

and that's pretty much

where the punk rock scene was happening.

The first time I went to CBGBs,

they didn't want to let me in
because I was a little kid,

but I was with my aunt,

and she was like,
"Come on, Hilly, you know,

it's my nephew,"

and he's like,
"Okay, I'll let him in."

[grumbling]..." you know,

and that was the first time
I went there, '74,

and they'd only been open
for, like, a year,

so I really did catch, like,
all of it, you know.

Debbie was playing shows at night,

and pretty much,
you know, any given night,

all the freaks were there,

whether it was Johnny Thunders,

or, you know, Wayne County,

but the first, like,
real punk band that I saw live

was the Dead Boys,

and that was nuts.

[woman]: The Dead Boys

are the best fucking rock 'n' roll band

on the east coast.

Why?

It's frantic.

It's high energy.

[background laughter]

I like it. [laughing]

How does that affect you?

How does it affect me?

I don't know.

It made me want to kill my mother once,

but I didn't do it.

Really, I didn't do it.

I wouldn't do that.

[Flanagan]: Back then,

CBGBs had rows of seats
bolted into the ground,

kind of like a movie theatre,

and Stiv had this jar of bugs

that he had hidden under his shirt,

and he came, like,
crawling out on the stage

and crawled up
to the front of the audience,

and then he, like, unscrewed this jar,

and just, like,
doused the crowd with bugs.

So all of a sudden,

you've got all these people,
like, freaking out,

diving out of their chairs
with bugs all over them,

and I just was standing
on the side of the stage

laughing my ass off.

I'm like, "That was just
fucking great," you know?

[crickets chirping]

And it was actually crickets,
it turned out,

because for, like, months after that,

when you went to CBs,
you could hear crickets.

It was, like...

It was pretty funny.

But, um, yeah, man,

that pretty much set
the wheels in motion for me.

[♪♪♪]

I started playing in a band
called the Stimulators.

We had this little gay dude on vocals,

my aunt on guitar,

and this other chick, Anne, played bass.

We also had a child on drums.
I was 12.

♪ You'll never get from me
what you so wanted... ♪

[laughter]

[♪♪♪]

♪ And now you say
that you will listen... ♪

All the first generation
of New York hardcore bands

were kind of
in the Stimulators' audience,

bands like Reagan Youth,

Cause For Alarm,

the Beastie Boys,

and the guys from Agnostic Front
met at a Stimulators show.

[♪♪♪]

Harley Flanagan, I know him from a kid.

I was at his tenth birthday party,

and I chased him around
Max's Kansas City

over that oval bar

all night long, 'til, like,
4:00 in the morning.

He was 10 years old.

Harley was so small,

when he sat down to play the drums,

his foot didn't reach the pedal,

so he used to have to stand up
and play drums.

Now, you know how hard it is
to stand up and play drums?

[♪♪♪]

He's got more talent in one finger

than I got in my whole body.

He's great. I love him.

[Flanagan]: To me, punk rock
was about being creative

with very little,

making something out of nothing,

not giving a fuck

about the rest of the world's standards,

you know, simplicity,

and just... freedom.

We played with a lot

of the first-generation hardcore bands

like Black Flag,

and, of course,
the Bad Brains, and, uh...

Yeah.

The Bad Brains, uh,
they changed everything.

Oh, shit.

These guys.

Bad Brains.

Kick it.

[♪♪♪]

♪ I make decisions
with precision ♪

♪ Lost inside
this manned collision ♪

♪ Just to see that
what is to be ♪

♪ Perfectly my fantasy ♪

[Dave Grohl]:
Still to this day

when anybody asks me the best
live band I've ever seen,

it's the Bad Brains.

♪ That in this world
we all must pay ♪

♪ Pay to write, pay to play
Pay to cum, pay to fight ♪

I still can't do it.

It's like Bruce Lee in a band.

[♪♪♪]

♪ And all in time ♪

♪ With just our minds ♪

♪ We will soon find ♪

♪ What's left behind... ♪

[Flanagan]: The motherfucker
would do a back flip

and land on the last beat of the song,

and you'd just be like,
"What the fuck?"

[♪♪♪]

(crowd screaming)

"Holy cow."

"Who are those guys?"

"What?"

"They're black?"

"Nah."

"They're from DC?"

"Get the fuck out of here."

[chuckles]

♪ America, America ♪

♪ May God thy gold refine... ♪

[Jenifer]:
Being a kid from DC,

you know, it was a real rough place,

you know, a lot of
black-on-black tension

and crime.

I'm from the Projects.

They call them the 'Jects.

You know, I've said before,

I don't think I even saw
real white people

'til I was about 17,

in my... where I was.

It's like they weren't there.

Sit back, or get up,

or do anything you want to do,
but please do it,

because we are here to do it!

[♪♪♪]

The Great Spirit made us
fearlessly inventive with rock.

That's what it's all about, really.

When I said I'm going
to make a punk song,

I said, "I'm going to make it
faster than the Ramones,

that ain't shit,"

and I said, "I'm going to put
some wild riffs

and breaks and shit in it,

and it's going to go
bam! Bam!" like a boxer.

These are the heavy right blows.

Then you've got the flurries,
"Ba-da-da-da!

Boom, bam, bam!"

and then, "Bang!"
Next time I'm gonna go,

"Bang-atta-bang-atta-bang-atta!

Bah-bah!

Blap-bang!" you know,
and it's a lot of...

It's a lot of shit.

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪♪]

I am not a musician, and I say that.

I am not a musician.

I play the bass, the drums, the guitar,

at the keyboards.

I can sing a little bit.

To me, it's all about the knack.

That's what I possess.

Never with any musical knowledge.

It's like somebody goes,

"How are you going to play
E flat, then a G?"

and you're like,

"I don't know,
shit sounds cool to me."

When I was a kid, you'd go
to the doctor's office,

they had this book "Highlight."

You color in it and shit,

but on the back, it had, like, a puzzle

where, you know, you draw
from one, to two, to three,

to four, to five,

then it's like an elephant
with a balloon

or some shit.

I look at the fretboard the same way.

You can see there's dots,

there's spaces,

and it's the lines.

So when I would make the music,

I'd be like, "Well,
I did one dot here to here,

and half this one,

and a whole one that one..."

You know, it's more like a Braille

that I was approaching
the fretboard with,

as opposed to musical knowledge,

which I think is the reason
why the Bad Brains

sort of had a unique sound, too,

because the structure
of the chord changes and stuff

are based on shapes on the fretboard

that I imagined,

as opposed to G, A, B, C,
and all that shit.

[Rollins]: The Damned
were about to come to America

for their 1979 summer tour.

They had heard that Washington, DC

has a black punk rock band,

so they said, "We want
the Bad Brains opening."

We had not seen them yet,

but we knew of their existence.

Ian MacKaye,

who is incredibly under-aged
at the time,

we make him the worst fake ID
you've ever seen.

I think I took the photo
in his mom's kitchen.

We cut it out.

His head looks like a baked potato.

It's like this bad photo,

and so many people
had to sneak into that gig,

and the Damned were amazing.

Are you kidding?

It was great,

but it was nothing
you'd never heard before.

The Bad Brains was like,
you had never heard that before,

and we became friends with them
and followed them around,

like, you know, like lost puppies.

"So are you guys going to eat lunch?

Can we watch?"

We were just their big fans.

[Ian MacKaye]: I saw
the Bad Brains/Damned show

using a fake ID.

15, 16, 17, 18, those years,

the bands I listened to were
extremely important to me,

so the idea that they would
play in my town,

and I couldn't go see them
because of some law

based on the alcohol industry,

that is an insult to music.

So we went to the 9:30 Club,
and to Dody,

and we said, "Listen, we want
to see this music.

We want to see these bands.

We will wear big Xs on our hands.

If you see anybody with this
'X' on their hand drinking,

let us know,
and we'll get 'em out for you,"

and she said, "Okay, we'll try it,"

and the 9:30 became all ages
at that point.

The 9:30 is still
all ages to this day.

[♪♪♪]

The Bad Brains,
they were the band in DC,

and I think they moved to New York

because that was, in their mind,
the next logical step

in terms of their, like, careers.

Like, they were trying to make it,

which it... fair enough,

but I remember the day
they told me they were moving.

I was gutted.

[♪♪♪]

I would talk to people,
and they would say,

"If you want to be a punk,
you've gotta move to New York,"

and I said, "That's crazy."

Like, why would it be geographic?

Why would I have to go to New York?

[Rollins]:
In a lot of major cities,

punk rock scenes
were starting to sprout up,

and it was either around a fanzine,

or two or three bands,

or a small record label,

where that was the thing

that all the moisture molecules
gravitated to,

and all of a sudden, it's raining,

and it's happening all over America

kind of at the same time.

[MacKaye]:
The scenes in America

were really recognizable.

Like, there was a regionality

that was so profound
in the early punk days.

Now, I was decidedly not interested

in what was happening in New York,

and instead, I got
right into Los Angeles.

In 1980, I was playing bass
in The Teen Idles,

and our first out-of-town gig
was at the Hong Kong

in Los Angeles.

We took the bus to L.A.,

four days on a bus.

It was the four members of the band,

and we had two roadies,
one of which was Henry.

We got on a Greyhound bus,

looking all punk rock,

hauling a hi-hat,
a snare drum, bass guitar,

and nothing else.

We were going to borrow the rest...

somehow.

Not all of this was exactly planned out.

I don't know why we brought roadies.

I think we all just
wanted to go to L.A.

[♪♪♪]

♪ Teen Idles, Teen Idles
Fuckin' bored to tears ♪

♪ Teen Idles, Teen Idles
Wait in 20 years ♪

[Rollins]: The band played
in Los Angeles

with a band called
Puke, Spit & Guts,

a bunch of local bikers

who were incredibly scary people.

I think Ian used their bass rig,

which he promptly blew up.

We were like, "Taxi!"

[♪♪♪]

[tires squealing]

I mean, they were terrifying.

They were literally terrifying,

because they were very violent,

and it was a little bit much,

but it left...

Yeah, it left an impression,
to say the least.

17.

I'll be 18 in about two weeks.

They're 17.
We're 18.

[chuckling] Yeah.
Of course. We don't lie.

We don't lie.

Well, I like
all kind of L.A. bands.

Skinheads.

Black Flag.

Yep.

Henry, our friend, our roadie,

he likes everything.

When you put some...

[whooping]

That back side.

The back side.

[MacKaye]:
So we played in L.A.,

and then I remember
just wandering around Hollywood

trying to find... punk.

Like, where was it?

We didn't know where it was,

and every time we'd see a punk,
we'd just ask him, like,

"Where do punks go?

And how can we find
Black Flag?"

I had first heard about Black Flag

reading a Slash magazine

in which they referred to Black Flag as

"some guys that you might expect

standing around in a 7-11 parking lot,"

and that really resonated with me

because my punk sensibility was always

I always dressed down,

and so when I heard about guys
who just wore regular clothes,

that was like, "Yes!"

The thing with punk rock at one point

was there were all of these rules.

What the fuck?

A bunch of rules.

Like, somebody had written
a fucking rule book.

Are you kidding?

You can't listen to this band

because their hair is down to here,

or you can't listen to them
because they're part of this,

or they're that, or...

No.

You listen to whatever
you want to listen to.

When we started playing music,
we didn't care.

We were going to play
what we wanted to play

because it's what we wanted to play,

and we didn't know any better.

We didn't know about
the punk rock rule book.

We didn't know any of that.

It was just the blind leading the blind.

The deaf trying to talk to each other

without any sign language.

[♪♪♪]

Early on in Black Flag,
we couldn't buy a gig.

It was playing in Greg's living room

in front of six people,

or eighth grade graduation party
in Hawthorne.

"Oh, these kids,

they're really going to like
Black Flag,"

and they didn't.

They were scared.

We played basements.

We played a basement party
where you rent a keg,

put it in a metal tub,

and you fill the metal tub with ice,

and then that keeps your keg chilled,

but we're playing in this basement.

It's about 120 degrees,

so all of the ice in this tub has melted

and spilled over the sides

onto the floor in front of the stage,

and I reached up,

the band hit that first note,

and I reached up to grab the mic.

Boom!

I was standing in a puddle
of this melted water,

and the room turned white.

It was just a big white flash.

I picked myself up,

and the band was still playing,

and they could care less

because of the way that we
approached the music was

we were in attack mode.

It's like you throw yourself into this

and not worry about
what's going on around you.

[Ron Reyes]: Nothing, nothing,

nothing, nothing, nothing

was as ferocious and raw

as that early Black Flag was.

Dez and I and a group of punks
from Hermosa Beach,

we would just caravan
to every Black Flag show

we could get to.

Being part of that scene was intense.

It was not Fleetwood Mac.

It was not Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

It was X, and Fear,
and the Germs, and Black Flag,

and the energy level
was elevated, you know,

far, far beyond anything
that I experienced in music

prior to that.

[Exene Cervenka]:
When you're really young,

you're going to find the most
exciting thing happening,

whether it's, you know,
some kids throwing rocks

or somebody playing music.

You're just going to find it.

[♪♪♪]

♪ Every other week
I need a new address... ♪

The L.A. punk scene,
you'd be on stage,

and when you got off stage,

you were in front of the next band,

who had been in front of you
when you were playing.

I mean, it was a very small scene.

Like, 100 people max.

♪ We're desperate ♪

♪ Get used to it ♪

♪ We're desperate ♪

[Cervenka]: We didn't have
any Internet,

no cell phones, no mass media,

no cable television,

no real anything except word of mouth

and a sense of,
"Where's the excitement?"

[Morris]: When we had it
going on here in Los Angeles,

what some would call the first wave,

which would be
the punk rock bands like X,

and the Germs, and the Gears,

and the Controllers,

the Bags,

just all great bands.

We would go and see these bands.

Each band had its own personality.

[♪♪♪]

♪ They pick on me 'cause
I really got the beat ♪

♪ Some people
give me the creeps ♪

[Alice Bag]: In Los Angeles,

almost every band had women in them.

Women, people of color, queers,

anybody who had been
shut out in the past,

anybody who felt like

"I have to wait until I reach
a certain level of proficiency,

or until I see myself
reflected."

All of a sudden, punk opened the doors,

and you were your own role model.

You weren't relegated to the role

that past music scenes had put you in.

You were no longer just the groupie,

or the girlfriend
that broke up the band.

All of a sudden, you're in the band.

So it was beautiful.

[John Doe]: Even in
the beginning of L.A. punk rock,

there were gay, straight,
black, white, brown.

It was inclusive,

because if you wanted to put up with

the bad living conditions

and poverty,

and persecution for looking weird,

and if you wanted to be
part of this club,

it's like, "Come on in."

We developed this clubhouse

for all of the punk rock kids
in the South Bay,

and it was fun.

All of the people
that gathered at the Church,

it was kind of a meeting place.

Well, I'm...
Puerto Rico.

But I like to live
♪ in America ♪

[laughter]

[Reyes]:
Penelope Spheeris, we met,

and it was just an afternoon
at the Church

doing some filming of us
just hanging around.

The Church was this place
in Hermosa Beach

that the hippies took over,

but by the time Black Flag
was rehearsing there,

the hippies were kind of moved out,

and there was a room
available downstairs,

and I managed to rent it

under the guise of just
using it as storage.

You mean, like, specifically?

Like, where I sleep?

Yeah.

Well, it's not exactly
what you would call a penthouse

or anything like that,

but this is where...

Whoo!

...this is where all
the action goes on, right?

[Reyes]: I was not
supposed to live there.

Sometimes I would wake up,

and there'd be the hippies
in the hallway,

and I could not open my door,

because they would have busted us.

The hippies would have
busted me for sure.

So I'd have to, like,
have a can where I can...

in there

to use the bathroom if I needed to.

Uh, $16 a month.

[Morris]: We'd throw a party,

and people from Venice,
and Santa Monica,

and Hollywood, and Los Angeles,

they'd all come down.

We could have a couple
of hundred people in the Church,

and it was fun.

[Reyes]: But we had a couple
of parties that, you know,

spilled out into the street.

It wasn't long

before the cops caught wind
of what was going on there.

With Black Flag

and our relationship

with the Hermosa Beach
police department,

we were constantly under scrutiny.

Their mentality became that
we were the local terrorists.

We were there for anarchy and chaos,

and we're burning stuff down,

and we're blowing stuff up,

and it was time to get out of town,

and...

that happened right about
the time I quit the band

and joined the Circle Jerks.

One, two, three, four!

[♪♪♪]

♪ I don't want to live ♪

♪ To be 34 ♪

♪ I don't want to die ♪

♪ In a nuclear war ♪

♪ Live fast ♪

♪ Die young ♪

♪ Live fast ♪

♪ Die young ♪

♪ Live fast, die young! ♪

[cheering]

Circle Jerks!

Come on, let's go!

[drummer taps kick drum]

Hey, Keith!

You're all suckers.
Ha, ha, ha.

Scream at the fuckers!

[drummer plays a rimshot]

[Flea]:
I love the Circle Jerks.

I think "Group Sex"
is an absolutely perfect album.

I mean, it's just like
song after song after song

that is, like, fast
and noisy and ferocious,

but you can sing along with every one.

All the words are memorable.

All the weird little melodies
are memorable.

All the riffs are memorable.

It's a masterpiece,
"Group Sex."

All through my childhood,

I had no interest in rock music.

I was a jazz snob.

I was a kid,

but I wanted to be
Dizzy Gillespie when I grew up.

Like, sometimes people think of it

as this sort of, like,
soft, mellow music.

I'm talking ferocious,

violent,

revolutionary music.

You know, guys going crazy.

It's fucking intense.

This isn't like a...

You know, this is the intellectual

revolutionary art form of the century,

and I had no interest in rock music.

I thought it was music for dummies.

I thought it was music

for people who cared about haircuts

more than they cared about music,

and then one night, I took acid,

and I went to a place
called the Club Lingerie,

and I saw the band Fear playing.

[distant gong rings]

When you take LSD,

all your kind of heady judgments

of how things fit together
can kind of disappear,

and you just sort of
see the spirit of things,

and they were rocking so hard,

and I was so blown away by what it was,

and at that point, I was like,

"Man, I think I love punk rock."

Here's the thing with punk.

Either you get it or you don't.

It's really simple, you know?

You get it, and you are it,

or you don't get it, and you're not it.

It's just so simple to me.

[♪♪♪]

The music I like was
when it was very aggressive

and expressed anger,

and did it in a way that the Germs

and Black Flag

and the Circle Jerks did.

That's why I made The Decline
of Western Civilization,

to kind of let people understand
what was happening back then,

because they were really
too afraid to go to shows

and figure it out for themselves.

[Flea]: One night,
I went to this party,

and I heard this music playing.

These songs have a couple of chords.

You couldn't even understand

if the singer was singing
a melody or not,

and I remember

I was standing with
the drummer of Fear, Spit Stix,

and I said, "What's that music?"

He goes,
"Oh, they're the Germs."

He said, "They couldn't play.

The singer was a creep," you know.

The next day, I went out
and got that Germs record,

and I remember, like, so vividly,

I lay down on the floor
and put on the headphones.

From the first note to the last note,

I was gone into a new place
that I'd never been before,

and everything that I'd ever...

and I love music.
I love music.

Music touched my heart.
Music always made me weep.

Music made me feel everything,

but this changed the way
that I saw music completely

for the rest of my life.

[♪♪♪]

♪ Standing in the line
we're aberrations ♪

♪ Defects
in a defect's mirror ♪

♪ And we've been here
all the time ♪

♪ Real fixations
Hidden deep in the furor ♪

♪ What we do is secret,
secret! ♪

♪ We're influential guys
for the D.C.C. ♪

♪ We can lie so perfect ♪

♪ We got a party line
to every call ♪

♪ It's a very short circuit ♪

[singing along]
What we do is secret, secret!

Says it all.

[♪♪♪]

♪ Licensed to drill
with the torch in our lives ♪

♪ Walking on shallow water ♪

♪ Progressed to the point
of no distinction ♪

♪ Dementia of a higher order ♪

♪ What we do is secret,
secret! ♪

[Don Bolles]: There's a lot
of stuff like it now,

but there wasn't really
anything like it at the time,

and that album still holds up.

I think the same qualities
of Darby's singing

that kept it from being radio-friendly

also made it so every
generation of 15-year-olds

rediscovers the Germs.

It's real, you know,

and you can't mistake it.

[McKagan]:
You instantly realized

Darby's lyrical content,

because you get this on vinyl, right,

so the lyrics were in there,

that he was a genius and a poet...

but you couldn't understand
a word he was saying.

That was kind of a new thing, too.

I'll tell you, they were a fun band,

but live,

they were kind of... messy.

They had an opportunity
to make an album,

and I think it was Darby

who asked me if I would produce it.

I didn't do much.

It was just, "Make sure
you get everything down,

and make everything
sound equal."

That was my first...
production,

and my first chance

to do something
for another band like that.

People loved the Germs back then,

and, yeah, they went out on stage

and sometimes stayed there
for five minutes and left.

The whole premise of that movement

was to do things contrary to the norm.

Hardcore was born out of
that punk rock movement,

and it is very different music.

It's very, very different.

You know, not so artsy-fartsy,

and very uncompromising,

and it's very male-oriented,
too, isn't it?

[Bag]: It started to get
very white and very male.

Like, women were relegated
to the back again,

and when hardcore came around,

it really felt like things
had to be a certain way.

Like, there was an appropriate attire.

There was an appropriate way to dance,

and the appropriate way to dance
was very jock-centered.

They started calling it hardcore punk

because it was getting more hardcore.

It was getting faster, more aggressive,

and eventually,

they just started
calling it "hardcore."

The dancing started to get
more aggressive, you know.

Pogo dancing turned into slam dancing,

and moshing,

and stage diving, and all that shit.

Stage diving, southern California.

We're the swimming pool
capital of the world.

What are you going to do?

You're going to jump
off the diving board.

That's all stage diving is.

At the time that The Decline
of Western Civilization

came out,

I think everyone was kind of
pissed off at Penelope,

because she showed a scene

that was very nihilistic and dark,

and we had just come out of a period

that was very optimistic,

and her movie was not.

But in retrospect,

I think it was actually
a really good time capsule,

because that's really
where it was going.

The poor kid in Penelope's movie

with the "X" shaved in his head,

there was one point
he was at the Starwood,

and he had a big dog chain,

and he was swinging it around his head.

That was like...

That's fucked up.

That's not just, like,
"Let's get crazy."

That's psychotic, and
"I want to hurt people."

I put a guy in the hospital
a little while back.

What happened?

I broke his nose and his jaw,

cut up his face.

They said I hit him with a chain.

I guess I did.

I was a little bit drunk.

I didn't remember.

Where's your real father?

I don't know.

Don't even know who he is.

Society stinks.

[laughing]

[Spheeris]: Well, I don't care
what society thinks.

You know what I mean?

I really don't, and that's...

If you're punk, you don't.

They got their own thing going on.

I mean, if they're
a criminal or an asshole,

to me, they're not a punk rocker.

You're just something else...

But if we're talking about
violence in the world?

Think about it.

Do you really think punk rock is violent

compared to the rest of the world?

I mean, I've seen teeth
on the floor before,

and luckily they weren't mine,

but in general,

it was a safe environment.

You know anybody who's not pissed off?

Everybody's pissed off, okay?

It's how you deal with it,

and, you know,

punks deal with it by writing lyrics,

and by hitting their instruments
really hard,

and by slamming in the pit.

It's better to express it,

like how the Germs and Black Flag

and the Circle Jerks did.

It's Black Flag.

[microphone feedback]

[Reyes]: Keith Morris
left Black Flag,

and I was like, "Yeah, why not?"

I mean, you know, we're buddies.

It's a great band.

I'm here, let's do this.

[♪♪♪]

In The Decline
of the Western Civilization,

I think they gave up trying
to find me on the stage.

I mean, it's like, "Oh, there he goes.

There he goes again.

There he goes. Where is he?

There he goes!" You know?

That's just my nature.

You know, I had to run around
and just cut loose.

[♪♪♪]

[McKagan]: My first gig ever
was the Vains,

opening for Black Flag.

Ron Reyes was the singer
of Black Flag at that point.

He came out in the crowd
and started fighting people.

Somebody threw a coin, I think,

and it hit his face, and he...

I've become really good friends
with Ron since then,

but my first impression of Ron

was he was this
terrifying dude from L.A.

[Reyes]: Halfway during
my time in Black Flag,

there was this huge influx
of very young kids

who had nothing but anxiety

and oppressive anger in them.

You can't hold that in.

It's got to come out.

So it came out,
and some people got hurt,

and then maybe some people
liked the fact

that people were getting hurt.

I went to see a Black Flag show,

and I was really appreciating the band,

and then, but every five seconds, like,

someone was being beaten,

you know, having their face kicked in

for not having the right haircut,

and I was like, "These
motherfuckers are stupid.

Fuck this."

[Reyes]: I eventually
walked off the stage.

I felt like

we could have been singing
about polka-dotted elephants,

and, you know,
it wouldn't have mattered.

I walked off saying,

"I don't want to be the background

to this violence,"

and then I came to Vancouver,

which, uh, didn't have that.

[Joey "Shithead" Keithley]:
The record companies

were in Los Angeles,
New York, or London,

and Vancouver, where the hell is that?

It's like a village in snowy Canada.

The early days of punk rock
in Vancouver,

the shows were great

because there were
so few people involved.

The scene was so small,
you maybe had 50 people,

and everybody played in a band.

We got D.O.A. started,

and it ended up being the three of us,

Chuck, Randy, and I,

and we played about six shows.

We thought, like, why go across Canada?

It's covered with snow.

There's not many people,

and it was like 3,000 miles
to get to Toronto.

You'd, like, starve to death
trying to go back and forth

between Toronto and Vancouver,

so we thought,
"Well, let's put out a record.

Like, it can be done."

We'd saved up enough money
to put out a 7-inch single,

and I just started mailing them

to New York, L.A.,
San Francisco.

Like, all over North America,

with a handwritten note

that said, like,
"Hi. We're D.O.A.

We're a punk rock band from Canada.

We'd like to come and play in your town.

Could you write me back
and see if we could get a show?"

We were part of a thing
called "Do It Yourself,"

DIY,

because we had no choice.

Word of mouth, flyers, fanzines.

There was no Internet.

We're not sitting around

waiting for anybody
to make things happen for us.

We're going to do it now.

Just fucking do it.

Don't overthink it.

We didn't know how to write
fucking songs.

We didn't know there was keys.

We didn't know any of that shit.

We just wrote a song.

We felt great, and went out
and rented a union hall,

and went and played those fucking songs.

Just write the song
and go out and play it,

if that's what you're feeling right now.

Who cares if it's got a chorus or not?

It was doing it for yourself.

I mean, the DIY thing, man,

it was kids put on the shows,

kids played in the band,
kids made the album covers.

Kids did everything.

It was beautiful.

This is...
this is our new issue.

[laughing]

We really want everyone
to go out and buy this.

It's got a really good
interview of bands

that you probably never...
Oh.

[laughing]

[Morris]: We had
what are called fanzines

from all of these different areas,

which is one way
to learn about who's cool

and who's not cool.

That was our line of communication.

We had no choice.

We couldn't afford to run an ad
in the Sunday Times

saying we're playing
a party at Gazzarri's.

I mean, the whole thing
that we're talking about,

this punk rock thing,

the fact of the matter
is it's us against them,

whether it be us against the government,

us against the police,

up against any kind
of authoritative figure.

It's gone on since that kid in the cave

picked up the fucking rock

and threw it against
the side of the cave

just to piss his parents off.

[Keithley]: So we had mailed
all these records out.

The first reply we really got back

was from the Mabuhay Gardens
in San Francisco,

which is one of the great
punk rock Meccas of all time.

We played at the Mabuhay,

and hung around on the Sunday night

because the Dead Kennedys were playing.

Of all the bands
that there were in America

in the early '80s,

they were like a sensation,

because it was like, "The Dead Kennedys!

Who could name a band
such a thing?"

And of course, the kids loved it.

[♪♪♪]

[Biafra]:
The Stooges were dangerous,

and I definitely wanted
Dead Kennedys to be dangerous.

Our first show was at Mabuhay Gardens,

and Will Shatter had given me
a little bit of speed

and a drink to kind of warm me up.

We were so nervous,

we went through
our 25-minute set in 12 minutes.

But then when I got
off stage afterwards,

I collapsed,

and my heart was about
to jump out of my chest.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,
boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,

and I figured,

"Okay, that must have been
the speed."

So no more speed before shows

ever again.

I got a postcard in the mail one day,

and it was a still
of Kennedy's brain exploding

from the Abraham Zapruder film
of the assassination in Dallas,

but grainy and in weird colors,

"If you want more,
write me back."

Okay, this could be interesting.

He wrote back to me.

You know, this was before email,

and I didn't even have a telephone,

and he went through
some portfolios of mine,

and, "That one, that one.

I want that one for my record cover,"

and one was a cross
made out of dollar bills

against a pattern
of universal product bar codes.

It wasn't attacking religion.

It was attacking our worship of money.

The record came out called,
"In God We Trust, Inc."

Since then, we've been, as Biafra says,

partners in crime.

Winston may have not have been
versed in punk very much,

but he had all this Dadaism in him,

but didn't really totally know

what to do with it,

or be inspired to make
all this stuff he'd made

until punk entered his veins.

[Smith]:
For me, the punk movement,

and punk rock in general,

it lets everyone know

that being creative is a possibility.

My point of view artistically
was very sarcastic.

People were outraged by lots of things

that were happening at the time,

such as the neutron bomb
being developed.

The days of Reagan were very grim.

He was telling
as many lies as Trump does.

I incorporated him
in lots of my photo collages

because he had a record
of all his movies

going back to the 1930s.

A lot of things I didn't have
to even change much

because he gave it to me.

Yes, sir.
I'm afraid it was me.

[Smith]: But it's something
that I've always had in me,

an outrage over injustice,

and to be able to put
a light on it through artwork

was my way of finding a voice
in the punk movement.

It kind of beat going out
and marching in the streets,

because I could reach
more people through artwork

than I could, you know,
carrying a protest sign

in Berkeley.

I've never really thought of
punk as a "movement," you know.

I think of movements
as political movements.

Eye on the prize.

It's a movement to achieve something.

What was the punk movement to achieve?

More punk?

I think that was accomplished
really, really fast.

Punk is a culture, a rebel culture,

a high-energy, inspiring culture

that gets the adrenaline
and the brain moving,

makes you want to do stuff,

even if it's just going out
and breaking things.

But it also meant we had to
stand up for ourselves,

and not play up to a bunch of goons.

Some of these people were showing up,

and surfers and whatnot,

whose idea of punk or hardcore

was to jump off the stage

and punch somebody
in the back of the head

and run.

So "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" was hatched.

What are we gonna play now?

"Nazi Punks Fuck Off."

I wasn't necessarily
against Nazis at the time.

It was more like

these people who are here
to fuck up the show

for everybody else,

they're acting like a bunch of Nazis,

so we had to say something.

One, two, three, four!

♪ Punk
ain't no religious cult ♪

♪ Punk means thinking
for yourself ♪

♪ You ain't hardcore
'cause you spike your hair ♪

♪ When a jock still lives
inside your head ♪

♪ Nazi punks, Nazi punks ♪

♪ Nazi punks, fuck off! ♪

♪ Nazi punks, Nazi punks ♪

♪ Nazi punks, fuck off! ♪

[♪♪♪]

♪ Ten guys jump one
what a man ♪

♪ You fight each other
the police state wins ♪

♪ Stab your backs
when you trash our halls ♪

♪ Trash a bank
if you've got real balls ♪

♪ You still think swastikas
look cool ♪

♪ The real Nazis
run your schools ♪

♪ They're coaches,
businessmen, and cops ♪

♪ In a real fourth Reich
you'll be the first to go ♪

♪ Nazi punks, Nazi punks
Nazi punks, fuck off! ♪

♪ Nazi punks, Nazi punks ♪

♪ Nazi punks, fuck off! ♪

[♪♪♪]

♪ You'll be the first to go
You'll be the first to go ♪

♪ You'll be the first to go
Unless you think! ♪

We debuted "Nazi Punks Fuck Off"

at 10th Street Hall,

and, yeah, I mean,

caught a lot of shit for that song.

I mean, people who actually

did have fascist and Nazi sympathies,

they came out of the closet,

and they were a little more organized.

They threatened me.

You know, death threats at home,
attacks on stage.

Somebody set dynamite off
in front of my house.

I got stabbed with a bottle
across my head once,

during the "Bleed for Me" song, no less,

but no one was going
to help the hardcore scene

from up above.

It all had to be built from below.

I think Black Flag did the most

to just take a chance
on just about anybody

inviting them to their town

and hoping the show went okay.

[Rollins]: I met Black Flag
in the spring of 1981,

when they played in New York
and Washington, DC.

We drove up to New York to see them

so we could say we saw them twice.

They come back in July.

They're not going to play
Washington, DC.

So, me being the fan,

I get in my wounded 1968 VW,

and I drive up to New York to see them.

I still have the ticket stub.

So I request a song.

I say, "Clocked In,"

it's a song about going to work,

and I look at Dez,
I look at the microphone,

and suddenly I'm standing on stage,

I have no memory of walking on stage,

and I looked at Dez,

and there's something
on my face that said,

"Give me the microphone,"

and he kind of went...

and I went, "Okay,"

and the guys in Black Flag
went, "Oh, cool,

Henry's going to sing,"

and I sang this
minute-and-a-half-long song

as best I could,

and I remember two things,

the audience going, "Aah,"

and the band going, "Huh."

I went back to DC.

Later that day, at my job,
the phone rings.

"Hey.

We're holding auditions.

Dez wants to move to rhythm guitar.

You're pretty insane.

Do you want to come up here
and audition?"

I'm 20 years old,

wearing an apron covered in ice cream.

You can have one of those jobs
and die in it 20 years later.

Bruce Springsteen will come in

and do a three-LP
concept record about you

eventually,

and that was my life as 20-year old.

It went from this to this in one day.

Live at Target,

a band from L.A. that really...

pow! pow! ...comes at ya,

Black Flag.

[♪♪♪]

All right!

[♪♪♪]

♪ Jealous cowards
try to control ♪

♪ Rise above!
We're gonna rise above! ♪

♪ They distort what we say ♪

♪ Rise above!
We're gonna rise above! ♪

♪ Try to stop what we do ♪

♪ Rise above!
We're gonna rise above! ♪

♪ When they can't
do it themselves ♪

♪ Rise above! ♪

[Rollins]: Black Flag was
a very hard band to be in.

It was never easy.

We played in every major city
and every single town,

but D.O.A.
was there before us.

Like, you want to find
the other five cities to play

in Illinois?

Call up Joe Shithead and ask him,

because he's already
got his nose broken there.

They were hardcore.

[Keithley]:
Some magazines said,

"Yeah, there's
this new style of music out.

It's hardcore.

It's, like, Black Flag,

D.O.A., Minor Threat,"
bands like that.

Bad Brains, right?

"They aren't trying to sound
like they're from New York.

They're not trying to sound
like they're from London.

It's original."

So we came up with the idea
to call an album "Hardcore '81,"

and then we did a tour
around North America

for, like, 50 shows,

and I think that put the expression

into the common vernacular.

[♪♪♪]

We'll play it for you.

[drummer beats time on drumsticks]

It's called,
"Get Out of My Life."

[♪♪♪]

♪ Where you at
you're makin' me weak ♪

♪ A knife in my back
but I'm beginning to think ♪

♪ Your new wave's shit
Your new wave's shit ♪

♪ And I'm gonna get sick
all over... you ♪

[Flanagan]: The first time

that the term was actually
used commercially

was by D.O.A.

They had a record called Hardcore '81.

I think before that

the only time you heard
the term was, like,

related to pornography, you know?

Hardcore porn.

♪ Where you at
you're makin' me weak ♪

♪ A knife in my back
but I'm beginning to think ♪

♪ Y our new wave's shit
Your new wave's shit ♪

♪ And I'm gonna get sick
all over ♪

[♪♪♪]

♪ I never never wanna... ♪

[Keithley]: The two bands

that were really
criss-crossing North America

and playing all the time

were D.O.A. and Black Flag,

so we would exchange information.

Like, you know, I'd say to Chuck,

"Okay, don't go and play
with this guy in Sacramento.

He'll rip you off,"

and Chuck would go, like,

"Oh, you should try this place,
you know,

the guy will give you 50 bucks
and somewhere to stay."

If you could get a dozen beer,
50 bucks, and somewhere to stay,

you were doing pretty good.

So we kind of this, like,
built up this circuit.

[♪♪♪]

[MacKaye]:
D.O.A., they had gone out

like some crazy Johnny Appleseed dudes,

and they had done a tour
around North America.

Dukowski in Black Flag
got numbers from them,

and then he started to book a tour

using those numbers.

Then for us, like, Minor Threat,

I would go to Chuck and say,
"Can you give me numbers?"

and we would pass out
photocopies of people's numbers,

and you have, you know, Chuck Dukowski,

Jello Biafra,

Kevin Seconds, Al Barile,

whatever, just a long list,

and then you'd just
photocopy it and hand it out.

[McKagan]: There was
the current place to play

in Sacramento,

in Portland,

in San Francisco, in L.A.,

kind of any place you wanted to go to.

We'd stay at the D.O.A. house,

and to me, as a 14-year-old kid,

these guys, really,
they took care of you,

you know, on that really base level,

and I was in a hardcore band
called The Fartz.

[MacKaye]: The tour network

was something that I would
largely lay at the feet

of D.O.A.,

and, of course, Black Flag.

Like, everyone had that template,

and we just toured, and toured,
and toured,

and it was so underground

that nobody knew it was happening.

You just did gigs.

You played everywhere,

and it just was completely

of no interest to the industry
whatsoever,

because there was no money.

That's all they really
respond to, ultimately.

You could tell

some scenes were, like,
really, um... friendly,

and that really cared,

so if somebody
got knocked down in the pit,

then somebody would help them up,

and then...

but in some other towns, they wouldn't.

They would just be like...

they would be in peril.

[♪♪♪]

[Rollins]: From '81 to '86,
when I was in the band,

punk rock was just
a violent environment,

and I think it's everything
from testosterone,

hormones, Reagan,

law enforcement, bouncers,

but it was a thing,

and you could find it
in America, Canada,

Scotland, Germany, Belgium.

We found it everywhere.

The music got more
and more and more extreme,

and I'd seen stuff in L.A.,

like at the Fleetwood,
down in Redondo Beach,

where these packs of super muscular guys

would find one person,

then just beat the crap out of him,

but it started to happen
in San Francisco too.

[Morris]: We had
the police showing up,

knocking heads around, arresting people.

We had gangs that were
associated with certain bands.

It turns into the warfare

that a lot of these people
brought along with them.

[Rollins]: Black Flag
was one of those bands

where we drew all the local skinheads,

who sometimes liked us,
but a lot of times didn't,

but they just came

'cause a lot of
punchable meat was there.

That sent me to the hospital many times,

concussions.

I would get pulled off stage and kicked,

and I'm not a tough guy.

I am not good at fighting,

but hitting a man in the face
became such a utilitarian task,

I could do it and not lose the lyric.

♪ And I'm gonna... ♪
Boop!

♪ Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-
doo-doo ♪

That was my life in Black Flag.

It made me completely feral.

Like, I was a very wild animal

who would react very quickly
to what I thought was a threat.

"Hey, man!" Pow!

"Oh.

Oh, you're a friendly.

I'm sorry, are you okay?

Oh, I'll do an interview
for your fanzine.

You want some ice?"

[Flanagan]: There was a time
in the early '80s

where hardcore shows really did
start getting pretty violent.

For a while,

they stopped having them
at CBs, you know?

Hilly just wasn't into it.

Who knew, you know?

It was just teenagers, you know, just...

doing our thing, you know?

I mean, for me, it was just a release.

[Jenifer]:
I wrote a lot of hardcore

after I stopped being a punk fan,

and it wasn't like I didn't like punk.

It's just like I grew out of it.

I used to bleed
playing Bad Brains music,

be completely out of breath.

You know what I mean?

We're the ones that's firing it up,

but it never was a fun time.

I think it was fun

maybe the first... six months.

[McKagan]: Mostly,
the music was great,

but I witnessed...

I saw this thing,

these kids coming in from the suburbs.

They'd shaved their head.

They got the mistaken information

that this was about white power,
or whatever,

and these gangs would start up,

and it came in, and it spread,

and it came in fast, and it was brutal.

At a point, to me,
punk rock was over by '82.

It was completely over,

so whatever was going to be next
rock music-wise

was on our shoulders.

[♪♪♪]

[Kathleen Hanna]:
So I went to punk shows

in Portland, Oregon,

where I went to high school,

just as, like, punk
had turned into hardcore,

and just became a bunch of guys
beating each other up.

[laughing]

I mean, it just felt like

we were supposed to, like,
eat up this music

that was so mean towards women.

I mean, everything was about
being a damaged male,

and how bad women
had injured these white men,

and blah, blah, blah,

and we were just
supposed to be, like, dancing,

and having so much fucking fun to it,

and I was just like...

realized that I had been trained.

I had been trained since I was born

to, like, just
lick that big fucking dick,

and I wasn't going to do it anymore,

and I wanted to just start talking about

what was really happening,

which was that we were, like,
starving ourselves.

We were starving for art.

We were starving for music.

We were starving
to expand punk to include us.

I mean, I'm allowed to say
stuff like "dick" and "fuck,"

'cause this is, like,
a punk documentary, right?

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪♪]