BLACK FLAG were interviewed on Nov. 27 at their 'business' home in Torrance. The business is SST Electronics, based around Greg's invention of an antenna tuner. The entire band lives and practices here, which is surprising since the place is small and cluttered with poster artwork, magazines, electronic gear and the bands equipment and personal stuff. This place is only one in a long series of homes for them: they started at the infamous Church in Hermosa, moved to the Hermosa Strand a place called the 'Worm Hole', where minors hung out and thus attracted the police and eventual running out of town by the city council. The new place was in Redondo for a while, but it was expensive so back to the Church only to get evicted, which gave good reason to have a demolition party, and now they are in Torrance.

Black Flag have toured the country extensively, the latest being the December "Creepy Crawl" tour to NY, but they have also been everywhere else, including up to Canada five times.

Al: Tell us about the name Black Flag, you didn't get that off the bug spray.
Chuck: Originally we were Panic...
Hud: Like Panic fanzine?
Chuck: That's why it stopped, too many Panics. Panic break out, Panic cut loose, Panic desperation. Black Flag--pretty much the same angle but a little deeper concept. Same basic idea. It was Ray's (Greg's brother and BF artist) idea originally, they both floated around at the same time, even at the time of Panic we wanted another band called Black Flag which would be more of a threatening thing. The name has the connotation of anarchy, negation and all that.
Dave: Opposite of White Flag which is surrender, you're taking over.
Greg: No.
Chuck: KICKING things over.
Greg: Our ambition is to be the number one punk band, that's the way a lot of bands think, unfortunately. We're not taking over anything.
Chuck: Anything established too long is sick. There's no formula to anything we do. Our songs have no formula to it, there's always a certain intensity to it and all that but it's not formulized. Each one is an approach to a separate emotion.
Greg: That's what's created problems in our band with personnel changes, people haven't wanted to change at all. We're not satisfied with recycling the same material.
Chuck: It's easier to get somewhere by 'pushing a formula', like Elton John or somebody... you keep putting out those same formula records and you get famous. You don't get famous by hitting people over the head with something new.
Greg: Like our band, the personal changes have been for the better, cause now I feel like everybody doesn't care about a music career. You'd be surprised the people who think that way. Even if they are a punk band, their main thing is to get signed to a major label or something like that.
Chuck: They're aiming what they do at that, not that they're aiming to get something out, they're aiming #1 to get a record contract, #2 to fuck 1000 girls, #3 ya know? I mean, those, however crass you want to look at it, those would be fringe benefits, a major label is a way of distributing what you want if they can be used by you and everything else that comes along the way is like eating hamburgers. Those things become people's goals, not something outside of that.
Al: What about people trying to make a living off of it?
Greg: I don't mind people making lots of money as long as long as they're doing something honest and it comes from that. It's the angle that you're coming from.
Al: What if they just want to make a living off it cause that's all they can do.
Chuck: Well that's boring, if that's all they want to do is make a living they're gonna come out with boring music, they'll sing about things they don't believe in or what's on their mind--making a living, either way it comes out either posed or boring.
Al: How do you guys afford to live here?
Chuck: We're poor. I have nothing against someone being a millionaire or poor that is not the point.
Greg: It's what goes into your music. If you mold your music to be successful rather than what you really...
Al: But you don't have to be successful to make a living, like the Alleycats who live off of their playing...
Chuck: They're a good band, they've got something they went to put out, I have to work. Here's the angle, I would much rather make my compromise going to work and come home and do something that's really me, a real outlet, then to go to work all the time and always be making compromises, you actually get some gratification...
Al: Why compromise at all...
Greg: The point is not making money or not, it's the motivation behind it.
Al: What's your motivation?
Chuck: He needs it!
Greg: Basically it's something that's turned out that way, I used to write songs by myself, I never thought I'd get a band together. I couldn't find people that wanted to play what I wanted but I still wrote songs. The motivation is to express something. We do want to get our material out as widely as possible, but we don't want to change to do that...what we try to do is create a situation that opens people's minds up to something new and possibilities of something different.
Al: Do you think they get the message?
Greg: There isn't any message.
Al: I mean the way they react to your band.
Greg: A lot of them, yeah. It works. It works for me.
Chuck: I get what I want out there. I know an awful lot of people get the same way. Real direct physical release, you net out, you go nuts and it's tied into things that are personally meaningful, like "Nervous Breakdown"--you get out there cause you got tension that's grinding away, and if you don't you kick the door off the bedroom or something. After it's better you feel a lot better.
Al: What about people smashing up the hall, if that's how they have to get it out?
Dez: They usually do that after they hear our concert has been cancelled.
Greg: People ask us why don't you get up there, you've got authority...
Chuck: We've got NO authority!
Greg: ...we don't want to get on stage and be authority figures and tell people what to do, we feel that that's wrong. We want to get up on stage to create an atmosphere where people can think for themselves. They're not always gonna do the right things.
Dez: Cops are like that, if you want to listen to them...
Chuck: We are not cops.
Greg: It would be real easy for us to get up there to control the audience so we'd have nice places to play all the time, but that contradicts our whole way of thinking. If we have to be authority figures we might as well not be there at all.
---The interview falls into the Whisky riot, which would be a re-run, but basically the point was that nothing usually happens until something fucks up. It could be doors opening late, too many people, bad promoters etc... In the case of the Whisky, the police were ripping up paid for tickets, which pissed off a lot of people. "If that happened to me, I'd start looking for bottles," says Greg. In fact the whole 'violence' scene around Black Flag (in the police's eyes), has got the cops intimidating promoters to cancel shows, and prompting the media to stay away (like ABC at the Starwood) to cover up any Police action that is out of line.
Chuck: "The risk getting hurt going to the shows is from the Police", we all know how true this is, even the people who get a bit hurt dancing don't mind as Chuck relates, "The girl that got her clothes ripped off at the Starwood, for awhile they had her up in the air, and we asked her if she was coming to the next show and she said 'Fuck Ya!' she loved it! The whole thing is real violent, and it's fun."---
Al: Robo, what do you think of all that?
Robo: Not much...
Al: Do you enjoy it all back there?
Robo: Oh yeah.
Al: Don't you want to write songs?
Robo: Ha ha, no I'm not into talking.
Dez: What about his new band the Rebozos.
Robo: That's not my idea, I had nothing to say about it.
(Charlie on drums, Brendan on marimba, horns trumpets and things and Robo as singer and MC with a girl backup singer on each side--Robo & the Rebozos)
Al: Explain Creepy Crawl?
Dez: An exercise in fear, give somebody the shakes. Say a punk with chains walks into a liquor store and...
Chuck: ...and the little oriental guy starts shaking and goes "Oh fuck, they're gonna do something, I know it".
Greg: Fear of the unknown.
Hud: You got that from Manson.
Greg: Yeah.
Hud: Do you idolize Manson or something?
Greg: No, but we feel a certain affinity for him.
Chuck: There's a lot of things that are mutual, the whole motivation behind the Sharon Tate murders.
Greg: In a way Manson was a lot stronger than us in certain respects, he wanted to murder, tried to murder Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys for stealing his song and instead he got Sharon Tate, we're not quite that severe!
Al: Why aren't you?
Greg: Sometimes I wonder, really, when people aren't just content to steal but have to lie about it.
Al: I thought we were thru with that!
Chuck: It's fun now. They used to go around, Manson and his family, and go into a middle class home and walk into the room and the family would be watchin' TV and they'd march around and they'd call that a crawl.
Hud: Creepy Crawls, but I thought he did that at night?
Greg: Yeah.
Al: And you're gonna creepy crawl the whole country...
Greg: Yeah.
Chuck: We've got the cops crawled, that's for sure or they wouldn't do this to us, it brings their stupid stuff out and we can make them fools in public--and then we'll tie their balls.
Greg: We don't consider ourselves musicians, it goes beyond what we're doing up there on stage, we want to make people think.
Dave: Like Polliwog Park.
Greg: Yeah, people in all these bands said "Why are you playing down there, it's stupid, you'll be playing to all these hippies", it would be fun, it will be great, all these people say "Why?", that's why we like to play out of town, you've gotta threaten people sometimes. Sometimes it's more effective than somebody who already accepts what you're doing.
Chuck: It's not as stimulating to play to a total receptive, audience. You don't get the response. You get wild stuff happening - people throw stuff and yell. The first times we played and people liked us I didn't know what to do!