Black Flag was formed in 1977. We first recorded in 1978.
I always thought that if record companies didn't understand me, fine - I'd go and do it by myself.
I really want to do a book on the history of the no-wave music scene in New York, how it extended out and formed lots of other things. It was such a great visual culture.
Punk rock and straight edge will always be married together. As far as me integrating that with wrestling, I learned a lot from punk rock.
I deliberately try not to cater for the commercial market, so I can't see myself in competition, you know, with second or third generation rock stars.
I love punk, I love a lot of British Invasion bands, I love garage bands.
I'm one of the few that comes from this vantage point: I never tried to get a record deal.
Punk rock has become another viable art form. It always was. But now it's like everyone's doing it.
Obviously spending my teenage years in music, and in popular music, I wanted to continue this career, but in a way that allows me to dictate it and create it myself as opposed to relying on third party or more corporate decision making.
I'm the first to admit that we were totally dependent on a particular place and time... for us, seeing Minor Threat at the CBGB hardcore matinee was just as necessary a force in our lives as the Treacherous Three at Club Negril or the Funky Four + One More at the Rock Lounge.
I was an artist, I was executive producer on my first album, so I've always had to manage both. I couldn't get a record deal. It wasn't by choice - I couldn't get a record deal, so I had to figure it out.
Punk-rock gave music back to people. For a long time, when I was very young, I went to go see arena rock bands. I was 16 and it was all I could get in to see, legally. And I saw Led Zeppelin and Ted Nugent and Van Halen and all that. Me and [Minor Threat and Fugazi vocalist] Ian MacKaye would go to these concerts, and it was fun.
Indie rock is just as susceptible - if not more susceptible - to all the gross things about people becoming total ass clowns in music, and only worrying about money and image. I'm not interested in being a part of that.
I'm gonna be making records anyway, even if I had to sell 'em out of the trunk of my car. I'm that kind of musician and singer.
I didn't want to be on a major label. I wanted all the attention and the noise to go away because I wanted to be something a little bit more substantial.
You don't need a record company to turn you into anything.
I signal with an independent label, Continuum. After that I put out a totally independent record, sold fourteen thousand of them from my basement, bought a house, started raising my kid, made a decent living.
I'm not so interested in being indie just for the sake of being indie.
At 13 years old, I realized I could start my own band. I could write my own song, I could record my own record. I could start my own label. I could release my own record. I could book my own shows. I could write and publish my own fanzine. I could silk-screen my own T-shirt. I could do this all myself.
I didn't want to wait around for some business entity to come around and give me money and tell me what to do. We just started releasing records as best we could.
I picked up the bass kind of postpunk-style. There's a real art to not learning how to play an instrument and being able to still play it.
I've always loved making independent music.
Because I'm not in a record deal, I don't have to operate in an album format.
You can always pound out demos and send them to record companies, but most of the successful bands I've seen are the ones that can sustain themselves.
Growing up, I played in different bands and did a lot of self-booked touring and traveling around, and my sister was driving us on tour, and we're playing for nobody and literally begging my friends that I went to high school with to buy tickets to our shows.
