Get in the Van: On the Road With Black Flag [Paperback]

Henry Rollins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1995

As a member of the seminal punk band Black Flag, Henry Rollins kept detailed tour diaries that form the basis of Get in the Van. Rollins's observations range from the wry to the raucous in this blistering account of a six-year career with the band - a time marked by crazed fans, vicious cops, near-starvation, substance abuse, and mind numbing all-night drives. Rollins decided to revise this edition by adding a wealth of new photographs, a new foreword, and an afterword to include some "where-are-they-now" information on the people featured in the book. This new edition includes 40 previously unpublished black-and-white photographs from Rollins's private collection and show flyers by artist Raymond Pettibon. Called "a soul-frying experience not to be undertaken by lightweights" by Wired magazine, Get in the Van perfectly embodies what one critic called the "secular gospel" of one of punk and post-punk's most respected and controversial figures.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A day-by-day journal from the journals of the ever-volatile Henry Rollins on tour from 1981 to 1986 that captures the irrationality and violence of punk specifically, and the stresses of being on the road in a rock band generally.

Product Details

• Paperback: 247 pages
• Publisher: 2 13 61 (December 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1880985241
• ISBN-13: 978-1880985243
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #318,575 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How to become famous the hard way, March 8, 2000

By 

H. Powell "hlp2" (Reynoldsburg, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Get in the Van: On the Road With Black Flag (Paperback)

Imagine living your life for nothing other than the chance to express yourself honestly in music night after night. Now, imagine you are puting your heart and soul into every song you thrash out, even though there is little chance of you ever becoming a main stream success...even though you barely have enough money to eat, you ride in a rickety van for hundreds of miles between gigs, and club owners, promoters, cops and skinheads are always screwing you over or beating you up. But you don't care: you live for the music and you do not compromise. This is exactly how Black Flag, one of the heaviest American rock bands ever, lived for six years while Henry Garfield/Rollins was at the mic. And Rollins' "Get In the Van" is his mesmerizing testimony of that magical time in the eighties that we aging punks remember so fondly...maybe a little too fondly, because many of us at the time thought the punks on stage lived the glamorous lives of their heavy metal brothers...such was not the case, as HR lucidly recollects in his trademark style. I mourn the passing of the energy and heart of the American punk scene. All of the supposedly "heavy" music of today is depressingly lame by comparison. Above all, I miss Black Flag. Fantastic book by a fascinating man.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I'm leaving a star because, April 6, 2005

By 

Carrie W. "Carrie Waterston" (Nashville, TN) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Get in the Van: On the Road With Black Flag (Paperback)

this book is so great, I'm sure I'll read another Rollins book later on which I'll want to lay that fifth star. This is the first one of his I've read, but it definitely won't be the last.

I met Rollins once, at a gig the 'pigs,' as he refers to 'em, shut down. This was in 1985, 86, I was in high school, and I remember how cool Rollins was to everybody that night.

Now I realize he was in basically utter torment at the time, which makes his demeanor all the more amazing.

Sure, I like the records. I like the stand up stuff. I lived in D.C. for years. But let me tell you this - if you're ever suffered from serious depression, this book is gonna give you nightmares. It's basically the best accounting I've ever read of what living day to day with that is like. It's like...everything can be objectively going great, in this case if you're the leader of a popular band, and you can still wake up every day and think about snuffing yourself.

It's ironic that Rollins is best known for his recorded material, when this book is so good. It almost makes you want to call him up and get him to come over, just so you can give him a hug. I'll tell you what, it must take a lot of guts to put your name on something like this and send it out into the world, for schlubs like me to review on Amazon.com.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A punk rock diary for your coffee table, May 24, 1999

By 

"[e-mail]" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Get in the Van: On the Road With Black Flag (Paperback)

Henry Rollins goes back as does this book. One interesting point is that this really isn't his first release of his "Flag Memoirs." Way back in 1986 Henry released "Hallucinations of Grandeur" on Illiterati Press. I have gone through each book to compare matching dates. Apart from one being a small, 2nd rate paperback printed on pulp papper and held together with glue and the other being a rather large, hardbound book printed on some rather expensive paper and an expanded time frame in which the story begins and ends... add a random assortment of photographs to punctaute the text with images of the narrator in a variety of situations... and with the exception of a few lines here and there, they are essentially the same book. "Get in the Van" should not be taken to be either a comprehensive history of Black Flag nor should it be construed as a complete profile on Mr. Rollins. Two singers [Chavo Pederast and Dez Cadena] had preceeded Rollins in the Flag personel and Rollins had fronted a local D.C. band called S.O.A. (State of Alert.) Incidentally enough during the S.O.A. days Henry had not yet traded in his his last name "Garfield" for his current moniker. This book chronicles Henry's tenure with Black Flag. The book starts with a first person narrative of a young man very much fixated with a band. Not fixated in the way teenage girls cover their walls with magazine photos of their favorite heart-throbs, but completely floored by the inertia one band is able to deliver with each song. Circumstance has it that our young protagonist be presented with an oppertunity, one that Henry tackles more out of desperation than jubilance. Throwing caution to the wind, Henry quits his job and moves to L.A. He had been drafted to front for his favorite band - the mighty Black Flag. From then on it is straight journal entries and reads like "Easy Rider vs. The Bad News Bears: Breaking Training." Each entry serves as a good lesson in what a young band had to do to get themselves across, not to mention feed themselves, fuel the van, load in equipment, not get hit by the beer bottles people are throwing at you, maybe get a few hours sleep and repeat the process all over again in the next town. It was this constant vigilence under such adverse conditions that honed the groups sound musically and also added to the legend. The group spans the globe, equipment breaks down, friends become enemies, the line-up changes, someone gets there nose broken while the others try to avoid getting arrested and strangers remain strangers. There is certainly a great deal of adventure to be had by some kids with some musical equipment and a van. For Black Flag, however, the Van was the norm and this is what made them so exceptional. Much to his credit the narrator makes no attempt to validate why anyone would want to live this way. Mr. Rollins often sounds confounded by it himself. Hungry, smelly and exhausted is certainly not how most people would choose to live their lives, but then again how many people honestly live and work on their own terms? If Black Flag's time among us had any lesson it would be that if you want to do it YOUR way, expect no mercy and give none in return. That was over ten years ago and it is sad to say that nothing comparable to Black Flag has surfaced since the bands sudden break-up. Perhaps their significance is granted them solely from the fact that such occurances are so damn rare. It's hard to imagine anyone reading this book and not walking away with something, regardless of your affiliations. It at least gives an account of a time before punk rock made cash registers chime in the heads of advertising and record executives, before the counter-culture became over-the-counter-culture... before it's author found a job on the side as a voice-over in adverts for Merrill Lynch and GMC Trucks.