Customer Reviews

Get in the Van: On the Road With Black Flag

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Henry Rollins, Get in the Van (2.13.61, 1994)

Get in the Van is Rollins' tour journal from his five years as the lead vocalist of Black Flag. That it is a compendium of journal entries should tell you a good deal of what you need to know to figure out if you're going to like this book or not; there's a good deal of repetition. It's the nature of the beast. If that's not your bag, you'll want to pass here.

That said, Get in the Van is interesting for all manner of reasons, especially for those of us who actually grew up listening to Black Flag. If you're in a more fringe area of the music industry, a lot of this will probably sound familiar to you, if on a larger scale (most underground musicians probably don't embark on extensive tours outside their home country, though as Henry points out, people are pretty much the same everywhere). If you don't, you'll get a lot of insight into what it is to be a "rock star"-- people ripping you off, mishaps on the road, jerks everywhere you look. It ain't easy being at the top (and Black Flag may have ruled the roost where hardcore punk was concerned, but in the greater scheme of things, to call the members of Black Flag rock stars-- putting them on the same level of success as bands who sold out arenas-- the very idea is something of a joke, as Rollins sourly points out a number of times).

The best thing about the book, though, is watching Henry's psyche and contrasting it with what we see on the page. Henry Rollins was a mass of contradictions during the turbulent Black Flag years. He often complains here that he feels detached from those around him, including the other members of the band, and that he feels less and less human. The truly sad bit is how human it all is.

Those not yet familiar with Rollins' writings would likely be better off starting with one of his other books (I've always been very partial to Bang!, myself) or, even better, one of the spoken word cassettes from 2.13.61. But once you've found yourself a convert to Rollins' particular brand of dark, heavy humor, Get in the Van is a fine chronicle. *** ½

From Haagen Dazs manager to touring the hard way in a crowded van as the lead singer of independent punk rockers Black Flag for the exquisite privilege of getting spit on and attacked by skinheads, and being ripped off by sleazy, hole-in-the-wall club owners, it's all here in all its depressing, angst filled, self-searching glory. 'Get in the Van' is not only an insider's look into the machinations of independent fringe level music labels in the early '80s and the state of rock fanhood in the same era, but a chronological history of Rollins's psyche slowly and painfully discovering the artist in himself. Rollins's life is an alternately horrific and inspiring modern day American success story earned the hard way with all integrity intact.

Henry Rollins is a interesting character, Very Anti-Social it seems at times, This book gives you the insight into the Hardcore Punk Lifestyle, being on the road, the violence involved, Including some cool pics, and info, especially on my favorite(way better than Black Flag IMHO) The Misfits. The Famous Motley Crue Story is in here.

Rollins' anecdotes of life on the road with Black Flag and back in "The Shed" are fascinating, but for me the most fascinating parts of Get in the Van are about Rollins' thought development and epiphanies that lead to his convictions about his artistic direction. It is fascinating to compare the "form" of Get in the Van, which is pretty much the memoir, to the form(s) of song lyrics; since Rollins is a poet/lyricist, the relations between raw notebook entries, memoirs, poems and song lyrics are intriguing. Another interesting aspect of Get in the Van is R's continuing struggle to articulate who he is in relation to other people--audience and band members, society, etc., and especially how he tried to deal with his ambivalence toward people. On another level, the book is about survival (Rollins' and others')and death (esp. his struggle to come to terms with the death of a good friend, who incidentally encouraged Rollins to begin keeping records of his life with Black Flag in the first place). The book also has a heavy amount of commentary on the state of America in the late 20th Century--where the creative vibrancy is, where the stagnant zombie gunk is--esp. as refracted through the eyes of someone living the hard core punk life. In the back of the book, Rollins includes a statement to the reader about what can/should be done to live a creative and courageous life, which for me dispels any doomsday soothsayers' assertions that the future looks bleak for anyone in America who aspires to be a creative artist.

So the second edition to Get In The Van adds more writing and photos and gig posters in it. There are some passages written by Henry in 2004 coz that's the year the second edition came out. By the way, this book is just great! A fair price for second-hand, plus it's in really well condition for a second-hand too. Great purchase, delivery time was superb for international.

Get In the Van is a collection of journal entries, pictures, fan art, and show posters from Henry Rollin's time as lead singer of hardcore punk band Black Flag from 1981 to 1986.

In my opinion, Henry Rollins is not a brilliant man, but he can teach you something about motivation, the importance of working hard, and the power of words if you are willing to learn. I would love the opportunity to attend one of his spoken word performances or maybe even get the chance to have a conversation with him. Regrettably, I will never see a Black Flag concert.

As for this particular compilation, do not expect a comprehensive history of hardcore punk from this book, but rather an interpretation of the scene through the eyes of a young and angry Henry. For a complete perspective on the birth and evolution of hardcore, I highly recommend American Hardcore: A Tribal History by Stephen Blush.

Rollin's writing style is direct and to the point. He avoids fluff and vents his rage towards fans who accused him of selling out, skinheads who showed up at gigs for the sole purpose of irritating the band, and even fellow members of Black Flag. This book sheds light on the day to day psyche and life of Rollins. As a reader, you should expect dark, raw, and heavy doses from an intense man living through a turbulent, demanding lifestyle in which he was constantly touring and on the road.

This is Henry's diaries from his tours with Black Flag. It follows him across the world through struggles with bandmates, fans and promoters. This is a great read and can't help but to motivate.