DC, 1980 (SUSIE J. HORGAN)
IVOR HANSON: Henry was definitely the one in charge, it was definitely his band, he was the leader.
HENRY ROLLINS: I never had stage fright and was never nervous. I was too angry to be nervous. I’d get onstage and just explode.
MICHAEL HAMPTON: Henry was a very charismatic guy. He was five years older than the rest of us and he had a job, so he used to give us quarters to play video games at the arcade.
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IVOR HANSON: While Henry was the leader of the band, Michael, you could say, was the “musical director” of the band. He would make clear what a song needed and we would work to make that vision of the song happen.
MICHAEL HAMPTON: Henry had an amazing record collection. I learned more about music in three weeks at Henry’s house than in my entire life before that.
HENRY ROLLINS: Those SOA shows were so chaotic. The gigs were like eleven to fifteen minutes long or something. A good seven minutes of which was, “Are you ready?” “I’m ready, are you ready?” Live tapes of that band probably just sound like this wall of noise with a guy barking over it.
MICHAEL HAMPTON: We practiced for the first time in September and then by December we went into Inner Ear to record a demo.
IVOR HANSON: Henry made clear to my mom and dad that he would totally look after me (and Michael and Wendel) since we were in a band, and that’s what bands do! My dad was a bit puzzled that Henry wore a heavy chain for a belt, but Henry pointed out that it came in handy in case he was gonna get beat by, say, a marine, since Henry’s shaved head ticked off some marines since they thought he was trying to look like one of them.
STEVE HANSGEN: My initial impressions of Henry Rollins were that you didn’t want to make him mad. The first time I saw him, he was wearing a bicycle chain around his waist. I thought, Anyone who’s wearing a bicycle chain around his waist probably means business.
SIMON JACOBSEN: The writing was on the wall for SOA just prior to Henry leaving for Black Flag. In fact, when SOA played in Philadelphia and when Henry was asked to join the Los Angeles band, it was like a scene from the cartoon The Road Runner—just a beep-beep and a puff of dust. The termination of SOA was the right time. I left the band to go to school because I was just so punk I couldn’t read, Michael Hampton was becoming a very serious guitar and lick-smith that was becoming dissonant to Henry’s animalistic bowel-grinding voice, and Wendel was looking for something a little more ultranational. There was also a new drummer named Ivor whose talents would be better matched with Hampton later on.
WENDEL BLOW: When I think back to when Henry left for Black Flag, I have many mixed feelings. Surely, he made a career move that so many back then would have made in a heartbeat—Black Flag being the premier US punk band of that time. But in that same light, SOA was a force of nature that, if given the time to mature, I believe would have eclipsed Black Flag’s role and established itself as something way more powerful in its ability to deliver the much-needed messages of the day. I think that there were many sides of Henry that I just didn’t know or understand, and that his choice to leave entailed a lot more than he was willing to try to explain.
Wilson Center, DC, 1981 (MALCOLM RIVIERA)
IVOR HANSON: My dad’s last posting in the navy had us living at the Observatory. Michael asked me to be in the band, since he knew me from Georgetown Day School and the band needed a drummer. Before I agreed to join, Michael gave me a copy of the SOA record and he asked me to listen to it and tell him if I wanted to be in the band. I remember putting it on and listening to it with my twin brother and being totally convinced that I was playing the record at the wrong speed, since all the songs were way too fast.
So the next day, I told Michael I would join the band, and shortly thereafter the band showed up at the Observatory gate for the first practice. The uniformed Secret Service guard at the gate called me to tell me, “Ivor, some young men here at the gate are claiming you are in a band with them, and they are here to practice with you. Is that correct?” “Yes,” I told him, “that is correct and I’ll come and get them”—all our visitors had to be okay’d by the guards at the gate. From then on, Michael, Wendel, and Henry could come to my house unescorted.
WENDEL BLOW: In the past, I think I really made too much of all of it [SOA breaking up], but in my own defense, my relationship with Henry was one of some kind of mentorship, and, as I had believed in him, I was certainly left in a state of disillusionment when he left.
Without a band meeting or consultation, or really any honest projection of his interest in what he wanted to do with SOA (after we’d gone and replaced Simon and were hitting our next gear in the music), he pursued and found his place in Black Flag.
IVOR HANSON: We weren’t that surprised when he told us he was leaving. By that I mean that when Henry told us he was going up to New York to hang out with Black Flag, we jokingly told him that when he came back he would be in Black Flag.
I wasn’t in the band for that long—only a few months. Indeed, my first and only show with the band was its last show and it was a drag. But I think it was a bigger drag for Michael and Wendel, since, of course, SOA was much more their band than it was ever my band.
WENDEL BLOW: Our last show in Philly was a nightmare, and should never have happened. Henry knew better than to do this half-cocked, last-minute show in one of the worst neighborhoods for a punk rock show in the country. Of course, it ended in a battle, with many of us being caught in a situation that could have easily ended up with one of us getting killed . . .
I do contend, though, that of all of the things Henry has done and said, the words he so powerfully screamed in SOA may prove to be his most prophetic.
Ian MacKaye, wilson center, dc, 1983 (Jim Saah)
“All I ever wanted then—and now—Was to get the whole room singing.” —Ian MacKaye
When the Extorts broke up after playing just one show, vocalist Lyle Preslar found himself without a band. By November 1980 The Teen Idles had broken up as well, and bassist Ian MacKaye decided he wanted to sing for the next band that he and drummer Jeff Nelson were envisioning. Knowing that Preslar was a guitar player, they asked him to join the new project. He recommended asking Brian Baker, a friend of his from high school, to play bass, and barely a month later they played their first show as Minor Threat. The band would come to represent DC hardcore to the world. They had the benefit of their own label, Dischord Records, which was run by Ian and Jeff. They would be the first DC band to tour extensively. They had speed, rage, chops, and authority. The stance they took on “Straight Edge,” from their self-titled 1981 debut EP, would name and codify a way of life that at times did not sit well within the band.
