Keith Morris, the legendary vocalist for OFF!, stands as one of the grand elders atop the punk rock family tree of Los Angeles. His new memoir, a snarling page-turner titled My Damage: The Story of a Punk Rock Survivor, is culled from a lifetime of fronting multiple major acts—including Black Flag and Circle Jerks.
Brimming with stories of wild success and epic failure, the book demonstrates that Morris was never more than a few degrees of separation from almost every SoCal band worth a damn in the last 40 years. A riotous, yet humble, endeavor, My Damage rips right on by. It’s a quick read.
“It’s like listening to a Black Flag album, then listening to a Circle Jerks album, and then listening to an OFF! record,” Morris says of Damage. “It’s got that kind of pacing, which is perfect.”
To this day, both the four-bar logo of Black Flag and the skanking Circle Jerks kid with the flannel tied around his waist remain universal punk rock symbols. Morris now fronts two bands: OFF!, a punk rock supergroup of sorts, which features guitarist Dimitri Coats, bassist Steven McDonald, and drummer Mario Rubalcaba; and Flag, which features a cohort of former Black Flag players covering songs from every era of the seminal hardcore outfit’s discography. While these groups remain Morris’ most famous projects, My Damage reveals aspects of his life before, after and between the music. Readers take away a street-level, cracked-window peek into the world of L.A. hardcore from its very inception.
“Before I had taken my detour to play music, I had something else I wanted to do—and that was teach art,” Morris says, explaining that he had secured a scholarship to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. But after critiquing all the bad art created by the stoners in his high school, Morris traded insults with a teacher and his scholarship evaporated.
Pivoting away from visual art, Morris turned to music. It wasn’t long before he met guitarist Greg Ginn. The pair sowed the seeds for what would become Black Flag at a Journey concert in 1976.
From that point on, historical and hysterical connections crop up on practically every other page. On one occasion, Spinal Tap, Slayer and the Circle Jerks all opened up for The Blasters (Read: Huh?). At certain junctures Morris saw AC/DC with Bon Scott at the Whiskey and lived with Jeffrey Lee Pierce of the Gun Club. He partied in Hollywood mansions and the grimiest alleys. He appeared in Repo Man for 30 seconds, and his chiropractor played bass on the first two Elvis Costello LPs. In the ’80s, Morris crossed paths with just about every L.A. musician you’d expect—punk and otherwise. Mötley Crüe, Los Lobos, Thelonious Monster and David Lee Roth all make appearances, in various conditions.
Morris got clean 28 years ago, and much of his journey to sobriety emerges throughout the book. He never gets righteous or preachy. He just takes the time to acknowledge the ways in which he treated people like shit or fucked up someone else’s party. He maintains that he’s never relapsed, even though he threw himself back into the fray of gigging just one month after leaving the machinery of a drug-addled life.
Detailed revelations also surface about Morris’ experience working for the darker side of the business—the record companies. He doesn’t paint a wholesome picture. They used and abused him more than once.
Near the end of the book, Morris reflects on Black Flag’s ascent—explaining that the band exploded out of a vastly different Hermosa Beach. Nowadays, the town is a wasteland of jock bars, foodie hipsters, mini malls and perpetual spring-break oafs. A history mural depicts Black Flag, but features Henry Rollins instead of Morris, the band’s original singer, the one who actually grew up in Hermosa.
“They’ve destroyed the place,” Morris writes. “It’s like any beach city in Florida now.”
Keith Morris Book Signing
Nov 10, 6pm, Free
Streetlight Records, San Jose
OFF!
Nov 10, 8pm, $15-$18
The Ritz, San Jose
