Get in the Van: On the Road With Black Flag

by Henry Rollins

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 This new edition includes 40 previously unpublished black-and-white photographs from Rollins's private collection and show flyers by artist Raymond Pettibon.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.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Punk, Autobiography, Travel

303 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1994

About the author

Henry Rollins (born Henry Lawrence Garfield; often referred to simply as Rollins) is an American singer-songwriter, spoken word artist, author, actor and publisher.

After joining the short-lived Washington, D.C. band State of Alert in 1980, Rollins fronted the Californian hardcore punk band Black Flag from 1981 until 1986. Following the band's breakup, Rollins soon established the record label and publishing company 2.13.61 to release his spoken word albums, as well as forming the Rollins Band, which toured with a number of lineups until 2003 and during 2006.

Since Black Flag, Rollins has embarked on projects covering a variety of media. He has hosted numerous radio shows, such as The Henry Rollins Show and Harmony In My Head, and television shows, such as MTV's 120 Minutes and Jackass, along with roles in several films. Rollins has also campaigned for human rights in the United States, promoting gay rights in particular, and tours overseas with the United Service Organizations to entertain American troops.

Reviews

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this has been one of the hardest books that I have read in a long time. It isn't the writing that makes it hard, however, I will say that it is all taken from Henry's journal entries so the flow is rough. No, the reason why it is such a hard read is that Henry's depression, self loathing and general hatred to the world is SO palpable that you can feel it wafting off the pages. He literally gave everything he had to his music and performances that there was nothing left for himself or anything around him. You also have to keep in mind that this was the punk scene throughout the 80s. Black Flag is on the cover of magazines, Henry is considered a rockstar, and yet he lives in a shed when he is in LA. Their shows are a mass of hatred and abuse (literal, they are attacked, urine thrown at them, etc) hurtled at them, they go hungry, they sleep in their bus or squat with fans. It's insane and insanely hard to read how shitty the conditions were for a band that you absolutely love. It's even harder to read that even despite that, being in the van and on the road and miserable is the only time that Henry ever really feels whole.

Too add insult to injury, it's also hard to read the inner thoughts of a musician that you love who is so addled with loathing, depression, and violence. They aren't pretty thoughts..killing the pigs, killing the fans, killing the pigs' families, mutilation of himself and others. And as you go further in the years, it only gets worse. Henry could have made an outstanding horror novelist. Or serial killer. Whichever.

Overall, this is an incredibly painful and real portrait of Henry's life at the time. His thoughts are blunt and pretty flipping horrid at times. There is no sugar coating of anything. More like rusted barbwire coated. Don't read this expecting to see a feel good story of a man's rise to fame. It's not there. You are actually really grateful that he got out of that van by the end of it. It was an interesting ride while you were there though.

[East Bay J · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've wanted to read Get In The Van since it was published sixteen years ago. Getting around to it after all this time has proven to be a loopy experience. When I was a teen, I was all about Black Flag. I thought they were incredible. Damaged, their first LP, was hard to take in and an immediate favorite. Each chapter after that was an education. Black Flag ruled. I identified with the sum of the parts in a variety of ways. I found it frightening as hell, too. These guys were like demons to me, living in a small town in the late 80's, having no reference. Their music spoke to me and spooked me at the same time. I identified with and was intimidated by the anger and the intellect. I still listen to Black Flag a lot. Reading Get In The Van was a revisitation. A weird rewind.

Rollins' recollections of his time in the Flag are absolutely enthralling. It was difficult not to skip his leaps into the abyss at the end of many entries but the rest of it, from sitting in the shed in the Ginns' yard to touring the world really pulled me in.

In fact, I wanted to know more. Having read this and Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life, I find myself wanting very much to read a proper bio of Black Flag. Azerrad's chapter on the Flag is a solid overview but lacks substance by its very nature as an overview. Get In The Van is Rollins-centric and there is almost no reflection of what anyone else was thinking. I'm pretty fascinated by Ginn and Dukowski and there were a bunch of characters involved with Black Flag over the years. Maybe an oral history would be the way to go. That would be a killer book!

The photos in Get In The Van are great. You don't get shorted on imagery with this one, folks.

A lot of people say Rollins is/was an asshole. I can see why, given the nature of the statements and stances he's taken over the years. I just don't agree. I identify with Rollins' attitudes and reactions. I would have felt the same way on a tour. I wouldn't get enough time to myself, would get sick of everyone and would start to withdraw. I'd be disgusted with people's behavior. I'd be tired, pissed off and angry. I believe, given the nature of the life he lead at the time, his background and upbringing, he did his best. You can see him struggling right in the pages of this book, trying to figure out how to deal with the circumstances he was part of. And, y'know, this guy didn't react to the pressure by eating a bunch of drugs or blowing his head off. He started a literary career and a publishing company, another band, did some acting. I mean, I find that inspiring. That's cool as hell.

Rollins is a hero to me and this book cemented it. "Get in the van" is my new mantra. Get In The Van is great. I read it so fast I'm going to have to read it again. Lookin' forward to it.

[Bonnie G.]

Not going to do a star rating for this one. I got 20% in and remembered how much hated this historical moment. I despised the rooms full of white boys grabbing women by their hair and breasts and genitals (including me on several occasions, this is not second-hand info.), I hated watching them beat each other into unconsciousness. I hated hearing their racist and homophobic shit at EVERY show (many would not have considered themselves racist, but I saw a lot of people with "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" t-shirts stay mute when vile things were said about people of color.) Mostly I hated the agreement to pretend that anger was a reasonable substitute for talent.

There are bands I love that came out of the hardcore scene, Husker Du, Flipper, Minutemen, Bad Brains, Fugazi (though they are of a slightly different scene), but most of it was crap. I never liked Black Flag and I still don't, though I saw 3 shows (only because I had friends in bands that opened) and will say the energy, though foul and testosterone soaked, was intense and I understood what people got from being in that room. And also, Rollins is interesting and knows how to string words together. So when I saw the eBook on Hoopla I checked this out.

Rollins' "woe is me, I am an oppressed white guy, the world is against me and my buds" garbage grates even more now than it did 30 years ago. I have news for Henry. There are innocent people victimized by police every day in this country, and you and your other thrash pals are not those people. (He tells a story about his trusty roadie laughing when he saw a swastika spray-painted on the hood of an old man's car. The man shook his fist or something, and the roadie said, something like "oh he probably thinks I am a skinhead." Really, a tattooed guy with a shaved head who thinks swastikas are funny? Guess what dude, you are a skinhead!) Further note to Henry: People petitioned to get you kicked out of their neighborhoods, cops rousted you, and people kicked you out of stores because you were violent thieving miscreants, not because they didn't like thrash. Your pal Ian MacKaye and his wife Amy lived down the street from me in Arlington in the 90's. He was lovely, kept his house looking nicer that we kept ours (I will grant this was not a high bar), and though he was recording Fugazi tracks there, sometimes audibly (at reasonable times) I certainly never heard of anyone trying to get him evicted. It’s not the music, Henry, it is that you and your friends often deserved it. The amount of theft I saw committed in the name of thrash is staggering. Throw in the property damage and the assault (sexual and otherwise) I also witnessed, and that equals someone you don't want in your neighborhood. I am not saying this chronicle of a scene is without value, or that Rollins does not capture the moment very well. He does. It’s just not something I want to relive.

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

“All [of Black Flag’s] songs were abrupt and crushing. Short bursts of unbelievable intensity. I had never seen anyone play like that before. It was like they were trying to break themselves into pieces with the music. It was one of the most powerful things I’ve ever seen. There was not a second wasted. The songs were devoid of filler. The urgency of the music and the playing was unsettling. Made me wonder what planet they came from. I wanted to move there immediately.”

-Henry Rollins, on seeing the band before joining

Not really sure how to rate this thing, but for now, I’m going with a flawed but brilliant 5 stars. Rollins was really young when he wrote these journal entries, so you’ve got to wade through a fair amount of angsty bullshit, and all these cringeworthy “profound” insights that probably sound really deep to a 23 year old but not so much later on. But then you’ve also got this fascinating inside look into what was going on with Black Flag—and the punk scene in general—at that time. And it’s really fucking raw as well. I already liked Henry Rollins before reading this, but I was truly blown away by his unfiltered, brutal honesty. I found him weirdly relatable too. Reading this at 1 am when I should’ve been sleeping but couldn’t for the third night in a row, he made me feel less alone. That counts for a lot.

There were a ton of amazing pictures in this thing as well, not only photos of Rollins and the band, but also plenty of their more memorable flyers featuring Raymond Pettibon’s sick artwork. I’ve included some of them below because why not.

[Michael Jandrok · Rating 5 out of 5]

10-01-18 Lockhart TX: We will start with this. Black Flag is one of my all-time favorite bands. They distilled hardcore into something tangible at a time when punk was reinventing itself for the second or third time. Nobody is really counting. Black Flag was the first of the hardcore bands to really embrace heavy metal and see the possibilities of taking one extreme form of music and melding it with another. They were hardly the first crossover band, and they weren’t really metal in any true sense of the word, but they foretold the future.

10-03-18 Lockhart TX: “Get In The Van” is one of the more important rock ‘n’ roll documents that you will ever read. It’s basically the tour diaries of Black Flag’s lead singer, Henry Rollins, during his tenure in the band. Rollins is a very intelligent and well-spoken man. He’s also kind of a dick sometimes.

10-05-18 Austin, TX: I own two editions of “Get In The Van.” I have the difficult to find first edition AND the equally as difficult to find second edition. The second edition has the benefit of additional diary entries plus reproductions of a lot of the early show flyers drawn by Greg Ginn’s brother, Raymond Pettibon. The art itself makes owning the second edition essential, since Black Flag was itself a sort of performance art act. Either way, I have both editions, and I’m glad. So there.

10-06-18 Lockhart TX: “Get In The Van” is not a history of Black Flag. For that you will need to acquire author Stevie Chick’s sprawling book “Spray Paint the Walls.” I found a copy of that at a garage sale for 25 cents a couple of years ago. That may be the best way to get ahold of the book. Nothing is more “punk” than buying a book about punk at a garage sale.

10-08-18 Lockhart TX: Jiminy Christmas, Henry Rollins is one fucked-up dude. The entries cover the moment when he entered the band in 1981 to its dissolution in 1986. I’ll give Rollins credit, he was a meticulous observer of what was going on around him. He manages to get most of the scene down on paper, and the whole thing just reads like a one-man history of hardcore punk as it was evolving in the early-to-mid 1980s. I’ll say it like this…..if you don’t at least APPRECIATE what Black Flag was doing back in the day, then you have no business calling yourself a fan of punk rock music.

10-13-18 Lockhart TX: Henry Rollins has a bad case of self loathing, and a good portion of “Get In The Van” is Henry ranting about his various anger issues and other types of suicidal psychoses that he would get himself into a froth over. He spent most of his non-touring days living in guitarist Greg Ginn’s garden shed. This little space could not contain Rollins. He longed for the road like most people long for a breath of fresh air. Black Flag never made any money. Henry was almost always broke. Posers labeled him a “rock star” when he was eating dog food and living in a garden shed. No wonder dude was angry.

10-15-18 Cedar Park TX: Man…….there are times when I wanna slap Henry. The man can be homophobic at times, insufferably miserable at other times, and a pity party this big can get tiring time and time again. Then again……..he notes the rise of Nazi punks at hardcore shows, both in Europe and in the States. Skinheads trying to appropriate punk music is nothing new, but the level of aggressiveness and combativeness reached a nadir in the mid-’80s. That shit is STILL a problem at shows these days, and it’s infected the metal community as well.

10-18-18 Lockhart TX: There is a big difference between East Coast Hardcore and West Coast Hardcore. Black Flag was a California band through and through, though Rollins himself is from the D.C. area. The Flag took more cues from surf culture and the whole Huntington Beach scene, even as Rollins brought a D.C.-style vibe that was founded in his time spent hanging around with the Bad Brains. East Coast and New Yawk Hardcore took their cues from thrash metal and hip-hop. I don’t even know why I’m writing this. You already should know this.

10-22-18 Lockhart TX: Gawd-DAMN but Henry doesn’t like Kira Roessler. Which is a damn shame because she was the best bass player that Black Flag ever had, and I mean no disrespect to Chuck Dukowski. Kira was an actual MUSICIAN, though, and her chemistry with Greg Ginn was unmistakable. But Henry has a definite burr up his ass for Kira.

10-25-18 Lockhart TX: Rollins is really focused in this book…..on Henry Rollins. You are not going to find much here on his relationship with Greg Ginn or any other members of Black Flag beyond Chuck Dukowski. Chuck and Henry were buds, and it’s clear that Henry never really got past being the “new singer” thing even though he was around for Black Flag’s “glory days.”

10-26-18 Lockhart TX: Van Halen’s David Lee Roth was actually a fan of Black Flag. That’s not in the book, it’s just an odd little bit of music trivia that I know. FIGHT ME!!!!!!!!

10-28-18 Lockhart TX: Yeah, this is another one of those reviews where I try to copy the style of the book I’m reviewing. I have no idea if this technique really works or it’s just me being pretentious. I don’t care either way. COME AT ME, ‘BRO!!!!!!!!!!

10-30-18 Lockhart TX: Ok, maybe reading this has made me a bit aggressive. It’s an aggressive book, written by a man with anger management issues and a death wish a mile wide. Henry Rollins has since calmed down a lot. After Black Flag broke up he went on to form The Rollins Band, which saw much more commercial success than Black Flag ever did. I think the music industry finally caught up a bit. By the time Black Flag ended they had largely abandoned the structures of hardcore and added avant-garde jazz influences to the music. It was time to stop.

10-31-18 Lockhart TX: Buy the damn book if you get a chance. It’s rock history here, for Chrissakes. Black Flag never sold a ton of records, but their influence as a band stretches far and wide. Henry Rollins now does a lot of public speaking tours and the occasional book release. He is a poet, an author…...a true entrepreneur. I admire the shit out of the guy. When he speaks, he speaks truths. He is a fitness addict, an advocate for straight-edge living, though he never really come out and said that he was straight-edge. Either way, he’s around my age and I wish that I looked as good as he does. That bastard. Anyway…..”Get In The Van” is a rock history essential. Go and buy it and read it or I will write to Henry and tell him that you blew him off. He will likely show up at your door and try to beat you up. If you don’t own this book then you NEED to be beaten up. Probably. I dunno, man….lotta violence in the world. No need to beat people up. But you still need the damn book.

[Nigeyb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Get in the Van: On the Road With Black Flag is grimly compelling. First published in 1994, it consists of Henry Rollins's journal entries whilst he was lead singer of American hardcore group Black Flag from 1981 to 1986.

Most of the book chronicles long hours on the road with Black Flag: a hand to mouth lifestyle where food and accommodation were never certain, a string of violent live shows, and regularly being abused by audiences, skinheads and the police. Life in Black Flag was not for the feint hearted.

The most interesting sections are about the group's early tours of England and other European countries which are particularly unpleasant. At least The Damned and the UK Subs emerge as decent, friendly people.

Rollins must have a huge streak of masochism to have put himself through these tours. Along with the Stephen Blush book American Hardcore: A Tribal History, this makes the scene sound incredibly unpleasant and hard work. The levels of macho aggression are off the scale and there's little humour or laughs in their lives.

Henry Rollins seems quite typical of the 80s US hardcore scene. A damaged kid with a lot of anger and alienation who wanted to punish himself and everyone he came into contact with.

Still, it all makes for another fascinating on the road-type tour book

4/5

[/Fitbrah/ · Rating 3 out of 5]

What an asshole.

I like Henry. He's an inspiration to any idiot plagued by anger issues. You too can just get on the microphone and just yell your heart out and someone might notice you. I really don't feel like got what I was looking for from this book. It's less about the band Black Flag and more about Henry. He seems to just ignore everyone around him, even his bandmates. It's so strange that he spent so long with them and he has almost nothing to say about them or how the songs were made or what they mean. There's just pages upon pages of Henry being angry and fucking miserable. It seems like the whole Black Flag project was just an exercise in masochism for him. He relishes in the violence and pain he takes. Unfortunately that clashes a lot with the image he's trying to present. That he's a victim of the system or whatever. Very annoying how much he reminds me of myself when I was young.

It seems clear to me he's kinda asking for it in a lot of these stories and though he has moments of kindness he seems to not care for anyone around him except himself. You forget he's touring with the band sometimes and it feels like it's just him with random people behind him, which is strange cause from what I understand he's not even the songwriter of the songs he sings. It reminds me of the song Cabin Man from Cows. Stuck in a shed writing about how the whole world's against you. Yeaaaaah, allright buddy.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best story:

Rollins writes about how he and another guy in his band (might have been Greg Ginn) are out on the road in some godforsaken place, have no money and are starving and want to go to this Wendy's type establishment to eat. There's a salad bar there where the price is three dollars for all you can eat. Their eyes light up and they run over, stacking mound upon mound of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc 'till the plate is three feet high.

The manager comes over and kind of pokes his head over to see what these two maniacs are doing, who are shoveling in the food as fast as they possibly can.

They look up- glaring at the guy with big wads of salad dressing stuck to the ends of their mouths.

Rollins remarks something like 'when you haven't eaten in three days you get this kind of look in your eye....people leave you alone.'

Priceless!

[Greg Swallow · Rating 4 out of 5]

First off, I'm biased. I've seen Henry Rollins with and without his backing band live over 25 times. I never missed a tour until the last couple of years.

How I got to the ripe old age of 34 without reading this book is beyond me. That I never cracked the cover of this book other than to glance through it casually is the same phenomenon as never owning copies of those oh-so-many "crucial" albums that were put out in your youth -- you know, there were just so many other alternatives that you had to explore, instead of buying something that was painfully obvious and would always be around.

This book contains Henry's first (I presume) writings, and it shows. Henry Rollins isn't the greatest writer. Even today, you can read his "dispatches" for free and most of them are as mundane as Facebook posts. Furthermore, most of the abstract content in the book -- the fictional (or pseudo-philosophical) content -- displays his amateur mastery of his writing style, but in late 1985, early 1986 his writing gets a lot better.

Some of this book is downright depressing and self-righteous, but it is what it is. Mr. Rollins could have gotten laid and maybe cooled out a bit during 1984, or at least gotten over himself. The book is what it is, though: had I kept a journal in my 20s it would have read a lot like this book (save that I was never a successful musician on tour). We all go through teens/twenties angst and we all mellow with age.

What's extraordinary about this book is how it captures how little "success" meant, and how it makes the obvious point of how special Black Flag really was in the 1980s. The band's music is timeless, to those people who understand it. And how few people actually understood it is even more amazing. It's like being able to see the core of a star: Black Flag was the unreachable white-hot epicenter of the self-immolating scene that was punk rock. To the outsider, what shone from the surface was often vainly offensive, self-destructive, violent, mindless and temporary. Again, such is youth. As Black Flag burnt out, so did American punk rock. Bring on the Glam Rock. The Poisons, the Motley Crues, the Bon Jovis. The cases of cheap beer, bales of skunky weed and back seats full of pussy. Bring on the oceans of girls with "mall bangs" and long-haired guys in patched up jean jackets.

No, thank you. And to our benefit, the vacuous musical wasteland that was 1988 collapsed under its own excess, while Black Flag's influence underlaid the brief "alternative" respite (that, thankfully, soured and collapsed under its own weight in record time) in the early 90s.

People who make good music in today's "post-cool" era know what's up. Without the Flag, there would be no "small record labels." Without the DIY ethic of Black Flag, you wouldn't see small bands show up hundreds of miles from home in broken down vans at small clubs to play their hearts out in front of 150 people. So, Mr. Rollins, Mr. Ginn, et al: thank you for setting the ball in motion. I have had access to a lot of great music growing up, all because of you. And special thanks for capturing what life was like forging the path for all the good bands today in your tattered notebooks from cargo areas of Ryder trucks.

[Gabrielle (Reading Rampage) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a biased review. I’m kind of in love with Henry Rollins. He’s the man, as simple as that. I know he’s a deeply flawed human being, with a motor-mouth and a strong tendency to self-mythologize. And… I really don’t give a fuck. I still love him. His music, his spoken word, his writing. I love it all. He’s made me laugh, cry, dance and inspired me endlessly. He is not perfect, but no one is and that doesn’t make him less of a hero for me.

Now about this book. It’s not a pleasant read: these are the tour diaries of a self-loathing, angry as fuck twenty-something who lived in a shed (when he was not sleeping in a piss-soaked van) and worked tirelessly, for no money, to keep his band going on. And then said band would get chased by cops, abused by its audience and screwed over by the music industry. This is not the 50-something globe-trotting Henry he is now: this is a self-righteous, depressed twerp trying to survive an unbelievably brutal world and scribbling his first writings (the style is embryonic and amateurish) in an attempt to not go insane. There are some very insightful moments in these diaries: Henry’s anger is not unjustified or random. But his bleak outlook on everything can be really tough to stomach.

Henry’s writing got a lot better with time. He’s mellowed out a bit as he aged, and his more recent stuff is still intense, but much more nuanced, self-deprecating and full of dry humour. He has turned into a clever, articulate and engaging guy. But “Get In the Van” is as raw as it gets: it’s what was going through his head when he was young and wide-eyed, and it captures what the gritty reality of 80’s punk bands were. People idolized Black Flag, other bands wanted to be them, probably having no idea that it meant eating terrible food (when there was food at all), crashing on fan’s floors because they was no money for motel rooms, being spat on by the people you came to play for and constantly clashing with your bandmates’ egos.

This is an important piece of punk rock (and rock and roll) history. I remember reading it and suddenly my idealization of this era of punk and of the musician’s life lost a lot of its glamour. This is a fascinating, dark book. It made me respect Henry even more, for getting through and over all this crap and staying a good, positive (albeit angrily positive) man: after Black Flag, he had the Rollins Band, then started his own publication company, travelled the world on spoken-word tours, published a huge pile of books and changed a lot of people’s lives for the best. I’d like to give the audiobook version of “Get In the Van” a try, as he narrates it himself, and won a Grammy for it (of all things…).

Very highly recommended, but don’t do downers when you read this. Also, the pictures in the print version are amazing! Everyone is so damn young!

[Nate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't really take too much of Henry's self-mythologizing, but this book chronicles the work that he'll be known for forever: fronting Black Flag. Working on Greg Ginn's farm wasn't easy and Henry's story is funny, bracing, and paints a staggering picture of young men overcoming unbelievable obstacles to push their rock band out into a very hostile world. A must read for fans of 1980s American rock.

[Matthew W · Rating 2 out of 5]

Henry Rollins used to be Greg Ginn's prize white slave.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got Get in the Van: On the Road With Black Flag by Henry Rollins from my daughter. Rollins was the lead singer of hardcore punk band Black Flag and this story follows their tours from 1981 - 1986, accompanied with Rollins' thoughts on life, music, etc. I will preface my review by saying that I was unfamiliar with the band and their music. It's a life style that I've never experienced and not the music (I think) that I normally follow.

Having said that, it's a powerful story and Rollins proves himself to be a capable writer and man with many self-destructive issues. Mind you, the treatment the band puts up with in their concerts (being spit on, kicked, beaten up, etc.) would make anyone feel that way, probably. Rollins suffers continuously as the front man, the person on whom the crowd focuses. The fights, even on stage, the constant threat from the police wherever they might be performing, the living tooth to nail (sleeping in their van, equipment and belongings being stolen; it's truly amazing). The first portion pretty well follows their first tour, when Rollins is hired to be the lead man, but gradually we get more and more into his feelings and thoughts.

"The initial inception must be pure. All energy must be put to use. The end must never leave your sight. Complete destruction must be had. You must maintain drive that goes beyond obsession, beyond reason. Every movement must be in the forward direction. When in the woods, seek the clearing."

As he grows, Rollins begins also performing in spoken concerts, he begins writing books, for magazines. He has a very poetic spirit, also a very self-destructive attitude. It's often a depressing story, but at the same time, a fascinating look at the life of a touring band. Well worth reading, but take a deep breath first. (4.0 stars)

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkable

While I don’t exactly enjoy a fair amount of the Black Flag catalog, I appreciate the value of the band—both in their moral “sponsorship” of more musically pleasing (and generally more musically proficient) bands that sprung from Flag’s ground-breaking energy and dissent and the movements these inspired, and in the highly varied levels of nuance and depth and even sometimes musical brilliance of their “music”.

I only place music in quotations here because Rollins himself acknowledges that it all wasn’t really about music, except only occasionally. And you have to include Rollins’ spoken word performances in the band’s oeuvre.

Rollins’ account here is spartan and honest, taken largely from his consistent and admirably introspective diaries. It’s a “concert log” with behind the scenes highlights (which are mainly lowlights) but also glimpses and some long looks into Rollins’ state of mind. His despair, hope, desperation, triumph, anger, disillusionment and, at the end, satisfaction with taking the road less traveled is clearly and simply and often profoundly manifest. Highly recommended for fans but a must-read for anyone that considers Flag to be offensive (you are right, of course, FWIW) or of simply no consequence.

Particularly recommended for anyone presently too afraid to take a risk to do something remarkable with their life. I was more in this latter category when I began to listen to the memoirs of this malcontent, this freakish rebel, this angry, ignorant young man that took a desperate leap from the path of his consigned normal life into the wilderness. Yes, it’s not an unpopulated or entirely unfriendly wilderness, but there is great risk out there. Few have the courage to go out and never even look back in regret.

[Eithne · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first it comes off a little cringe as like some edgy teenager rambles but this is actually so relatable. I thought why quit your job for this crazy lifestyle but honestly chronic pain and being pestered nonstop with barely any time to eat or sleep is the life of the average wagie.

Also, its an interesting contrast to the conventional image of the 80s which consists of vibrant excess and overconsumption. The 80s as told here is bleak and empty and a constant fight for survival.

[RandomAnthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, I'm going with three stars here only because 2.5 isn't an option. Get In the Van features three distinct categories:

1. Rollins in the "shed" (an actual shed behind Greg Ginn's house, if I'm not mistaken, where he lives when not touring),
2. Rollins free-associating through weird poems/visual fantasies, and
3. Black Flag tour diaries.

The first and last are solid, sometimes more than solid, but the second is bad/embarrassing to the point where I skimmed most of them. I can't give an unquivocal three stars to a book with significant (although small, maybe 10%) sections I couldn't stomach. Those passages sound like the ramblings of a pissed off young person armed with a pen and notebook. Well, Rollins was one of those, I guess, but Get in the Van is the book through which he purges himself of these juvenilia. You can hear his voice develop over the book's five years; he's processing fear, emotions, and scenarios that are still new. His later work is better, sure, but Get in the Van's invaluable account of the Black Flag years is still worthwhile, especially if you skim the bad parts.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

So Henry Rollins is someone I want to spend the rest of my life with.Some think he is a complete asshole, which he is, but that does not bother me much bc it's henry fucking rollins!

Anyways if you had a childhood/teenage blah blah life similar to my very own you love Black Flag. Maybe you even have the bars tatted up on you.

Their painful coolness is what punk rock dreams are based on, but this book shows you in some instances the mundane existence of a touring punk rock band from the 80s. there are some really great stories and I think if you are a fan you will enjoy

[Callum Francis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book while staying at the Dixon house in the north east. Lots of bands stay here when they play Newcastle or Sunderland. One of our hosts Ross lent it to me. We have had a couple of days here before we move on to Glasgow. I see that Jeff Rosenstock is staying here in a couple of weeks. That’s cool, I wouldn’t listen to him but I have a lot of respect for his schtick. Short sentences are addicting. Teebay services tomorrow. We’ve got to grab Sam from the airport.

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a moment early in "Get in the Van" where Henry Rollins recalls listening to Black Flag as a fan and both loving and hating the music. Loving it because it was urgent, energetic and evocative of his own pent-up feelings of alienation and boredom. Hating it because, reflexively, the band's very do-it-yourself existence combined with the music to show the young Rollins what he was not - free and self-realized.

What follows is Rollins' account, almost all of it pulled from his own journals, of what happened when he became the vocalist for the band that he both loved and hated. And perhaps appropriately, I left the whole things feeling satisfied and sad.

The satisfaction comes from the fact that this is a damn good read, and, in a rare instance, an even better experience as an audiobook. Yep, the Grammy Rollins earned for his narration was well-deserved, as the book comes through the speakers like Rollins' best moments as a vocalist and spoken-word artist - intense, hyper-introspective, standoffish and funny.

The sadness? Probably like a lot of readers in their 30s and beyond, I picked this up in the spirit of re-visiting something. Black Flag had long since broken up when I heard my first punk record and immediately felt I was being spoken to directly. But just as I embraced the bands I was exposed to in the 90s, I wanted to hear their influences and their influences influences. That led me to the early moments of American hardcore punk, bands like Minor Threat and, of course, Black Flag. And I loved them just as much, if not more, than the generation of bands that came after.

Like a lot of 31-year old former punkers, I've moved on musically and intellectually. Despite a steadfast love for Bad Religion (still my favorite band,) I only occasionally dust off my old CDs. I think everyone goes through brief spurts of musical nostalgia.

Yet, like I said, I was hit by sadness midway through "Get in the Van." Because going through the (mis)adventures of Rollins and Black Flag - constant poverty, broken-down vans, sleeping on floors, infighting, dustups with skinheads - I could only think "Christ, that sounds miserable."

But Rollins isn't writing about misery. He's writing of the joy of the music and how it superseded all else at that time in his life. And that was when "Christ, that sounds miserable" turned into "Christ, I've gotten old." Because Rollins is talking about a moment in life most of us are thrilled to have behind us - the early 20s, where most of us were embarrassingly passionate and/or embarrassingly poor. I realized that while I was hopefully done with poverty, I was almost assuredly done with that kind of passion. And that made me sad.

That's the crux of "Get in the Van." Rollins, 20 years old and miserable despite a "straight job" that gave him money in the bank, embraced the desperation of traveling and playing in Black Flag in a way an adult couldn't embrace. There are numerous ways Rollins shows this desperation - the band's roadie advises him that dog food and white bread is a great cure for hunger, so long as you get it down before tasting it - but there are just as many mentions of the other side. Often, a story of some degrading moment is ended with "but we got to play."

In fact, that may be the only fault of "Get in the Van." It commits the ultimate punk rock sin - it lags. Rollins seems especially intent on describing the band's routine misfortune on its European tours. All the stories of being put down by terrible bands or being attacked by anti-American skinheads or getting no response from too-cool-for-school English audiences...all of it blends together into a narrative that could easily be half as long.

The real thorn in Rollins' paw is Rollins, and it makes for the best part of the book. Through Rollins' own words, we see a wide-eyed kid living the dream of singing in his favorite band turn into an alienated, surly, inward-driven young man. Is it the solitude of the road between gigs? The violent conflicts with skinheads? The lack of food, money and shelter? The creative tug-of-war between Rollins and bandmate/foil Greg Ginn? Yes.

It's a bit hard, really, to pick at the flaws of a book considering most of the words written were never intended to become a book. It would have been better, narrative-wise, to have less regarding the drag that is Bavarian touring and more on Ginn, the yin to Rollins' yang both musically and in regards to worldview. It would have been better to have had a less-abrupt end, or at the very least something insightful from the young Rollins to show a transition from his inner conflict.

We don't get that, though. "Get in the Van" is jumbled, imperfect and unbalanced. LIke any satisfying punk song.

[Alex Ankarr · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm too sentimentally attached for any kind of objective assessment. When it's true love it's always five stars.

[Mark Desrosiers · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a misanthrope and a solipsist, young Henry Rollins is the midpoint between Gene Simmons and Arthur Schopenhauer (with whom he bears more than a passing resemblance). This book chronicles his transformation from an insecure D.C. ice-cream sales associate to a self-absorbed glossolalia Cardassian. Compassion, malice, and egoism (the nascent traits that Henry calls his "Discipline, Insanity, and Exile") are vividly enacted here, everything from skinheads interrupting Henry's taking a shit to his rationale for being booze-free ("I don't want anything to disturb my signal" 10.27.85).

I prefer the early scribbling, when he was documenting a DIY scene, putting down the facts. Round about 1985, entries get squishier, longer, stoopider. Not sure about his music tastes during this era either-- Diamanda Galas, Jerry Garcia, Nick Cave... Even despite the cannabis haze, I can kinda see why Greg Ginn was ready to remove Henry from his sonic vision.

"I am infected, I a lucky, I am stricken, I am alive," the diarist says on April 17, 1985 (after his hideous backpiece was fully inked). That's where I gave up reading closely. You get less a music memoir than a Spartan punker griping and philosophizing as fast as his empty stomach and the coffee grinds between his teeth will allow. Typical of austere solipsists: Henry omits LOTS of groovy band details and trivia. Hell, you barely notice that d. boon died after Henry mentions this funeral that he skipped.

Great photos though.

[Lani · Rating 2 out of 5]

Henry Rollins is kind of an asshole. I'm not sure why I would be surprised that when he was in his early 20s he was an entitled self-centered and pompous asshole. Couldn't finish it, spent too much time rolling my eyes and convincing myself that Rollins has grown up by now.

[Ross Whelan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just bloody moaning and moaning

[Nico Merino]

Hermoso. Mi primer audiolibro y la experiencia fue extraordinaria.

Siempre había visto este libro ser mencionado por músicos cabrones como una suerte de biblia sobre las giras. Tenía que leerlo. Coincidió con que el audiolibro goza de particular fama y celebración. Y en el mismísimo youtube se encuentra la versión oficial (originalmente era un cd doble) narrada por el mismo Rollins en una interpretación formidable. Desde el preciso sentido del humor a las partes más emocionales o hasta todos esos quiebres que uno se los puede imaginar tan funcionales en papel y en esta narración adoptan una dimensión errática que funciona demasiado bien. Es muy cautivante.

Diría que la narración hace existir al libro en tres dimensiones: A) La del nerdeo. Sigue siendo una gran obra sobre Black Flag publicada por uno de los Black Flag. Están los detalles y está la sensibilidad estética. B) La la crónica -y documento histórico- de un gringo que le tocó ser partícipe de un momento cultural único y C) La del ejercicio literario en busca de musculatura donde incluso podemos olvidar esas canciones de Black Flag repetidas hasta el cansancio y escuchar esto tan solo como si fuese una ficción. No lo es, pero sus virtudes literarias y la obvia distancia con el personaje real transforman el relato en uno de personajes. Aplica igual y de cualquier forma es un gran libro.

Obligatorio escuchar. Y si se puede, leer.

[Jaz · Rating 1 out of 5]

I listened to the first of the two discs, and I stopped there because I genuinely couldn't stand any more of Rollins' self-absorbed whining. Early on in this mess he advises you that the best Black Flag record you can buy is the compilation of stuff that predates his time in the band, which is easily the most sensible thing he says in the course of all this nonsense. I think he's a TV presenter or something nowadays?

Seriously, don't waste your time and/or money.

[Killer_Wolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Never logged an audiobook before. Never thought I would…kind of feels like cheating.

But seeing as this book is virtually impossible to find for less than $75 and it’s sold out on Hank’s website the audiobook will have to do.

Interesting and depressing as hell. Henry Rollins is an odd guy to figure out but he’s a gifted orator and from what I heard a straightforward and effective writer. A must for any fan of “underground” music…as lame as that sounds.

[Tyler Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

note: read via audiobook on tape

can’t believe rollins did all of his touring with black flag while sober. i would’ve lost my mind.

this book would make even the rightest of right wing individuals want to buy a Damned tape, call cops pigs, and punch neo-Nazis in the face. loved the straightforwardness of these journal entries. felt like i was listening to war stories but instead of the backdrops of ‘Nam or Germany, it was Sacramento and Tampa. “what a trip.”

also, cool to compare the thoughts in this book to his interviews now, the dude has mellowed out a lot since touring with the flag. i guess being 60 and living west of the 405 does that sort of thing.

[Vampfiction · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sounds like a sad, lonely and violent life.

[holden · Rating 5 out of 5]

I need to remember to read more Rollins when I'm feeling alienated. I mean, I don't stop feeling alienated, but it reminds me that I'm not the only person out there that feels like this.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

God forbid if my journals I wrote in my 20s were published so I’ll give Henry some slack when it comes some of vitriol in these pages.

Was interesting time capsule of touring and releasing music pre- internet and indeed even pre- MTV.

Also anyone concerned Henry might some long term issues related to his many many headaches and concussions he suffered in years of playing live shows? It was alarming to read over and over.