Interview Flag

Artiest: Flag

Geïnterviewden: Keith, Chuck

Interview afgenomen op: Groezrock

Label: SST

Ware pioniers van de hardcore punk met een onverwachte come back. Daar houden we zeker van. En dat mag Black Flag dan ook geweten hebben op Groezrock. Hier was de band onder de naam Flag van plan de Etnies stage zeker in rep en roer te zetten. En zo zou het dan ook geschieden. Maar hoe komen de heren nu net bij deze plotse terugkeer? Toch even polsen hoe dat zat.

So Black Flag is considered to be one of the pioneer hardcore punk bands. Did you expect this to grow out such a succes?

Chuck: It was my goal actually.
Keith: Yes, and his parents were very upset with it in the beginning. They said that it wasn't a good goal to achieve in life. There were better things to do with your life.
Chuck: Yeah, I could have made killing machines.
Keith: Or rob banks for example. When we were doing it, we were just doing it because we didn't know any better actually.

A lot of people advised not to go through with it, still you guys did the opposite and went on with the plans. How did that happen?

Keith: Some of us didn't stick around for very long. We had a few line up changes. I was even there for long enough to see 4 different bass players, 2 different drummers and I saw the vocalist exit the band.
Chuck: I just wanted to do what we did and I was helping to do it. When I saw Keith with such charisma and was able to have a good group to work with, I set my mind and energy on it to work out. To stick with it.
Keith: I wasn't around long enough actually to reap any of the rewards. I didn't experience the rock 'n roll superstardome, the big lights and stadiums, the fireworks. The strippers and the drugdealers.

So I can hear you guys had your fair share of the hard side of rock 'n roll. What would you consider to be the biggest differences between now and then?

Keith: The computer. No, on the road we've grown older so we realised that we don't have to do it the way that we did it before. Like driving for 16 hours straight and then arriving in a club with 6 people there.

Talking about just 6 people, how do you give the people what they wanted? Because that few people still need to get a good show, as well as you play for a thousand.

Chuck: I know for me, when you are playing your music, and you feel the feeling, you just give the energy. At that point it doesn't really matter about the people, except that they're there. Once they are there you interact with them. But the music demands the emotional engagement and part of that is the energy.

Do you still play for the audience in that case, or just for yourself because you love it so much?

Chuck: Both, it feels like you're playing for the crowd and that's important. When I'm in front of a crowd I'm playing for that crowd but either way we're giving the same energy. So in terms of engagement to the music I would say both.

And why exactly did you decide to regroup and play some shows again?

Chuck: Like about two years ago now, in august. So actually a little less than two years ago, some mutual friends, a group called No Age, they put Keith and me together. So we had done a show with them, a free show they did for their fans out in Los Angeles in a place called Mc Arthur Parc. Nobody knew we were going to do it but they brought us up when they were done and we did like 6 or 8 songs and it was super fun. I didn't see Keith for so long, we didn't even hung out together or something since 1980 or 1979, and it was ragin'.
Keith: Yeah, we got up and played for about 4000 kids and just the energy, they just went about completely apeshit.
Chuck: The feeling was with us too, like we said before, it was there and we were feeling it.
Keith: And it was a young crowd too, that was the amazing thing. We even had a guy that was crowdsurfing in his weelchair. We just saw this and it was pretty amazing, it happened to us a few times before in the early times but not very often because the rooms were always smaller.

So after this show it was pretty abvious you still had it in you, how did everything went on from that moment?

Keith: Well, Chuck was contacted by a friend of ours, his name is Gary Tovar. Who was responsible for Goldenvoice, who is the underground indie promotor in Los Angeles, now responsible for Coachella. He was doing this 30 year anniversary and Chuck was invited to give a speech. But Chuck didn't want to give a speech, Chuck just wanted to play bass. You know, leave the speeches to the speechgivers. The talkers and the politicians. So we decided to play there and it was kind of the same thing all over again. About 4000 people and everyone just went completely fucking bananas.
Chuck: Yeah, I wanted to honour Goldenvoice because they helped us so now we helped them. They provided us the name, Goldenvoice. And now  30 years later I said that I didn't want to talk and told Gary about what we did for No Age and said we were going to do the same thing for him. So I called up Bill from the Descendents because they were on the show as well. I asked if he and Stephen wanted to do this with me and Keith and that way we could do it. It was rippin', just awesome. It was really high energy on stage, it was of the hook like Keith said. So we decided to just do it again when everybody got a break in their schedule. And here we are.

Ok, to round things up. You're touring again, does that mean we can also expect some new material, like an album in the near future?

Keith: That's still a big question mark actually.
Chuck: We're not working on any of that now. That wasn't in the plan up to now.
Keith: We will get to that when we get to it, it's an open ended big giant question.
Chuck: Yes, I haven't really thought about it yet. It would be good though to just get together with the people and jam out some stuff, to honour what we build. Just because it's fun jammin' with them so who knows.

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