Get in the Van

by Henry Rollins

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1880985233
• ISBN13: 9781880985236
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: 2.13.61 Publications
• Length: 247 Pages
• Weight: 2.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 8.9" x 11.3"

Customer Reviews

Dive Headfirst Into The Portal Of Punk Counterculture!!

This Is A Front Row Seat For A Trip Down Memory Lane By Way Of The Words Of Punk's (In My Opinion) Biggest Icon, The Legendary Henry Rollins. This Book Is Henry's Experience, His Descriptions & Views Of His Life And Time On The Road With The Baddest Punk Band Ever.. The Almighty Black Flag!! Henry Minces No Words Ever, And Lets It Rip! This Book Is A Work Of Gritty Hardcore Art That Is Soaked In Henry's Blood, Sweat, And Tears. Nothing Is Shyed Away From, Thoughts, Emotions, Opinions, And The Truths Are Are All Layed Out For The Reader To Experience. Henry Bares His Soul In Every Work Of Art He Produces, Whether Its His Music, Writings, His Spoken Word, Etcetera, So Expect No Less Than In This Piece As Well. For Myself, A Huge Flag Fanatic Its Truly A Gem And Ive Read It Three Times So Far. I Was Lucky Enough To Be A Part Of, A Time, A Culture, Of A Music And A Movement That Will Never Be Again. I Witnessed The Power Of Black Flag Quite A Few Times As A Member Of Detroit's Punk Movement Of The 80'S And Was At Their Last Show At The "Greystone Hall" In '86. Theres Never Been Anything Close To The Power, The Sweat & Grit Of Being There As Far As My Experience Afterwards Goes, But The Descriptions In This Book Takes You About As Close As You'll Ever Get To Feeling An Era That Has Long Past...Unfortunately. If You Were Not There Ya' Certainly Missed An Extremely Critical Era In Music History. In This Book, Henry, In Only A Way That He Can; Resurrects What It Was Like To Eat, Sleep, & Drink Punk Rock In It's Rawest Form.. To Live It To It's Fullest, As He Did.. And Survive It!! In The End This Work Of Art Takes You Back To A Moment In Time.. As Well It Delves Into The Personal Life Experiences Of Henry Rollins And As To What It Was Within It That Has Shaped & Shifted Him Into The Person, The Strong Man He Is Today. The Pictures And Flyer Artwork By Raymond Pettibon Are An Added Bonus & Certainly Help Bring To Life The Feel Of What Real Punk Rock Was Like, There Definitely Was No Luxury In The Hardcore Era. Henry Rollins Was Put On This Earth As An Example Of What A Hard Driving Blood & Guts Guy Can Accomplish With An "At All Costs" Attitude.. It's Certainly Paid Off For Henry In The Long Of It And It's Beginnings Are Laid Out In This Book, You'll Love It!!

Hilarious, eye-opening, and fast-moving

Rollins. The name evokes many different images and adjectives: hard-nosed, blunt, angry, alienated, repetitive (the guy harps a lot on how pissed he is at himself and the world), acerbic, and freakin' hysterical. If you've seen him do spoken word shows, you know how razor sharp his wit can be, and there's no denying that Henry Rollins is one of the great racontuers (did I spell that right?) of punk rock. Greg Ginn has of course dismissed this as bunch of egocentric and glamorized nostalgia. But I've read plenty of interviews with various Black Flag members, including Ginn himself, that lead me to conclude that the biggest jerk in Black Flag was Ginn himself. For his part, Rollins is quite complimentary of Greg Ginn for his integrity (as far as being a completely dedicated musician and performer), even if he doesn't shy away from talking about the problems that existed in that band. The bottom line is, this is a peek inside the life of the lead singer of one of the most important and notorious punk bands ever. Black Flag broke up when I was 16, and I will forever regret having missed the chance to see them live. But reading this book is definitely the closest thing I know of to actually seeing a punk show. The anecdotes about the relentless touring and countless run-ins with cops (who harassed Black Flag non-stop throughout their career) kept me glued to this book from cover to cover.

Lunatic Real Life Adventure, Part 8

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.

How to become famous the hard way

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.

amazing portrayal of life on the road, dev. of an artist

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.

A punk rock diary for your coffee table

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