The true meaning behind Black Flag’s ‘Six Pack’: “I was the cement shoes attached to their feet”
Black Flag may have helped define the hardcore punk movement in America in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, but it came at something of a cost.
Nobody ever told them it would be easy to break into the limelight with a sound as brash, abrasive and confrontational as theirs, and this was proven to be right. With distributors and record labels refusing to put their material out due to fears it might incite violence, the California group were seemingly always up against it.
Within their ranks, things weren’t without turmoil either. The band cycled through three different lead vocalists in the space of four years prior to settling on Henry Rollins, who would remain their frontman over the rest of the course of their original run as a group. Founding member Keith Morris lasted three years, and then, in rapid succession, they ousted Ron Reynes and deposed Dez Cadena, who was relegated to guitarist for the band.
While large amounts of their lyricism was directed as a violent assault on authoritarianism, the justice system and the US government, they would occasionally launch attacks on others and satirise aspects of the punk subculture that was emerging. On their debut album, Damaged, one song existed purely to poke fun at a particular trope of the scene, joking about a certain sort of man who is good for drinking large quantities of beer, and not a great deal else.
The thing is, ‘Six Pack’ is actually about someone that the band used to know very well: original frontman Keith Morris. With lines such as “$35 and a six pack to my name / Spent the rest on beer so who’s to blame / They say I’m fucked up all the time / When the dude’s a waste of time”, it seems like a terrible indictment of Morris’ drinking habits and fecklessness, but in actual fact, while they were poking fun at their former vocalist, he was ready to accept that this addiction caused him to be a liability in the band.
“Whenever there would be arguments, everyone would be pointing their finger at me, and it would be my fault,” Morris would later admit. “If we weren’t learning new songs fast enough, it was my fault. Coming to rehearsal after having drunk a six-pack of beer, maybe having snorted a couple lines of coke, that would be my fault. They made me feel like I was the cement shoes attached to their feet.”
Does he hold any grudges towards Rollins for penning these lyrics? Absolutely not. In an interview with The Quietus, Morris revealed that he still believes that Rollins was the best vocalist that Black Flag ever had, and that he would go to any lengths to defend him despite having been called out by his eventual replacement. “I’ve got the utmost respect for the man; I don’t have a bad word to say about him. I’m one of the administrators of the Black Flag Facebook page, so if they start talking shit about Henry, I’ll put them in their place. I have no problem doing that.”
Speaking about the incredible work ethic that he had, Morris is still in awe of how he managed to keep things real while presenting himself as a stern figure at the core of the band. “Hank’s a straight-up, no-bullshit guy,” Morris declared, and ‘Six Pack’ is definitive proof of that.
