Damaged (Black Flag Album) - Background

Background

Black Flag had made at least two aborted attempts to record a full-length album since the release of its first extended play Nervous Breakdown, with singers Keith Morris, Ron Reyes, and Dez Cadena; some of the Reyes sessions became the Jealous Again EP, while selections from two of many Cadena sessions became the Six Pack EP and the "Louie Louie"/"Damaged I" single; other session outtakes would later comprise the Everything Went Black double album. At the time of the recording, Cadena had moved to rhythm guitar (a position he had initially intended to take when Reyes was still in the band) and 20-year-old Washington, DC expatriate Henry Rollins had become the band's new lead singer weeks before the sessions occurred. Unlike Reyes, who had never sung in a studio before and Cadena, who had not even sung at all before joining the band, Rollins already had one recording credit to his name with the short-lived DC hardcore punk band State of Alert, who recorded No Policy, an EP released earlier that year on Dischord Records.

The band recorded their backing tracks without Rollins, who overdubbed vocals with band members Greg Ginn (guitar) and Chuck Dukowski (bass) coaching him afterward. The most complicated vocal tracks ended up being Dukowski's "What I See", which was supposed to have an improvised speech in the song's bridge but ended up having one written out by Dukowski when Rollins could not come up with anything that he was satisfied with, and "T.V. Party", which featured backing vocals from the entire band.

The album was recorded at Unicorn Studios, on Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood. The band was living and rehearsing in another part of the building that housed Unicorn Studios prior to the sessions.

Drummer Robo was wearing bracelets on his left wrist that rattled when he played; the rattling, whenever he would hit his snare drum, especially when he hit downbeats on it, became part of the sound.

The version of "Rise Above" on the album was recorded at an earlier session with Rollins and was intended purely for a single release. Another version was recorded during the album sessions but the band abandoned it & decided to include the single version instead.

The closing track, "Damaged I", is technically Rollins' first writing credit with the band. In his book Get in the Van, Rollins reports that he used to improvise the lyrics every night when the song was performed live. Two takes of the vocal were done, and the first was used.