That became clear early in our conversation last week, when I asked the longtime counterculture photographer if he had any new work to promote since his 2014 collection of essays and photography, My Rules.

Glen E. Friedman (by Brett Ratner)

“F**k that,” Friedman said. “Unless you’ve read every word in the book already, don’t come to me and ask me what’s next.”

Now 53, with a photography career spanning almost 40 years, Friedman has spent most of his life embedded in subculture, and he’s just as uncompromising as many of the people he shoots.

Friedman photographed the SoCal skateboarders who inspired the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys. Working with Def Jam’s Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin, he shot now-famous images of Run-DMC, Ice-T, Public Enemy and The Beastie Boys in their early years. He’s published a book of Fugazi images, and he was around during the peak years of D.C.’s hardcore scene.

Ex-Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins — one of Friedman’s favorite subjects — has said the photographer “was there at the beginning of so much cool stuff in so many different areas, it’s not funny.”

Sunday, Friedman returns to D.C. for a conversation with punk-rock veteran Alec MacKaye at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, organized by Highway magazine. In advance of their talk, Friedman chatted with me about his frustration with the music industry, his loyalty to radicalism and a subject that seemed to put him on the defensive: the lack of women in his photographs.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. 

Bandwidth: Do people pressure you to be more prolific?

Glen E. Friedman: I couldn’t imagine being more prolific than I am.

Run-DMC (by Glen E. Friedman)

But do people — like, say, an agent or manager — pressure you to put out more work?

No, no, no. I’ve never had an agent or a manager in my life. I’ve been doing this since I was 14. I learned all the business myself. So people might want to see more, but I don’t want to water down the archive. I feel like I’ve been able to do some pretty incredible stuff and, why ruin the credibility by shooting s**t?

Are you still out there shooting actively?

No, not at all.

When did you stop?

I didn’t stop. But it sounds like you mean someone who’s going to shows in a fairly regularly way, and I don’t do that. I still shoot pictures. I have an 8-year-old and I shoot pictures of him with film every couple of months. If something inspires me, I’ll shoot, but there are so many people shooting so much nowadays. It seems as though they all miss the correct moments, and I just kind of sit back and laugh and say “whatever,” you know?

“I’m not loyal to any overall scene. What I am loyal to is radical behavior and people wanting to change the world and make it a better place.”

What bands have inspired you recently?

I’m mostly just inspired by all the old music that I listen to. In the last year or two, I really liked seeing that Flag reunion — that was great. I love those guys. I like The Evens, of course. I call The Evens adult punk rock. I like Chain & the Gang. The usual suspects of old punks. There’s hip-hop records out there that I like, too. If I was super inspired, I would remember [their names], and then I would maybe see if they’ve got good imagery, and if they don’t, maybe give someone a call.

But everyone nowadays is into having managers and people who handle them, and no one just deals with stuff on their own. I’m really turned off by all that. I’ve never really done work with an artist if it wasn’t the artist who came directly to me. All that f*****g other middle level — I mean, some people need it, but I don’t f**k with that.

“My Rules,” the 2014 photography collection by Glen E. Friedman

You seem pretty loyal to the punk scene. I was reading an interview with you where you’re like, “Yup, still listening to Fugazi.”

Look, I mean, I’m 53 now, and I’m not out there digging in the crates like when I was a kid, looking for the hottest, newest stuff. And nowadays everything’s just f*****g spoonfed to everyone on a website.

I don’t think it’s [loyalty] — I’m loyal to my friends, but I’m not loyal to any subcultures, necessarily, unless they deserve that loyalty. What I’m inspired by, I like to share with other people. It’s not blind loyalty. There are plenty of s****y bands and plenty of s****y everything, and I’m not loyal to any overall scene. What I am loyal to is radical behavior and people wanting to change the world and make it a better place.

So is that what you saw in D.C.’s punk scene, and in Fugazi? People who were trying to improve the world?

I first started coming to D.C. in 1982. I’d been there before, skateboarding, many years before, but I came down to see Minor Threat. I became very close friends with a lot of guys down there. It was a very unique scene, it was very intense. But they also had a sense of humor.

But really, it was the music that inspired me. It wasn’t all the social s**t necessarily that was going on within the scene, it was just the music was inspiring. It was f*****g great, and kicked my ass. As a young kid, those things are vital to your life.

Fugazi, the level of integrity that they exhibited was totally inspiring and something that I lived by, myself. And the emotion that was pouring out of what they were doing was phenomenal… So I started taking pictures of them every so often. I didn’t bring my camera every time. But there came a point of seeing Fugazi shows where it was like, “F**k! I should have had my camera tonight. F**k! I missed some great moments.” Even though there was really no place to get those photographs published, because no one was interested in putting out pictures of Fugazi [at the time].

Have you always stuck to subjects you identify with? Have you ever taken a photo of someone you had absolutely no interest in shooting?

I always identify with my subjects. There are subjects that I’ve shot that I have not so much interest in. But they’re associated with someone who I do respect. Like, if Rick Rubin asked me to photograph a particular band for him, and he was able to express to me why it meant so much to him that I did it, [I’d do it]… Other than [for] the financial reward, because that’s usually the last thing that comes into play. It’s really about what we’re all feeling when we get together and talk about the artist and their art.

But I have to say those are my least favorite things to do. When I’m into it, the work is usually better.

Tony Alva (by Glen E. Friedman)

You’ve taken a lot of photos of young, tough dudes. Do you ever find that they’re pretending to be someone else in front of the camera?

Very often they aren’t as rough and tough or as rebellious as they appear. But to be honest, that’s how I see them, and how their music portrays them, and how I idealize them before I know them. So even if someone isn’t the toughest guy in real life, if that’s how he’s portrayed in his own work… that’s what I’m going to do. I don’t consider myself a documentarian. I’m trying to inspire people. I’m not just trying to show people what’s there. I’m trying to f*****g wake them up.

“I don’t think the word ‘integrity’ is even in the vernacular anymore. People don’t get it. They consider it a success if someone comes to them to sponsor their tour or if they have some brand behind them.”

What female counterculture icons have you photographed? I know that you recently shot Pussy Riot. Anyone else?

I’d say there’s only a few. And it’s not by any choice. I’m not sexist at all in that way, or in any way, I would hope. But they weren’t around. There were no — at the time I was shooting skateboarding, there were no female skateboarders that were of the stature, as far as how they were riding, like the guys that I was shooting.

At punk-rock shows, there were a few women involved, and I shot pictures of some of them, but the numbers were not there. And they were not the ones inspiring me and generally not inspiring many people in the scene. Certainly they were inspiring women in the scene, even if they weren’t in a great band, [by] just the fact that they were up there on the stage. But again, I’m not a documentarian on that level, just taking pictures of everyone. I was taking pictures of things that were overwhelmingly, fantastically inspiring.

The most important bands that I shot, and the ones that inspired me the most, unfortunately there weren’t too many women in them. And that’s just a sign of the times. It’s not sexist in any way. It’s just that — what am I gonna say, that I love listening to Siouxsie and the Banshees? I don’t. Do I like The Fall? No, I don’t like them either. One has a male singer, one has a female singer. It has nothing to do with the sex. If they f*****g kick my ass and inspire me, I’m going to shoot pictures of them.

But recently, those women from Pussy Riot and what they’ve done, I mean, jeez. They f*****g ended up in the Gulag. They’re f*****g badass women. And they were very inspirational to me. That’s probably one of the most recent pictures of someone who’s involved with music that I ever shot. Although their music isn’t even very good, it’s just their f*****g attitudes and what they’ve done. They’re incredible.

You’ve said that when you were younger, shooting the skateboarding, punk and hip-hop scenes, that you lived for those things. What do you live for now?

I live to still inspire people in the best way that I can through a lot of my old pictures. It’s really amazing that I took most of the pictures that I’m known for half of my life ago, practically. But they still inspire to this day. And I didn’t realize when I was taking them that they would have a shelf life at all.

I guess I live for just continuing to inspire people with things that I’ve learned. I have a particular lifestyle, I have a particular view of the world, and I would like to inspire more people to think for themselves — and maybe in the same direction that I do. Not to have copycats or something, but a way that I see we could all make the world a better place. Stop eating animals. Care about the environment. Do things from the heart, have some integrity. These are touchstones that I believe that people are lacking these days, unfortunately.

I don’t think the word “integrity” is even in the vernacular anymore. It’s like, people don’t get it. They consider it a success if someone comes to them to sponsor their tour or if they have some brand behind them. To me, that’s the antithesis of what we want.

For kids nowadays, that’s the goal, is to have corporate support. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the last resort.

Glen E. Friedman talks with Alec MacKaye 2 p.m. on Oct. 25 at the D.C. Public Library downtown.

The two-hour conversation ostensibly focused on D.C. punk, but with smart, open-ended questions from Richards (my former colleague) and the audience, Rollins hopped all over the place. He dished on changing his name, seeing The Ramones at Louie’s Rock City in Fairfax, trashing his Steve Miller records (then buying them back), feuding with Greg Ginn, collaborating with Chuck D and watching football with William Shatner.

This is a partial transcript of Tuesday night’s conversation. It has been edited for clarity and brevity. For more on Dischord and D.C. punk, read the Ian MacKaye interview we recently published.

On “the changing of the guard” from arena rock to punk rock:

I was raised in a very conformist atmosphere at school, where you liked this, but you can’t like this. I was not very open-minded. I was very close-minded, actually. I was kind of trained to be that way. And had a father who said it’s this way, and it can’t be any other way but this way. And I’d go OK, all right.

So when punk rock started to creep into our lives—my life—I started going, well, if I like Led Zeppelin and I like Ted Nugent and I like Van Halen and Aerosmith and all that big guitar rock I was raised with, but I have a Clash record. Can I like both? No! These records must go.

I think we saw Led Zeppelin first, the first of five nights at the Capital Centre. And then eventually, Feb. 15 1979 with D.C.eats, Bo Diddley and The Clash at the Ontario [Theatre], and I’d never seen anything like that in my life. All of a sudden, you’re this far from the band, not across this rackety arena not built for acoustics, built for hockey and basketball, and almost suddenly you’re feeling this real music coming at you—not that these other bands weren’t real, Zeppelin was astounding live, it was great—but all of a sudden there’s something else. You felt a different way coming out of that gig. And that night I went home and I actually physically threw out… maybe about 25 percent of my records after I saw The Clash. Poor Steve Miller, who’s a great musician. He was the mellowest one of the gang! “Fly Like An Eagle,” you’re outta here!

And with a lump in my throat, I bought all those records back years later. I literally slunk into record stores, where I’m now recognized. Like “Wow, ‘Fly Like An Eagle!’ [And I’d say] “Just, just put it in the bag.” [Hides face] “Carole King Tapestry? Dude, you?” “Shut up, put it in the bag. It’s a great album!” Because I realized at one point, you can listen to all of it, you know? There’s this great word, it’s called “eclectic.” One can be eclectic. You can entertain country and Western.

On how Bad Brains blew his mind:

We first saw them in June, I believe, of 1979, The Damned came to town, which was a huge deal. And I hope I’m not talking out of class, Ian, but Ian [MacKaye] was underage. Which is no fault of his, but there’s no way we can have Ian miss this show. So that afternoon we have to make a fake driver’s license for Ian…

We had heard that there’s a black punk rock band in D.C. Like, “Wow, that we want to see. How cool.” We see these scary-looking young guys in torn-up suits outside the gig putting up the flyers. We’re like “That must be them!” And it was. Like, “Look at these guys!” Just scary looking… And The Damned apparently had requested them, like, “There’s a black punk rock band in D.C.? Put them on our bill.” And that’s how they got that gig.

So we get into the show, we’re there early to see the opening band, Bad Brains, and the place is barely full. Bad Brains appeared on stage, and they’re really intimidating. They’re young, they’re handsome, and they’re just coming up with it, playing this music that’s reinventing the wheel as each songs goes by—there’s nothing like it. The crowd’s kind of shrinking back. They’re like, “This is a lot!” Because H.R. is like “Aaaarggh!” And he’s a lot! I remember very clearly, Ian, myself and I think Mark Sullivan—later of Kingface—we walked towards the stage. It was like, “No. This is it.” We just kinda went, “That, this is, they’re local? We can see these guys again?”

Then by the time The Damned went on, you couldn’t fit another person in there. And they were great. Great! But it was kinda almost rock ‘n’ roll compared to The Bad Brains, that were like science.

“Later on, The Ramones played Maryland University. It was a bigger thing. It was you and 1,500 other people, with some drunk like, ‘What are you lookin’ at?’ And you’re like, ‘Aw, well, that’s over. That cool time’s over. Now there’s some jock guy who wants to fight me because I look punk rock, but he’s at a punk-rock gig.'”

On seeing The Ramones in suburban Virginia vs. seeing them later at the University of Maryland:

I got to see them with Ian in the summer of ’79, I believe, Road to Ruin tour, at a place called Louie’s Rock City, which is now a Chinese buffet restaurant… We got to see The Ramones so close, I remember the drops of sweat coming off Dee Dee’s nose almost like a faucet because I was standing right in front of him. And you couldn’t have fit more people in that show if you had WD-40… And all of a sudden The Ramones come out and they look just like they do on the record, and they’re this far from you, and you’re like, “Whoa.” And it was more incredible than seeing Led Zeppelin, because they’re right there. …

But these were shows that, a year later, The Ramones played Maryland University. It was a bigger thing. It was like you and 1,500 other people, some drunk like, “What are you lookin’ at?” And you’re like “Aw, well, that’s over. That cool time’s over. Now there’s some jock guy who wants to fight me because I look punk rock but he’s at a punk-rock gig. Oh well.”

On how Ian MacKaye got Black Flag to crash at his parents’ house:

[Ian is] a true visionary, and the first person in my age group I ever met who had his own opinion. I wanted people to like me, so I’d go where anyone else went, just as long as someone would say, “Yay! Henry’s here.” Ian didn’t give a damn what you thought about him. …

At one point, Ian wanted to find out more about SST Records and Black Flag. So what does he do? He just calls them. He gets their number and he says, “Yeah, I talked to Black Flag today.” I said, “You did what?” He says, “Yeah I was talking to Chuck Dukowski, I called SST.” I’m like, “Are you kidding?” He’s like, “Yeah!” But that’s classic Ian MacKaye. “So they’re coming to town”—which we all knew—“and they’re gonna stay at my parents’ place.” I’m like, “Black Flag is coming to your house?” And they did! All of them.

On leaving D.C. to join Black Flag:

Immediate and total was the feeling of disconnect that has obsessed me ever since the day I left in July of ’81. As soon as I left, I was like, “Ugggh!” Where I start thinking about D.C., dreaming about D.C., I come back, I collect leaves, put them in notebooks. I eat in a restaurant, I save the napkin. I’ve [written] journal entries. To this day, when I’m here and I get a chance, I walk for hours. …

I keep putting the teabag back in the water. I just remember where I come from. … I like to come back to a place that’s completely analog… and Ian is here. And he’s like the rock on the table. The guy who never sold out, he never turned into this unapproachable, awful, like, “Ugh, well, what happened to him?” He never did that. I probably did. But he never did.

On the importance of preserving punk ephemera:

At first I started pulling flyers down off walls or wherever because I love the artwork. Everything’s cut out and crazy and just free and you’re like, “Wow, I’ve been to that show, man. This is me.” And Ian’s band, The Teen Idles, Jeff Nelson, the drummer—great graphic design. He would make these amazing flyers. He spent days on them. They’re just beautiful works of art. And I’d grab two or three of ’em. Because you’d read a review of The Teen Idles in some local paper, and you could tell that the rock critic, he realizes his world’s gonna change. And he’s a little bitter on the way out. “This band is a bunch of [grumble grumble].” And I realized they don’t want these bands to exist. They want this history to be erased. I’m going to keep any memorable trace of this music. …

Johnny Ramone passed away, right? I was with Johnny right before he died, and afterwards, I went to Linda—his wife—I said, “Linda, you know this house is history. Everything in it.” All his ticket stubs from all the gigs he used to see, Stooges on St. Marks, MC5 playing the Fillmore East, Mott the Hoople—he kept everything. Ramones board tapes. I said, “OK, I’m taking these. I’m gonna database it all. And I’ll bring it back at the end of the semester.” She said, “OK!” And I said, “This is all important.”

And I find this notebook in one drawer. I said, “Let’s just open up every drawer in the house.” And I find this notebook, we open the book, and I go, “What is this?” She says, “That’s Joey’s handwriting on that page”—his crazy scrawl, and this much neater scrawl here, I go “What’s that?” She goes, “Oh that’s Lester Bangs. They used to write songs together.” I said, “OK. OK. We’re gonna scan this. And I’m gonna put on gloves to pick this up. Linda, this is important!” … My main concern was preservation, because I felt there was a predatory lean upon the music that we were doing.

“In a way D.C.’s scene is very PC, a very brainy music scene. A lot of readers in the audience. And I would be in a touring band seeing all kinds of scenes with a bunch of alcohol and speed freaks. Not a whole lot of intellectual movement. And those early D.C. shows, you’d go to someone’s house and someone would start lecturing you about Nicaragua.”

On how Ian MacKaye helped build an all-ages community in D.C.’s bar-rock scene:

Ian was the guy who figured out we’re all underage, we don’t wanna drink, and that’s what’s keeping us out of clubs. We have to sneak one of our guys into see The Cramps play the Psychedeli because it’s a drinking place, and none of us want to drink, but you’re not of age. So how are we gonna fix this? And we put big X’s on our hands voluntarily. You see a kid with big X’s on his hands, don’t sell him booze. You feel safe? And these venues are like, “Sorry! It’s the law, we can’t let you in.” So Ian says, “We’ve gotta find a venue where we can do music.”

And I remember driving around with Ian. And [to Richards] you’re an old man now, so you might not remember how irresponsible you were as a teenager—well you were probably responsible. I wasn’t. Ian is a teenager and he’s like, “We’re getting in my car and we’re gonna start looking for possible venues.” We’re just driving around D.C. looking at—“That’s a vacant building. We should maybe talk to the guy and see if we can put a venue in there.” Like, “Who are you?” He’s way past the curve. [MacKaye thought,] “We need our spot to do our thing, otherwise this music is gonna suffocate.” Because it’s a beer thing. It’s a booze thing that’s keeping us out. And I went, “Wow, he’s really figuring it out!” And here come the X’s, and here comes the all-age show idea as ethic. Like, “Let’s not make this music exclusive. It needs to be inclusive.” …

So things in D.C. had to change. Radically. Because it was bar culture. It was pub rock, like England had before punk rock hit there. It was the pubs. And in D.C., you had the bars… But [MacKaye] said, “This music would be fine if everyone who wants to go to the show can go to the show.” And that’s a big part of the whole Dischord ethic.

On D.C.’s intellectual punk community:

In a way it’s very PC, a very brainy music scene. A lot of readers in the audience. It’s a sharp crowd. And it gave rise to a lot of great records. And I would be in a touring band I’d see all kinds of scenes. And a lot of ’em, the scenes [were made up of] a bunch of alcohol and speed freaks, just going to shows and throwing up, passing out, beating each other up, being very untoward towards one another. And not a whole lot of intellectual movement. Where D.C. shows it’s kinda like lightning bolts going, “What are you reading? What are you reading?” And those early shows, you’d go to someone’s house and someone would start lecturing you about Nicaragua. A very switched-on kind of scene. And I think this town still retains a lot of that to this day. It’s very PC.

Another thing about the D.C. scene that I remember, it was very cool as far as the misogyny level was barely noticeable and… perhaps absent. In other scenes, being in Black Flag I saw a lot of stuff go down. You go to some place, you’re like, “Did you just say that? And no one around you clapped you upside the head? Wow. That’s not how we do it where I come from.”

On when he quit writing music 10 years ago:

The greatest thing for me to listen to and enjoy music was stop making it. And I stopped making music only because… the day I stopped writing lyrics, I stopped making music. What I will not do is go onstage and play old material and do a whole tour of old material without something new to bring you. [I prefer] to pass or fail on the merit on the new stuff… So as soon as I stopped writing new songs, I said, “I’m out.” If I’m not gonna make something new, I’m not gonna be the old jukebox guy onstage. So I quit, which was like pulling out half my guts. It was like, “Wow, am I really doing this?”

“To take Black Flag songs out now is like patting the dog. Everyone sings along. That didn’t happen when we were doing those songs. We got $10 and a punch in the mouth. I liken it to going to a park full of caged animals, shooting them and calling yourself a hunter. You’re fake! And you’re kind of huffing and puffing through these songs. And why? Because you weren’t brave. You have to play these songs because you don’t have any money.”

On Black Flag reunions and his legal battle with Greg Ginn:

Inititally, these wonderful people from my past all got together to form this band Flag. And they came to my office to get my blessing… They said, “What do you think?” I said, “I think you’re living in the past. And you’re about to be 60. And you’re gonna go play Six Pack. OK.” And they said, “You wanna come along?” I said, “No!” They said, “Why not?” I said, “Because it’s 2012! Let’s go do something else.” And they said, “Nope,” and they went out and did their thing, and Greg Ginn got angry at them and sued them all. Sued me, too, for good measure, I guess. I got served in my driveway. …

So all of a sudden I’m in this legal rigamarole, and Greg Ginn goes out with some group of people and plays these songs. Both bands going out at once!… It was pathetic, in my opinion. They’re men, they’re grown-up men, they’re just doing their thing. But to me, those songs were battle hymns. They were not tours. They were wars that we fought. Because not everyone liked us. They’d pay six bucks to come and beat up the singer. And it didn’t always go down well. Greg would change ideas and all of a sudden we have 11-minute songs. People didn’t dig that at first! They really didn’t dig it. They always took it out on me, the cute one.

And now all those records, [people say] “Man, I love that record.” Boy, where were you in 1983?

So to take those songs out now is like patting the dog… They know all the words, so everyone sings along. And that didn’t happen when we were doing those songs. We got like $10 and a punch in the mouth… And I’m not saying that they can’t, I’m just saying it’s not the same thing. I liken it to going to a park full of caged animals, shooting them and calling yourself a hunter… You’re fake!… You’re taking out a product that’s way past its due date. And you’re kind of huffing and puffing through these songs. And why? Because you weren’t brave. You have to play these songs because you don’t have any money. You didn’t go boldly into the darkest, deepest coldest part of the pool and jump in. That’s what I did. …

So when I see my ex-bandmates not be brave when I was, every time—never doing Black Flag songs, never [saying], “Hey I’m the Black Flag guy!”—you have to remind me, I’ll never walk up and use that card. It doesn’t work for me. I never did any of that. And I did OK for myself, where I never had to go back and become a parody of myself, and in my opinion, some of my bandmates fell into that. And in my opinion, they screwed up the mission. The mission is now somewhat FUBAR, because—you know when you eat something, and it doesn’t finish well? You’re like, “Wow, that’s not tasting good.” Where it doesn’t finish well to the palate? I think the legacy of Black Flag now is it’s a band that didn’t finish well because of the activities in the last 25 months. And it’s sad. …

I got sutured up a lot from that band. I’d go into the hospital a lot of times. I got stitches all over my head. Concussions. Knocked out cold. Broke out the cartilage in my leg; I still walk funny. I got stitches in my lips, kicked in the skull, I got stitches in my eye—I mean I got beat up a lot being in this band. We all took a beating, but I took a beating beating. And so when I see someone kind of cheapen that experience, I’m like, “Damn man! You? Of all people? You guys?” So it hurt. But that’s the world.

On why he changed his name from Garfield to Rollins:

“Garfield” has no link to the late president… When I joined Black Flag, they said to me, “You’d better get a different name. Because within 24 hours, the LAPD is gonna open a file on you.” Which they did. And you’re gonna want a little slippery distance and room to wiggle. And Rollins was the name of the college Ian’s sister was going to. [Audience member asks, “Which sister?”] Uh, one of the older ones. [Amanda MacKaye yells from the front row: “Susannah!”] Yeah, OK, Susannah. It just kinda came. Like, we’ll just kinda do that, and it’ll be an in joke, and Ian will go like [snort] “Right!” And it was basically an in joke for the benefit of Ian.

“When Gene Simmons says rock ‘n’ roll is dead, that’s for Gene Simmons. And you know what? Here’s the great news. He’s wrong. But guess what, you don’t have to ever wake up and be Gene Simmons.”

On what aspects of the D.C. scene prepared—or failed to prepare—him for touring through different cities:

Nothing at all from what I learned in the D.C. scene prepared me for what I was going to encounter joining Black Flag. Like, “You’re 15? Why aren’t you in school? You’re a runaway? My goodness. What’s that? That’s heroin? That’s real heroin?” This is the stuff I saw almost immediately. “It’s a needle! Oh my God!” This is what I saw. And I realized what a boy scout I was because the scene I came from was, [upstanding-citizen voice] “Hey man, do you need a ride home? Have some orange juice!” We were an incredibly decent bunch of young people. “Good morning officer!” …

By 1982, a year in, I had seen so much. I was almost a little battle-weary. And what helped me was, “I’m never gonna be that. The D.C. scene told me I don’t wanna fall on my face in a puddle of puke.”

On working with Chuck D on Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three:

We were mixing the last song, it was the first song on the record, the song “Rise Above.” And we were doing the final mix, and I said, “It needs something. It needs Chuck D to say, ‘Arkansas, let’s get it on.’ Like, ‘Here we go.'” So I contact Chuck. I go, “Chuck, I really need you to do this. We are mixing. I need you to give me, you know, here’s the line, I need it 10 different ways, now.”

Hours later, FedEx, boom. Here’s a CD-R of Chuck doing it every possible way. We put a little echo on it, we fly it into the mix, goosebumps—like, “Whoa, that’s the mix!” So the first thing they hear on that record, I said, “Chuck, you’re lighting the fuse on this record. I can’t think of any other voice to let Arkansas know that we are coming to put our foot up their collective ass than you.” And Chuck came through like a champion, man… I almost start crying when I hear the beginning of that. [Rollins appears to tear up.]

On Gene Simmons saying “Rock is dead”:

Well, rock is dead for Gene Simmons.

[Ed. note: This part of the talk happened later, when Rollins circled back to the subject, but it makes more sense to include it here.]

Gene is a very funny man. And he says stuff for effect. He’ll just say stuff to kind of bum you out. And I’ve actually hung out with him at a gig, where, you know he’s really tall, and I’m really short, so we stand like a double act in the back. And he’ll just look and be like, “Look at that guy. Look at that hair.” He’ll just burn people as they go by. And I’m like, “Well at least I’m hanging out with Simmons doing his thing.” And he just says stuff. So when he says rock ‘n’ roll is dead, that’s for Gene Simmons. And you know what? Here’s the great news. He’s wrong. But guess what, you don’t have to ever wake up and be Gene Simmons.

On his former musical collaborator, William Shatner (whom he impersonates through this entire anecdote):

[“I Can’t Get Behind That”] started a friendship with me and William Shatner that exists to this day. A choice group of people get called to his home for Monday Night Football. I don’t know anything about football, I don’t know what a half-pack does… But free food, his dogs are friendly, his wife is lovely and his friends are very cool. And since 2003, I’ve been going to Monday Night Football. And I’ve collaborated with him. I’ve been in his documentaries. I’m just part of his world now.

Years ago, [Shatner asked me,] “Henry, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?” I said, “I’m gonna throw a frozen bag of Trader Joe’s pasta into a Pyrex bowl and microwave it, eat it and curse the darkness. You know my M.O.” ‘Cause I don’t do holidays, really, I just work through everything. [Shatner said], “Henry, you’ll come to my home for Thanksgiving. That’s what you’re going to do.” Aye aye, cap’n.

Over nearly two hours, Margosis and MacKaye spin some tunes and talk Dischord history, straight edge, L.A.’s punk scene, Henry Rollins, Nazi skinheads, Fugazi’s record sales, getting courted by major labels and all sorts of subjects that would excite even a casual fan of MacKaye’s now-legendary bands and record label. For Margosis, the interview must have felt like a flashback; according to MacKaye, the former University of Virginia DJ was the first to play Dischord music on the radio.

The entire interview can be streamed right here—and I recommend listening to the whole thing—but I’ve also transcribed some choice snippets from the conversation, below. Read on:

On Dischord Records’ approach to the music industry:

Ian MacKaye: My interest in the record industry itself is actually extremely low. In fact I generally think of it as pretty odious. So in some ways, the only way to get my music out, the only way I would feel comfortable doing it, is really by putting it out myself. But in terms of the business, I can’t stand it. Never used a contract on the label ever, no contracts. No lawyer. Don’t have a lawyer. Never had a lawyer. I think a lot of times people felt that Dischord—the approach we had, Dischord was too idealistic. But considering that the label is now 33 years old and we have a staff of four or five people who are at least reasonably paid with health care and so forth, I’m wondering if we’re real yet. I suspect we are. Maybe we weren’t too idealistic after all.

On his attempt to sell Dischord’s first release—Teen Idles’ 1981 eight-song EP—to Newbury Comics:

Some of us went up to New England or something on vacation, just go to record stores. I remember I went to Newbury Comics in Boston and I had the Teen Idles single and I went in there and I said, “I wanna sell these. Wanna buy ’em? A dollar each.” And the guy said “Well, I’ll take five on consignment.” I go, “Consignment? Come on, they’re a dollar each!” I go, “I don’t live in Boston!” But you know, I think he actually ended up taking ’em. But these are records that are now, they’re worth $1,000 each or something.

“The media was portraying punk as this extremely self-destructive, nihilistic, sadomasochist kind of nonsense… [So] people who were really into nihilistic and sadomasochistic and self-destructive tendencies said, ‘Oh I must be a punk!’ and started coming to shows.”

On how Bad Brains changed the D.C. scene:

I can tell you that I think the band to really turn the corner on things was really I think the Bad Brains. They started playing in late ’78. I first saw them—I guess it would be late ’78 they started playing. I remember first seeing them—my first show I went to was the Chumps, Urban Verbs and The Cramps at the Hall of Nations in Georgetown. … And the Bad Brains guys were there. They were in attendance. And we were just thinking like “Who are these guys? They are the coolest-looking guys.” They had “Bad Brains” written on their pants and stuff. We kept seeing them around, and finally in June of 1979, the Damned from England played the Bayou and the Bad Brains opened for ’em. And we were at that show, and that was just absolutely life-changing gig. That was the greatest gig—it was the first time we saw the Bad Brains. And from that point on, it was sort of like… this is gonna happen.

On how Los Angeles’ punk scene blew his mind:

Our first show the Teen Idles ever played outside of Washington was not New York. In fact, we never played New York. We took a Greyhound bus to Los Angeles because we were so interested in Black Flag. They’d put out that single at that point, and maybe even Jealous Again, the second record. The Germs, The Weirdos, all these bands, all the Dangerhouse stuff, that scene was something that we were extremely interested in…

So we went out there and we were like, “Whoa!” It was so much bigger and much more intense than I think we had expected. … We played a show [in Los Angeles but] we didn’t get a sense of the real scope of the scene there. But then we went to San Francisco and we did a show there, and the Circle Jerks were playing. It was a show with the Dead Kennedys, Circle Jerks and Flipper. And a bunch of these L.A. kids came up for that show. And that’s when we got a sense of the real intensity of their scene. It was so extreme. Much more so than what we had seen here. And then we went home, and we were just like, “Wow, that was really exciting.” And they had stuff tied around their boots and stuff, and we started to emulate that. The look—we just felt like “All right, that’s our tribe.” Although in many ways they are really scary. Like much more scary than the people here. And they were unhinged, a lot of those kids.

On how media coverage of D.C.’s punk scene helped make it more dangerous:

One thing that was happening at that time was the media was portraying punk as this extremely self-destructive, nihilistic kind of sadomasochist kind of nonsense. Which then really created a lot of unpleasantness in terms of straight society towards punks. But even worse, people who were really into nihilistic and sadomasochistic and self-destructive tendencies said, “Oh I must be a punk!” and started coming to shows. And they would come to the shows and just start fighting. So at some point, people were [like], “We’re just gonna have to fight back.” So there was some stuff like that, but it wasn’t as wholesale as what we ended up seeing in Los Angeles, which was just totally crazy. And then by the early ’80s, it was just a lot of that everywhere.

On finding out Black Flag had recruited Henry Rollins:

Henry and I first met when I was 11 years old. We both grew up in the Glover Park neighborhood here in D.C. And we have remained best friends ever since. We just cracked 40 years of friendship. Once every couple weeks we talk on the phone. He’s in L.A. still. But I drove him to the Greyhound station the day he left to go to L.A. That was July of 1981.

Black Flag [was] looking for a singer [and] they had gone around the country trying people out. They had first come to New Orleans and tried out a guy named Dee Slut from a band called The Sluts. Then they went to New York and they asked Henry to come up there and he went up there—just drove straight up, sang with them then drove straight down to work at Haagen-Dazs in Georgetown where we all worked. And then he got the call.

And I remember he didn’t tell me he was gonna go up for [this audition]. I didn’t even know it was happening. He just called me one day and said “Hey guess who the new singer for Black Flag is?” And we’d all known that Black Flag was trying to find a singer—we had read about that and heard about it. And I was trying to guess all these people in L.A. [like] “Who? Who?” and he says “Me!” And I was like, “You! How? What?” It was just beyond—I couldn’t even process what he was telling me.

“In schools or any arena, the kids who were the rebellious ones were the ones who were hurting themselves. And that just seemed counterproductive to me. If you wanted to rebel against society, don’t dull the blade.”

On the fetishization of self-destruction in the 1970s and 1980s:

Margosis: The entire idea of rebellion at the time—this is late ’70s early ’80s—rebellion involving rock ‘n’ roll almost always involved some kind of self-destructive behavior. Drugs, alcohol, sex as conquest. And nobody had ever—and this was true whether you were rebelling against your parents and listening to Skynyrd or Boston or Journey or something like that or rebelling against your peers and listening to punk rock—nobody ever really came out with a really clear message that I ever heard before that said, “Hey, there’s another way to do this.”

MacKaye: None of us got high really, we didn’t drink. I just never did. It was something I was not interested in. … It just seemed so boring to me at the time. I also grew up thinking that at 18, you had to drink. Like it wasn’t a choice. You just have to.

I thought you couldn’t drink soda, and you had to drink beer from that point on. I just didn’t understand why anybody would want to hurry up to that point. Because as far as I could tell, you had to drink for the rest of your life, and miserably. Because I saw so many adults who were just such a mess as a kid. And I remember just thinking, “I don’t wanna be a part of that at all. Period.”

You’re absolutely right, in the late ’70s, it wasn’t limited to music, by the way. [When it came to] rebellion… the only option made readily available was self-destruction. So in schools or any arena, the kids who were the rebellious ones were the ones who were hurting themselves. And that just seemed counterproductive to me. If you wanted to rebel against society, don’t dull the blade.

On almost naming Minor Threat “Straight Edge” instead:

The name “straight edge” had been considered as a possible name for the band. Jeff [Nelson] and I took a drive right after the Teen Idles broke up, talking about new band names, and that was one of the names that was bandied about between the two of us. By then we went with Minor Threat, which of course is a play on minor, being underage. And echoing Teen Idles of course.

On Ted Nugent’s indirect role in “Straight Edge”:

MacKaye: I wanted other kids in the world who didn’t wanna party to feel like, “All right, yeah! I agree!” I can remember—honestly I loved Ted Nugent in the ’70s, which is horrific to say now, but at the time, part of the reason I found it so engaging [and] him so interesting was because he said quite publicly that he didn’t drink or use drugs, and I thought “OK! That’s cool!” I appreciated that.

Margosis: Ironic that the Nuge would be associated with taking a responsible position about something.

MacKaye: Well, yeah, it’s true. But I remember [being like], “That guy, he’s super radical,” and that’s a thing I respected. I mean, you have to remember that time—I was just reading a book about the early ’70s, a thing about those bands like Led Zeppelin and The Who. And I mean, John Bonham, he died at 32 years old, one of the greatest drummers of all time. He died after drinking, I think, a liter of vodka. That just can’t be good for you. And it’s such a bizarre way to go out.

“I always feel like you hear these stories about [idealistic] people… and then eventually a price is named, and they’re like, ‘OK, well let’s take that.’ And that’s kind of a sad story. Don’t you wanna hear the story where they never said yes?”

On Dischord’s best-selling records:

If you took the first Minor Threat single—we put the two singles on one 12-inch. You include that, and you include the cassette version of that and then you include the discography CD, which is all of the songs—if you add all those up, it’s just shy of a million, or maybe it’s over a million copies now. I don’t know. It’s a lot.

Fugazi, on the other hand, we had I don’t know how many records, eight or nine albums. And I think Repeater, probably the first one and Repeater were close to 500,000, maybe over, I don’t know. I don’t actually really keep too close a count. But cumulatively, we sold over 2 or 3 million records now.

On major labels courting Fugazi:

We were unique in the fact that by the time the labels came around to us [and] started sniffing around, we’d had a record label for a decade at that point. A lot of the bands who were in our position, where they were fairly successful, [were on] pretty unstable punk or independent labels, and sometimes those independent labels were actually terrible. People were just ripping people off. So I think those bands [were thinking], “Well, do we get ripped off by the little label and drive in a van, or get ripped off by the big label and drive in a bus?” You may as well take the bus in that case.

Our circumstances were that we’d had a label for over a decade, had a pretty good setup, and also I think we were just more stubborn than other bands. We always had said that we were just not interested in what’s on offer, which is that they’re buying the name of the band, they’re buying the control of the band. And we decided that there was no price that would be worth it to us to cede that control.

One label came and said, “Well we’ll just do a deal with the entire label.” And we said no… I always feel like you hear these stories about people like they’re really… idealistic or whatever, and then eventually, a price is named and they’re like, “OK, well let’s take that.” And I feel like that’s kind of a sad story. Don’t you wanna hear the story where they never said yes?

Margosis brings up an early ’90s Fugazi show in Orlando, Florida, that was paid a visit by Nazi skinheads:

I remember that, the O Town Skins, I remember them well. They were sieg heiling us. And I was just yelling at ’em. And then we came out and our tires had been slashed. Florida was rough! Rough and tumble.

…There were skinhead gangs in almost every city, and you know, Canada—you just saw ’em everywhere. I don’t know what happened at that time that made people so angry. I don’t know what was going on. But it was an epidemic for sure. And they were bad. They weren’t the worst. There was other shows. One of the worst skinhead things the band ever ran into was in Warsaw in Poland. Oh my God. We were having dinner at kind of a dorm near the venue, and maybe 50 or 100 skinhead guys attacked the entire building, smashing out the windows. It was incredibly crazy.

I remember we were doing a show booked in Eugene, Oregon, and these white-power skinhead kids put up flyers saying they were gonna like come to the show and straighten us out, basically shut us down. And the city council of Eugene shut down the show. And I thought, that’s a great way to empower the skinheads! That’s great! That’s a really incredible turn of events. I was shocked they would shut down the show based on what these kids were up to. But that’s the thing, like, I’m gonna use the word [a-hole] again, but [a-holes], they’re like a virus. They’re gonna always be around. They’re just gonna manifest in different ways.