Singers Keith Morris Keith Morris grew up in Hermosa Beach and attended
Mira Costa High School, where brothers
Greg and
Raymond Ginn were also students. After graduating in 1973 he studied fine art and painting while working at his father's
bait shop. One of his co-workers at the shop was
Bill Stevenson, a Mira Costa student eight years Morris' junior who would also go on to be a member of Black Flag (Morris' father befriended
Ozzie Cadena, who son
Dez would also later join Black Flag). Becoming a fan of heavy rock and
proto-punk groups, Morris took a second job working at local record store Rubicon Records. It was here that he struck up a friendship with Greg Ginn, whose sister was dating Morris' record store co-worker. The two bonded over shared musical tastes, including an interest in early
punk rock groups, and decided to start a band together. Morris originally planned to play drums in the group, but Ginn convinced him to take the role of vocalist after witnessing his frantic energy while singing along to the radio. In the summer of 1976 they began rehearsing songs that Ginn had written on guitar, with Ginn's brother Raymond accompanying on bass guitar. Later that year he and then-Panic bassist Gary McDaniel (later known as Chuck Dukowski) took up residence at "The Church", an abandoned
Baptist church the band was then using as a rehearsal space. The band changed its name to Black Flag in early 1979. in 2006 By November 1979, however, Morris was growing "burned out" with Black Flag's long and frequent rehearsals, and began making excuses to miss them. His feelings of isolation within the band exacerbated his problems with drugs and alcohol: McDaniel later said that Morris quit because "he wanted to stay exactly the same. Our music was changing, and he didn't like a lot of our new songs." Morris claimed to have felt blamed by the other members for slowing the band's progress: "Whenever there would be arguments, everyone would be pointing their finger at me, and it would be my fault. Like, 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." According to Morris, his departure was not acrimonious: It was entirely my decision. For me, we had pretty much run our course. I love Robo, I still respect Greg, Gary kind of irritated me at times. But the fact of the matter is, when I left I felt no hatred towards them; it wasn't like "Fuck you guys, man, I don't ever wanna see you again!" It wasn't like that. Because I still lived in the church and they were still rehearsing there. They probably breathed a sigh of relief, because I was completely in the throes of being a full-blown alcoholic cokehead, and it didn't help that Robo was one of my suppliers. A couple of weeks later, I started my next group. Their early set list included some of Morris' Black Flag lyrics set to new music:
Nervous Breakdown's "Wasted", the recorded-but-unreleased "I Don't Care", and two songs Morris had written with Black Flag but had not recorded: "Red Tape" and "Behind the Door" (originally titled "Room 13"). Morris was asked by director
Penelope Spheeris to sing with Black Flag for her documentary film
The Decline of Western Civilization. Morris declined, and ultimately both the Circle Jerks and Black Flag appeared in the film, the latter with Morris' replacement Ron Reyes singing.
Ron Reyes Ron Reyes, a punk rock fan of
Puerto Rican descent, dropped out of Mira Costa High school at age 18. He was present for Black Flag's first performance, at the
Redondo Beach Moose Lodge, and the experience left a strong impression on him: Reyes and Dez Cadena were friends and had practiced songs together on guitar. In summer 1979, Reyes moved into "The Church", where Black Flag rehearsed; He would watch the band practice and became good friends with them, particularly Morris. He purchased a drum kit from a friend as a favor, and soon began drumming for a group called The Tourists, with
Greg Hetson and brothers
Jeff and
Steven McDonald. The Tourists opened for Black Flag at their infamous July 22, 1979 performance at
Manhattan Beach's Polliwog Park, and the following month changed their name to
Red Cross. Reyes continued to follow Black Flag, travelling to
San Francisco that fall for their first performances outside the Los Angeles area. By the time Morris left Black Flag in November 1979, Reyes had quit Red Cross and was playing drums with a group called The Tracks. Greg Ginn and Gary McDaniel approached him with an offer to sing for Black Flag. Reyes' first show with Black Flag was December 16, 1979, less than three weeks after Morris' departure. Ginn also began teaching Reyes how to play guitar, with an eye towards making him a
rhythm guitarist as well as vocalist, which would free Ginn up to play
lead guitar and add
solos to his songs. Ultimately, however, Reyes would never play guitar in Black Flag. Having attempted to record their debut album with Morris the previous November, Black Flag made another attempt at it with Reyes in April 1980. The session was unsuccessful, in part because Reyes would sometimes leave the studio mid-take. "There was a lot of violence, and I was really starting to lose my taste for it", he later recalled. "It seemed like it didn't matter what we did up there, we could've just been up onstage masturbating and it wouldn't have made a difference; [the audience] would have kept on slamming and going around in circles and doing their thing, and that's all they cared about. I felt, 'What's the point?' ... So I just walked offstage. I remember saying something to the effect of, 'I don't really care about being the background to whatever it is that you're doing out there...' It didn't have anything to do with the other band members, I had no beef with any of them." Despite having quit the band, Reyes agreed to return to finish recording the tracks they had begun in April.
Recording engineer and
producer Spot recalled that "recording the vocals in a posthumous manner [Reyes] was surprisingly cooperative and I was moved to remark: 'This is so easy now! Why didn't you quit the band before this? When the
Jealous Again EP was released in August 1980, he was credited on the sleeve as "Chavo Pederast", a mean-spirited joke on the part of Black Flag: "Chavo" after the homeless orphan character in the Mexican
sitcom El Chavo, and "Pederast" after
pederasty. "At the time, I'm not even sure I understood the derogatory nature of the name, and I don't think I would have cared anyway", said Reyes. His father,
record producer and
jazz promoter
Ozzie Cadena, befriended Keith Morris' father Jerry Morris. Cadena recalled Chuck Dukowski asking him to join the band: "He said, 'You know all the words to our songs, in a week we have to play a gig in Vancouver, why don't you become our next singer? Cadena's first performance with Black Flag was a party at the end of summer 1980 to close out "The Church", the abandoned
Baptist church they had used as a living and rehearsal space since 1978. The band had moved out of the building several months prior, and on the eve of a
West Coast tour invited many of their fans to demolish the property as means of provoking the police before they left town. He became interested in
blues and jazz while studying
economics and business management at
UCLA, and began playing guitar at age 19, becoming a fan of the
Grateful Dead as well as various
protopunk and
punk rock groups He befriended Morris when Ginn's younger sister began dating Morris' record store co-worker. He had rented storage and workspace for SST at an abandoned
Baptist church, and this became Panic's new home when they were kicked out of their rehearsal space in late 1978.
Dez Cadena After the band hired Henry Rollins to be their lead vocalist, Dez Cadena moved to rhythm guitar. After leaving Black Flag in 1983, Cadena went on to front
DC3 from 1983 to 1988. He spent the 1990s playing in various bands for relatively short stints before joining the
Misfits in 2001. He left the Misfits in 2015 and currently appears with the Keith Morris-fronted Flag.
Bassists Raymond Pettibon When Greg Ginn and Keith Morris first began rehearsing together in the summer of 1976, Ginn's brother Raymond accompanied them on
bass guitar. In early 1979 the band was looking to change their name from Panic, and it was Raymond—who had since quit his teaching job in favor of pursuing a career as a visual artist under the pseudonym Raymond Pettibon—who suggested the name Black Flag and designed their logo. Over the next six years Pettibon's single-frame illustrations were used for the band's sleeve artwork, posters, and gig flyers, their unsettling and provocative imagery becoming synonymous with Black Flag's music while helping to build the group's notoriety and expand their fan base. His artwork appears on the covers of
Nervous Breakdown,
Jealous Again,
Six Pack,
Everything Went Black,
My War,
Family Man,
Slip It In,
Loose Nut,
The Process of Weeding Out, and
In My Head. He also did artwork for other SST releases including the compilation albums
The Blasting Concept and
Cracks in the Sidewalk, and released pamphlet books of his art through SST. Greg Ginn resurrected it without telling his brother and turned it over to drummer
Bill Stevenson to do the layout, who cut it into pieces and used them as elements for the cover and lyric sheet. "As far as I'm concerned, SST is not even a part of my past. For one thing, it was dishonestly procured. I was never paid for any of that stuff. If you talk to [SST] it's like Stalinist Russia, rewriting history. Somebody is some big commissar and the next day he's purged and all traces of his existence are literally written out of the official history." Described by Morris as "just this huge stoner", Kansas and drummer Bryan Migdol were not committed to the band and would often fail to show up for rehearsals.
Spot Glenn "Spot" Lockett was a friend of Greg Ginn and a staff engineer at Media Art recording studio, and Ginn invited him to play bass guitar with Panic in rehearsals after Kansas' departure. He later recalled his experience in the liner notes of
Everything Went Black: The band had a total of six songs, each of which lasted no longer than one minute. Greg showed me the simple repetitive chords..."OK, here we go, 1–2–3–4..." and BANG!! the drummer started smashing out a fast, trashy straight four-pattern beat, and the wiry little singer started bellowing and jumping around wildly, and Greg's body lurched forward as he underwent a remarkable transformation from Jekyll to Hyde...Within seconds it was over. Jekyll calmly stepped out of his Hyde as if stepping out of a routine nightmare...I was dumbfounded, shocked; my eyes wide in amazement, my mouth hanging open in disbelief. We played again. "1–2–3–4!!"...Ten minutes later we had played the entire six-song set twice. Spot decided that he could not commit to playing with Panic, and was soon replaced by Würm bassist Gary McDaniel. Spot continued to work at Media Art and convinced Panic to record their first record there in January 1978, which produced the
Nervous Breakdown EP. The studio's senior engineer, Dave Tarling, acted as
producer for the session, with Spot's role limited to "setting up microphones and later running some rough mixes for the band." By that summer Würm were living and rehearsing at a space in the Hermosa Bathhouse, which they referred to as the Würmhole. Würm guitarist Ed Danky met Keith Morris and, learning that he was also in a band, invited him to hang out at their rehearsals. "It was for fun, at first, just trying on personalities," he later said of the name change. "At first I didn't use Chuck all the time, but when I quit my straight job to work on the band full-time, I made a break. I found the new name to be convenient when I had to deal with the police. And I had to deal with them too fucking much. I liked the name Chuck Dukowski — it seemed like a regular guy name." Dukowski developed a prominent presence in Black Flag through both his playing—which was physically aggressive and produced powerful, thudding low-end notes—and through his intellect and passion for revolutionary thinking, which informed the band's
ethos. An outspoken
anarchist, he would often use interviews and between-song pauses during shows as opportunities to declare his ideas and beliefs. He only played on the final tour of the band in 1986. He later came back in the 2003 Black Flag reunion. He did not appear in any of the releases. C'el died on May 3, 2017, after a long battle with stage 4
brain cancer.
Dave Klein Klein is known for being a bass player in
Screeching Weasel (2011–2013) and he went on tour with Black Flag in 2013. Klein left Black Flag in 2014.
Tyler Smith Smith originally joined Black Flag in early 2013 but had to back out due to personal obligations back home. When he learned that the previous bass player left the band, he contacted Greg, auditioned again, and rejoined Black Flag.
Joseph Noval Joseph Noval joined as the band's bassist in 2019.
Harley Duggan Harley Duggan joined as the band's bassist in 2022. He also plays in Darkhorse Rising.
Austin Sears Austin Sears joined as the band's bassist in 2023.
Matt Baxter Matt Baxter joined as the band's bassist in 2024.
David Rodriguez David Rodriguez joined as the band's current bassist in 2025.
Drummers Bryan Migdol Bryan Migdol (aka Brian Migdol) was recruited from amongst Morris' friends in early 1977 to serve as the drummer for Panic (the band that was the precursor to Black Flag). He had entered the United States on a student
visa and was living in
El Segundo, working in a plastics factory.
Emil Johnson Emil Johnson was 15 when hired, although his place in the band was short lived. His only playing credit is the A-Side of the
TV Party EP.
Chuck Biscuits Chuck Biscuits played with Black Flag for several months in 1982. He appeared in no official studio releases, but does appear on the live album
Live at the On Broadway 1982 and several bootlegs and demo recordings. Prior to joining Black Flag he had been a member of the Canadian hardcore punk band
D.O.A. After leaving Black Flag he had a few brief stints playing drums with the
Circle Jerks and the
Red Hot Chili Peppers, though he was mostly out of the music industry until he began to work extensively with
Glenn Danzig, appearing with his bands
Samhain and
Danzig, and later worked with
Social Distortion. He has also had short stints with a number of other punk acts.
Bill Stevenson Black Flag's fifth drummer was
South Bay native Bill Stevenson. A
Mira Costa High School student and avid fisherman, he frequented Jerry Morris' bait shop and ended up working there alongside Keith Morris. His audition turned into a drunken
jam session including members of Panic and
The Last, and the position of drummer in Panic ultimately went to Robo. He would later join Black Flag as their regular drummer, and served with them from 1983 to 1985, appearing on all of their studio albums from
My War through
In My Head. After leaving Black Flag in mid-1985, he reformed the Descendents, and would later found the band
All, and play drums with
The Lemonheads.
Anthony Martinez Anthony Martinez replaced Bill Stevenson and was their last drummer before their breakup. He played on the live album "Who's Got The 10 and a 1/2?" and the live EP "Annihilate This Week", which consists entirely of songs from Who's Got The 10 and a 1/2?
Gregory Moore Gregory Moore is a drummer from Georgia who is sometimes credited as Gregory Amoore, or simply "Drummer". He has recorded and toured with Greg Ginn on several of his solo releases as well as Ginn's projects
Gone, El Bad, and Get Me High. He performed with Black Flag at their 2003 reunion show, their tour in 2013, and on the "What the..." album. Gregory currently plays with the bands Are You A Cop, 2Ton Bridge, and Fer in Los Angeles.
Brandon Pertzborn Brandon received an email from Greg in early 2014 to see if he would like to audition for Black Flag. He called Greg later that night and they set up an audition two days later. Brandon learned a good number of songs and then drove to Greg's studio to audition. Over the course of a few hours, Brandon played about 15 songs. After he drove back home, he recorded two songs a day and would send them to Greg every day for a week so Greg could get more of an idea what his playing style sounds like. A week after his audition, Brandon got the call that he made the band. Brandon did not know Mike or Greg personally before he started playing with Black Flag, but he had known who they were for years. As a Black Flag fan growing up, Pertzborn was familiar with Ginn's role with the band. Pertzborn used to skateboard in his spare time and knew of Mike Vallely's career as a professional streetskater and a musician. Pertzborn is married to Emily Vallely, who is the daughter of former Black Flag lead singer Mike Vallely.
Isaias Gil Isaias Gil joined as the band's drummer in 2019.
Charles Wiley Charles Wiley joined as the band's drummer from 2022 to 2025.
Bryce Weston Bryce Weston joined as the band's current drummer in 2025. ==Members==