by Dan Ozzi
Jaded Punk
April 10th, 2013
If
you’re reading this, chances are pretty good that you have a Black Flag
bars tattoo. And you probably think it makes you pretty special, huh?
Well, bad news:It doesn’t. Thousands of people have The Bars permanently
branded on their flesh. Tens of thousands, even. It’s arguably the most
common music-related tattoo out there. But is it more meaningful than
just a tattoo? Barred For Life is a book that seeks an answer to that question.
The
8×10” book features interviews with all Black Flag members except for
two who declined: Henry Rollins, who was probably busy doing deadlifts
and Greg Ginn, who was probably too high to answer the phone. The
interviews give some insights into the background of the band which, if
you’re enough of a fan of the band to read this book, chances are you’ve
heard before. But the band members’ reflections on the tattoo and the
logo itself are uncharted territory for most Black Flag aficionados and
are most relevant to the crux of the book’s story.
Barred For Life
is held together by the personal narrative of the author, Stewart Dean
Ebersole, who reflects on Black Flag, The Bars, and the meaning of the
Punk Rock movement. (His capitalizations, not ours.) While not
uninteresting, it is a distraction from the book’s main eye candy:
Dozens and dozens of black and white photos of people with their Bars
tattoos and their brief thoughts on it. Each subject is asked for the
following: name, age, location, occupation, favorite singer, favorite
song, favorite album (amazingly, someone said Family Man), and
what the band/logo means to them. Through hundreds of pages of these
featurettes, we get a comprehensive picture of what kind of people get
The Bars tattoo. And the answer is all kinds.
Flipping through Barred For Life
is a bit like looking through a high school yearbook. Chances are
pretty good that you’ll spot someone you know, either personally or from
a band/record label/venue you’re a fan of. A former member of Avail
makes an appearance, as does the drummer for Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
and the founder of Equal Vision Records. Frank Turner is featured on
the book’s final page. Some punk notables, like former Indecision and
Milhouse singer, Artie Phillie, aren’t even credited as such. Everyone
from 44-year-old NYU psychology professors to 25-year-old bike
messengers in the UK are included. Some are self-professed bums and
others are city councilmembers or Daily Show producers. Some seem to
have intimate and deep connections with the logo and the band, whereas
others profess to having gotten it to fit in to a scene.
There
is an especially moving story from a wounded U.S. Army veteran who met
Henry Rollins. “[Rollins] asked me now that I lost my leg what I wanted
to do. I told him that I wanted to go back into combat with my buddies.
He left the room and came back in red-faced. I think that he was
crying.”
The tattoos of the iconic logo themselves tell a larger
story as well. It’s a story of a movement that acts as a Rorschach test,
meaning something different to each person it touches. Some tats are
timeworn and faded while others are crisp and new. Some are small and
subtle while others prominently take up an entire limb. They adorn
people’s asses and people’s throats.
Some
folks got them in prison and some were the result of late night drunken
tattoo sessions in basements. Some people got theirs at 18, others got
them at 48. Liberties were taken with the logo, like the guy who got the
Bars as bacon strips.
While it would’ve been a much easier
undertaking for the author to publish a book of general punk tattoos, he
instead narrowed in on one specific logo, did the subject due
diligence, and the results are infinitely more impressive. It’s amazing
that four simple sticks can capture such a comprehensive story, but much
like Black Flag did for the punk scene, Barred For Life ties it all together.
Back to Stewart Dean Ebersole’s Author Page | Back to Jared Castaldi’s Artist Page
