The seeds of Black Flag were planted at a Journey concert. That’s right: the seminal American hardcore punk rock band got its start at an arena rock concert at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Los Angeles, California.

Journey was playing with Thin Lizzy on their Jailbreak tour, and we drove up from Hermosa Beach in a bright red Chevy Impala my dad had given to me that I would later sell for only a few grams of cocaine. I hated driving (and still do) but we had to get to the show, and this was a concert I wasn’t going to miss. It was a Wednesday night in June in 1976. I was twenty years old and in addition to working at the bait shop, I’d picked up a few shifts at a record store on Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach called Rubicon run by a guy named Michael Piper.

Keith Morris fronts Black Flag in July, 1979

If you liked Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks, and Linda Ronstadt, Rubicon was the place for you. The record store was located right across from the mortuary, and the vibe at the Rubicon wasn’t all that different from what was going down across the street. It sometimes felt like Michael was trying to brainwash his customers and employees with Buckingham-Nicks. Michael’s idea of a wild time was playing the first three Bruce Springsteen records back-to-back-to-back. He played that combo so many times, I never wanted to hear the Boss again.

Michael was dating Erika Ginn, and sometimes she would come into the store with her older brother Greg Ginn. He was this really tall, dark-haired, skinny guy who was into electronics and liked to listen to the Grateful Dead and other kinds of weird music. I recognized Erika and Greg from Mira Costa High. He was a year older than me, so we were never classmates, but he was definitely hard to miss. Erika and Greg had two other siblings, and their dad was an air force veteran and an English professor who’d met their mom in Europe at the end of World War II.

Every time Michael left with Erika to grab some lunch or hang out on the pier, he’d leave me in charge of the record store, and the first thing I’d do is take off whatever crap was on the turntable and play some music I wanted to hear. I was into music that was heavier, like Deep Purple, Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, Alice Cooper, and Iggy and the Stooges — anything that would make my parents cringe.

In this process of hanging out and listening to music together at Rubicon, Greg and I got to know each other a little bit. We shared an interest in music that was outside the mainstream. He subscribed to the Village Voice, where he learned about the burgeoning punk rock scene in New York, and I was a faithful reader of the rock zine Back Door Man, the South Bay music bible, but we didn’t really become friends until we went with Michael to see Journey at the Santa Monica Civic.

Steve Perry, aka the Guy with No Testicles, hadn’t signed on yet, so Journey was still a prog rock band, which wasn’t really my thing. We were there to see Phil Lynott and Thin Lizzy jamming “The Boys Are Back in Town.” I’m not going to lie: they didn’t blow me away or change my life. It wasn’t the best rock concert I’d ever seen — not even close. I’d seen some amazing shows, and this wouldn’t even rank in the top one hundred.

But something about the Thin Lizzy show took me outside my usual headspace and got me wondering whether there was a place for me in the rock and roll universe. Greg and I didn’t say anything to each other that night. There was no magical moment I can point to and say, “That was the night we knew we were going to make music history together.” But on the way back to Hermosa Beach the idea started to take shape: we wanted to get in a room together and bash on some equipment.

Greg told me he had some songs. I didn’t know what that meant. I’ve always been a pessimist — it’s my nature to stay on the cynical side of the street. So when Greg told me he’d written some stuff he wanted to play for me, I hoped for the best but expected the worst. I kept reminding myself that he was a Deadhead. I don’t hate the Grateful Dead, but they don’t do anything for me musically. I kept telling myself to be patient and see what happens.