Lawsuits between band members aren’t cool, that ‘s all I can say, especially if it is a so-called punk band as lawsuits are the opposite of punk! Nevertheless members of one of the most iconic hardcore punk band, Black Flag, were suing each other, or rather Greg Ginn had a trademark infringement lawsuit against his former bandmates including Keith Morris, Chuck Dukowski, Dez Cadena, Bill Stevenson, Stephen Egerton and even Henry Rollins who isn’t even part of this new Black Flag business. Ginn was claiming that he and his label SST Records should be the only ones using Black Flag’s image, logo and songs, and the fact that his band mates had decided to tour under the name Flag with basically the same body of work, wasn’t pleasing him at all.
I saw both bands this summer, and thought that Morris-Dukowski’s Flag was much better than Ginn’s Black Flag, but this is beside the point. In any case, when they all have been in the same band, I can’t understand how one of them could own the name more than the others? And this is basically what a judge decided, even claiming that the logo was now a generic use since unlicensed band merchandise has been available since 2009 (a Japanese company even registred the band name in 2008) and Ginn never sued anyone before. Plus Flag was touring under the term ‘original members performing the music of Black Flag’ so they weren’t appropriating anything. The judge said fans could tell the difference between both bands,… obviously, if you could read a flyer you couldn’t be confused, I knew I would see Ginn’s version at the Vex and Morris-Duchowsky’s at the FYF fest.
Ginn has lost and Flag can go on with its business. But Rollins in all this? According to Ginn, he was included in the lawsuit because Rollins had attempted to use and abuse the legacy of the band and he and Morris had at some point manufactured and sold bootleg Black Flag records and t-shirts! That seems abuse once again.
Black Flag suing Black Flag goes so against the DIY punk rock ethics, don’t they feel the name of Black Flag has been damaged by this mess? Ginn looks like the bad guy in all this, suddenly trying to get some special rights (and money) whereas so many people have been in the band and have done whatever they wanted for the past 30 years without any reaction from Ginn and its SST records. He gave to the lyrics ‘Gimme gimme gimme/ I need some more’ a whole new bitter dimension.
An interesting part of the development is that the court ruled Rollins never quit Black Flag as there is no physical evidence he did! Does it mean he will show up one day at one of these Flag’s gigs?