Keeping it Hardcore
February 20, 2007

When director Paul Rachman and writer Steven Blush set out to make the film version of Blush’s 2001 book American Hardcore (Sony, Street: Feb. 20), a chronicle of the American hardcore punk movement, one of the first items of business on their agenda was to begin searching for the musicians and producers and other participants of the take-no-prisoners, early Eighties musical off-shoot to schedule them for interviews.

Said “scene” may have made its mark in the Eighties, but the trickle down effect can still be experienced in today’s mainstream in the form of stage diving, slam dancing, tattoos, piercings and even bald lead singers.

“I had left hardcore for more than a decade,” remembered Blush of how he was inspired to write his book and subsequent film “It was in the mid-Nineties that I saw how much hardcore had changed the music of the day. It was all very clear to everyone as to how it started, but it was a story that had never been told.”

So Blush teamed with Rachman (the two have known each other since their hardcore days in the early Eighties) and they hit the trail to get their interviews for the film. Within a couple of years, they had Henry Rollins and Dez Cadena of Black Flag, Keith Morris and Lucky Lehrer of the Circle Jerks, Chuck Treece and Gary “Dr. Know” Miller of Bad Brains and dozens of others in the can.

Blush regrets that there were two bands they could not get for a sit-down due to “schisms in the bands and business reasons”—hardcore icons The Dead Kennedys and the original Misfits. But he and Rachman are very proud of their results.

“A fuckin’ MTV crew showing up wouldn’t have worked,” said Blush. “These guys trusted us because we were their friends, or friends of friends, and they saw we were the real thing.”

Posted by Laurence Lerman on February 20, 2007 | Comments (0)