**The Making of out of step by minor threat - featuring ian mackaye**

Intro:

Dan Nordheim: You’re listening to Life of the Record. Classic albums, told by the people who made them. My name is Dan Nordheim.

Minor Threat formed in Washington, D.C. in 1980 by Ian MacKaye, Jeff Nelson, Lyle Preslar and Brian Baker. MacKaye and Nelson had played in the Teen Idles in high school together and when that band broke up, they started Dischord Records. In early 1981, Minor Threat released their first 7-inch, with the “In My Eyes” 7-inch following later that year. When Preslar decided to leave for college, Minor Threat temporarily broke up. After speaking with H.R. of the Bad Brains, MacKaye was convinced to reform the band and Preslar agreed to return. Brian Baker wanted to switch from bass to second guitar so they asked Steve Hansgen to join as the new bassist. In early 1983, they returned to Inner Ear Studio to begin recording as a five-piece. Out of Step was eventually released in the spring of 1983.

In this episode, Ian MacKaye reflects on how the EP came together. This is the making of Out of Step.

Ian MacKaye: This is Ian McKaye, and we are talking about Minor Threat’s Out of Step EP, the 12-inch EP that came out in April of 1983. Just stepping away from the band, like, being a member of the band, I look at the guitar playing, the bass playing, the drumming. I think they were brilliant players. Jeff Nelson is one of a kind as a drummer. And I think both Brian and Lyle and Steve on the, you know, on Out of Step, they're just, they're great players. And we grew up under the shadow of the Bad Brains, and I think that we really put a lot of emphasis on precision and practice and surprises. The Bad Brains’ arrangements were super strange and cool, and I think that we never could keep up with them, but we wanted to at least say, “We're on that team where we think about this stuff. We care.” We did care. We gave a fuck about our music. And there was a tendency for a lot of punk bands to not care and just to be schlubby, and that's fine. But that's not where we were at.

Minor Threat first started playing in late 1980, December 1980. And Lyle Preslar, the guitar player, was a senior at Georgetown Day School. And we knew he was going to go to college so that was, it was always literally a deadline. Like, we were gonna come to an end. We knew that. At that time, it was not a big deal because that was normal. All punk bands just broke up because people went to college. That was part of, that was why I thought college was such a bane because it kept destroying, you know, bands because people would go off to school. Nonetheless, you have to strike while the iron is hot, and we just started playing. And we played through the spring of ‘81, into the summer. We played with S.O.A. quite a bit, which was Henry Rollins' band. He was Henry Garfield at the time. But Henry and I were best friends, we met each other when I was 11 and he was 12, and we basically got into punk together. And so he had his band, I had my band. Lyle had sung for a band called the Extorts, and the Extorts were essentially, they were S.O.A. When that band broke up, Lyle came to play guitar with me and Jeff, and then the other three got Henry to sing, and that became S.O.A. So it was a very incestuous scene. It's also interesting because Henry and I and Jeff, we'd all graduated from school. Henry was class of ‘79. Jeff and I were class of ‘80. But the rest of them were still going to Georgetown Day School together, and there was a lot of stuff going on that we had no idea about. So they would get into a fight with each other at school, and then they would complain about it at practices. And then Henry and I would be angry because we'd heard some smack, some bullshit that other people were saying about us. And it was just a really funny relationship. Of course, it came to an end when Henry went off to join Black Flag in July or late June or July of ‘81. Minor Threat did one attempted tour. We were touring with D.C.'s Youth Brigade across the country. We tried to make it. We had shows booked all the way to California with no idea of how to actually do that. And we had Youth Brigade's guitar players' family van. It was like a tricked out camper van. And so Youth Brigade and the equipment went in that van and then I had a 1970 Plymouth Duster. It's a 2 door. Could hold 6 people if you really were dangerous. And then Brian Baker, the bass player of Minor Threat, had his mother's Volvo wagon. And we set off, the two bands, and then I think we had maybe 6 or 7 kids, came with us, just friends, my brother was there. Bert Queiroz, Giovanna Ragini, Vivian Green, I think was there. Just all these people just jumped in the cars with us. Not sure if Vivian was there, but in any event, we set off for the west. And we made it as far, really, as Madison, Wisconsin. And then Tommy Clinton, the guitar player for Youth Brigade, as I recall, his parents called and said, “Where's the van?” (laughs). So they had to drive back with the van, which put it into the tour.

And then Minor Threat played a few more shows, and then Lyle went off to school. Our last show, I think, was at a party at Janelle's house in Rockville. We played a party, and that was the end. Jeff and I immediately set to forming a new band, which was called either Grand Union or Skewbald, depending whether or not you asked me or Jeff. I was a fan of Skewbald, he was a fan of Grand Union. Grand Union being a local grocery store that was kind of falling apart, but Jeff just thought it was a great name for a band. And we never played a show. We wrote some stuff, and we recorded a couple of songs, but it just sort of never got past that. At Christmas time, right around Christmas, the Bad Brains played a show at the 9:30 Club. They had just come back from the West Coast. And the Bad Brains, of course, were our heroes. They were the, 1980, the greatest band that ever existed, in my opinion. And when they came back, you know, we went down to see the show, and they were really excited because they had made it to the West Coast, we had not made it to the West Coast. And the singer H.R. said, “Minor Threat, you gotta get out there, man. People, they wanna see your band. You gotta get out there.” And I said, “Well, we broke up.” And he said, “Well, you gotta get back together.” He said, “Because you said something, now people got questions, you gotta go answer them.” And the timing was interesting because I had just, I had been feeling really frustrated with Skewbald. And it made me think like, “Oh, I'd like to go play those shows in the West Coast,” because I was obsessed with what was happening in L.A. You know, we obviously were huge fans, very knowledgeable, we read Flipside fanzine, which was really sort of like a gossip, almost like, we knew all the players out there. We knew all these people's names. We didn't really, hadn't really spent any time there with that scene, but we knew it. And Henry, of course, was living out there at that point. So we were very excited about the fact that people in L.A. liked Minor Threat. And Lyle had come home, he had gone to Northwestern University, and he had come home for Christmas break. And I told him about what H.R. said. I said, “H.R. thinks we should reform.” And Lyle said, “Actually, I hate school, so I'm up for it.” So I think he went back and quit and then came back at Easter. And we went, immediately started practicing again as a 4 piece. This is Brian Baker on bass, Lyle Presslar on guitar, Jeff Nelson on drums, and me singing. And we had a couple new songs, we were working on “Little Friend” and “No Reason.” And so we just started practicing immediately. I'd say within a few weeks, I think April 29th, we played our first show back together. And we opened for the Bad Brains at the 9:30 Club. And it was a really, yeah it was pretty amazing to play again.

There was a lot of consternation in the scene here about the fact that we had reformed because there had been a general sense of bands, you didn't reform. That was sort of selling out. Like, once you finished something, that's it. You just built something new. You did something else. So there was a little pushback about us reforming, and it may not have been quite as severe as I and the others were feeling, but we were certainly feeling defensive about it. And we talked a lot about our return to the stage because people had sort of referred to us as selling out. So we wrote a song, a joke song called “Cashing In,” which was to sort of mock the idea that we are selling out. And the idea of the song, it was sort of a cheesy, in my mind, a sort of rock and rolly song compared to our other tracks. And I wrote facetious sort of lyrics, things that were tongue in cheek. And the idea was to play it one time, the first song, the first night we reformed at the 9:30 Club, which we did. We played it, we opened with it. We also threw change at the audience (laughs), and it was probably not the greatest, people were very angry with us. A lot of people in the crowd were mad. A lot of our friends were mad because they thought we were being obnoxious, which we were. But we were defensive. And the next night, the thirtieth, we played a show at the Wilson Center. It was a big show. It was Minor Threat, the Faith, Artificial Peace, Iron Cross, Common Cause, and maybe one other band. It was a big show. But I had a problem, which was that I was working at the movie theater, a Georgetown movie theater. And at that time, everybody who worked at the theater were punks. So if there's a show, like, you couldn't get anyone to fill in for you because everybody else was going to go to the show. That was the way it worked.So I was desperate to get somebody to work because I had to play the show, but all the other ushers were in a band or were going to be at the gig and didn't want to work. So I asked an old friend, asked an old friend of mine, if he could work for me that night. He wasn't, he just was not a punk guy, and he didn't care about the show. And he agreed. The problem was that as an usher, you had to close the theater, basically, you had to lock up at the end of the night. And that's something that you can't do on your first night. You need someone to do for you. As a result, to pull this off, Minor Threat had to play in the middle of the night. We had to play the third slot. And Faith and Artificial Peace would play after us. Now both of those bands, especially Artificial Peace at that time, had become very popular here. So there was a part of me that kind of felt like, “Well, I'm just showing deference. Like, you guys are now the big band and we're back, but, you know, we don't mind opening for you guys.” But also, there was a pragmatic or practical component, which was I had to go close up the theater. And what happened was we played third, and the show was great. And then a lot of people would come in from New York and Philly for the show. It was a big crowd. But after we played, a lot of people left. And this really added fuel to the fire in terms of the local scene being kind of frustrated with us.

That summer, we finally did a tour. We went across the country. It was great. It was a 4 piece and really eye opening, and we learned a lot. And we came back. And I think on the tour, at some point, it became clear that Brian, who was playing bass, was not happy playing bass. The thing about Brian Baker is that he's, like, a genius musician, and he was a guitar player. He was, in many ways, probably, like, the best guitar player. He was a real, he knew how to lead, and he was like, he really understood guitar. And, you know, because Jeff and I started playing with Lyle to begin with, we were looking for a bass player. And Brian said, “Well, I'll play bass,” because he wanted to be in the band. But, really, he's a guitar player. And at some point after that tour, Brian let it be known that he was no longer comfortable, he was not gonna play bass anymore. He wanted to play guitar. And he suggested that maybe we get a different bass player and we have two guitars. Now this came on the heels of a number of bands going to a two guitar setup, notably, Black Flag. When Henry started singing for Black Flag, he replaced Dez on main vocals, Dez Cadena. But Dez then moved to second guitar. So that was the first time we saw Black Flag with two guitars. It was pretty incredible sounding. Then the Circle Jerks, they also, Lucky, moved to guitar, and they got Earl from Saccharin Trust, Earl Liberty, to play bass. And we were really like, “Wow, that's incredible sounding.” And D.O.A. had two, you know, then it was like, two guitar bands started to become something that people were doing. So it was not unheard of the idea that we could do that. And Brian came up with this guy, Steve Hansgen, who we knew. He's a kid from round the way. He's going to punk shows and a nice kid. And of course, we were all kids, and we all knew each other. We were all hanging around Georgetown, so we all saw each other all the time. And he brought Steve to practice one day, and Steve knew every lick, every inch of every song. He just played, he knew it immediately. It was as if he had been in the band. Obviously, Brian had sat down with him and taught him the songs, but, also, Steve is also just an incredible musician and could just, he just can figure it out. So he joins the band. This would have been September of 1982, and he plays his first show with us in October. At this point, our songs, because we have now two guitars, the songwriting is sort of entering into a new place, changing the sound. And we start developing, we have now four or five new songs and then six new songs. And once we head into the winter, it's decided that we're going to record.

And then we had a long debate and discussion about what we would record, what we were gonna do, because we had seven new songs. That's what we had. But we also were debating whether or not to record any of the old stuff. Notably, the song, “Out of Step,” which we had released on the “In My Eyes” 7-inch. “Out of Step,” I wrote those lyrics, and they're very clear what they mean to me, you know, like, how they work. And the lyrics were, “Don't smoke, don't drink, don't fuck, but at least I can fucking think. I can't keep up. I can't keep up. I can't keep up. I'm out of step with the world.” And I was really trying to pull no punches and just lay it out there. The “Straight Edge” song, song “Straight Edge,” really incited a lot of reaction. And I wrote “In My Eyes” as sort of a song that would sort of maybe delve a little deeper into some of what I was thinking about. Like, kind of go point by point. But “Out of Step” was this declaration of sort of freakdom. Like, the thing that actually attracted me to punk was the fact that punks were freaks. And I was a freak because I didn't do what seemed to me most of the world, including the punk scene, by the way, did, which was just constantly try to take leave of one's senses. And I thought it was an irony, but it was sort of the fact that I didn't do that made me a freak. So that when I got involved with the punk scene, saw these freaks who looked weird or did weird things or listened to weird music or believed in weird political stuff or weird religious stuff or practiced weird sexual stuff. Whatever it was, whatever these freaks are up to, I was with them. I'd rather be on, you know, a boat with a bunch of freaks than a bunch of norms, you know, because the norms only swim in one, can only row in one direction, and that's always the wrong way. And so I really I was surprised when I got into punk because then there was this real serious reaction from punks about, you know, the song “Straight Edge,” which I just sort of thought, like, “Hey, this is a song about an individual's right to choose how he or she wants to live their own lives.” That was it. Because I was ridiculed for being a straight kid, like a guy who didn't drink or didn't use drugs. In high school, I was ridiculed for it. And then in the skateboard world, I was ridiculed for it. And then when I went to rock shows, like big concerts, I was ridiculed for it. And then when I got to the punk scene, I was also ridiculed for it. But I was an angry person, I didn't give a fuck whether people really, I'm just gonna sing this song. So I wrote “Straight Edge,” and then it got such a huge response. Like, you know, people, I mean, our first tour, we'd get to towns like, you know, Dallas, and some gang of tough knucklehead would come up and say, like, “We're round edge. What the fuck are you gonna do about it?” Or they would I mean, literally, attacked on stage a number of times. I mean, it was sort of par for the course of that era, but having people try to beat your ass while you're singing, that was as we used to say, “That's every day” (laughs).

And so I wrote the song “In My Eyes” as more of a, I kind of broke it down more, going into details. And then “Out of Step,” which was just, I thought, almost like a koan, like a Buddhist thing. Like, just sort of like, “Here's a little riddle for you,” but also super direct. And when we were working on the “In My Eyes” 7-inch, the lyric sheet, Jeff was designing it here at Discord House. And when he did the lyric sheet, he showed it to me, and he had put in the lyrics… The lyrics are, “Don't smoke, don't drink, don't fuck, at least I can fucking think.” And he put in parentheses the word “I” in front of each of those first three. “I don't smoke. I don't drink. I don't fuck. At least I can fucking think.” Now, first off, this song in many ways is I think the thing that really upset people is the don't fuck line, which I always thought was so funny because I was never, I've never was or have been against sex at all. And I think what I was trying to tease out was this idea of conquest or abusive or yeah, conquest oriented sex, people who were just using other people's bodies. Something that was fairly common with teenagers and certainly in the music scene. And would often say that, you know, nobody had any problem parsing the nuance of the word, “drink.” They didn't think that I was against fluids. But when I said, “fuck,” they thought that I was a celibate, which I was not and would never, had never advocated. But I kinda loved it. I was really entertained by people's, how upset they got over that one lyric. Anyway, Jeff came down with this lyric sheet and showed it to me. And I said, “Why are you putting the word ‘I’ in parentheses? The fourth line qualifies the first 3. Don't smoke. Don't drink. Don't fuck. But at least I can fucking think.” So clearly, I don't do these things, but at least I can do this. You know, like, it just seemed obvious to me, anyone who reads the lyrics, and he said, “Well,” he was saying, “Well, people think you're sending out orders, and I'm trying to soften that.” I go, “Well, I don't give a fuck what they're thinking. That's not the word. The words are this, this, this, and this.” And I go, “And this is a qualifying line, and that's the way I…” Anyway, the argument was going on and on. And eventually, Jeff said, “Well, we just want to make sure that people know that it's you.” Like, in other words, “It's not that you don't do those things, but we might.” Basically, he was saying that the band was trying to distance themselves from the lyric, which, of course, “Uhh.” I mean, Jeff and I have argued, we've known each other since high school, and we've argued so much over the years that that was just one of the millions of arguments we've had. But it was such a stunning revelation.

So the song was controversial even within the band. So we had this discussion, this idea that we would rerecord the song. And then in the sort of middle break, a little section where there was no singing, then I would say something to clarify that it's not a set of rules, that straight edge wasn't a movement or just something like that. So that song was considered. We would maybe do that song. But then, what to do with the fact that we only have seven new songs and maybe “Out of Step,” which total in time, say, maybe 18 or 20 minutes, maybe. I don't know. Not that long. Maybe 15 minutes. And it had to be a 12-inch. It couldn't be a 7-inch, which would be our first 12-inch. The music is too long for a 7-inch. We discussed the idea of maybe putting the two singles on the A-side and then put the new songs on the B-side, which would fit on one side. It’d be a little cramped, but it would work. Lyle and Brian were emphatically against that. They did not want to reissue. They wanted to keep this as a separate thing because this was a new, in their mind, it was a new band. Like, not a new band, but it was a new era, and they just didn't want to bring those other things along. I was resistant to the idea of rerecording the songs because I thought that was kinda rip off. I never was, I always thought it seemed like a rip off when bands would rerecord songs and reissue it. And you're like, “Well, we already have those songs.” So we argued and argued about this in practices. The other thing that we argued about was whether or not to record “Cashing In,” which I was against, but the band really wanted to do. And I think I finally agreed to do it. This is typical of me, I agreed to do it, but not to, I hadn't agreed to release it, but I would record it just for posterity's sake. I think probably, part of me, secretly was, like, “Alright, we'll put this out.” If you're gonna record it, it's probably gonna come out. So then we had basically the seven new songs, “Out of Step” and “Cashing In.” And then we said, “Well, let's just go to the studio, and we'll start.”

So we booked time at Inner Ear, which was, at that time, Don Zientara ran it. It's in a small brick house just about eight or ten blocks from Discord House here in Arlington, Virginia. And it was in the basement, in a rec room, his kids' rec room. The control room was actually in the little boiler room, like, where the furnace was and the hot water heater. It's a tiny little space. And Don had just gotten an 8-track recorder, a Tascam, I think. And prior to that, he had a 4, we'd record everything on 4-track. He first got his 8-track in the spring of ‘82. We fooled around and went over there and did some recording, but nothing really came of that. So this is our first time recording on 8-track. And one thing about recording on the 8-track, which was interesting and kind of exciting for me, was that when you record 4-track, you have 4 separate tracks. So when we recorded, the drums had one track, the bass had one track, the guitars had one track, and then the vocals would have one track. But that also meant we had a lot of emphasis on backing vocals. So the backing vocals and the vocals had to be on the same track. So what we would do is we would record those first records, I would do a scratch vocal. They would play the music, and I would sort of kinda sing along, but not going too hard because I don't wanna blow my voice out, if they have to repeat the song over and over and over. But I would just do a placeholder so we knew that the count was right or whatever. But once we had the track down, once we selected which version we were going to use, then we would all go into the other room. I would have a mic, and the rest of them would stand behind another mic. And then we would do the actual vocals. So it's overdubbing, doing them after the music. With an 8-track, that problem has been solved. Because now we had 2 tracks for vocals, and I could do the vocals live. So “Out of Step” was the first time that I sang live vocals. All the songs that are on there, those vocals are done live. There's no overdubs. Those are actually, they're done at the moment, which was amazing. I stood in a little, under the stairs going down the basement where they have a washing machine and a dryer and like, a work sink, we set the mic there. And then right there on the side of the door was the rec room where those guys played, and then Don was in this other little closet behind me. So this was really exciting for me because I like the idea of the sort of visceralness of just singing and just like, once you finish a song, that's kind of the take. If that's it, then the vocals are done. We don't have to do anything. They would go back and do backing vocals, but it just felt really, it felt valid to me. Yeah it just felt real. So that was exciting, going into the studio to do it that way. And, Steve, of course, now we had two guitars, and Steve was on bass. So we were prepared. And I think that, yes, I guess by the time it just, as I said, it was a fait accompli, we were gonna be a 5 piece, and that was fine. Actually, it was a show we did. It was called the 555 show, which would have been, I think, January 2nd, 1983. And it was Minor Threat as a 5 piece. And then Faith, my brother's band, they had just gotten another guitar player, Eddie Janney. They had become a 5 piece. And then this band, Marginal Man, who had sort of come out of the ashes of the band, Artificial Peace, and it was their first show, I think. And they were a 5 piece, or their second show, so it was the 555 show. That was January 2nd. And January 3rd, we went into the studio to record Out of Step. So we were really working at that time. I think we were prepared. Yeah we were ready to go.

“Betray”

The song is called “Betray,” but the chorus is really, “tray, tray, tray,” because the emphasis was always on the “tray,” like that. And it’s hard to say “betray, betray, betray.” But it's just “tray, tray, tray.” Because it's hard to get the word “be” in there, “betray.” And I wrote the words, and, you know, it's really about this idea that people around us who are considered our, like, you know, the scene was very much, it's very much a scene politics record. Like, the songs are all basically largely based on our immediate surroundings. And I think we felt really or I felt really betrayed by some people who I loved. And a lot of my songs start off with kind of a specific incident or a person in mind, but very quickly become much more general and just about the idea or the concept or the tendency or or whatever. So probably when I wrote it, I probably could have even been granular and told you what this was about, like, when so and so did this or whatever. But then it just becomes itself. And of course, they're always, you know, they're always about Jeff too. Because Jeff and I would always argue. So, you know, so I always would write words that were basically saying, like, you know, “I thought we were friends,” that kind of thing. And I have some practice tapes where you can really hear some ideas, other ideas. Like, we had a, at one point, a really kind of unfortunate kind of funk breakdown in that song that I'm so glad never made it past the practice room. We were all pretty obsessed with go-go music. So we tried to do, like, a little go-go breakdown, but it just didn't work, obviously. How's it, what is the ending of that one? Does it go, “Goddamn it we were supposed to stay young. Now it's over and finished. Normal expectations are on the run. Now it's over.” Yep. That is the funky go-go-y part that initially was there, it wasn't the same one, but there was the chorus was that. Like, there was a chorus. It wasn't “Betray!” it wasn't that it. It was a funky part, and it just, yeah. If you ever come to Washington, I'll play it for you. It's pretty funny.

No but it was a rocker. It's a good song, “Betray.” And I mean, the last record we'd put out was “In My Eyes.” And the song “In My Eyes” is pretty developed compared, say, to the first record. I'm not saying it's better. I'm just saying it's, that you can hear that we're becoming more developed in our craft or our arranging or thinking about music in a different way. And I would say even “Out of Step,” though it's fast and kind of raging, it had a, there was a kind of severity to that song that was much really a departure for the band compared to the first single, which I think those songs are pop songs. I mean, and I mean that in the best sense. I love pop music, and I wrote songs, every song I ever wrote, I wrote to be heard and for people to sing along with. So those songs, I loved the kind of catchiness of them. But “Betray,” I think, definitely showed that this was a, we had taken another step in our evolution. And you can note that I don't use the word progression because, and this may be semantics, but I think evolution is what happens to you, and progression is what you try to make happen.

“It Follows”

“It Follows,” I think we talked about this as a band, and no one can really remember who wrote the music. But that song was really, lyrically at least, was about this idea of, in my mind, becoming a punk and sort of dropping out of society. The idea was that you removed yourself from the kind of mainstream tendencies that were so discouraging, behaviors and tendencies. But what we found was that the mainstream societies, especially the media's attempt to ridicule and dismiss punk. They would put out all these absurd and kind of contemptuous images of punk. They would have all these characters that were nihilistic or self destructive or insane, which had caused two problems for us. One problem was it meant that people outside the punk scene thought that we were nihilistic or self destructive or insane, and then would treat us that way. But more problematic is that people who were nihilistic or self destructive or insane thought they were punks and would start coming to shows. So suddenly, we had this sort of really weird situation where the punk shows were suddenly becoming more and more popular, and they're being filled by a lot of people who actually were kind of mainstream people. The kind of stuff that we thought we were getting away from actually just came with us. And now, you know, I'm 61 now, and I think I can look at it a little bit differently. I wrote those lyrics when I would have been almost 20 when I wrote the song. I just turned 20. But what I'm really singing about is the reality that even within us, that we are normal. Like, there's a, you know, a normality that kind of creeps up. The things that you think that you're you've removed yourself from or that you've excised from yourself actually still exist. And these are things that are psychological or egotistical or whatever. Things that you like that feel like you've gotten past, but then you realize they're still with you. And so, yeah, “It follows me” (laughs). That's, you know, is that the thing that you thought you were getting away from actually has come right with you.

Initially, when we first started with two guitars, it was a little bit, felt a little sloppy because Lyle Preslar is such a genius guitar player, and he's so tight. I think Lyle is an underappreciated guitar player. He played full 6-string barre chords with such precision, and his tone was always great. Like, he just really played, and his rhythms were so cool. Brian is a slightly, at the time, he's a looser guitar player. So it took a little bit of getting used to the songs not being quite as razor sharp as they were before. They were really like, we were playing super tight. But then, you know, we got once we figured it out, yeah it was good. And there was also something we could do with two guitars that we hadn't been able to do with one guitar, obviously, because there's sort of counterpoint things. But also, everyone was just improving, you know, on their instruments, evolving, you know, by leaps and bounds. And we practiced a lot, and we worked hard on our songs. And the new songs, the first record, the eight song 7-inch, I had a hand in writing everything. Probably half of the songs I wrote by myself. You know, I wrote “Straight Edge,” “Minor Threat” and “Small Man, Big Mouth.” I mean, obviously, people had input, but they're pretty much songs I wrote by myself. And then Lyle and Brian had you know, they wrote some music, and I sang on it, or in the case of “Seeing Red,” I wrote the music and Jeff wrote the lyrics. But when we got to Minor Threat 2.0 or whatever, like this, when we reformed and these new songs, these are, no one can actually remember who wrote the songs, but I definitely did not write all that music. I may have written some parts of “Little Friend,” maybe. I don't know. “No reason,” I think that was Lyle Preslar. I think pretty sure Lyle wrote that stuff. There are parts I know I wrote, like, certain elements that I knew I wrote, but it's funny. We've talked about it, the four of us, and no one can actually remember who wrote what. It all becomes sort of, it just exists. No one can remember who wrote it. I do think that they, Lyle and Brian, wrote most of those riffs. And then the band, we all arranged together. That was just the way we worked. On the practice tapes I have, you can hear the kind of, even by the summer of ‘81, we're working on “In My Eyes.” I have tapes where we can just hear us just discussing. Like, “Well, maybe we could like, from this point, like, right here, stop there and go right into this section. Or maybe we can, you know, stop there and then have, like, a kind of, like, a drum roll.” You know, we'd have all these ideas. So it was something that I think we had a pretty good grasp on arrangement, and we were challenged, also I think, thrilled to push sounds together and have them come out sounding so incredible. The songs are cool.

The creep, it just follows no matter what. So at the very end of the song, I would, yeah, whistle. So that perhaps was me trying to illustrate the idea of the kind of safe walk down the street that I thought I was having until something came up and tapped me on the back.

“Think Again”

That seemed like a Brian riff, yeah. But it's impossible. I mean, seriously, Lyle and Brian and Jeff and I sat together trying to figure it out. That song, lyrically, was just me pushing back against, the thing about Minor Threat, really, was that, as H.R. said, you know, “You said something that prompted questions. Now you gotta give them answers.” And it was clear that there was something about the band, the way we operated, and the lyrics that really created interest from some people, you know, on a relative level, a lot of people, but at a world level, not that many people (laughs). But, you know, we had a reputation, like, where we had, there was a lot people had this sort of notion about who we were, what we were doing, and there was a lot of talk. I mean, the punk scene was filled with talk then. You know, you gotta remember that the American punk scene was extremely regional in the late seventies and early eighties. I've often talked about the idea that, you know, the Ramones sort of, in the mid-seventies, sort of started a conversation that some people were picking up on, like the kind of more tuned-in people around the country. And then the Sex Pistols, just by their outrageousness, and even more as a result of the overreaction of the media, it was like a flare being shot up or a firework being shot up into the sky. And in my mind, that firework or that flare, it unfurled a banner that said self-define. Like, you can do whatever you want to do. And there were people, a lot of young people, but just people all around the world, but I'm going to speak about America, just the United States at the moment, who saw that and were like, “Oh, I'm marginalized. I'm a freak. And I just got a good reminder to self-define,” to go ahead and just do what you want to do. And there was no, for the most part, there was very little chance that the bands that we would hear about, The Clash or The Damned or the Sex Pistols or Generation X or even the Ramones for that matter, are gonna be in your town anytime soon. It was too obscure. But we wanted punk. We wanted to, you know, we wanted punk. And there were people in all these towns who were somewhat clued in. They had, they were coming at things from an original sort of point of view. Even if they were a cover band, they would really be selective in what songs they covered, and you would gravitate to be near those people. But, ultimately, what you had to work with was listening to records and looking at magazines. There was no film, there was no, you couldn't do it in real time. You couldn't see how these people moved. So you had to create your own version of it if you wanted it in your town. If you wanted to have punk in your town, then you better be that punk. And each town had its own style, its own sound, its own palette. You know, the well water for each town was unique. It had a very regional scene, and each scene really hummed on chatter, gossip. It's a way to remind each other that we exist. And as the scenes started becoming aware of each other, there's a lot of letter writing going on, some phone calls, it was very expensive to talk on the phone at that time, especially if you were broke. But we wrote a lot of letters, and you always looked out for fanzines. And there was a couple of fanzines, specifically Flipside magazine. Obviously, there was Slash before that. Those were L.A. periodicals. But Flipside was really important. In New York, there was New York Rocker, Big Takeover, I think it started at that point. There's a handful of zines. So you would go to your local record store, and we call them import stores because they imported records from England. And because they dealt with distributors who were import distributors, quite often they're independent, they weren't major labels, they would have fanzines too. They would carry fanzines or music papers. So that's how we would learn about these other scenes. So you would read about a band from another town, and then it would just be a lot of discussion about who are these people. And then you'd hear legends about, “Oh, you know, they throw hammers at the audience,” or whatever, I'm making that up. But there's just a lot of chatter and Minor Threat and the D.C. scene got a lot of, yeah it prompted a lot of conversations. And Minor Threat, I think, specifically the lyrics really got a reaction. And I believe people developed a sort of an idea about me personally that was just so off base. And the song was really saying or just thinking about the way they thought about it, I just say, “Well, think again. Like, you gotta question things. Don't just accept what you're hearing, but think about it more than once.”

People in bands who really became rock stars. And I said, “You think you're something? Think again. Like, you're just normal like me. We're just all normal people.” I was, you know, always pushing back on the idea that I didn't, I wasn't into rock stars. Still not.

“Look Back and Laugh”

That song actually there's a couple things about that that I can tell you. Number one, the beginning segment, the intro part, I wrote that on piano. That's a piano thing that I wrote. I wrote that on piano, and then it was transposed to guitars and bass. I mean, because you can play the piano, you can play the melody and the bass. You can do the bottom part and the top part. So this was really exciting to be able to have two guitars because they fleshed out the sound. Now my recollection, if we did this song, we were like, “Alright, well, let's transpose it.” I read an interview with Steve Hansgen who said that he recalls that they were practicing, they came up and I was playing that on piano, and they go, “That's cool,” but I don't I don't remember it that way. The other thing I can tell you about that song is that that is the first time I ever sang the song. I had a cassette, we had recorded a practice version of it. And I wrote the lyrics in my bedroom listening to a cassette of a practice. And then we went to the studio and we record it, and that's the first take of the song. And it's the first time I ever sang it. And I thought, “That's perfect. Leave it right there.”

I really was a huge fan of Janis Joplin and Joe Cocker. In terms of vocals, they were hugely influential for me. And I think with that song, I really was trying to really lean into that song and to really, you know, really fucking mean it. And I did. And I do.

There's been some discussion over the years that, like, you know, that later on, the other bands, bands started singing about their emotions and stuff, and things started to change. But I would offer up that that song literally name checks emotions and goes down the you know, it's just (laughs). So it's funny to me when people say, “Well, yeah. Later you know, years later, bands started to really deal more with their emotions.” And then in this song, “Look Back and Laugh,” I'm saying, like, you know, “Jealousy and anger,” I'm talking to all the different emotions and actually acknowledging them. I always thought it was funny that I was like, “Well, there is actually this song where I actually literally sing about emotions” (laughs).That's a good song, though.

I think that I was always, I mean, even the first record, those songs are all about social interaction, and I'm critical of people. Even a song like “I Don't Wanna Hear It,” that's partially about the world at large, it's also about people that I know, you know, like, who just always talk bullshit. And I just don't wanna, so I think that my interest in sort of being introspective or thinking about things, even the song, “Straight Edge.” I'm literally talking about myself. “I'm a person just like you.” That's the first line of the song. So it's introspective. So to me, this seems the same way that the music has evolved over this, you know, through just playing together and time and growing and understanding our instruments. The same way, it would make sense to me that my lyric writing and my singing would also evolve. But I don't know if it's so world weary necessarily. Maybe by Salad Days, which was later. That was another almost a year later. Then maybe, yeah, you could say I was more jaundiced.

And that was a song really about the experiences that we have specifically, but our experiences together as young, like, being kids, growing up. And there's one way of looking at life, in which, life is a series of stages that you are sort of in this era, and then you're in this era. And there are, like, certain rooms in your house that you can just close the door and say, “Well, I'm not in that room anymore. But when I was in that room, I was, like this. And now I'm not in that room, so I'm this way.” But I actually, I think of life as a flight of steps, you know, and that it's all one thing. And so there was a lot of sense about pressure I felt of people who are, like, aging out of punk or were trying to move away from or feeling like they had to change with who they were, their style, and I was, I think that really was at the root of that song was this idea of people sort of looking back on their lives and like, “Oh, you remember this?” And and also knowing how desperate things felt, while keeping in mind that it would probably seem rather petty in the future, which on some levels, it does. But on other levels, it's 2024, and you're fucking asking me questions about it. So I guess it wasn't that petty after all.

“Sob Story”

“Sob Story,” lyrically, it was just about this sort of notion that the scene was so much bellyaching going on, and I was just kind of making fun of them for that. And again, on a micro level, they're probably, every word in there is specifically about an incident or a person. But once you put all the ingredients into a pot, it just becomes a stew. It is what it is, a singular thing. Any one of those lyrics I could probably, you know, could be a caption to a certain photograph of my memory. But once I got into the rhythm of it as a whole, it was about the tendency that human beings have to feel sorry for themselves when that energy could be used to actually advance themselves and not be stuck, not to wallow.

“Life's not been good to you. It's just not fair.” My mother used to always, that was a classic line from my mom. She said, “Nothing in life is fair.” She said to me, I said, “It's not fair.” She said, “Nothing in life is fair.” That was my mom. So that was a, I think that was a direct quote from her.

“No Reason”

“No Reason,” that, I'm sure Lyle wrote. Not all of it, but maybe most of it. I don't remember. But I know that was a song that we worked on prior to Lyle going to college. And he had written a set of lyrics called “No Reason,” and it was about a, we had done a show and the police shut the show down and cracked a bunch of people's heads, and he had written a lyric about that. And then when I was, Jeff and I were playing in Skewbald, we actually played the music of part of that song, at least. So I don't know if I wrote it. Maybe I wrote that section. Don't know. I have recordings of Skewbald playing maybe the verse, that part. But the chorus in that song is one of my favorites. I love that chorus. It just sounds so good. And the way I sing and the way I write my words or I have my vocals, like, once I kind of set on it, it really is set. And I remember that was the first time I ever double tracked a vocal ever on the chorus. I never double tracked things before. And I just thought it would sound cool. And I remember we went in and, also because we had the 8-track, I had an extra track to fool with. So I tried to double it a couple of times while listening to my original vocal in my ears in the headphones. And I kept having trouble. I would pitch off of it. I would sing, like my brain would always make me sing in a different key. And so I said to Don, just take me out of my head. Let me just sing it again. I have recorded the first you know, the original live vocal is on there. So then doing the overdub, I have my vocals turned off in my headphones so I'm hearing just music. And I sing it, and it's like perfectly lined up exactly the same. And that's actually, since then, that day in 1983, whenever I double vocals, I always just say, “Just take me out of my head and I'll sing it exactly the way I sang it the first time.” I mean, it'll just be spot on. And it almost always is. I just have it, especially a part like that which has such a defined shape in my mind. That was a good song. I like all these songs. They're good songs.

I have to say that wasn't only about Jeff, but no question that Jeff and my relationship was always fodder for…But no, I think that was about other people too though, or actually older friends, people that I, actually, there was a person I knew who I had met many years, many years before punk. And we were friends, and then we became really not friends. And it seemed absurd, although I was also, I didn't like the fella. But I can't say, I don't know if that was specifically about Jeff. I can't say that.

“Little Friend”

“Little Friend,” again, musically, the same. The beginning of that song was very, seemed very Lyle-ish to me, but that was me grappling with, lyrically grappling with what compels or propels me, at that time and still, to want to sing or to make music even. Something inside of me that I have to address constantly. I think that's the, I mean, I think all people have a little motor, something inside that’s prodding us along and I was just speaking to that.

I had forgotten that I'd written about something gray until you mentioned it. But now that you mention it, it makes me think about this idea that people quite often will think of it as something heavy or gray or sad when it really is just, it's just beyond their comprehension. I think that humans or most humans have a tendency to encounter inexplicable or incomprehensible feelings and then to assign those feelings with fear or sadness because they don't understand them, because they've confused understanding with happiness (laughs). So I think, yes, I think that that, what I refer to as a gray feeling, still exists. It's like the existential part of it all, right? And, like, what the fuck? And some years after that, I think I landed on an idea that the real assignment we have is to make peace with incomprehensibility. You know, make peace with that and not have to understand it or to figure out everything. And I think that the tendency is to think, “Well, I must be blue because that's this part of me, it's like a part I can't understand, and it scares me,” or whatever. But or maybe it's just a part and just let it be, and you don't have to understand it. But probably at that time, I was still trying to understand it.

It's hard to parse this stuff because the song becomes so married to itself and its time and everything else. But if I think about it deeply or if you ask me, now I start thinking like, “Well, maybe that's what's going on.” But it is interesting because it does, in that one it says, “And now I'm waiting. Now I'm waiting.” And it's a theme that I've come back to many times. Most notably, I mean, “Waiting Room.” Same basic, “I'm just, I'll wait. I'm a patient person. I'm waiting for the thing, whatever it is, it'll come along. And when it does, then I'll get to work. Or I'll deal with whatever it is that thing you ask me to do. I have other stuff going on all the time, but I'm patient.” That's probably the first time that I articulated that kind of part of me that, just waiting for the thing or the circumstances to arise in a way that will result in something worth sharing.

“Out of Step”

It is interesting when you think about it because, for the discomfort that seemed that Jeff or the band had with the song, “Out of Step,” it's interesting that they would then want to not only reprise it, but also name the record after it. But I don't know, I don't remember. Everything was happening so fast at that time. But, you know, we had to get the record out. So we recorded in January, we recorded in 3 days. I have here the Inner Ear, this is the actual calendar. And January 5th, you can see there's Ian. That's when we started recording. We probably recorded the entire thing in one day, knowing us. And then we come back, we come back on this Sunday. Yeah so that's it. So we spent 200 dollars making that record. So we recorded mixed and everything was done and then we immediately shipped it off, and we started working the artwork. I had asked Cynthia (Connolly), who I was going out with at the time. She and I started going out in 1982. And I had this idea for a black sheep, the idea of a like, kind of a happy black sheep dancing away from a bunch of serious white sheep. To me, serious white sheep or mainstream society or just people who are conventional. And I thought there was a lot of joy in being a black sheep. And then she did that illustration, which was perfect. Like, she just nailed it. And so we knew that would be the cover. And so many records that time, you know, the bands quite often would really lean on other people suffering to sell their, to show how rocking their records were. Like, they would show people who are in war atrocities or being, you know, lynched or it just was something that I found, I've always found distasteful. That it was, it just seemed weird that they have these kids in a skate rock band and then they show, like, a Holocaust person, someone being murdered, like during the Holocaust, just to show how tough their music was, seemed absurd to me. So we were, that was just not our style. And the Out of Step cover was really to kind of step away from that notion. So she was already working on that. We left her on tour in March. So we recorded in January and must have shipped to the plant by February because we had the record back by the end of the month, end of March. So we were full speed ahead, we were going fast.

Well, as this interview might indicate, I don't tend to be prepared. I don't prepare in a way. I just sit down and do the thing. So when this idea came up that I was going to offer up some clarifying thoughts, Like, we got to that part and I said, “Okay, we have the mic on and the part would come up and I would just start talking.” And I mean, I think part of me did not want to do this. I thought it was a bad idea or a dumb idea, but I was, I did feel pressure. And my first attempts were not, they sucked. I mean, it just didn't sound, it was dumb, corny sounding and pointless. And my recollection is that Jeff came in and we were discussing. He said, “Well, why don't you blah blah say this? Or why don't you try saying this? Or etcetera, etcetera,” that kind of thing. And we were arguing back and forth about it. And then at some point, it got very heated. And I was saying, “Look, you know, it's not, I don't give a fuck what it is.” You know, I'm yelling at, like, “Whether you're talking about this or that, the other thing,” you know, and I'm kind of yelling at Jeff. And Don Zientara just pushed record. And he recorded a part of the argument. Like, just recorded it. So that some of what's in there is actually me and Jeff arguing. You can hear, if you listen closely, you can kind of hear, there's a kind of a point where you can hear me saying, like, you know, I changed the, I think it's toward the end. There's a slight tonal shift. You can tell that it's an edit. And the edit was me from the original thing where I was saying, you know, “I'm just trying to say,” whatever and then goes into the rest of the song. But before that, you can hear, there's a slight, there's a shift in the tone. It's because that was actually, the other one was just me yelling. Jeff and I were yelling at each other, and this is what I was yelling at him. I wish it was actually a recording of the whole thing. I don't think there is. I mean, in other words, I think that we trimmed it down and fitted it in, and so that's all that exists on the multitrack. I should go back and look. I have the multitrack. That'd be interesting to see whether the other stuff is on there, whether we just muted it or if it literally was something we erased everything else, and that is exactly what it is now. But that's my recollection anyway, that it was actually what is on the record is one side of an argument that Jeff and I were having about how to do it.

Originally, the record was going to be the seven new songs, and then “Out of Step” was gonna be on there, but not on the track listing. You aren't gonna see it. And I think, actually, on the vinyl, that's the case, the original record. I don't think there is, no well, it gets more involved because the original artwork, the back of the record was black because we had a problem with the printing. We had left on tour. The back was designed with a gray, using gray as a background, but Jeff had used the wrong screen or something. But, any event, it was gonna be so dark that you couldn't see anything. But we were already leaving on tour. There was nothing we could do about it, and it was gonna look terrible. So then the decision was made just to make it black (laughs). So the the first record, it just has a pure black back. It's the first pressing. It was 3500 copies. It was pure black. But I can tell you that the plan was to not mention the “Out of step,” I think, or certainly “Cashing In” was not gonna be on the track listing. Once we decided to use the song, it was definitely not gonna be on the track listing. And it wasn't until CDs, CDs are when the first time that it came along.

“Cashing In”

Dischord had released the Flex Your Head compilation which was a 12-inch LP, long player. And it was our first 12-inch record. We had done six 7-inches first and then we did the 12-inches of Flex Your Head, featured all the bands in town at the time, or at least most of them. The second record, number 8, and the second 12-inch record was the Faith/Void record. And that was a situation where we had two bands. We had recorded demos, both of which were longer than a 7-inch could hold, but not long enough to warrant a 12-inch. So we had this idea of putting both the bands on one record. So there's like, a two-sided record with two covers, you know, that they're flipped upside down. So you had the Faith/Void record. The third record, 12-inch we did was number 9, Discord number 9, which is the Scream Still Screaming LP. And that was just a legitimate album. The difference between for us, at that time, 7-inches, we had to hand make the sleeves. I think there's close to 10,000 records that Dischord sold where we handmade the sleeves. We cut and folded and glued and inserted everything, did it ourselves. Albums had, you could buy pre, like, there's companies that made the covers, so you could have them printed by somebody else. 7-inch covers were not, we didn't have access to that at the time. Later, it was, you could get a 7-inch sleeve made, but in that time, we had to do it ourselves or we thought we did. So I think we made this move towards just doing 12-inch records at that point. And I didn't really care. It wasn't a big step for me. In fact, it presented new challenges, like, what we would charge, for instance. I think we were selling our albums for five dollars each at that point. List price probably would have been, like, regular record price sold for eight to ten maybe. So we were selling for five. But when Out of Step was recorded, we were only doing, it was just gonna be these seven or eight songs, and we had a big argument about it. We were selling our 7-inches for two dollars and fifty cents. We're selling the albums for five dollars, and we argued and argued, and we finally agreed that we'd sell it for three dollars and fifty cents. That's how much, because it was not an LP, it was an EP. Which, by the way, just on that note, I was thinking about this the other day, I've never quite understood why like, EP, as I understand it, means extended play. And I don't really understand what (laughs), why, it's not an EP, it's the same vinyl real estate as an LP. It's a 12-inch. So if we have twelve songs on there, you call it an LP. If you have five songs or six songs, you call it an EP. I don't really understand why on earth, but that's what it was called, EP. We always thought it just meant not a single. Like, a single is two songs, A side and a B side. If you put more than that, it was called EP because it's an extended play. But when we went to 12-inch, it sort of reversed, and I've never quite figured that out. I was just thinking about that the other day and laughing about how weird terminology like that is. But in any event, this was not an LP, so we sold it for three dollars and fifty cents. We argued and finally agreed to it. I mean, I was always the one that pushed for the lowest possible price just to thumb my nose, or our noses, at the record industry and the idea that we were selling out, which we were really not and didn't want any confusion about that.

“Cashing In,” we did record even though I think initially I had resisted it, but then agreed that it was a really fun song to sing. We did it in practice and enjoyed it. So we tracked that. We did a version of it. And I think at that point, I, they, but also I, we're gonna include it on the record. I was very concerned that people think I was being serious, which I'm obviously not being serious. But I also, I like the song, and I like the piece of music and I thought it was confrontational, and I liked confrontation like that. I liked artistic confrontation. But as I pointed out, that song was not gonna be listed as a song because it was not a song in my mind. It was a piece of music that shouldn't count as a real, like when people buy a record from Minor Threat, these are the eight songs you're getting, and that's what you're paying for. That's what you think you're getting for eight songs for three dollars and fifty cents. And this other thing is just an extra thing that you didn't even know is on the record. And as it turned out, because the first record had a black back, you didn't know what anything was (laughs). You're just getting whatever you're getting.

Out of Step was by far our biggest pressing we'd ever done. At that point, every pressing, Dischord had done, every pressing, we did a pressing of one thousand. And those other records we had repressed, we never had enough money to press more than a thousand. This one, we knew was going to sell really well. So we saved up and borrowed tons of money, and we pressed three thousand five hundred copies. And the record was basically sold out before we had even gotten it back from the plant. We had so many mail orders, but also the stores and distributors had taken so many that it was already a sold out record, almost immediately, which was pretty mind boggling. At that time, Dischord, though we had been a label for a few years at that, two years, we still had no credit with any record plant. So everything we did, we had to do cash on delivery, COD. So if you made a record, if you pressed it a plant, then UPS would deliver the record, and you have to pay the entire amount of that pressing. And we were broke. We were fucking broke. And Jeff and I, we all worked, we had jobs. You know, we paid a hundred and five dollars of rent, and we were struggling (laughs). We were broke. And, also, Dischord had a policy that every record that would come out, all the money of that record would go back into putting out the next band’s record. So the first record was the Teen Idols, which came out in December 1980. Henry wanted to do the S.O.A. record, and we are still waiting for the money to come back for the Teen Idles to pay for it, but he didn't want to wait anymore. So he used his own money to press the S.O.A. record. And then he said, when he left for Black Flag, he said, “Just whatever money comes back, just put it into putting out the next record.” So then the Minor Threat record came out at that point, and all the money should now, the money from that came back. We did the G.I.'s (Government Issue) record. That money came back, we did the Minor Threat “In My Eyes.” When that money came back, we did, you know, so but then we got to the 12-inches. They were so much more, cost so much more money. We had to borrow money from people, and we were broke. And we were always waiting for the distributors to pay us so we could press the next record. And Out of Step, the Minor Threat record was really a huge problem because we sold out immediately. Most of the records going to distributors who, in theory, were just gonna pay you in 45 to 60 days. But in reality, you have to fight them for 6 months just to get a fucking three hundred dollars or whatever it was they owed you, because that was their game, was to always just dog you. So we really were up against it because we had this enormous response to the record. We had hundreds and hundreds of orders waiting. We were going to repress it, but we didn't have any money to repress it. Plus, the Faith had made this Subject to Change record, which was, we had recorded and they were waiting to put out their records. So do we use the money that we get back from the first pressing to press the Faith record first, or do we repress the Minor Threat? It was very, it was a very complicated and confusing time.

And on top of that, while we were on tour in March and April of 1983, the band, present company excluded, because I did not agree. They decided that the mix sucked and they wanted to remix the record. We did remix that record, Out of Step, in May, and then we repressed, we did five thousand copies with a different mix. Nobody really seemed to notice it at the time. That a distinguishing mark to tell you whether or not you have the first or second mix is that there's violins at the very end of the “Cashing In”/”No Place Like Home” section. There's like violins tuning up. That's only on the second mix. On the first mix, it just ends with me saying, you know, “So where am I?” With a little bit of a kind of reverb on my voice. And the vinyl for the next twenty some years or more was always second mix. But when we finally started working on the Complete Discography CD, which I think is how most people, especially back then, came to Minor Threat was buying that CD. We had a long discussion about which mix to use, the original mix or the remix, the second mix. And everybody listened to it, and the entire band agreed with me, by the way, since I'm the one that always thought the first mix was better. They said, “The first mix is better.” And that's what's on the CD, the first mix. And then when we started pressing the vinyl again over here in the early 2000s, we went back to the first mix. So that's what's available.

There's another piano thing that I had written, which we called “Addams Family.” (Sings) “Da da da da da da da da da da da,” that thing. And so we mixed “Cashing In” into that, and we called that “No Place Like Home.” And that's just sort of the coda of the record. Inner Ear was in Don's basement, Don Zientara’s basement for ten years or twelve years. In 1989 or 1990, he got another building and he moved the studio. He was in that building for thirty one years. In 2021, Arlington County, where the building is situated here in Arlington, Virginia, they took eminent domain. It's a warehouse district, and they're making it into an arts and culture district. And one of the ways that they're doing that is by knocking down the building in which Inner Ear Studios had lived for thirty one years. So Don basically was being kicked out, and he was moving back to the basement, but he wasn't going to take any tape machines. So I thought, “Oh God, I need to digitize as much stuff as possible.” And I had an 8-track machine, which we set up, and we were getting all these 8-track tapes done, digitizing the tracks. And it was that moment that I did that that I was looking at this track sheet. And on the track sheet, you can see, “In My Eyes.” And I thought, “What the fuck?” And you can see here, it says, “Fuck Reagan” somewhere. Or there's “Cashing In,” but then it says, “Fuck Reagan” and “Filler,” right? And then, “Addams Family.” And I was stunned to see those things because what you're seeing there is actually the order. Like, we finished the seven or eight songs that we knew we were going to record, and there was still tape on the reel. And though “Cashing In” was something we had discussed recording, I and the rest of the band had totally forgotten that we actually recorded, rerecorded “In My Eyes” or “Filler.” We had no idea. We just didn't remember that at all. The only person that remembered it really was Steve Hansgen, but no one else remembered it. And I was stunned when I saw that because not only did I had in my mind that we decided that we were not going to rerecord any of the songs to hear what it sound like with two guitars, I actually have this argument on tape, a practice argument, in which I specifically say that, “I'm basically open for doing any of the songs, but not ‘In My Eyes,’ because that song was too personal, and I don't wanna sing it again.” And yet, there it is. And I was stunned. And so when I heard it, keeping in mind the vocals are done live, so it's a real take. And Don and I decided, let's just mix these things. So we mixed them, and I sent them to the rest of the band just to say, “Look.” And everyone, Lyle and Brian and Jeff were shocked. Like, just, “Oh my God.” They didn't remember doing it at all. And we just left it there. And then at the end of 2022, I thought, “Oh, you know what? We should just put out a 7-inch with those songs. Also, “Addam's Family” is on there as an instrumental. We just, it was at the end of the tape. We were just, like, recording anything just to use up the tape. And we ended up taking “Addams Family” and pairing that with “Cashing In.” But the other two songs, they were never mixed. I am very struck by the fact that in the order that we recorded “In My Eyes” prior to “Cashing In,” which means that it took precedence. That “Cashing In” was even an afterthought after, I mean, it really was an afterthought that we decided to record that. And at this point, I guess it's out there, but, you know, the 7-inch itself, if you actually play the vinyl, you might actually hear the actual argument, the discussion about whether or not, what song we'd record and me saying, “I don't want to record ‘In My Eyes.’” That I'm uncomfortable with that. So it was a unique opportunity to be able to put those things out, and they sound good. I mean, they do sound good with two guitars. I'm not sure if they're better than the first. It doesn't really matter. They just, they justify their own existence. It's just music.

The first single to me was a really specific reflection of that original body of songs. “In My Eyes” was a real departure from that first one. That was a separate record. Out of Step was yet another departure. And then Salad Days is the conclusion. Yeah, like, the end of the band. Because, you know, of course, after that tour in 1983, you know, the 5-piece went out, when we came back, we went back to being a 4-piece. It just was not working, the 5-piece anymore. And Brian went back to bass and we played the last bunch of shows over the summer as a 4-piece, which was really pretty amazing. It was so tight. It just really streamlined. And then we recorded “Salad Days.” Actually, we broke up in October of 1983. We recorded “Salad Days” in December. We were all still talking. We just, we weren't going to be a band anymore. But we had that song, “Salad Days.” We had a couple other little things. We had “Good Guys,” which was a cover of, a Standells cover. And it was decided that we would record those songs for posterity once again. And, of course, Jeff arguing for posterity and me finally agreeing to it, but only on the condition that it would never be released. And, of course, then we released it. And, again, I think that I probably wanted to release it, but didn't want to acknowledge it at the time. And we were all assholes to each other, and we argued all the time. That band was a giant fight. And, like, if people ask about Fugazi, I always say, “Well, we're on indefinite hiatus, “ but Minor Threat broke up for sure. We were really, had different ideas of what that band was going to do and we didn't agree about things.

Early on, long before we got to this point, before Lyle went off to college, I think, Lyle said one day he wanted to buy a strobe tuner. And at the time, the only way you could tune a guitar, you could tune to a piano, to get the note, or you could get a tuning fork. It's a little fork-shaped piece of metal you would hit, and it would give a perfect tone. And there were no cheap tuners back then that, you know, now you have, they’re disposable practically. But Lyle wanted to buy this stroboscopic tuner. It's like a unit that would probably cost a hundred and eighty dollars. I mean, something that was so insane that he wanted to buy. And I argued strongly against it because I was a cheapskate, but he went ahead and bought it. And as a result, we were in tune, unlike any of the other bands, they were never in tune. But Lyle and Brian, really, they had a premium on the idea of the stuff sounding good and right. I'm forever in their debt for that. The fact that we were in tune, that they really thought about the way songs are written, it was just them. That's just where they were coming from. And I was a singer in the band, and I certainly brought something to the equation. But in terms of music, they were players. And as I, over the years, when I occasionally will go study the band and with my knowledge now having been in bands for so many years and dealt with so many different bands, understanding that, you know, someone like Brian, who was 15 years old when he started, or Lyle, who was, you know, 16 or 17 when he started playing with us, their level of talent was pretty undeniable. So what I hear on Out of Step is a very logical evolution in the band, the growth of the band. And it was never a phase for me. It was never a joke. I fucking meant it, and I mean it. And, also, those guys were good. They could fucking play.

Outro:

Dan Nordheim: Visit lifeoftherecord.com for more information about Minor Threat. You’ll also find a full transcript of this episode and links to purchase Out of Step and the recent Out of Step Outtakes 7-inch. Instrumental music by Restraining Order. Thanks for listening.

Credits:

“Betray”

“It Follows”

“Think Again”

“Look Back and Laugh”

“Sob Story”

“No Reason”

“Little Friend”

“Out of Step”

“Cashing In”

Produced by Minor Threat

Engineered by Don Zientara at Inner Ear Studios, January 1983

Cover art by Cynthia Connolly

Guitar: Lyle Preslar

Drums: Jeff Nelson

Vocals: Ian MacKaye

Bass: Steve Hansgen

Guitar: Brian Baker

Episode Credits:

Intro/Outro Music:

“Don’t Really Think” by Restraining Order from the album, This World Is Too Much

Episode produced, edited and mixed by Dan Nordheim

Additional mixing and mastering by Jeremy Whitwam