BOTTLED UP FOR YEARS

BOTTLED UP FOR YEARS

Al Barile on the reissue of SSD’s legendary LPs

Fred Pessaro

Nirvana’s Live and Loud broadcast on MTV in 1993 was crucial to hardcore punks of a certain age. It was the television debut of guitarist Pat Smear, the legendary member of L.A.’s the Germs, and maybe less important to some but hugely important to me, bassist Krist Novoselic wore a black T-shirt with a big “SSD” across the chest. As a young suburban “punk” with no older siblings, it was hard to find music unless I did all the digging myself, but it usually happened one of a few ways: trial and error of buying records with hard-saved lunch money, word of mouth, watching who toured with who, or seeing what band wore what other band’s merch. I hadn’t heard of SSD at the time, but the giant block-lettering font gave a bit of a nod to high school athletics, which in itself was also a nod to youth-crew-style hardcore, so I felt determined to find the record.

Years passed, and I never managed to track down any SSD records, which were long out of print by then. Finally I stumbled across a copy—a bootleg, of course— of the band’s classic The Kids Will Have Their Say at an out-of-town record store. The cover featured a gang of kids rushing up the Massachusetts State House steps with varsity jackets emblazoned with “The Straight Edge.” It spoke to me immediately—SSD had to be militant, hard-line, and furious, something I was always in search of. I was right, and the record didn’t leave my turntable for a while—that is, until I got a copy of SSD’s Get It Away LP. Between the two, SSD had to be one of the greatest hardcore bands of all time. Punk was an arms race, and the fastest was proclaimed the fiercest, but SSD took their time and came off as terrifying. Their riffs felt so unique, fierce, and urgent, while their lyrics touched on alienation, religion, politics, and standing tall (“We’ll be a force/And they will pay/As we will have our fuckin’ say”). In a genre that quietly rewards conformity while championing freedom of expression, SSD were the real deal.

On April 6, 2025, hardcore punk lost a true legend in Al Barile. The guitarist and founder of Boston’s legendary SSD passed away at age 63 after an extended battle with rectal cancer. In his final few years, he decided to reissue SSD’s classic The Kids Will Have Their Say and Get It Away to Trust Records, giving interviews and using his platform to share his critiques of the Trump administration. Until the day he passed, Al Barile’s punk soul shined brightly, just like those classic records have for 40 years and counting.

CREEM was lucky enough to be granted one of his last interviews, which took place last year. The results of our conversation with the guitarist—and the man who took straight edge from an idea to a movement—are below.

SSD were such pioneers in their time. What were the details of their formation?

So, like, late 1979/1980, I started thinking about being in a band and trying to figure out how I was going to accomplish it. I met our bass player [Jaime Sciarappa] at a Dead Kennedys show in 1980, I believe, and told him what I was thinking, and then we put an ad in the local weekly newspaper to find our drummer, Chris Foley. He lived in Wellesley, which is maybe a couple hours from where we practiced, or at least an hour commute. We had one other singer for one practice, and eventually we settled on Springa because we used to see him at shows. So you could say the band formed at those early Dead Kennedys/Black Flag shows. I think there were a lot of people in that audience that were contemplating forming some band. I think members of the F.U.’s were probably in that audience.

So everyone was trying to start a band at that point. Now, my observation of the Boston scene was it wasn’t hardcore or kid-friendly. I thought it was college-student-friendly—a lot of those alternative independent bands, maybe garage rock or something like that. It definitely wasn’t heavy enough. So I made the decision that the only way to do this was to kind of start my own scene and kind of blow that scene up, and that’s what I set out to do: build this around young people. That was my attitude.

The drinking-age thing was a big thing back then—drinking was 20. And then it eventually drifted up to 21. It was 18 maybe for a year, but it was before I was eligible. So, you know, I found that I was really at odds with that. You know, a young kid growing up and you want to listen to music and a lot of times the music you want to listen to isn’t at the Boston Garden, it’s usually at a much smaller local place. So I said, “I’m gonna start a music scene where there will never be an age minimum." To me it just goes against everything I can think about, putting an age on music. At the time I couldn’t dictate those terms, but the goal was to somehow get to the point where if we did want to play a club, they would do it under our terms—which was, you know, not having an age restriction.

SSD are one of the first bands to adopt the term “straight edge” as a lifestyle— where did that come from for you? Did you have any personal issues surrounding alcohol, meaning in your greater family or something?

My father and my mother never exposed me to any drinking issues. With straight edge I’d say around the eighth grade, I had some friends who were maybe a couple of grades older than me. We got some beer and started drinking in the woods, and when my friends got their license, it graduated to driving around the city. Drinking and driving was frowned upon then, but it didn’t have the stigma that it did many years later. So that’s what we did. But all during that time I was saying to myself, “What am I even doing this for?” There wasn’t a lot to do, and that seemed like the only reason. So the straight-edge thing was mainly about, I really wish I made that right choice. It wasn’t like a new set of rules or anything. It was just I wanted future generations going to high school to know that they had that choice, and a place where they could be cool and not drink, you know?

I found other friends going to shows around Boston, and my friends from my hometown could have come with me, but they elected to stay in Lynn. So the ones who came with me, we got to see different things and maybe took a road trip to New York or whatever. I just was in a mode where I was trying to explore different things, so part of that was to not repeat the same mistakes I did. I didn’t have an alcohol problem, but I definitely didn’t think that drinking every weekend was a good long-term plan. You live that lifestyle, nothing good’s gonna happen from it.

“I DIDN’T START TO BE STRAIGHT-EDGE TO START A MOVEMENT. I'M THE GUY WHO TRIED TO MAKE IT INTO MORE THAN JUST A SONG."

I thought that if I could get more people to go along with me, then maybe we could make an impact, and especially being straight in high school. There’s also kind of like an osmosis thing. If you and your friends are all really into bowling and most of you don’t drink, then you’re gonna kind of absorb those ideas just because that’s part of your culture— your mini-culture. It did create that kind of pressure on people.

I didn’t start to be straight-edge to start a movement. I’m the guy who tried to make it into more than just a song. Ian MacKaye was a great spokesman for that song, and it fit the time of my life and was something that I needed.

I think one of the greatest things about The Kids Will Have Their Say even today is how much it stands out and how furious it sounds. We’re pushing 45 years since the record came out. I would imagine that there’s probably a boring business story in there, but why did it take this long to get these records back in print?

I just kind of figured that with YouTube and the internet, anyone could hear them. So it was less of a concern for me. But when Trust approached me about re-pressing it and wanted to do it in a certain way for fans, I changed my mind.

I put The Kids Will Have Their Say out in 1982 on my label X-Claim with Dischord. We obviously moved on after that project, kept touring and recording. It was a high, that first time was a hard album to make. I mean, we were just kids. We were still trying to learn our instruments and how to write songs, let alone going to the recording studio and then releasing the records, pretty overwhelming. We were a bunch of kids who really had no clue what we were doing. Lou Giordano was our engineer, and he went on to be involved in big records like Live and Goo Goo Dolls.

So the real story is I always was looking forward to the next project. You know, X-Claim was kind of almost the anti-business label since I wasn’t doing it actively. I didn’t like getting on the phone and talking to distributors and then, you know, begging for my money and things like that. So, you know, the music business became distasteful. So I just continued to put the records out and not worry about that.

But I'll tell you, there was never an intention to make it a collectible piece. I don’t think even at the time I knew about the collectibility of vinyl and stuff like that.

How did the collaboration with Dischord to initially release The Kids Will Have Their Say come about?

So here’s the best way I can kind of trace back the thing. I remember we went to New York City to see Black Flag play. I think it was at Irving Plaza, and I met Henry Rollins at that show. He had brought up maybe, like, 20 guys from D.C. We had maybe 15 or 20 guys. And I was talking to Henry and he was telling me that all these guys don’t drink. He mentioned the word "straight" and there were X’s on their hands. They all had shaved heads and Henry was selling SOA and Teen Idles records out of a box, so I bought those records. I probably got Ian’s address off of the Teen Idles record. I think I wrote him, you know? Or I called him. That’s the best I can remember.

There was no email back then. So Ian MacKaye and I were writing and then would phone each other. I would ask Ian about how he’s doing his records, and obviously he had a different thing because he was doing 7-inches. So we just developed a long-distance friendship, and I asked them if we could split the release. Now, I don’t even know if that was being done at the time, but to me it made sense. I think I ended up just giving them a box of records as compensation for letting us use the name or something like that, you know, I believe that was the transaction.

It kind of felt like with the hardcore kids, D.C. were the intellectuals, New York City were the knuckleheads, and Boston were the militants.

Well, I think we’re the more working stiffs and we kinda got the drive. I would definitely think that D.C. was, as you described them, "the intellectuals," and New York was kind of chaotic, at least in my experience.

So do you think that has any relation to your sound? Did that working-class approach lead you to be the meanestsounding band?

Yeah, you kind of hit on something there. There’s a lot heavier bands than we were, but at the time I was trying to, you know, see how heavy and hard and powerful we could make it. I never would have known where the music was going to go—and be much harder than we ever could be—but at the time we wanted to be the hardest.

And later on people started playing faster because a lot of people thought that was harder. COC, I remember, had put out a real fast record. But we wanted to stand out, and it was impossible for us to keep up in the speed race, so we actually slowed down and tried to find the groove that we thought was really more our group.

Now, as far as the record and the iconic cover of The Kids Will Have Their Say, the title is obviously such a statement. And the photo looks like such a statement. What were you guys trying to say? Have there been any misguided people who have taken the cover as a rallying cry for January 6th?

We just wanted to be bold and make sure that the message of the whole record and its cover was, “We’re gonna be heard. We’re here to be heard. We’re here to be listened to.” Since January 6th some people have said that that cover was like that day. Well, you don’t see any weapons in our hands. We didn’t say we’re going to take over the government. It was using symbolism.

As far as the title, my opinion is that you put the strongest song on the album as the title track in general. Well, in this case I don’t think kids will say it was the strongest song, but I thought it was the strongest title. It summed up the whole record.

What do you think is the song that you’re most proud of writing?

I’d say “Glue” or “Get It Away” would be the two songs.

Both of those songs are from your second record, Get it Away, another classic. A crucial LP for its time and even now. Which album do you think is closer to your original vision as far as the band’s sound at the time?

Definitely Get It Away. I’d say that was the sound. That was really the evolution of our sound. Our second guitarist Francois [Levesque] joined the band right around The Kids Will Have Their Say, but he didn’t play on it. So when he joined the band, it definitely gave me a certain amount of freedom that I was lacking, being the only guitar player in the band. So I think Get It Away is really reflective of that.

Who do you think was the most unsung band of the early hardcore era?

I mean, the greatest band of all time, but this doesn’t fit your description, would have been the Bad Brains. I saw them in New York in 1981, and I remember thinking to myself this must be what it felt like seeing like Led Zeppelin or AC/DC for the first time. Later on we played with them at this club called A7. They blew me away. And this was the early version of them. They kind of had a short run where they were the greatest band of all time.

A bunch of the Washington, D.C., bands stood out, like Government Issue, Minor Threat. All those bands, when I saw them, I immediately thought they were going to be huge. They might not have ever truly become huge, but I think they’ve stood the test of time and became huge in their own way. That’s the best I can hope for with SSD.

I don’t think you have to worry about that.