No machine-readable author provided. SteveHopson assumed (based on copyright claims). · CC BY 2.5

A singer who helped invent American hardcore punk as the original frontman of Black Flag, forming the band at 21 with guitarist Greg Ginn and singing on its 1979 debut EP Nervous Breakdown. After leaving in 1979 he founded the Circle Jerks with Greg Hetson, releasing seven albums across a career of repeated breakups and reunions, and in 2009 formed the supergroup Off! with Dimitri Coats. His voice — fast, sardonic, unmistakably Southern Californian — became a template for the genre.