A searing memoir of a broken childhood and the hope of escaping it—from the iconic Black Flag frontman and legendary punk musician Henry Rollins

What happens when a child grows up in an almost total vacuum of love? That was the reality for Henry Rollins, pioneering punk frontman of the seminal groups Black Flag and Rollins Band, who came of age in an environment seemingly determined to break him. For the first time, Rollins tells the story he spent most of his life trying to avoid, taking us through his childhood and adolescence—from a volatile Washington, D.C., childhood spent shuffling between indifferent parents, to his encounters with a seemingly endless parade of abusive adults, to his eventual meeting with Ian MacKaye, and their ultimate discovery of punk rock, which would become a lifeline. Rollins tells what it was like to live a life colored by the experience of constantly absorbing pain, like a bait dog. 

“I have no desire to be a survivor,” Rollins writes. “I’d rather accept, absorb, adapt, fight and break that which seeks to break me—to be that which remains.”

Told in Rollins’ unmistakably blunt, brutal, and acerbic voice, Bait Dog Boy is a coming-of-age story with the teeth and truth of a great punk anthem. It’s an unforgettable tale of what it means to not quite fit in anywhere, except on stage: A memoir as dynamic and singular as its subject.