Al Barile, SSD Guitarist and Straight Edge Icon, Dies at 63

Al Barile, the co-founding guitarist in legendary Boston hardcore band SSD (formerly SS Decontrol) and a lifelong straight-edge icon, died this morning, his wife and author Nancy Barile shared online. “I never met anyone who was his own person as much as Al was,” she wrote. “No one made me laugh more. There was always a story. We loved each other unbelievably, and my heart is crushed into a million pieces.” He was 63.

Often heralded as the most important hardcore band in all of New England, SSD burst out of the gate as one of the loudest and most vocal bands in Boston’s music scene in the ’80s. Drawing inspiration from Discharge, Black Flag, and Minor Threat, they were proudly aggressive in style—courting moshing and stage diving, as opposed to pogoing—and wanted to break down the barriers between band and audience. Onstage, Barile was a wild ball of energy, flinging himself into the air while playing guitar and kicking his legs mid-jump, which made a lasting impression on crowds, especially while opening for bands like Dead Kennedys or Negative Approach.

Behind the scenes, Barile was a bandleader and primary lyricist, steering SSD towards the straight-edge stance they’re best known for. After seeing Minor Threat perform live and befriending Ian MacKaye, Barile changed his lifestyle to embrace sobriety and a drug-free existence. That quickly worked its way into SSD’s songs, with part of the appeal being that it was a radical choice made by kids, as opposed to a restriction forced upon them by adults, the government, or the law. His espousing of straightedge ideals directly inspired the youth crew movement, in tandem with Minor Threat and 7 Seconds. Barile’s moral compass was so steadfast that fans made their own “What Would Al Do?” t-shirts.

“When we met the D.C. people, I saw how they were all X’d up and not drinking, I found a lot of strength in that,” Barile said in a 2023 interview with punk newsletter Former Clarity. “I came home and said, ‘You know, I’m not going to drink anymore.’ That’s kind of my story of how I decided not to drink, but what really went into that is me getting my voice. I was leaving that life behind. It took a lot of courage to just walk away from all your friends and find new friends, you know?”

Born Alan Scott Barile on October 4, 1961, he longed to play music as a kid but, when comparing himself to classmates who played guitar in cover bands, didn’t believe he had what it took as an ardent football and street hockey player. It wasn’t until Barile saw the Ramones in the late ’70s that he found his calling and began fervently attending punk shows at clubs in the Boston area. A self-described leader his whole life, Barile began assembling a lineup for a new band in high school before he even knew how to play guitar. “I wasn’t just trying to get a band that would play cover songs,” Barile recounted in the documentary Get It Away. “It would be a special band.”

Officially formed in Boston in the summer of 1981, SS Decontrol (short for Society System Decontrol) featured Barile on guitar alongside singer David “Springa” Spring, bassist Jamie Sciarappa, and drummer Chris Foley. Although Foley was the only member who previously knew how to play an instrument, the band barreled ahead, borrowing money from Barile’s parents to record their debut album, The Kids Will Have Their Say, in 1982. Barile started the record label Xclaim! to put out the LP, but Ian MacKaye was such a fan that he offered to co-release The Kids Will Have Their Say on Dischord, making it the first full-length album from a non-D.C. area band on the famous label.

Within three months, all 1,900 copies of The Kids Will Have Their Say sold out. Instead of reveling in that demand for their album or an abrupt rise in fame within the hardcore world, Barile repaid his parents for the money they loaned, SS Decontrol welcomed second guitarist Francois Levesque, and they started focusing on recording their follow-up record: 1983’s Get It Away EP. While Barile toiled away as a machinist building parts for jet engines during the day, he penned lyrics about about the importance of sticking together, the harm of smoking, and sobriety as a form of freedom during the night. Get It Away immediately became a landmark record in hardcore, and is still upheld as a classic to this day.

As the musical sound of the era began to change, so did SS Decontrol. The band shortened their name to SSD, started gravitating towards a heavy metal-leaning sound, and dabbled in unwieldy guitar solos. After signing to Modern Method in 1984, they released the How We Rock EP that year and followed it with 1985’s Break It Up. Come that November, SSD disbanded.

After SSD broke up, Barile attended Northeastern University full-time, earned a degree in mechanical engineering, and continued working at General Electric. He didn’t let the dust gather on his guitar, though; in 1993, Barile teamed up with friends to start Gage, a new alt-rock punk band. They went on to release three albums during their run: 1994’s He Will Come, 1996’s Scissor, and 1998’s Silent Movie Type.

When Gage opened for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and the crowd gave a lukewarm response, however, Barile realized that the shadow of SSD would always follow him – a liberating, if potentially dispiriting, fact. “That was kind of a rude awakening: that I was in for a lot of work to get probably one-tenth the popularity of SSD,” he told Former Clarity. “This is exorcising a lot of these demons here. I realized that I could do anything, I could write the greatest album, five great albums, whatever it was, it wasn’t going to make a difference. I was Al from SSD.”

In his later years, Barile began speaking more publicly about SSD and the band’s influence, thanks in large part to his wife Nancy Barile. The two met in 1982 when Nancy, a punk band manager and fanzine journalist, reached out to book SSD for a show, and the two bonded over a lengthy phone call. In addition to being a teacher, she was a published author, documenting her life in the punk world with I’m Not Holding Your Coat: My Bruises-and-All Memoir of Punk Rock Rebellion and preserving SSD’s history through a series of interviews in the collection How Much Art Can You Take?. The two were together for 43 years, and often regarded as a power couple in music.

In 2022, Barile revealed he was diagnosed with rectal cancer and was suffering from several other health issues. Two days ago, he posted an update on his Instagram: “I almost died today. My heart stopped. My prognosis isn’t good. I hope I have a few more days, weeks, months, but it looks like days. This may be my last post. I love Nancy.”

Converge, Agnostic Front, Have Heart and Fiddlehead’s Pat Flynn, Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament, Fucked Up’s Damian Abraham, former Oxbow member Eugene Robinson, Sick of It All’s Craig Setari, Youth of Today’s John Porcelly, and more have paid tribute to Barile online. “Most iconic guitar jump ever, defies gravity, defines the form,” Gorilla Biscuits and Quicksand musician Walter Schreifels wrote in an Instagram story. “Al’s music with SSD transcends the HC genre, so uniquely innovative and powerful, the world still hasn’t caught up. Thank you for the inspiration. RIP, Al.”