On October 28, 2022, Darren Henley, better known as D.H. Peligro sadly died at the age of 63. He was primarily known as the drummer of the influential hardcore band Dead Kennedys, joining them in 1981. He also had a short stint as the drummer for the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, joining them in 1988 and contributing to several tracks on the band’s 1989 album Mother’s Milk.
As a black man in what was viewed as a predominantly white genre, he faced his share of discrimination. “Music would take me to places I wouldn’t normally go, and it’s fine while you were onstage, but when you got off, they’d get drunk and call you all kinds of names,” he told LA Weekly. “You go down South, you go across the Midwest, then people were thinking that it was music for white people, or I was the janitor or security or something. You got to experience the racism firsthand, because everybody wasn’t as open-minded as they were in San Francisco. It’s a bit more open and accepted today, but there’s still pockets of people who want to use punk rock to create hate music. That angers me to no end.”
Peligro made his Dead Kennedys debut on the 1981 EP In God We Trust, Inc., which included the seminal tune “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” which is sadly still relevant.
RIP D.H. Peligro, July 9, 1959-October 28, 2022.