Down With The System

How do you turn inherited wounds into public good without losing your soul or your voice? In this memoir, Serj Tankian argues that art becomes most potent when it metabolizes trauma into moral action. He contends that the Armenian Genocide, and the denial that followed, function as both origin story and ongoing emergency—a force that shapes his identity, fuels System Of A Down’s songwriting, and drives decades of activism.

You watch a clear arc: ancestral memory becomes a compass; migration and family precarity sharpen skepticism about institutions; music arrives as refuge and then as vocation; production and imagery turn into ethical choices; touring tests conviction; public speech collides with censorship; organizing builds infrastructure; and, finally, business conflicts expose the fragility of creative trust. The book is less celebrity tell-all than field guide for using culture to contest erasure and mobilize communities (compare Ani DiFranco’s DIY politics or Tom Morello’s Nightwatchman project).

Ancestral wound as creative engine

The story begins long before the band. Serj’s grandfather Stepan, born in Efkere in 1909, survives deportations, starvation, and the death march that claims his brother David. Stepan later quits smoking by sheer will and, in his final days, starves himself rather than die needlessly medicated. For Serj, Stepan isn’t a vignette; he’s structure: proof that denial perpetuates violence and that remembrance obligates action. The promise to keep the story alive becomes Serj’s covenant.

Migration, precarity, and a skeptical patriotism

Born in Beirut and raised in Los Angeles after fleeing the Lebanese Civil War, Serj grows up in a household where survival is a skill. His father climbs in the shoe business, then a crushing lawsuit and a judge’s punitive temperament shatter the family’s security. Kitchen-table legal strategies and years of translation work teach Serj two truths: institutions often fail the vulnerable, and family duty can reroute dreams. That tension—safety versus meaning—haunts his later decision to sell a successful software company (Ultimate Solutions I) and risk everything on music.

Music as calling, not career

A cheap Casio becomes meditation in the middle of legal chaos; a Roland D-50 unlocks composition; bands like Forever Young and Soil give him a stage. Meeting Daron Malakian catalyzes System’s core chemistry—Daron’s riff architecture and Serj’s lyrics snap together into a volatile, theatrical language. The Laurel Canyon moment—slamming the brakes and shouting, “I want to fucking do music!”—marks a point of no return, blessed by his father’s reluctant yes.

Production, imagery, and political lineage

Rick Rubin’s curatorial minimalism (Miller Drive basement sessions, a recording tent, blunt notes like “enunciate”) and Sylvia Massy’s studio audacity (hanging Serj upside-down to capture a take, experimenting with the Akai S1000) help translate feral energy into recordable form. Choosing John Heartfield’s “The Hand” for the debut cover aligns the band with anti-fascist art traditions rather than Gene Simmons–style merch opportunism. These choices say: sound and image are ethical theaters.

Touring as crucible and test of ethics

Opening for Slayer teaches survival amid hostility (Nazi salutes in Poland, coins and bagels thrown). RV breakdowns, stolen gear, and sleep debt crush illusions of glamour. Yet touring becomes a moral arena too: the band refuses Istanbul over genocide denial, proving that where you play is a political statement.

Free speech in wartime and media gatekeeping

After 9/11, Serj publishes “Understanding Oil.” The backlash—Howard Stern pile-ons, death threats, label pressure—meets a simultaneous private-industry chill: Clear Channel’s memo of 165 “lyrically questionable” songs (including “Chop Suey!” and Lennon’s “Imagine”). The lesson lands: the First Amendment doesn’t shield you from corporate programming decisions, and fear constricts the Overton window faster than reason can expand it (see Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent for the template).

Spiritual practice as fuel, not escape

Panic attacks push Serj to transcendental meditation with Nancy de Herrera. TM steadies him, opens lyrical portals (“Life is a waterfall” in “Aerials”), and reframes activism from rage to compassion. At Cello Studios he meditates, wanders, and lands on “Father, why have you forsaken me?”—an accident guided by readiness. Inner work becomes a discipline that protects outer voice.

Organizing beyond the stage—and its limits

Axis of Justice with Tom Morello turns concerts into civic on-ramps—Amnesty tables at shows, benefits with Chris Cornell and Eddie Vedder, Food Not Bombs actions defying Santa Monica’s anti-aid ordinance. Films like Screamers leverage the band’s platform to pierce denial, though power (Ahmet Ertegun’s legacy, Lyor Cohen’s veto) can still bottleneck distribution. The 2015 Yerevan concert for the centennial galvanizes a nation; the 2020 Artsakh war proves art can mobilize aid ($700,000 raised) but can’t alone stop drones and geopolitics backed by Turkey.

Money, power, and creative trust

Inside the band, uneven publishing splits and control over song pipelines strain relationships. Serj confuses nonattachment with passivity, lets patterns calcify, then watches legal threats over scheduling (“Sounds good, let’s talk later”) reopen family-trauma wounds around litigation. He learns the hard way: clear agreements aren’t unspiritual; they’re protective for art and friendship.

Throughline

If you want to understand Serj, you need to understand Efkere—and then follow how a vow to remember becomes a practice of making, speaking, organizing, and, when necessary, refusing. The memoir invites you to build a life where art and conscience are not departments but the same bloodstream.

Serj frames inherited trauma not as private grief but as a public mandate. His grandfather Stepan’s survival from Efkere through deportation, starvation, and orphanage life isn’t a distant prologue; it’s the architecture of his ethics. The Genocide’s official denial by Turkey keeps the past present, insisting that cultural work and advocacy remain ongoing duties rather than commemorative gestures.

From family story to civic promise

Stepan’s stories—the death march, losing his brother David, the lifelong scars of malnutrition—become for Serj a curriculum in endurance. Serj joins youth groups like the AYF, organizes “Souls: A Benefit for the Recognition of the Armenian Genocide” at the Palace (Avalon), and uses System’s rising profile to force a sidelined history back into public view. This is more than branding; it’s oath-keeping.

Migration and the fragile American dream

Escaping Beirut’s civil war to Los Angeles imprints a survival-first mentality. The family’s tentative ascent—his father’s shoe business and a Mulholland home—collapses under the weight of a punitive lawsuit and a judge’s poor temperament. Serj translates legal documents at the kitchen table and swallows the pressure to be practical. He learns that ladders in America can be kicked away, which warps trust in institutions and tightens loyalty to community.

Ethics of remembrance

For Serj, denial is a violence that extends the original crime. He aligns with Raphael Lemkin’s moral arc: naming genocide is a precondition for preventing it. In the book’s logic, the inheritance of memory is also the inheritance of voice; erasure demands response. That’s why later choices—refusing to perform in Istanbul, centering John Heartfield’s anti-fascist art on System’s cover, writing “P.L.U.C.K.” (“Politically Lying, Unholy, Cowardly Killers”)—read as fidelity to this inheritance.

Private precarity becomes public politics

Years of family litigation teach Serj that formal systems can grind the weak. He delays ambitions, studies business, and even builds a software company (Ultimate Solutions I) to stabilize finances. But the Casio keyboard on his desk and late-night composing turn necessity into discovery. When he finally sells the company and pivots to music, it’s not a rejection of responsibility; it’s the recognition that meaning and obligation sometimes require bold reallocation of risk.

Activism as an ethical corollary to art

As System gains a platform, Serj treats it like a tool chest. Benefit shows distribute educational materials on 1915; interviews become teach-ins; songs encode historical critique. The point isn’t to make “issue” music; it’s to refuse the lie that art is apolitical. If trauma can be inherited, then so can resistance strategies—and the band’s practice turns remembrance into policy pressure (e.g., congressional pushes for recognition).

Working principle

You don’t choose your origin wound, but you choose the shape of your reply. Serj’s reply is to turn family archive into public architecture—songs, screenings, protests, and, eventually, a massed crowd in Yerevan singing history back to itself.

What you can use

If you carry inherited pain, treat it as signal, not only scar. Build practices that prevent erasure—story circles, public art, targeted advocacy. Pair remembrance with structural action, because memory without muscle invites repetition. And when institutions fail, widen your coalition; survival networks can become movement infrastructure.

System Of A Down doesn’t appear fully formed; it condenses out of crisis, curiosity, and chemistry. Serj’s transition from top student and fledgling entrepreneur to full-time musician begins with a cheap Casio and the quiet of late-night composition. That private refuge becomes a public roar when he meets Daron Malakian and discovers the volatile duet at the heart of System’s sound.

From refuge to resolve

The family lawsuit draws Serj into translation, spreadsheets, and stress. The Casio offers a counterworld; a Roland D-50 unlocks tone and texture. Early bands—Forever Young’s experiments and Soil’s heavier edge—teach stakes and loss (the song “Soil” mourning a friend’s suicide). Then comes the Laurel Canyon epiphany: he slams the brakes and declares, “I want to fucking do music!” He sells Ultimate Solutions I and burns the safety net.

Chemistry and division of labor

Meeting Daron changes the equation. Daron brings jagged riffs and sharp arrangements; Serj adds lyrics, voice, and conceptual architecture. Shavo Odadjian’s hustle books shows and moves tickets (150 at a Roxy pay-to-play), and Beno lures Rick Rubin to a Viper Room set. The lineup hardens when Andy’s erratic drumming gives way to John Dolmayan’s steadiness—a tough but necessary swap that raises the band’s floor.

Production as philosophy

Rick Rubin operates like a curator, not a knob-twiddler. In his Miller Drive basement, he builds comfort and sharpens instincts: a recording tent, an emphasis on enunciation, a sense for what serves the song. Sylvia Massy injects creative risk—asking Serj to hang upside-down, bouncing sounds through unorthodox chains, coaxing textures that studio orthodoxy might bury. The Akai S1000 samplings and live-take ethos keep chaos musical.

Cohesion over credit

When the band assembles Toxicity, most of the music isn’t Serj’s; only “Shimmy” carries his composition. Yet he’s content because the fifteen tracks “dance best together.” That choice—album cohesion over individual authorship—foreshadows later conflict about publishing splits, but here it reads as artistic clarity. The title switch from “Suicide” to “Chop Suey!” isn’t label capitulation so much as an inside joke that matches the song’s cut-up aesthetic.

Visual lineage and lyrical knives

Choosing John Heartfield’s “The Hand” puts System in conversation with 1920s Dada and anti-Nazi photomontage rather than shock-value metal tropes. Songs like “P.L.U.C.K.” compress indictment into acronyms (“Politically Lying, Unholy, Cowardly Killers”), while studio edits trim indulgence to sharpen point. Creative compromise also happens in micro: debates over lines like “Pull the tapeworm out of your ass” in “Needles” show how image and integrity get negotiated syllable by syllable.

The lucky wind of timing

Gatekeepers can’t see everything. Kevin Weatherly at KROQ calls System “too wacky,” then the marketplace shifts as nu-metal widens radio’s aperture (Korn, Deftones, Slipknot). Within a year, the same eccentricities become assets. The lesson for you: trends change faster than verdicts; build work that can catch a moving wind.

Takeaway

Creative destiny is a braid: private practice, catalytic partners, risk-embracing mentors, and historical timing. You don’t control the wind, but you can build a sail sturdy enough to catch it when it shifts.

Touring is the crucible where art meets entropy—hostile crowds, broken vans, food monotony, and the strange chemistry of thousands of strangers breathing your lyrics back at you. For System, the road is both bootcamp and battlefield, a place where performance practices form and ethical lines get drawn in real time.

Survival before affection

Opening for Slayer, the band faces crowds that mix devotion with menace. In Poland, Nazi salutes dot the pit; elsewhere, coins and bagels fly. The band learns to metabolize hostility—turning provocation into theater—without normalizing its politics. Along the way, gear gets stolen (a Ryder truck heist), RVs fail, and sleep becomes a rumor. John Dolmayan jokes about imagining “large planes bombing the shit out of the whole planet” to fall asleep, a dark coping mechanism in a life without off-switches.

Performance as ethics

Stages are political spaces. The decision to refuse an Istanbul date over genocide denial reaffirms that routing is values in action. You’re reminded that “neutral” bookings aren’t neutral at all; they’re endorsements by presence. At benefit shows, the band collapses the barrier between spectacle and service—tabling for causes, distributing educational flyers, and redirecting spotlight toward justice work.

Friction inside the family

The same intensity that ignites sets can explode in rehearsal. There’s the infamous fight: Daron hurls his guitar, John swings, blood, urgent care. Some interpret the brawl as bonding through extremity; Serj sees a warning. When creative tension turns ritualistically violent, the line between generative friction and corrosive harm blurs—and repair requires more than another tour.

Rituals that sustain

Against the churn, Serj builds micro-rituals: pre-show centering, breathwork, the deliberate choice to approach hostile audiences with calm rather than contempt. Later, transcendental meditation becomes a pillar. The shift shows up in writing: “Aerials” arrives as a waterfall image from stillness rather than strain. Even Rick Rubin folds ritual into process, encouraging meditative resets at Cello Studios that lead Serj, by serendipity, to the “Father, why have you forsaken me?” graffiti that seeds a line.

Contradictions of the road

Touring multiplies reach and also tempts burnout. The backstage becomes both shelter and surveillance; relationships distort under distance; substances hover as shortcuts to relief. Yet the highs are real: the feeling of unison with thousands, friendships with peers like Mike Patton and Lemmy, and the thrill of songs becoming communal property. The mature practice is learning to harvest the highs without paying for them with your nervous system.

Field rule

If you want longevity, build renewable rituals: sleep disciplines, meditative anchors, and clear “no’s” (to routing, to hostile symbolism, to gigs that violate your line). Touring tests what your values really are, because repetition turns choices into character.

What you can apply

Treat stages and schedules as moral documents. Bake recovery into calendars. Name your red lines in advance (cities, sponsors, imagery), and make the backstage a workshop for civic action—tables for local groups, petitions, and micro-benefits. Then use conflict as signal, not theater: when friction escalates, solve the pattern, not the night.

When national grief surges, the cost of nuance skyrockets. Two days after 9/11, Serj publishes “Understanding Oil,” arguing that terrorism has histories and that U.S. policy plays a role. The response is swift and punishing: death threats, radio takedowns, and media framing that casts context as betrayal. This chapter exposes the gap between formal free speech and practical permission to speak.

Backlash mechanics

A few megaphones (notably Howard Stern) set the story: this isn’t reflection, it’s disloyalty. The label urges removal; the band contends with a Clear Channel memo blacklisting 165 “lyrically questionable” songs, from “Chop Suey!” to “Imagine.” Private companies, not the state, redraw the Overton window—and because they control distribution, the effect looks and feels like censorship even when it’s technically programming.

Art, timing, and the collective field

Lyrics written months earlier—“I cry when angels deserve to die”—suddenly seem prophetic. Serj frames this as tapping the collective unconscious, not crystal-balling. Art circulates symbols; crisis recharges them with unintended voltages. What once felt metaphorical becomes politically radioactive overnight.

Strategy, stamina, and regret

On Howard Stern’s show, Serj pivots and deflects, later wishing he had stood firmer. The lesson is tactical: moral courage needs media strategy—prepared framing, allies ready to counter-narrate, and the stamina to ride out news cycles. Sometimes you retreat to fight better; sometimes you plant your flag and pay the toll. Knowing which is wisdom, not cowardice.

Gatekeepers and shifting winds

Earlier, Kevin Weatherly at KROQ had dismissed System as “too wacky,” only to reverse as nu-metal normalized extremes. After 9/11, the same ecosystem contracts. The pattern endures: gatekeepers mirror audience mood—and conglomerates amplify it. You don’t control their lens, but you can anticipate its swing.

Practical playbook for hot moments

• Pre-brief allies: Build relationships with sympathetic journalists and artists who can contextualize your position within hours, not days.
• Message discipline: Translate complex causality into two or three durable metaphors before you get on air (Note: see George Lakoff on framing).
• Redundancy of channels: Expect private platforms to constrict; prepare direct-to-fan routes (mailing lists, independent radio, community media).

Core truth

Free speech protections don’t guarantee free reach. In wartime climates, moral clarity and strategic resilience must travel together if you want your message to survive contact.

Why it still matters

The post-9/11 constriction foreshadows our era’s platform governance. If you create politically charged work, accept that reception is contingent and often unfair. Your job is to build message muscle, not just message content, so the next shock doesn’t silence you.

Axis of Justice begins as Tom Morello’s “freedom school” idea and grows into a model for turning concerts into civic infrastructure. The method is simple and replicable: use stages to convene nonprofits, give fans on-ramps to action, and translate celebrity attention into durable organizing. You see music not as a substitute for politics but as its amplifier and recruiter.

Blueprint in practice

At festivals and headline shows, Axis of Justice tables groups like Amnesty International, Greenpeace, RAINN, and Food Not Bombs. Benefit concerts enlist artists—Chris Cornell, Eddie Vedder, Flea, Boots Riley, Wayne Kramer—so issues borrow star wattage without losing specificity. Direct actions pair with spectacle, as when Food Not Bombs shares meals in defiance of Santa Monica’s anti-aid ordinance, exposing the cruelty of criminalizing compassion.

Tactics that persuade

Persuasion requires tone as well as volume. Boots Riley offers a masterclass: encountering a fan in a Confederate flag shirt, he chooses calm conversation over shaming, expanding the circle rather than fortifying a fortress. The band follows similar logic with educational inserts at shows and documentaries that Trojan-horse hard topics through fandom (Note: Peter Gabriel’s “Biko” is a precedent—art that mainstreams distant struggle).

Film, media, and power’s choke points

Screamers, directed by Carla Garapedian, uses System’s draw to narrate genocide denial and the cycles that follow. Yet distribution hits elite resistance: Ahmet Ertegun’s denialist stance and Lyor Cohen’s initial veto show how legacy ties can stall uncomfortable truths. Still, protests like the Dennis Hastert action in Chicago pierce the news, and the film becomes a lighthouse for young organizers.

National moments and their power

In 2015, the Yerevan centennial concert transforms a commemoration into mass pedagogy. Serj declines the choreographed optics of sharing a podium with leaders, choosing the stage and the people instead. The choice signals confidence in cultural sovereignty: sometimes bands, not cabinets, carry the nation’s most honest voice.

Hard limits and hard lessons

In 2020, as Azerbaijan—backed by Turkey and foreign mercenaries—targets Artsakh, System releases new songs, raises $700,000, and fights misinformation. Hearts move; drones don’t. Artsakh falls. The recognition clarifies scope: art accelerates solidarity, funds relief, and reframes narratives; it rarely changes battlefield math without policy, diplomacy, or deterrence.

Operating doctrine

Use stages to recruit, media to narrate, and partnerships to endure. Expect interference from power’s soft choke points—distribution, platforms, philanthropy—and plan redundancies.

What you can replicate

• Make every show an entry point: tables, QR codes, petitions, and volunteer signups.
• Pair spectacle with service: benefits that also mobilize direct aid.
• Narrate the fight: films, podcasts, and zines that outlast the tour.

Bands run on two kinds of equity: creative and financial. When either skews, trust frays. System’s internal tensions—over publishing splits, song pipelines, and who decides what gets worked first—reveal how unexamined arrangements calcify into hierarchies that art can’t indefinitely mask.

Early formulas, later fractures

At the start, a split structure favors primary songwriters (mostly Daron and Serj). Over time, granular credits—percentages sliced by verse, chorus, bridge—generate disparities that feel less like reflection of effort and more like institutionalized tilt. On “Question!” Daron receives around 20% for a small contribution while Serj sees 5–10% on many tracks. Resentment accrues in silence.

Control of the pipeline

Creative process becomes a battleground. Serj brings complete songs that linger untouched while “B-level” material by others moves first. He proposes equal creative input and 50/50 splits later, but by then roles have ossified and egos have rationales. The misread is spiritual: Serj confuses nonattachment with nonconfrontation, mistaking passivity for peace. The cost is unvoiced pain and delayed explosion.

When business eclipses brotherhood

A scheduling ambiguity (“Sounds good, let’s talk later”) spirals into a lawsuit threat from Shavo over Ozzfest. Given Serj’s family litigation traumas, the episode is a gut-punch. He capitulates to avoid court, but the moral substrate is cracked: legal leverage has entered the rehearsal room. After that, every decision carries the hum of risk.

Hard-won governance lessons

• Codify early: Put publishing, process, and veto power in writing before success distorts incentives.
• Audit often: Revisit splits and roles as contributions evolve; equity must be a living document.
• Separate care and conflict: Use mediation or neutral producers to surface friction without humiliation.

Beyond System: a general pattern

Creative industries run on ambiguity because it’s fast. That speed frontloads power in whoever controls the studio calendar, the DAW session, or the final say on tracklists. Without explicit design, “process” becomes personality worship. Serj’s reflection reasserts a counter-ethic: clear frames free creativity; murk enslaves it to politics.

Bottom line

If you want your band to last, design the business to be as beautiful as the music. Otherwise the silence between songs fills with scorekeeping, and the scoreboard always wins.