Morris was born September 18, 1955 and grew up in Hermosa Beach, California. His father, Jerry, had been a budding jazz drummer in his youth and practiced with visiting jazz groups at the Lighthouse Café. Jerry later opened a bait shop in the 1970s and struck up a friendship with jazz record producer Ozzie Cadena (both men\'s sons, Keith and Dez, later became singers in Black Flag). Keith attended Mira Costa High School, where brothers Greg and Raymond Ginn were also students, and graduated in 1973. He then studied fine art and painting at the Pasadena Arts Center while working at his father\'s bait shop. One of his co-workers at the shop was Bill Stevenson, a Mira Costa student eight years Morris\' junior who would also go on to be a member of Black Flag.\n', '

Morris and his friends spent their spare time hanging out by the Strand under Hermosa Beach pier, where they took drugs: "I\'d get off work, and we\'d get up to trouble," he later recalled, "smoking angel dust, snorting elephant tranquilizers. Just real goofy, \'why-would-you-want-to-do-that?\' kinda stuff, the kind of thing you get up to when you\'re young, and into experimenting. If it was a good experience, then cool; if not, well, then it was just a real hard lesson learned." His early musical tastes included various rock acts such as Bob Seger, Foreigner, Montrose, Styx, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Queen, Ten Years After, Status Quo, Uriah Heep, UFO, the Scorpions, Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, and the MC5, "any kind of fist-pumping, \'flick-your-bic\' rock. I was into anything that was loud". He became a freely opinionated and passionate fan of heavy rock and protopunk, and took a job working at local record store Rubicon Records.\n', '

In 1976, Morris co-founded Black Flag (then-known as Panic) along with guitarist Greg Ginn. Their work ethic proved too challenging for some early members; Ginn and Morris had an especially hard time finding a reliable bass guitarist, and often rehearsed without a bassist, a factor that contributed to the development of Ginn\'s distinctive, often low-pitched guitar sound. Ginn\'s brother Raymond Pettibon and SST house record producer-to-be Spot filled in sometimes at rehearsals.\n', '

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