Henry Rollins

[ LiB ]

Henry Rollins

Web site: www.two1361.com

May 13, 2003, at Rollins' office.

Henry Rollins is a workaholic. I've admired him since SOA, the band Henry sang for in D.C. in 1980 and 1981, before he moved to California and joined Black Flag. The man simply does not stop: making records and books, acting in films , doing spoken word shows and records. Few know this, but he actually won a Grammy for his Get in the Van spoken word album.

He is one of the few people I see who operates in the Hollywood system but keeps his integrity as well as his sanity . It was a pleasure to interview him.

In my opinion, this interview contains almost everything an aspiring musician needs to hear. It's an hour of mad science.

Figure 18.1. Henry Rollins. Photo by Michael Dean.

I got Henry Rollins' e-mail from Ian MacKaye. Sent Rollins an e-mail asking to interview him for this book. The e-mail had the subject line "Got your e-mail address from Ian MacKaye." I only dropped Ian's name because I figured Henry probably gets an ungodly amount of e-mail and I know that he and Ian have been friends since they were teens.

Within 90 seconds Henry wrote back, saying "M, sure I guess, since Ian sent you. I am in LA; you can come by the office if you like. Today is okay, sooner the better as I am jetlagging, and things are starting to get very busy here. Henry"

He sent his phone number. When he said, "office" I'd expected a receptionist , but he answered the phone himself.

Damn cool .so easy, no nonsense 25 minutes later I was sitting in his office. There was no receptionist. He answered the door and was alone. We got right to it.

His office is a modest duplex in a residential neighborhood in Hollywood. The other side has his record and book company; he lives nearby in a second house. Pretty nice by punk rock standards, but would be shabby by most Hollywood media business standards.

In my mind, this guy has it going on. He's totally in charge of his own game, a workaholic, and doesn't give a damn about the image. It's all about the work for him.

I barely spoke. He's an amazing interviewone of those guys you ask one question and they drop mad science for 20 minutes. Then you ask another question and they talk for 10 more.

Henry Rollins: So, what do you want to know?

Michael Dean: Why do you do what you do? Why did you take the road you did instead of working for someone else?

HR: Well, I had normal jobs from when I was a little kid throwing newspapers until I left Washington, D.C. to move out here to be in Black Flag in the summer of 1981. Right before I came out here was the last time I had a straight job with a time clock working for someone else.

Then I came out here and worked for SST, Greg Ginn's label, as part of being in Black Flag. We were living on the floor of the place, and I ended up working there. You learn a lot about the independent record thing by living knee-deep in a label. I learned a lot in those five years in Black Flag, and from there I formed my own companies, combining what I learned there with what I learned at retail jobs as a kid. You know, working the cash register and whatnot.

Having a normal job againI've never considered it. Does that answer your question?

MD: Sort of. I meant in relation to being in a band. Why do you do most of it yourself?

HR: The nature of what I do: books, records, the more cooks you have in the kitchen, when you throw them into the mix, often their ideas aren't your ideas and their idea gets on the cover of your record. Somehow all of the sudden there's a tambourine in the mix of your record and you're like, "What's that about?" and they're like "Well, you should have showed up to the mix of your recording session." So I learned early on that the way to keep your artistic integrity intact is to learn the mechanics of how this is done and get ownership of it and be in control of it as much as possible as much of the time as you can.

At this point I record all my own records and own all the music publishing rights, and I own my own companies. Next door is my book and record company and this is my office. We are a little factory, like any small independent label. We're pretty much similar to any label like Dischord or Touch and Go. Probably a fraction of the releases and a fraction of the sales, but the same kind of spirit in that we do what we like to do. Hopefully, some people like it, and if not, oh well. We're still gonna keep putting out what we think is cool rather than what we think will sell. Us liking it is the basic criterion for doing it.

MD: How many employees do you have?

HR: Two full time, and sometimes when we have a lot of mail order we have someone who comes in and helps, but we run it pretty efficiently with two people.

MD: When you record, do you ever employ outside producers , you know, take anyone else's suggestions on it?

HR: The last several Rollins Band records I've produced, except our live one, the guy who's engineered our records for years, Clif Norrell, he produced it. I mixed it with him, but he got all the sounds. But most of our stuff I produced, not because I'm the only person in the world who could do it, but because I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to hear on those records, and I didn't want to do a lot of explaining. I'd rather just have an engineer that I know very well that I can tell what I want and he can get it, rather than bring in a producer whose job it is to take the music down his street. And the last few records I've wanted a really clear sound, just a live band in a room hitting it. Very unproduced in a way. Just kind of documented.

MD: Did you sell part of your music publishing at one point?

HR: I was on a label called Imago for two records from 1991 to 1994. And they said in the contract that the only way to sign with this label was to also do a publishing deal with them. We found out later that other bands didn't have to do this. But it was a sticking point with the signing. They take part of the publishing and for that you get an advance.

Now I do the publishing in my band, and I give the guys in the band an advance, and I administer the music.

MD: Did you come to regret that decision you made to sell your publishing back then?

HR: Yeah, sure, in that

MD: Do they have a share in what you do now?

HR: No, no no no, NO! Just those two records. And after that I've never done a publishing deal again. To do your publishing with somebody is not a bad thing, because hopefully they're looking to get you into movie soundtracks and suchthey're looking to administer that's the active verb, they admin your music. Dentyne comes calling and wants to . That's how you see some travel cruise commercial with an Iggy Pop song in it. He has a music publisher who goes and gets it, and he probably gets an amazing chunk of change for that.

We've been in a lot of movie soundtracks, but it's always been the director coming to me or my manager, so the music publisher never did anything that we weren't doing. I don't need the money, why would I give away the rights to anything? When we're getting the opportunities, and the publisher was doing nothing except making money. So we decided not to do that anymore.

MD: I know that Ian (MacKaye) turns down a lot of things like that; you seem like one of the few people who has integrity still but lives in both worlds : writing for Details Magazine and being in big Hollywood movies, but still running your own label. How do you jibe that? Do you see it as a contradiction?

HR: No. That brings up that whole thing of "selling out." To me, selling out is when you make your record and the label says "We would prefer if you did this other song instead, and you cave in. That's selling out.

There is this imaginary rule book written by someone at Maximum Rock 'N' Roll Magazine that says "If you're in a band you can't do this and this ." ( MD bursts out laughing.) "If you come from this kind of music you can't do this I've never seen it in print, and I've never been handcuffed for these charges. I do what the fuck I want to do.

The problem is when you physically try to impede my progressthen it moves up to a whole 'nother level that you probably can't handle me on. If it's just words, mean little things, I'm not Stalin, say what you want. Get in my way, it's a whole 'nother thing.

I come from a very Nietzschean Darwinian proclivity: The straightest, most direct line between two points is a broken nose. I live by that. I've lived by that. I'm not a violent person. It's all fun and games until someone tries to physically bar you from going somewhere. And then it's some Cro-Magnon watering hole bullshit.

So I do what I want. I live in Hollywood. I go for some Hollywood auditions. I get in a few movies. If someone doesn't like that like I give a fuck.

It's how I've funded a lot of things that I knew wouldn't make money. I used someone else's money. Like a lot of really expensive books we've put out. Like photo books that I wanted to do because I believed in the art. I could have never afforded these playing music in the little clubs I play in. Some of these books I've put out and most of the records I put out. I will dip into that mainstream world. It's the same idea as a poet working at McDonald's. You get some bread so you can put out your chapbook. For me, that's Hollywood, where I can go into a movie and do something that's fun and interesting and get a paycheck from it and do something interesting with it. I quite enjoy dabbling in the mainstream. I don't think there's an integrity thing there. I think if I were in some bag running around with 17-year-old girls , I think that's losing the plot. But I'm quite grounded and I know what I'm doing. On the outside it's contradiction, but for me it's subversion.

I've done a lot of movies, a lot of voiceovers , but I don't have anybody's phone number. I don't keep in touch with them, I don't really think of it after I'm done.

MD: What advice do you have for people in bands with regards to finding, keeping, and firing musicians ?

HR: I've only been in one situation, well, two, where there is someone in the band we didn't want in the band anymore. One because he had an alcohol problem. And no one in the band had the backbone to call the guy and tell him that it was over. So I called the guy and dispatched him. He was cool about it and said, "Fine."

The other time the guy was such a day-to-day nightmare that when we got home from the tour he said, "I quit," at the same time we said, "You're fired ." And it wasn't like we said, "You're not employed by us anymore." It was like breaking up with a girlfriend; you can't be around that person anymoreVelcro rip yourself away from them, can't be around that person anymore.

Those were the only times I've ever been in that position, and I don't know what to recommend other than be honest, be direct, and never lose your will to confront.

MD: How do you deal with mean-spirited, non-constructive criticism? Does it get you down?

HR: Yeah, sure, as much as it would bother any human. Say someone is mean to your record. It happens. It comes with the territory.

But, everybody, from the band you hate the most to the band you love the most, they have one thing in common. They worked really hard on that record. Every band, whatever you're into, they all worked hard on it. So you give it everything you have and someone rips your baby a new one. It's hard to not take it personally because you sweated blood and lost sleep to make that record. You birthed it and it was hard. So when someone gratuitously swipes it, you're like, "Fuck! We bled through the eyes for this." So it hurts, but it's, so what? You stop breathing ? No. You just keep jamming.

It happens. I've been panned.

MD: The art, or you?

HR: Both. A lot of times they leave the music alone and just go after me. Maybe I'm a bad person. Or maybe a lot of people who write for publications are people who make a living by getting Jiffy Packs of CDs that they hastily write reviews of and then take them down to record stores and sell them so they can supplement their Top Ramen diet with Budweiser.

To me, to be a music writer, you should have a record collection that looks like mine. (Rollins gets up and leads me through two rooms with shelves on every wall, floor to ceilingprobably 10,000 CDs and cassettes total.)

MD: Where's the vinyl?

HR: Next door. So when these people are kind of, "Neyhhhhhhhhhhhhh ," I can see a lot of their record collection in what they write. At the end of the day, you make these records because you want to make them. If you put them out in the world, unleash them from the garage into the world, not everyone in the world is going to think that the pictures of your baby are pretty. They're gonna go, "What an ugly kid you have." It hurts.

And I know I'm not that bad a person. I've never raped anybody. I've never killed anybody. I wouldn't steal from you, nor would I hurt your child. More often than not, I'd go out of my way to help you. So when I get slammed every once in a while, I look at why I'm doing all this stuff. I do it because I like what I do. I give it everything I have, and I work hard at it. So if someone doesn't like what I do, tough on me, gotta keep jamming.

But to say that that kind of thing doesn't hurt would be lying.

MD: Do you get enough sleep most nights?

HR: Um, I get an adequate amount. My body kind of keeled over last night. I just got back from 89 shows. I've been on the road since January 7th. I got back from Australia Friday afternoon, slept three hours, came here and started working. Saturday and Sunday, same thing. Yesterday, I was up at 3:00 a.m., came in, went back to the house and made a protein shake, drank it, figured I'd sit and let the shake assimilate, laid down on the couch , woke up three hours later, and it was dark. Managed to stagger to bed and slept another seven hours. So I guess I needed sleep. But I usually get between four and six hours.

MD: Is that enough?

HR: Some days it feels like enough. Some days it doesn't. What usually determines sleep for me is the workout I've done that evening. Legs or back is going to put me down on the mat for a couple of extra hours. Like I did legs at 5:30 this morning, so I'll be feeling it later so I'll sleep harder. On the road with the band, I sleep longer because it's such a physical outlay. I'll walk off stage and get right to my bunk pretty quickly afterwards.

MD: I've been to your shows and a lot of people want to know you afterwards. They want to talk to you and hang out and give you stuff. How do you deal with that?

HR: Well, I get a lot of mail. I answer all the letters . That's what I've been doing the last three nights, these things (Rollins points to mail bins ) were full of mail. I answer every e-mail I can. At shows I sign everything that's put in front of me, do every photo, and answer every question I can, and just do the best I can.

People talk to me every day. Here I am. I go to the store. I don't hide. I fix the roof when it leaks, I go to the hardware store, I stand in line. More often than not, I talk to someone within five minutes of being on any street anywhere . Someone starts talking to me. I just treat them like I'd like to be treated.

Sometimes it can be a little invasive. We've had stalkers here. We've had people camping out here (gestures out to the bushes) for weeks at a time. It gets pretty intense . But I've been doing this for a long time. I've been doing shows for 23 years. Without an audience I don't have a job. So these people mean everything to me. So if they want to ask me something, I can make some time for that because I can respect the fact that they've been checking me out. I'm blown away that they keep coming after so long. I gotta think I'm at least three of the seven days past the thing stamped on the side of the milk. I can't believe that people keep showing up.

MD: Yeah, when you were in SOA what did you think you were going to be doing in five years?

HR: I've never gotten very far away from that whole mentality . I work very hard every day. I live way below my means. That's one of the reasons that the Hollywood thing it's like getting a free pencil to me. Warner Brothers, Sony, they're all right here. If they're handing out auditions, shit yeah, I'm going.

MD: Where do you live?

HR: I live in Hollywood, up the hill. I used to live here (in the office) but I bought another place a few years ago. I still have that I-work-for-a-living mindset. Music and entertainment for me have always been a journeyman's voyage. We come to town, we play, we'll see you in eight months if you show up again. It's not like some big tour to promote a single; we're not waiting for radio to do something for us. It's like Lemmy said to me once, "We're a journeyman band. We're Mot rhead. We come to your town, we kick your ass, and we leave." That's kind of what I do. That's why in the 80s I started looking at learning a few other things to do. Because I started looking at a lot of other musicians who actually had talentI never considered myself really talented, I just think I have a lot of tenacity and I think that counts for somethingbut I saw a lot of people with real talent not being able to pay their rent. So I said, "Okay. It's a survival situation. I'd better learn to do more than this music stuff. That's when I started going to auditions for voiceover work and acting and really working on the talking shows in an effort to stay lively.

One of my heroes is a fellow named Man Ray, who I'm sure you're familiar with. He sculpted, painted , drew, arted out. If you saw interviews with him, you'd think he was a cab driver. You wouldn't believe this was the great Man Ray. He was just this guylike when you listen to Henry Miller, he sounded like he was this guy who came in to fix your toilet . (Effects Brooklyn accent .) "I'm a writtah " You look at a guy like that, he lived, and he painted, and he wrote; that's kind of like what I go after.

MD: Do you have any advice for musicians who wanna do what they want to do?

HR: To do what you want to do, you have to be very tough. Especially in this day and age. Not tough like being insensitive; you have to be tough like Miles Davis who protected his art. He was very protective of that thing that he had; he was like a swanit's this very graceful creature but if you mess with it, it gets very pugnacious. So on some level you have to have a bit of that. If you're going to take this kind of sensitivity into the brutality of the entertainment business, you'll take some knocks. Because if you're any good, down the road a piece, you're going to be fairly into rising to the occasion.

I think these days a lot of bands who do their first tour on a Privo bus with shiny new gear are missing out on a lot of things that will keep them in the game after the blush is off the rose. Because you never maintain your popularityeveryone has an arc. Or ebbs and flows. Guys like Neil Young, they just keep making records and it's never like an up or down thing, it's like a high-tide, low-tide thing. He's just going to keep making records whether you buy them or not. Neil Young makes records. That's what he does. He doesn't care. He's busy making records and doing tours . It's not an up and down thing for him: It's an ebb and flow thing. But you just have to stay tough through the vicissitude. All the greats, no matter what, they just keep working. Those bands that were hydro-grown through the Clear Channel thing, they have no roots to the ground, so when push comes to shove, they have no anchor.

Take a guy like Fred Durst, who I've got no problem with, I'm not trying to make fun. Here's a guy who's not untalented, but he just came out and BAM! He was huge. No one stays that huge for that long. You have your moment, and your demographic grows up and starts breeding and moves to the suburbs, and you're left to either cross over to a new audience or not. There will be a time when he plays to half of the people he played to at his peak. Then a third. It will be interesting to see how guys like Marilyn Manson will he be in love with music enough there again, another guy I'm not putting down. I think he's amazing, but when you're born and bred on MTV, will you have enough love of music to be back in little clubs where they may have not even started or were there for a tiny bit of time? And to me, that's the measure of the musicianif you're still into it enough to ride that wave down, enough to do it even when you're not fab anymore. That I think is a real measure. Lemmy he fascinates me. I'm no expert on Mot rhead, but this guy, who lives right up this street, he saw the Beatles play at the Cavern Club. Who roadied for Hendrix. He once said something to me that was mind blowing. He said, "I remember before there was rock and roll." I said "What do you mean?" He said, "I remember before there was rock and roll. There were just Rosemary Clooney records. And then there was Elvis. And WHAM! Our lives changed."

Lemmy was there for that. And then all these decades. And there was a time when Mot rhead was on everyone's shirt. Now? No. But he still goes out and does it. That's the real thing. Guys like Iggy, that's what they do.

These days, the current culture that's directed at young people the audience is acting the way the record companies want them to in that, it's very easy to find a pretty girl to sing, or a pretty boy to sing, with cheekbones that can jump up and down. Boys and girls look like that for about three summers. Pert, lean, handsome, or whateverthe things that make their age group flock towards them. So instead of finding them talented, the record companies have discovered that it's easier to find pretty people than talented people. So they've created this popular culture that's a Menudo effect. This Avril Levinewho I have no problems withbut here's this teenage girl with her big recordwill they still love her tomorrow? We'll see. Or is she just this thing that was just hydro-grown by the industry to look good for a couple of summers and then be trotted away and dropped so they can install the next one that has a one-and-a-half or two album career arc. (Claps his hands together.) Gone! And these days you have an audience that downloads music because they get so much overpriced mediocre stuff thrown at them. "Twenty-two dollars for this? Fuck you!" Then they go to the computer and download it.

MD: Does it bother you when people download your music?

HR: No. Not at all. It means at least someone's hearing it. People come up to me and go, "Dude, I downloaded your new talking record and, oops! Oh shit!" ( Rollins laughs.) And I'm like, "It's okay. It's fine."

MD: Avril Levine complains in interviews about Britney Spears, saying "She's not the real deal; I am." But Avril's songs are co-written by the same people who write Britney's songs. It's like that whole Coke vs. Pepsi, Nike vs. Adidas bullshit.

HR: The major label industry and major entertainment industry are turning everything into Coke and Pepsi. Thankfully, there's people like Dischord Records, Touch and Go, and IpecacMike Patton's label. People like Cory Rusk of Touch and Go, and Ian MacKaye, the real deal, the real guys who are putting out amazing records on their labels. The best stuff Dischord has ever done is out this year. The new El Guapo record is amazing; the Q and not U record is amazing. The Black Eyes record is amazing. Have you heard this stuff?

MD: No. I did get the remixed "Flex Your Head" and listened to that stuff for the first time in eight or nine years.

HR: They're putting out some stuff that's like you've never heard music like this. It's new music. They're doing great stuff. They're selling great music for really cheap.

That's a thing we do here. We sell a double CD of a talking record for 10 bucks with one dollar of it going to a different charity. Our companywe work five days a week here and we contribute money five days a week. The Southern Poverty Law Center, who battles the Klan through litigation; the Hollygrove Children's Shelter down the street from here for kids ; we work with Partnership for a Drug-Free America, The West Memphis Three, and continually put in a dollar from each thing we sell.

There's a lot of labels that put out a lot of cool stuff for the right price to turn people on to good things and not bilk them and not take their money. So all is not lost. There are good bands playing in every city every night. There are cool labels in every state in America. And a lot of honest, switched-on people who do well, mean well, and are dedicated to keeping that good thing happening. So for all the Avrils and Britney Spears in the world, there is another choice. The danger is, in my opinion, young people who only see their access to music, and I specify music, being MTV or some Clear Channel mafia.

MD: They're buying it all up.

HR: They own it all. You'll wake up tomorrow morning with a Clear Channel chip in you that they installed while you were sleeping.

I was just in Europe, and Clear Channel is buying up venues there. Venues I've been playing in for 21 years are now Clear Channel venues . I'm like, "Come on! What are you doing?" ( Laughs. ) Now the Clear Channel rep in Amsterdam is telling me how it is. I'm like, "Thanks. I've been playing this place since you were eight years old. And you're telling me how it is now? All right." ( Laughs more. ) "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

For me there is a danger with young people, and I'll specify young people, who will not get the chance to check out Blonde on Blonde by Dylan, or check out Leadbelly or Coltrane. Or a tenth of what's in that room (points at his record collection): King Crimson, Black Sabbath, all kinds of neat stuff, all kinds of great reggae, jazz, big band; there's so much good music in the world, you're never gonna hear one percent of it. From every country, there's musicians who will blow your mind.

The idea that this young person who's like 17 years old who should be this intellectual sponge, just uploading knowledge and culture and having this amazing emotional roller coaster would be into three bands because he liked their video . That to me is losing the plot. When there's a lot more great stuff out there to read, not just Stephen King, not just a book with a movie still on the front. When there's great music to be heard, from before your mama was born. Music that people actually got razored in the face for playing because they were black. Wrong color in this country to be Ornette Coleman, to be a musical genius. So a lot of people bled through the eyes to make a lot of good music and a lot of great culture. A lot of great writers were killed by Stalin for stuff they wrote .

[At this point the tape ran out on my Dictaphone. Rollins did something very cool that I've never seen an interviewee do: As he heard the tape recorder snap off after 45 minutes, he picked it up without looking at it (he kept his eyes on me the entire interview), turned the tape over without pausing in his story, pressed Record (again without looking at it), and set it back down and talked for 20 more minutes.]

for a while. That sucks. And I think at the end of the day, culture loses. Watering hole culture the water starts receding. Record companies with less life span for an artist, in the present day, major labels, which is now kinda the last place you want to be in music, like the last place you want to effect political change is in political office. Here's a situation that seems to be a working engine for the anti-music anti-culture. It seems to be using less colors, less nuance, less flavoring in the food. It's more strip-mall culture. I think Americans buy into that. It's how we're raised. And the way the music industry now feeds into American consumerist culture. You propose something different and you'll be surprised how conservative young people can be. You get some really amazing attitudes coming back at you, real conservative plot loss. I'm like, "Gee, who have you been listening to?"

But thankfully there's a lot of cool independent people. Like a lot of the people who are on here (gestures to a copy of DIY or DIE: How To Survive as an Independent Artist. ) The attitude to put something else across. To run counter to what's going on.

Like J Mascis who has never made a bad record. He's a great songwriter who writes beautiful music. There's people like that all over the place. A guy like J, if he sent in the record that got him on Warner Brothers, "Green Mind," if he sent that in now, they would just go, "Who is this guy?"

MD: Some artists have done that as a test. Platinum artists , just for kicks, have sent in a demo under a different name to their labels and gotten rejected.

You read that "Problem with Music" article by Steve Albini?

HR: No.

To me, one of the problems with music is Steve Albini. I just think he makes all his records sound the same. An asexual insect with no balls. How he can emasculate rock music is incredible, with the same scalpel every time. And you can tell him I said that.

Pretty talented, smart guy, and he fights the good fight. I just think his production is bullshit. He's definitely on the good side of things. He hates the corporate crap. I just think his production's really corny.

MD: I'm out of questions. Thanks.

When we were finished, I turned the Dictaphone off and we talked for about 15 more minutes.

Part of it was him saying that "Any young people who are reading your book should know that you can make great records without spending a fortune ." He mentioned Inner Ear Studios in Virginia.

I told him that I'd recorded four records there myself, and got on his computer and showed him where to download my cover of "Long Black Veil" with Ian singing backup on it. He said it was great.

He smiled and said, "I've never downloaded a song before in my life."

NOTE

Tiffany Couser and I proofread this article a few times and then I e-mailed Rollins back and asked if he wanted to take a pass through it to check to make sure we got it all right.

He wrote right back and said "Sure." An hour later I had the final result back.

It was Memorial Day. That's one thing I've noticed about most thriving self-employed D.I.Y. folk: they don't really take vacations .

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