September 7, 2021 • 49 mins
Henry Rollins speaks with Rick Rubin from Shangri-La pre-pandemic and in full Rollins fashion, the stories just poured out of him. Henry talks about the time he was christened a lead singer by H.R. from Bad Brains, the day he woke up and realized he was done writing music, and why he’ll never be the old guy on stage performing his greatest hits.
Subscribe to Broken Record’s YouTube channel to hear all of our interviews: https://www.youtube.com/brokenrecordpodcast and follow us on Twitter @BrokenRecord
You can also check out past episodes here: https://brokenrecordpodcast.com
Check out a playlist of our favorite Henry Rollins HERE.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Henry Rawlins is intense about the things he loves.
It's like he's on a mission from God, and he's
been that way since his days It's Black Flags frontman.
In the eighties, their music was pure aggression. At shows,
(00:35):
there was no delineating between the band and the audience.
It was all just one big moshpian with Rollins physically
fighting off the crowd and dodging beer bottles hurled at
his head. Real punk rock Gallins, Gallard Riding lovedy. For
(01:02):
nearly twenty five years, Henry Rawlins toured the world relentlessly,
first as Black Flag, then Rollins Band, and most recently
as a spoken word artist just before the pandemic, who
performed in twenty one countries and was the keynote speaker
at conferences for things as Munday in a Software but
also at cannabis conventions, which is funny for someone as
(01:22):
famously straight edge as Rollins. Henry and Rick Rubin, to
the most music obsessed dudes of all time, met way
back in the day. They even started the Infinite Zero
label together in the early nineties to reissue long forgotten
albums they both loved. Rick sat with Henry at Changela
pre pandemic, and in full Rollin's fashion, the stories just
(01:42):
poured out of him. Henry talks about the time he
was christened the lead singer by HR from Bad Brains,
the day he woke up and realized he was done
right in music, and why he'll never be the old
guy on stage performing his greatest hits. This is broken
record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmondson.
(02:08):
Here's Rick Rubin and Henry Rollins. I was thinking about
the fact that both of us have essentially made music
our lives, and neither of us, I would say, a
particularly virtuoso and my musician, I can't. I can't play
a note on any instrument. All I can do is
(02:28):
buy him and carry him upstairs. Yes, I can't, and
I've never wanted to. I mean, I've written songs in
my head. I co wrote a song with George Clinton
once and we hummed it to the band. He's like
I got something, and he hummed, I go, that's King Crimson.
How'd you know I have that record? And he hummed
another one. I go, that's one of your own records,
(02:50):
like oh man, And then we finally came up with
something that he wasn't already used. And then I hummed
something and we wrote this song together and neither one
of us. He could probably play something. I don't know,
but we just found the music by just going due.
And the band were like like this. I'm like, yeah, man.
And it was fascinating to be standing in front of
these guys sitting he was at the old Cherokee studios,
(03:13):
Me and Clinton looking at these guys going and a
song happened. Yeah, with no one's with no one else
sitting at a piano or anything. Yeah, so if you
if you know what you want to hear. Yeah. And
I've never been a musician, you know. I was angry.
And they said, here's a microphone, here's a beat, do
your thing all right now? I can do yes. At
(03:36):
one time, our second bass player, Melvin Gibs, he heard
me singing. He goes, oh, just put it in E, man,
what does that mean? Like you're E. I didn't know
what that meant until later, like this, just anyone get
hit at Henry, You're safe in E. I'm like, I
still don't know what it means. Really, I guess that
means I suck or limited? What was your first love
(04:00):
affair with music, go to the tell me your first
memories of like this is for me. A couple of things. Well,
if my mom had pitch perfect taste in me music
and we rarely watched TV, but we she would play
one record after another, and we go to the record
store up to three nights a week. My mom was
a record buyer. Bartok, Stravinsky, Beethoven, Hendricks, Mary mcaba, Barbara
(04:24):
streisand showed too. It's like poor gay in best Miles
Monk Coltrane. I mean, like perfect taste in music. I
don't necessarily need a Barbara streisand record every day, but
those are good records. I mean, she's not messing around.
She's incredible Leadbelly, Dylan, both Guthries. My mom is like
her record collection is a mo And as a young adult,
(04:45):
I went through her record collection as like a twenty
something who knew a thing or two, and I went, wow,
Miles Davis, like, how come how come it stops it?
In a silent way, she's I just couldn't. I stopped
understanding Miles at a certain point, and she said, I
used to go see Miles and Coltrane all the time.
I said, you saw Miles, and she goes yeah, together separately,
like you're killing me. I had no idea how cool
(05:07):
my mom was. So I was raised in good music,
but the thing that really knocked me out was Ringo
drumming on Sergeant Pepper. I'm like, oh, I'm like eight
years old, hyperactive and just bouncing off the walls of
my little room. My mom gibbe Beatles records as electric
babysitters because I just play them over and over again.
(05:29):
But it was Ringo on the outro version of the
last you know, the outro Sergeant Pepper riff on the
way out of the record where it's just like naked
just doing that that stacked up ringo beat, and I said,
that's that's what I'm talking about. I didn't even know
what I was into. I just liked that and that
that that plays in my head all the time, and
(05:50):
that was the hook. And the first things I bought
when I made money, like throwing newspapers, was records, and
I bought you know, bike and records. It wasn't candy drugs,
it was music. And I you know, records are four
dollars and ninety nine cents. Back when Carter was president,
and I would make my money and go buy my
(06:11):
four dollars ninety nine cent. Some girls fly like an
eagle rocks toys in the attic, you know, whatever was
what was up? And so how old are you at
this time? Fifteen fourteen? Yeah, I was buying records steadily
by the time I was fourteen. I was a school
One time at prep school, all boys, and I walked
by one of the major jocks. He's got one of
(06:32):
those one speaker tape decks and he's got this crazy
music coming from and I took all the courage I
could someone like, you excuse me, sir, what are you
listening to? And he looked at me like I was
the dumbest guy on the planet. He's like Ted Nugent,
Like get a clue. I was like, duly noted. And
I went to the record store after school that day
because I always worked, I always had little pocket money,
(06:53):
and I bought free for all and then I went
backwards and bought the first album and those are the
Nugent records that were out, and I put him on
im like, oh, that's there, it is, That's what I'm
talking about. And then a couple of years later, me
and Ian McKay saw him live and I was kind
of like the one of the best things I've ever seen,
and it was like, to this day, top five live
(07:14):
gigs I've ever seen in my life, and I've seen
quite a few gigs. And so music was an obsession
all through high school because it was the escape from
the drudgery of an all boys prep school where as
a hyperactive riddle and adult student which didn't do well
on any level in school. And that's when me and
Ian McKay from Fugazi and Minor Threat, our friend, we
(07:37):
were gig guys. We would just go to the sea
the everybody Van Hale and Arrowsmith, Zeppelin. We saw everything
we could. And then when punk rock hit, that's when
music became like it went into the red as far
as collector guy need to know too much about everything,
hair splitting, you know, magnifying glass out looking at the
(07:59):
label where I took way better care of my records
and just became super vinyl obsessive. What was the first
punk record for you? The first one you heard, first
one you got, first one I heard was the first
Ramones album. I was. I was kind of birth purely
I read about these bands. He's like, what's this punk
rock craze? And I had Nugent Records that was my
crazy music. And a guy in my neighborhood he's on
(08:20):
a lot of the early discord records, rore Bert Queiroz.
Bert was like the cool kid. He's just a sharp guy,
really sharp guy, has his ear to the ground, and
he knows about import records. And one day we're at
the skate ramp and I said, you know, my music
no longer addresses my issues. I was like sixteen and
mad at everything, seventeen whatever. I was just pissed and like,
(08:42):
you know, fly like an eagle. Great record, it's just
not cutting it. You know, I don't understand the poetry
of the lyrics. I want to, you know, meet a
girl and burn something to the crownd. And so he said,
come with me. So I went to his microscopic apartment
he shared with his mom, and he was like, I'm
going to loan you this record. I need it back tomorrow,
this first Ramons album. And my mom wasn't home from
work yet, so I put it on her nice speakers,
(09:04):
not my crappyge in my room and I heard the
first Ramo album, and I don't get it. There's a
joke record, these four morons on the cover, and that's
not a rock band. They don't look like elo, Like,
what's what's their problem? And then you get to the
end of it like okay, that's funny, that's not Then
you play it again because he said you need to
play it three times. I'm like, okay, it's a thirty
(09:25):
minute records because the first two times, the first time
you're like, this is hilarious, second time you're like and
then the first time you're like, oh, lightbulb, and you're like,
this is my band. And with great regret and some reluctance,
I get the prize it from my grasp. And then
he said, okay, here's your next lesson. First clash Shop
because that's an import. Be careful. I go, what's an import?
(09:47):
He goes, that's a day's pay. That's what that is.
Twenty dollars record in nineteen seventy nine or whatever took
the remote the Clash record back and still to this
day one of my favorite records, and those records blew
my mind. I just didn't know you could do that
with I didn't know you could say that in a lyric.
Have not so many instruments on a record. I'm used
(10:08):
to elo ninety keyboards and feel I love those records.
I walked through the snow to buy Out of the
Blue or whatever the big double album is. I love
that record. But it's like eighty of everything, and it's
all so perfect. You can't get near it. With the remotes.
You can hear the cracks like, oh, those are humans,
And I never thought I could do that, but you,
like you look at him, I could approach those guys.
(10:30):
You're never going to meet Robert Plant, but you could
meet one of those guys. And all of a sudden,
I went from seeing led Zeppelin at the Capitol Center's
gone Now We're the ind to seeing February fifteen, nineteen
seventy one, seeing bow Didley opening for the Clash, and
he said he looked at the crowd bunch a little
like all one hundred and fifty of us. Do you
(10:52):
remember when the coolest thing you're gonna have it was
a fifty five Chevy, A girl at your side. We're
like yay, Like no, you don't like okay whatever, We're
just trying to be there with you. Man, and so
bow Didley played. He was brought there. He's a DC guy,
so he walked to the show. He lived right down
the street, so the Clash requested him because he knew
he's a DC native. And then the Clash play in
the open with Janey Jones or White Riot something, and
(11:12):
it was like getting hit with this blinding white light
and it just seemed to burn, like I'm burning, my
skin's on fire. This is like destroying every notion I
have of what music. So I used to watch from
like a block away, and suddenly within a year, I'm
being sweated on by De de ramon Luck's interiors down
(11:34):
to his underwear landing on me. I'm like, oh, naked man,
Like it became real. The Bad Brains are breathing on
me because I'm standing in front of them at a
punk rock party. And that's when music went from this
spectator sport to this thing that I knew was going
to be my life, even if it's just fanboy, record store,
(11:55):
go to guy going to a gig. Guy. I never
thought of being in a band until one night, hr
of the Bad Brains. He said, Harry, you're a singer,
and I said, no, man, you're you're the singer. He said,
you're a singer, and tonight you're gonna be in the
bat brightness. And I'm standing in front of him, and
he grabbed me by my arm, put me on stage,
(12:16):
gave me the microphone, went back down off the stage
about as high as the couch we're sitting on, and
stud in front of me with his arms crossed. And
I knew those songs, we all did. And I just
call that a couple mid tempo was I could try
and get near and I sang them and I remember
Hr looking at me with this intense scowl like se
and I was like, oh, well, I guess here's your
(12:37):
mic back. That was a thrilling three and a half minutes.
But within a few months I was in a band.
But so as me and some other guy. You know,
we weren't that good. We had a lot of fun.
Our songs were forty four seconds, gigs were nine minutes
in length. All the songs we had fit on one
forty five and it's like at least five and a
half minutes of music. Yeah, how long did that band last?
(13:01):
I got into that band. They were pre existing and
the singer, some guy named Lyle Pressler, he never went anywhere.
He was also a good guitar players, so he moved
across town to some band called Minor Threat. Oh yeah, yeah.
Then anyway, so Lyle leaves and he leaves behind this
band who needs a singer. So I go see his
old band, the Extorts, one night, and they're shopping for
(13:22):
a singer. So everyone knows who are seen as you
can fit them all in this room. It's not that
many people, so they know who I am. I know
who they are. So I said, I'll sing with you guys,
and they went okay. I think they're too scared to
say no because they're just, you know, ah scary guy
with no hair. And so suddenly I'm at band practice
having to write lyrics, which amazingly was not that difficult. Well,
(13:45):
I can't say anything about the quality of the lyrics,
but it came to me I was probably pretty pedestrian,
like I'll sing on every snare beat because melody's not
my thing. But suddenly I'm in this band and it
felt right, It felt really right. It felt like I
was a fish dropped into water. No stage fright, none, zero,
like I couldn't wait. And that was October eighty By
(14:08):
July eighty one, I'm in California at Black Flag practice.
How did that happen? That's crazy. I'll give you the
hyper condensed version. I knew those guys because they would
come through town and when they're in DC, they'd stayed
in Ian's mom's basement. So Ian's house is the coolest
in DC because you could go there and excuse me,
(14:28):
miss McKay, is Ian home. He's downstairs with a black Flag,
and so we're all like, you're in black Flag. We're
just like staying and they're like, oh gooey on the inside.
So I got to know those guys, and you know,
they're just broke touring band, as I was student to
find out, and they were doing a tour on the
East Coast. I met him in March April. They came
(14:49):
back in July, not playing DC, so I took a
drove my car up to see them at Irving Plaza
and guest list. I hung out with them all afternoon
because I kind of sort of knew him. Drove with
them to another show at Second and A there and
I helped him load in Me and John Joseph at
the chromag loaded their gear in which a guy gets stabbed, like, okay,
(15:11):
that that just happened. Here's the snare. And I'm looking
at my watch. I gotta drive to DC and do
a full shift at hogandahs on no sleep. But I'm young.
I can totally do it. Just one thing. I've top
ramen noodles. I'm good to go. And so I looked
at my watch and I said, hey, they're playing this
tiny bar. I said, can you guys do a song
for me? It's called clocked In. It's a great riff.
And Dez, the great singer at the time, he said,
(15:34):
this is for Henry. It's called clocked In because he's
got to go to work. And he's like, who's that?
And I looked at I have no memory of this.
I looked at Des and Dees looked at me, and
suddenly I'm standing on stage with him, and I must
have had quite a look on my face because I
looked at him. He just gave me the mic, like,
don't hurt me. Here's the mic. I'm like okay, and
the band was like, oh, Henry's gonna sing. I knew
the words. It's like a ninety second song, and I
(15:56):
sang the words the way I thought those songs should
be sung, where like vital organs fly out of your mouth,
the audience is terrified and Rome burns to the ground,
and I do the thing, and I remember two things.
I remember the audience going like ah like looking at
like they're being assaulted, and Greg and Chuck looking at
the center of the stage at me, going like huh,
(16:18):
like that's keeping us awake. And I gave the mic
back and I got into my wounded nineteen sixty eight
VW fastback with the dent in the hood from where
the mace canister bounced off it when my mom was
locked in a traffic jam riot in the sixties. I
drive the wounded car to my work shower in the
work sync, pull on a new shirt, and I'm scooping
(16:39):
ice cream, thinking I was in Black Flag for ninety seconds.
I've been you know, I'm twenty. My life is one
humiliation after another. Minimum wage jobs are going to be
my life. This is I got no plan, but man,
that was right. I was. I was in the right place,
and I got band practice. I go back to go
back to work and the phone rings. It's someone in
(17:00):
Black Flag has found found the work number. Hey, Henry,
we're auditioning singers. Dez wants to move to rhythm guitar.
You're pretty crazy last night. You want to come up
here to New York and audition. We'll pay your train fare. Like,
what do I have to lose? I'm twenty, I'm going
nowhere three seventy five an hour. I have nothing to lose,
and I'm not a tough guy. I don't have a
lot of guts and courage. But I said, this is it,
(17:21):
this is a shot. This is never happening to me again.
No way, shouldn't be happening now. So I said, I'll
be there tomorrow, give me an address. Met the met
at Odessa Polish diners great, a lot of food for cheap.
That's why they liked it. I ate there so many
times in Black Flag since anyway, I said, so what
are we doing? I still like Clay that we're gonna
go to a practice place and you're gonna sing two sets.
(17:44):
I said, I don't know any of the words. They
hardly have any records out is it sucks to be you?
What was out at that point? The yellow Yeah Jealous again?
In the Yellow twelve inch six pack was the EP
they were touring on, and then there was the Damage,
the Damage One in Louie Louis on Posh Boy, the single,
and Nervous Breakdown EP. So not much, not much at all,
(18:05):
not TV party and Rise the Bob and all the
big stuff and in your world? What was Black Flag
to you at that time? Before thing? To me? It
was the ultimate band. And they asked me, like, what's
your favorite song of ours? I said, Damage One, the
slow one with the wrong chord, liked and I was like,
that's the song and they went, you like that, you
(18:26):
like the slow one. I'm like, yeah, that's the one.
They want to go and kill everyone. They went, you're
all right. They were fascinated that I liked the slow
wrong one, classic gin weirdo chord, which is genius, and
that was my jam and they went, okay, you're interesting.
And so we get in this tiny practice room and
I literally am holding a microphone a fifty seven, not
(18:50):
a fifty eight, and I pinched myself because I did
I didn't believe. I said, so what song you want
to start with? I said, well, I didn't even know
many of the song titles. I said, Police Story and gain.
He has an on off. He doesn't have a tone thing.
He took that out and just put an on off switch,
so that all the early Black Flag records you hear,
and that's just him hitting on and the thing starts howling.
(19:13):
With feedback. It's a Dan Armstrong. We could pick ups
floating in resin, so it's a feedback machine. And all
I can remember is and ninety minutes later, we've done
every song twice. I'm completely soaked in sweat. I have
no real memory of it. All I remember is I
just kind of went ooh wah wah and yelled and scream.
I had fun. And they said, okay, we're gonna have
(19:34):
a band meeting. You go wait in the front lounge.
I ran across the street, got one of those cool
glass bottles of tropicana. Not from concentrating. I'm like cool
live in large dollar thirty five and I'm sitting there
waiting for the verdict, which I figure is gonna be
like hours. They're gonna take out the skull and light
the candle and with out the sacred verses. Now they
came out in like three minutes, and one of them,
(19:55):
I think it was Dakowski, said so matter of factly,
you're in. And I said, excuse me, you're in? I
said in what in Black Flag? Who? You me? Yeah?
Doing what? You're the singer of who? Black Flag? Because
they were like, He's like, so you're in. And I
was in disbelief. And one of them finally said you
(20:15):
want the job or not? I was like, yeah, wait,
wait a minute. I was scooping ice cream yesterday, is
this happening? It was unreal? So I said, so what
do I do? And I forget which maybe it was Dakowski.
He hands me this massive folder of lyrics. You know,
they were prepared, and they said, you learn these, you
go home, you kiss your little mommy goodbye, you quit
(20:38):
your job, you give all your stuff away, you pack
a bag. Here's the tour, I tinner, you meet us
as soon as you can. And then one of the
road crew guys are laughing and what's so funny? Like, man,
we got we gotta make the album soon. I said,
what album? The first Black Flag album? I said, aha,
so who's singing on that? And they went, you do
you get it? I feared it would be Daz like
(21:01):
the Farewell Das album. I didn't know, And I get
on the train, numb like speechless, kind of holding this
folder like it's not even mine. And I go to
work and Ian Mackay calls because there's no internet, he said,
where have you been? Let me talk every day he said,
I said, okay, I left town like yesterday, the day before.
(21:23):
I didn't have time to tell you anything. So here's
what just happened. And I don't ask advice of people.
I just go and make a mistake and you know,
limp away. But I asked Ian, I go, so what
do you think? He said, are you kidding? This is
going to be great? And so it took me a
few days to pack, give things away, including that car.
Quit my job and my boss said, well, I'll give
(21:46):
you four dollars an hour, like you know, an incentive.
I said, I love my job. Steve. We're still friends
to this day. I said, I liked my job. He
helped me get my first department. He gave me, He
got me credit. He called the landlords that I got this.
If he screws up, I got this. That's how I
got my first department. So he means a lot to me.
Trusted me with his money. I ran his store, his
hog and does and so I said, I gotta go.
(22:08):
He said, no, you got to do this. This is
a shot. You're not going to get this again. So
if it craps out on you, you can have your
old job back. And I said, man, you never know,
I might be back. And a few days later, my
old band played with Black Flag in Philadelphia and I
sang the encore with Black Flag, and that was the
handing of the baton where Chuck went up to the
micazette and here's the new singer of Black Flag. And
(22:30):
I went out on stage and sang Louie Louie and
like one or two others, and everyone kind of went whatever.
And the owner of that club a few years ago
sent me the set list. Wow, he said, here's the
set list where you transitioned into Black Flag. And I
went back to d C because I still had to, like,
you know, clean up a few things. And a couple
of days later, I was on a Greyhound bus overnight
(22:52):
to Detroit. I still have the bus ticket. I take
a taxi to Clutch Cargo, the now famous punk rock venue.
I beat the band there. They're driving from some other
city and I come in with my duffel bag and
I walk in as a lady behind the bars. He
just canna help you. I said, you know I was
born play I said, yes, ma'am, And I've never said
I had never said this as a declarative sentence to
(23:13):
anyone in my life except this lady behind the bar.
It's like two in the afternoon. She said, can I
help you? I said, I'm the singer in Black Flag.
Like not even I thought she's gonna go get out
of here. She went, Oh, would you like a kolke want? Yes? Please?
What was the relationship from the beginning between Greg and Chuck?
(23:34):
How did that work? Founding members? Yeah and left side,
right side brain Dokowski hard on sleeve, you know, tears
up during songs. He's really like just ripped open. Greg
is the more hyper analytical. They're both smart, different but
they're utilizing different parts of the brain and you can
(23:54):
see it in the lyrics. Chuck is writing my war
other stuff was just ripped open emotionally. Greg is coming
from the more introspective. Both of them are super effective,
great songwriters, but where one is writing, you know, rise
above Greg American waste, which is like, let's burn America
(24:16):
to the ground before they kill us all, Chuck. But
when you have both sides of the brain, left side,
right side on one record, you have this fully realized,
introspective person who's mad. And so that's why, like those
early records really work, because all parts of your your young, angry,
insecure palette are being addressed. You know, you have a
(24:39):
Hall and oats and it worked. And later on their
relationship became antagonistic leading and I'm not talking out of class.
It's all documented, leading for Dakowski to eventually sell his
share of SST and move on, and so it became
Greg scene. Do you know what that was about. It's
just about the combination of Greg Ginn and Chuck Dakowski.
(25:02):
And if you look at the history of Greg Ginn
and everyone in Black Flag and every artist on SST,
I'm sure you know quite a bit about this. And
anyone wants to take the merest glance onto the internet.
I'm not trying to talk out of class. Kind of great. Plus,
anyone is a turbulent time stamped there. It will come
to an end, like there is a use by date,
(25:25):
and don't stick around after Monday when the thing is
just just leave. And so I left, and so they
were an amazing combination. The closest thing that I can
in my life was Bob moulding Grant Heart of Who's
Gerd Two Guys Again. Bob Mould the introspective, analytical Grant
(25:48):
Heart completely ripped open both insanely talented and almost knocked
down drag outfights with those two back in the day
because they're both you know, getting loaded or whatever. There's
this crazy young men, super talented. But I saw Who's
Grew do One? Oh, I'm in a band like that,
who are like you know, everyone is just like snarly
at all times, and that's why those records sound like
(26:11):
they do like you play them now. As a man
pushing sixty, I hear some of those songs every once
in a while somewhere and I go, yeah, that's music
you make when you're young and hungry and really mad.
I can't make that music now because I got too
much money in the bank. I eat three meals a
day and I nothing really inconvenience, just me, and I'm
(26:31):
just not there anymore. But when you're young, you're Ferrell.
And the way Black Flag lived it was a constant
like well there, let's hope there's not the second stabbing
this week at one of our shows, and so those
days you became your environment. We'll be right back with
Henry Rollins. After a quick break. We're back with more
(26:55):
from Henry Rollins. What was the difference in the shows
between the UK and the US? Far less antagonism in
England in those days, you know Reagan, Thatcher. It was
a bunch of people telling you to go home. And
I'm a guy who grew up in the record store.
So we're opening for the Exploited. I had the Dudes
records that was an hour's paid a guy by that
(27:17):
single and his road crew would come into our dress
room take our food and there, you know, we don't
want to. You know, they're all these Scottish maniacs. They
will kill you. So like take our four bananas and
the cold ham sandwich. So we starve. And the singer
hated us because we're from America, and he'd go on
stage and like, you know, kill the American wankers. And
(27:38):
we opened for Chelsea and I had those records too,
liked them. And this singer like, hey, hey California, Hey
mister America. I'm like, what have I done to you?
And so All these bands were really mean to us,
except The Damned in the UK subs, but all these
bands who I had records of were just awful to us.
And there's the spitting and when you're opening for a band,
(27:59):
they kind of don't like you, like when you open
for the Damn the audience wants to see one band
it's not you, and their audience was kind of nice.
With the exploited audience, they just want to beat you up.
And we're coming We're not shrinking violets either. We're coming
on with our thing, which is pretty insane in those days. Right,
you don't like us, we don't like you either, And
here it comes. So we came back to America basically
(28:21):
to a hero's welcome. You know, yeay, they already knew us.
You know, you're an American band who they already had
a built in audience. And so two nights later, you're
up in Boston doing two sets and on BCM with
Oedipus after the show in a heated van. It's all different. Yeah,
let's talk about the making of the first album. Sure,
(28:42):
it's made in autumn of nineteen eighty one at a
place which is now a trader Joe's on Santa Monica Boulevard,
a little west of La Sienega, and it was Unicorn
Recording Studios. Black Flag lived in the office as above.
We slept on the floor. There's a practice room on
that floor, so we'd practice there. He'd go downstairs to
(29:02):
their offices. Wood paneling, plush carpuses. Total nineteen seventies into
the eighties. Studio, tiny studio, but we didn't need much.
It was like a very bare bones environment. We knew
the songs and so we recorded by day with Spot producing.
But here's the thing now, is everyone's dead. We can
(29:22):
talk about it. What Unicorn didn't understand was we live
on top of the we're in the same building. They
go home at five pm. The owner this reception is
it's a record company with a studio. At five pm,
everyone's out of there. The way to get to the
studio from the upstairs is one door. You just turn
that little thing in the middle of the knob. You
(29:44):
just leave it open. As soon as they're gone, like
at five pm, we're like, oh, we're really tired, and
they'd leave and we'd leave at five fifteen. We're right
back in there. Over Dub's vocals till about seven thirty
in the morning, Open up the doors, air the place out,
because a bunch of man odor we've been in their
sweating all night singing the course of TV Party eighty times.
(30:07):
You air it out, turn everything thing off, and tiptoe upstairs,
sleep for forty minutes, and come back down having just
clocked a good twelve hours of free time. Because we
can't afford what it would really cost, and so we
would do everything at night, like tons of overdubs, and
finish the record at night. And Unicorn probably made plenty
(30:29):
of us, but we made that record on you know,
by using it at night. And who knows if they
knew or even cared, but we did that. But we
made the record very quickly because of all the demoing
and the years of playing those songs on stage. Some
of the songs were new My TV Party was super new,
but the rest of them were like, you know, a
(30:49):
couple of years old, So it wasn't like anyone had
a question about him. You've been playing them a hundred times.
By eighty three, we're playing the songs that wouldn't be
released until eighty four. In fact, my war slip it
in all those. We demoed those in eighty two. That's
how quick Greg and Chuck we're writing them. So we're
(31:12):
still doing the damage set, but we're playing the rock stuff.
And so we started playing those songs in late eighty two,
eighty September eighty two into eighty three, and the audiences
are just like staying there flipping us off. It's like, nope,
what is this? And by eighty four, it's all seven
minutes sludgy, slow songs, and the audience was off two minds,
(31:32):
either like, man, this has never been better, like this
is the most intense, or I hate you guys and
I paid my five dollars and fifty cents to come
here and abuse the singer. And it only became more
either with us or against us, because every album was different.
By eighty six, this shows the audiences were pretty angry
(31:56):
because they didn't like the new songs and a lot
of them they hadn't heard, and they wanted the old ones,
and they took it out on us, like things would hit,
the stage, equipment would get abused, the PA would get abused,
the l would get abused, the singer would get abused.
And so by the end of that In the last tour,
it was kind of a miserable hate fest of a
(32:19):
record or songs that people weren't that into lyrics. I
didn't quite get along with all that well in a
band that was incredibly unhappy. And I'm not trying to
put anyone down. It's just, you know, people are together
in a band very intensely. It is what it is.
You know, you're not You've you've been around a few
bands in your life. It's closer than a family. It's
(32:40):
a bunch of crazy, creative people all in a compressed
space doing the same thing every night, and everything smells
like somebody's laundry, and you're like, okay, I hate your guts,
so let's go on tour. And that's how it is.
As much as those people have made me mad over
the years, when it came down to it, I would
(33:02):
jump in front of anything bad coming their way. I
have to, because they're all in that battlefield and you know,
and some of those men make me very angry. But
if it was something bad was happening right now, I'd
be right there, like I got this hit me instead,
How did it work that you left the band? The
tour came the last show was in Detroit, two nights
(33:25):
at Graystone. We finished, drove back to La Greg said, initially,
We're going to take a year off because I'm going
to reinvent SST. Like, what's that going to be like?
Because I never understood an hour off from that band.
You were never far away. And I went a year
that might as well be ten years. I didn't know
what to do. And I was on the East Coast
(33:47):
visiting you know, Ian and all these people, and I
get the phone call from Greg and he said, oh,
I quit, and I'll never forget this. I said, it's
your band. You can't quit. He said, well I quit.
And I hung up the phone and went, wow, that's that.
And when you're a young guy and you go from
(34:09):
a minimum wage job and your first day in LA
you're in the La Times and you're in this very
intense band with a very strong work ethos, and everything
is a big damn deal, and all of a sudden
it's over in a phone call where the jet doesn't land.
It kind of drops out of the sky and goes
into a thousand pieces on the ground and you stagger
(34:31):
away from this wrecked bit of shrapnel. You don't go oh,
I'll do you like, ah, what do I do? How
do you breathe? Who am I without Black Flag? And
I'll never forget I read somewhere like on a fortune cookie.
If one seeks to change, one must be prepared to
seem stupid, and you got to go try new things
(34:54):
like okay. And right around that time, I got an
offer to audition for a film, and so I went
to New York and I auditioned for this film. I
have no memory of it, and I'm like, okay, I
did that. I'm going to try and act now. And
that was July August. By October I'm in Leeds, England
(35:14):
making my first solo record. So I realized, if I
don't hit the ground and run, I'm going to hit
the ground and rot. And so my old pal from Washington,
d C. Chris Haskett, he and I grew up together.
He had a really good band called the Enzymes in DC,
and he used to live in England. Chris said, as
a joke, if Black Flag ever breaks up, like that'll happen.
You and I should make a record, And I said okay,
(35:36):
and I called him. He was he happened to be
back in America visiting his folks because he was living
in Leeds, England. I said, hey, Chris, it's Henry the
Eagle has landed. I'm at I don't have a band,
And he was like, I got a band. I got
this like he had been waiting, like he knew before
I did, because I have a whole band there in Leeds.
I know a studio, I got a practice place. You're
gonna live in my room and we're gonna write songs.
(35:57):
I'll see you in England in like ten days. And
I had like twenty five hundred bucks to my name.
I got a standby flight and I remember getting out
of the plane. I took a bus a coach up
to Leeds with like a backpack and on fear of failure,
tons of tea and onion bogies. Chris Haskett and I
(36:19):
wrote like eighteen songs in four days, recorded him in
five days, like two take with his rhythm section from
his surf instrumental band. And I said, Hi, I'm Henry.
I'm about to terrify you the scariest lyrics you've ever heard,
and that they heard them like you're a scary guy.
I said, you have no idea, and so we made
a record called Hot Animal Machine and we made this
little record for no money and it's pretty good. And
(36:41):
so by April of eighty seven, like less than a
year after Black Flight broke up, I'm in band practice
in Trent, New Jersey with Andrew and sim of Greg
Gin's old instrumental band Gone, who had broken up Chris
from the Hot Eilm Machine record, and we called it
the Rawlins Band, And almost a year to the day,
we're back in leads at the same studio we recorded
(37:03):
Hot Eild Machine recording Lifetime, all new songs we wrote
on the road we were we road tested him, We
played him every night, and I since eighty one till
the end of the Rawlins Band, I never really kind
of put the mic down. Where is he he's writing songs?
Where is he now on tour? Where is he now
(37:23):
making a record? Around and round you go, like AC
DC and everyone else, trying to prove it every night.
And I did that for damn your twenty five years,
you know, and playing more than kind of any band
I know of besides maybe DA or like the Chili Peppers.
They go at it. They're gladiators, you know, they lay
leave for three month, three years. You know that they're
(37:44):
not kidding around. And we toured. That's what Black Flag
taught me. Play every night and suddenly you know, we're
rocking and Singapore, We're playing in Moscow. You know, I go,
you guys into this, They're like, yeah, we're playing in
Bootapest hungry. Who would have thought? And we just basically
said yes to every gig. And that's how I toured
to this day. We'll be right back with Henry Rollins
(38:07):
after a quick break. We're back with the rest of
Rick's conversation with Henry Rollins. What was the first speaking
engagement you did? Nineteen eighty three? The Harvey Kouberneck a
great local tastemaker producer in this town. He used to
(38:28):
do these shows where you get twenty people. Everyone gets
five minutes, and Dakowski would read from his little notebooks
of doom and talk about the apocalypse or whatever. I
would go with Chuck John Doe would go up and
sing a song. Jeffrey Lee Pierce to the Gun Club
would read from five minutes of his tour journal. It
was like really fun that real poets, performance artist, movie
(38:48):
stars would talk and I'd go with Chuck go into that.
We lived in the beach, we go to the big
I'd go to the big city, look at pretty women,
and you know, be in Hollywood with the real people.
And so one night Harvey came up to me at
the Loss of Club, I think, and he said, we're
doing a show next week. Chuck's on the bill. Why
don't you get on the bill. I'm like, what am
I gonna do? Say? You got a big mouth? You
never shut up five minutes, like ten bucks, I think
(39:12):
it was. I was like, and all I saw was
the money. I was like, ten dollars. How many almosts
can I get for ten? That's a lot of waves rancheros.
I was like, I'm just hungry all the time. And so,
you know, with sheer hutzpah, I went on stage the
next week with some writing folded in my ass pocket.
Read The Two Things told a story about what had
(39:33):
happened the day before band practice, when a neo Nazi
tried to run over Greg with his car as Greg
was on his way to the little store to get
a thing of orange juice, which is just Tuesday for
Black Flag. The audience, their jaws were on the ground.
I said, oh, I got my seven minutes or whatever
are up, and huge applause, and I remember two things distinctly. One,
(39:56):
I don't need a band in that I have no stage. Fright,
give me another half an hour. I got this. I
love being alone with a microphone. I could be George Carlin.
I was raised on all those records. I'm not comparing myself.
I'm saying I can get by without a band. And
people coming up to me after it was going one's
your next show? I said, well, I'm leaving on tour.
They go, no, no, not the band. When you just talk?
(40:19):
I went never. I got my ten dollar bill. Then
Harvey came up to me and he said, okay, you're
a natural, and I said whatever. He said, how about this.
I booked half the poets on tonight's stage. I manage them.
Three of them are doing a poetry reading at a
bookstore in wherever. Why don't you do fifteen minutes and
(40:40):
I'll give you twenty five dollars? Okay. Within By the
end of eighty three beginning of eighty four, some of
those poets, much to their chagrin, were opening for me
because I was drawing people. By the end of Black
Flag in some major cities. I could draw almost as
many people as Black Flag on my own and not
(41:04):
everyone in the band was cool about this. And so
suddenly I'm doing radio interviews about my writing and my speaking.
I'm on the cover of this magazine because of spoken word,
and so I had this whole other thing. And by
automn eighty five, when the Loose Nut Black Flag Tour
(41:25):
came to an end, I left almost immediately across America,
twelve to fifty people a night with our old sound
man driving the van and doing sound for me. And
we just did a talking tour from LA to New
York and back and it. And then by eighty five
I got invited to a poetry festival in Holland. Sure
(41:48):
it's me and Linton Queezy Johnson and who came up
to me after he said righteous mister Rollins, I said,
thank you, sir. Bill Burrows was on the bill, Jeffrey
Lee Pierce, all kinds of people, and with the Rollins band,
I finished the band tour, we made the Lifetime record.
They all went home and I was debt to all
(42:09):
of them. I owed them all money. So I left
on a talking tour like three days later, I'm doing
that entire tour again. And so I got back to
La December eighty seven and did two sold out nights
at the loss Of Club with Hubert Selby of Last
Exit to Brooklyn Fame opening for me crazy and so
(42:30):
from then to now I now do twenty one twenty
two countries. I sell out multiple knights at the Sydney
Opera House. I mean it's crazy. And you know, I
get amazing offers like keynote our convention. What's the convention
about software and progress? And make a speech about where
(42:53):
the world needs to go in the future. Really, Oh,
we think you're perfect for that. Okay, and speak at
this commencement. Just get these kids out of college. I've
done that a couple of times. I don't I take
work seriously. I take dedication seriously. But luckily I don't
take myself seriously. And so it's it's opened up this
(43:14):
whole other thing for me where I'm not the guy
in a band and a lot of my peers they
go out and we're doing the first album again twenty
five years later. Okay, I want to come along, No, no,
I don't. I'll pay money. I'll go see it but coming, no, no, no,
and so I don't have to go out there and
(43:35):
remember this one kids. My dad does. And so that's
where it is now when you're almost sixty, like you know,
I see all these old men. I know that old
guy from somewhere. Of course I'm his age. He was
at my shows. I remember that guy. The smart thing
I did is a younger man who was One day
I woke up in my bed and I went, I'm
(43:58):
done with music. I don't hate it. I just have
no more lyrics. There's no more toothpaste in the tube.
I called my manager at the time. I said I'm
done with music. And that was you know, fifteen percent
of that was a good thing for him. He's like, no, no,
I thought yes, And so luckily I had enough, you know, movies, voiceover,
documentary work, writing talking where that just filled in and
(44:20):
now I'm busier than ever. But um, I walked away
before I had to start saying, hey, kids, remember this one.
So I didn't have to put it on and dada
and go out there and put on the dog and
yelped for my dinner. And I've had gentle discussions with
major rock stars who you've produced and why you go
(44:42):
out there and I go, you go out and you
play those same songs every night for the last forty years.
And one of these people who I love dearly, said, yeah,
that's what people want. I go, you want to give
him what they wanted? What? Yeah, he's an older school guy,
even older than me, And he said, yeah, that you
want to make people happy. I'm like, you do Huh,
I never thought of that. That never has occurred to me.
(45:04):
What do you do? I go this what I's what's
on next? He went, huh, how's that treating you? I'm like, well,
I need must here to get home. But the two
different schools and his whole thing is what you put
on the show. Everyone goes yay. You play what everyone
wants to hear, and everyone's happy. And he said you're not.
I'm like, no, not necessarily. If they happen to like
(45:26):
what I'm doing, cool, If they don't, they can bite me.
And I'm sure in the last few years he has
sung that one, that one, that one, and that one
for the five hundred and seventy millionth time, and fifty
thousand people went ya, that's just not for me. The
right way for any of this stuff to go. It
really is up to the person it is and everyone's fine.
(45:49):
I mean, everyone's doing it their way as long as
no one's getting hurt. I used to put bands down
when I was a younger man. I had a big
head full esteem. I can't do that now. Music and culture,
you know, America is in a very interesting time right now.
I wouldn't say bad. I would just say eventual and interesting.
It's been. We've been working towards where we are now
for quite a while. If you watch this stuff, you're
(46:09):
not that surprised. But as far as culturally, I don't
know how much you voulivoo and hobnob in La. I
don't think La has ever been cooler since I've been
living here. As far as having an analog pulse, people
you want to actually talk to again, Clubs you want
to go to, local bands, you want to see every
(46:31):
time they play. Like if I was a younger man,
i'd be out more often. I just can't do five
hours to sleep and function all the time. I'd be
out way more often because there's so many good bands,
and there's so many great clubs being run by thoughtful,
conscientious people who love music. I've never seen audiences so cool.
(46:54):
The other nights at the Palladium for Labucherettes, that's a
band and bikini kill and it's like sold out four nights.
It's a love fest in there. There's no fights, no
one's getting their t shirt torn off, no one's getting groped.
And these are the gigs I see these days. I
go to gigs and there's like all these gay kids there.
Everyone's cool, like because that's nothing like the gigs I got.
(47:17):
You know, it was a blender of flesh and testosterone
when I got here. And so LA's never, in my opinion,
never been a cooler place to dig what's happening. And
so when someone gets cynical or everything sucks, I'm like, wow,
you've just decided today sucks, because the truth is it's
really exciting and there's a lot of things to fix.
(47:39):
But culture is really, I think, kind of is answering
some howling painful moan of homophobia that homophobia and racism
and misogyny in genders or illicits music is going on. No,
we got this, here's the news. We're going to neutralize
that with this, And so it's a great time to
(48:03):
be open minded things are better when you go to
the gig. Everything's better once you're you know, you're perforate
your can with a few holes and have to remind
myself of that a lot. You know, I will sit
alone in brood, so I push myself out the door.
Thank you for coming in and having a chat. Yeah, man,
I hope that was though. It was really fun to
talk to you. Same thanks to Henry Rollins for taking
(48:28):
the time to chat with Ray. You can hear a
favorite Black Flag and Rollins band songs by heading to
Broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to
our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast.
We're can find all our new episodes. You can follow
us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Records produced with
helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and
(48:51):
Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chaffey. Our executive
producer is Mila Bell. Broken Record is production of Pushkin Industries.
If you love the show and others from Pushkin Industries,
considered becoming a pushnick. Pushnick is a podcast subscription that
offers bonus content an uninterrupted ad freeless name for four
ninety nine a month. Look for Pushnick exclusively on Apple
(49:13):
podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, of course,
please remember to share, rate, and review us on your
podcast app. At the Musics by Kenny Beats, I'm justin Richmond,
Pushkin. Henry Rawlins is intense about the things he loves.
It's like he's on a mission from God, and he's
been that way since his days It's Black Flags frontman.
In the eighties, their music was pure aggression. At shows,
(00:35):
there was no delineating between the band and the audience.
It was all just one big moshpian with Rollins physically
fighting off the crowd and dodging beer bottles hurled at
his head. Real punk rock Gallins, Gallard Riding lovedy. For
(01:02):
nearly twenty five years, Henry Rawlins toured the world relentlessly,
first as Black Flag, then Rollins Band, and most recently
as a spoken word artist just before the pandemic, who
performed in twenty one countries and was the keynote speaker
at conferences for things as Munday in a Software but
also at cannabis conventions, which is funny for someone as
(01:22):
famously straight edge as Rollins. Henry and Rick Rubin, to
the most music obsessed dudes of all time, met way
back in the day. They even started the Infinite Zero
label together in the early nineties to reissue long forgotten
albums they both loved. Rick sat with Henry at Changela
pre pandemic, and in full Rollin's fashion, the stories just
(01:42):
poured out of him. Henry talks about the time he
was christened the lead singer by HR from Bad Brains,
the day he woke up and realized he was done
right in music, and why he'll never be the old
guy on stage performing his greatest hits. This is broken
record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmondson.
(02:08):
Here's Rick Rubin and Henry Rollins. I was thinking about
the fact that both of us have essentially made music
our lives, and neither of us, I would say, a
particularly virtuoso and my musician, I can't. I can't play
a note on any instrument. All I can do is
(02:28):
buy him and carry him upstairs. Yes, I can't, and
I've never wanted to. I mean, I've written songs in
my head. I co wrote a song with George Clinton
once and we hummed it to the band. He's like
I got something, and he hummed, I go, that's King Crimson.
How'd you know I have that record? And he hummed
another one. I go, that's one of your own records,
(02:50):
like oh man, And then we finally came up with
something that he wasn't already used. And then I hummed
something and we wrote this song together and neither one
of us. He could probably play something. I don't know,
but we just found the music by just going due.
And the band were like like this. I'm like, yeah, man.
And it was fascinating to be standing in front of
these guys sitting he was at the old Cherokee studios,
(03:13):
Me and Clinton looking at these guys going and a
song happened. Yeah, with no one's with no one else
sitting at a piano or anything. Yeah, so if you
if you know what you want to hear. Yeah. And
I've never been a musician, you know. I was angry.
And they said, here's a microphone, here's a beat, do
your thing all right now? I can do yes. At
(03:36):
one time, our second bass player, Melvin Gibs, he heard
me singing. He goes, oh, just put it in E, man,
what does that mean? Like you're E. I didn't know
what that meant until later, like this, just anyone get
hit at Henry, You're safe in E. I'm like, I
still don't know what it means. Really, I guess that
means I suck or limited? What was your first love
(04:00):
affair with music, go to the tell me your first
memories of like this is for me. A couple of things. Well,
if my mom had pitch perfect taste in me music
and we rarely watched TV, but we she would play
one record after another, and we go to the record
store up to three nights a week. My mom was
a record buyer. Bartok, Stravinsky, Beethoven, Hendricks, Mary mcaba, Barbara
(04:24):
streisand showed too. It's like poor gay in best Miles
Monk Coltrane. I mean, like perfect taste in music. I
don't necessarily need a Barbara streisand record every day, but
those are good records. I mean, she's not messing around.
She's incredible Leadbelly, Dylan, both Guthries. My mom is like
her record collection is a mo And as a young adult,
(04:45):
I went through her record collection as like a twenty
something who knew a thing or two, and I went, wow,
Miles Davis, like, how come how come it stops it?
In a silent way, she's I just couldn't. I stopped
understanding Miles at a certain point, and she said, I
used to go see Miles and Coltrane all the time.
I said, you saw Miles, and she goes yeah, together separately,
like you're killing me. I had no idea how cool
(05:07):
my mom was. So I was raised in good music,
but the thing that really knocked me out was Ringo
drumming on Sergeant Pepper. I'm like, oh, I'm like eight
years old, hyperactive and just bouncing off the walls of
my little room. My mom gibbe Beatles records as electric
babysitters because I just play them over and over again.
(05:29):
But it was Ringo on the outro version of the
last you know, the outro Sergeant Pepper riff on the
way out of the record where it's just like naked
just doing that that stacked up ringo beat, and I said,
that's that's what I'm talking about. I didn't even know
what I was into. I just liked that and that
that that plays in my head all the time, and
(05:50):
that was the hook. And the first things I bought
when I made money, like throwing newspapers, was records, and
I bought you know, bike and records. It wasn't candy drugs,
it was music. And I you know, records are four
dollars and ninety nine cents. Back when Carter was president,
and I would make my money and go buy my
(06:11):
four dollars ninety nine cent. Some girls fly like an
eagle rocks toys in the attic, you know, whatever was
what was up? And so how old are you at
this time? Fifteen fourteen? Yeah, I was buying records steadily
by the time I was fourteen. I was a school
One time at prep school, all boys, and I walked
by one of the major jocks. He's got one of
(06:32):
those one speaker tape decks and he's got this crazy
music coming from and I took all the courage I
could someone like, you excuse me, sir, what are you
listening to? And he looked at me like I was
the dumbest guy on the planet. He's like Ted Nugent,
Like get a clue. I was like, duly noted. And
I went to the record store after school that day
because I always worked, I always had little pocket money,
(06:53):
and I bought free for all and then I went
backwards and bought the first album and those are the
Nugent records that were out, and I put him on
im like, oh, that's there, it is, That's what I'm
talking about. And then a couple of years later, me
and Ian McKay saw him live and I was kind
of like the one of the best things I've ever seen,
and it was like, to this day, top five live
(07:14):
gigs I've ever seen in my life, and I've seen
quite a few gigs. And so music was an obsession
all through high school because it was the escape from
the drudgery of an all boys prep school where as
a hyperactive riddle and adult student which didn't do well
on any level in school. And that's when me and
Ian McKay from Fugazi and Minor Threat, our friend, we
(07:37):
were gig guys. We would just go to the sea
the everybody Van Hale and Arrowsmith, Zeppelin. We saw everything
we could. And then when punk rock hit, that's when
music became like it went into the red as far
as collector guy need to know too much about everything,
hair splitting, you know, magnifying glass out looking at the
(07:59):
label where I took way better care of my records
and just became super vinyl obsessive. What was the first
punk record for you? The first one you heard, first
one you got, first one I heard was the first
Ramones album. I was. I was kind of birth purely
I read about these bands. He's like, what's this punk
rock craze? And I had Nugent Records that was my
crazy music. And a guy in my neighborhood he's on
(08:20):
a lot of the early discord records, rore Bert Queiroz.
Bert was like the cool kid. He's just a sharp guy,
really sharp guy, has his ear to the ground, and
he knows about import records. And one day we're at
the skate ramp and I said, you know, my music
no longer addresses my issues. I was like sixteen and
mad at everything, seventeen whatever. I was just pissed and like,
(08:42):
you know, fly like an eagle. Great record, it's just
not cutting it. You know, I don't understand the poetry
of the lyrics. I want to, you know, meet a
girl and burn something to the crownd. And so he said,
come with me. So I went to his microscopic apartment
he shared with his mom, and he was like, I'm
going to loan you this record. I need it back tomorrow,
this first Ramons album. And my mom wasn't home from
work yet, so I put it on her nice speakers,
(09:04):
not my crappyge in my room and I heard the
first Ramo album, and I don't get it. There's a
joke record, these four morons on the cover, and that's
not a rock band. They don't look like elo, Like,
what's what's their problem? And then you get to the
end of it like okay, that's funny, that's not Then
you play it again because he said you need to
play it three times. I'm like, okay, it's a thirty
(09:25):
minute records because the first two times, the first time
you're like, this is hilarious, second time you're like and
then the first time you're like, oh, lightbulb, and you're like,
this is my band. And with great regret and some reluctance,
I get the prize it from my grasp. And then
he said, okay, here's your next lesson. First clash Shop
because that's an import. Be careful. I go, what's an import?
(09:47):
He goes, that's a day's pay. That's what that is.
Twenty dollars record in nineteen seventy nine or whatever took
the remote the Clash record back and still to this
day one of my favorite records, and those records blew
my mind. I just didn't know you could do that
with I didn't know you could say that in a lyric.
Have not so many instruments on a record. I'm used
(10:08):
to elo ninety keyboards and feel I love those records.
I walked through the snow to buy Out of the
Blue or whatever the big double album is. I love
that record. But it's like eighty of everything, and it's
all so perfect. You can't get near it. With the remotes.
You can hear the cracks like, oh, those are humans,
And I never thought I could do that, but you,
like you look at him, I could approach those guys.
(10:30):
You're never going to meet Robert Plant, but you could
meet one of those guys. And all of a sudden,
I went from seeing led Zeppelin at the Capitol Center's
gone Now We're the ind to seeing February fifteen, nineteen
seventy one, seeing bow Didley opening for the Clash, and
he said he looked at the crowd bunch a little
like all one hundred and fifty of us. Do you
(10:52):
remember when the coolest thing you're gonna have it was
a fifty five Chevy, A girl at your side. We're
like yay, Like no, you don't like okay whatever, We're
just trying to be there with you. Man, and so
bow Didley played. He was brought there. He's a DC guy,
so he walked to the show. He lived right down
the street, so the Clash requested him because he knew
he's a DC native. And then the Clash play in
the open with Janey Jones or White Riot something, and
(11:12):
it was like getting hit with this blinding white light
and it just seemed to burn, like I'm burning, my
skin's on fire. This is like destroying every notion I
have of what music. So I used to watch from
like a block away, and suddenly within a year, I'm
being sweated on by De de ramon Luck's interiors down
(11:34):
to his underwear landing on me. I'm like, oh, naked man,
Like it became real. The Bad Brains are breathing on
me because I'm standing in front of them at a
punk rock party. And that's when music went from this
spectator sport to this thing that I knew was going
to be my life, even if it's just fanboy, record store,
(11:55):
go to guy going to a gig. Guy. I never
thought of being in a band until one night, hr
of the Bad Brains. He said, Harry, you're a singer,
and I said, no, man, you're you're the singer. He said,
you're a singer, and tonight you're gonna be in the
bat brightness. And I'm standing in front of him, and
he grabbed me by my arm, put me on stage,
(12:16):
gave me the microphone, went back down off the stage
about as high as the couch we're sitting on, and
stud in front of me with his arms crossed. And
I knew those songs, we all did. And I just
call that a couple mid tempo was I could try
and get near and I sang them and I remember
Hr looking at me with this intense scowl like se
and I was like, oh, well, I guess here's your
(12:37):
mic back. That was a thrilling three and a half minutes.
But within a few months I was in a band.
But so as me and some other guy. You know,
we weren't that good. We had a lot of fun.
Our songs were forty four seconds, gigs were nine minutes
in length. All the songs we had fit on one
forty five and it's like at least five and a
half minutes of music. Yeah, how long did that band last?
(13:01):
I got into that band. They were pre existing and
the singer, some guy named Lyle Pressler, he never went anywhere.
He was also a good guitar players, so he moved
across town to some band called Minor Threat. Oh yeah, yeah.
Then anyway, so Lyle leaves and he leaves behind this
band who needs a singer. So I go see his
old band, the Extorts, one night, and they're shopping for
(13:22):
a singer. So everyone knows who are seen as you
can fit them all in this room. It's not that
many people, so they know who I am. I know
who they are. So I said, I'll sing with you guys,
and they went okay. I think they're too scared to
say no because they're just, you know, ah scary guy
with no hair. And so suddenly I'm at band practice
having to write lyrics, which amazingly was not that difficult. Well,
(13:45):
I can't say anything about the quality of the lyrics,
but it came to me I was probably pretty pedestrian,
like I'll sing on every snare beat because melody's not
my thing. But suddenly I'm in this band and it
felt right, It felt really right. It felt like I
was a fish dropped into water. No stage fright, none, zero,
like I couldn't wait. And that was October eighty By
(14:08):
July eighty one, I'm in California at Black Flag practice.
How did that happen? That's crazy. I'll give you the
hyper condensed version. I knew those guys because they would
come through town and when they're in DC, they'd stayed
in Ian's mom's basement. So Ian's house is the coolest
in DC because you could go there and excuse me,
(14:28):
miss McKay, is Ian home. He's downstairs with a black Flag,
and so we're all like, you're in black Flag. We're
just like staying and they're like, oh gooey on the inside.
So I got to know those guys, and you know,
they're just broke touring band, as I was student to
find out, and they were doing a tour on the
East Coast. I met him in March April. They came
(14:49):
back in July, not playing DC, so I took a
drove my car up to see them at Irving Plaza
and guest list. I hung out with them all afternoon
because I kind of sort of knew him. Drove with
them to another show at Second and A there and
I helped him load in Me and John Joseph at
the chromag loaded their gear in which a guy gets stabbed, like, okay,
(15:11):
that that just happened. Here's the snare. And I'm looking
at my watch. I gotta drive to DC and do
a full shift at hogandahs on no sleep. But I'm young.
I can totally do it. Just one thing. I've top
ramen noodles. I'm good to go. And so I looked
at my watch and I said, hey, they're playing this
tiny bar. I said, can you guys do a song
for me? It's called clocked In. It's a great riff.
And Dez, the great singer at the time, he said,
(15:34):
this is for Henry. It's called clocked In because he's
got to go to work. And he's like, who's that?
And I looked at I have no memory of this.
I looked at Des and Dees looked at me, and
suddenly I'm standing on stage with him, and I must
have had quite a look on my face because I
looked at him. He just gave me the mic, like,
don't hurt me. Here's the mic. I'm like okay, and
the band was like, oh, Henry's gonna sing. I knew
the words. It's like a ninety second song, and I
(15:56):
sang the words the way I thought those songs should
be sung, where like vital organs fly out of your mouth,
the audience is terrified and Rome burns to the ground,
and I do the thing, and I remember two things.
I remember the audience going like ah like looking at
like they're being assaulted, and Greg and Chuck looking at
the center of the stage at me, going like huh,
(16:18):
like that's keeping us awake. And I gave the mic
back and I got into my wounded nineteen sixty eight
VW fastback with the dent in the hood from where
the mace canister bounced off it when my mom was
locked in a traffic jam riot in the sixties. I
drive the wounded car to my work shower in the
work sync, pull on a new shirt, and I'm scooping
(16:39):
ice cream, thinking I was in Black Flag for ninety seconds.
I've been you know, I'm twenty. My life is one
humiliation after another. Minimum wage jobs are going to be
my life. This is I got no plan, but man,
that was right. I was. I was in the right place,
and I got band practice. I go back to go
back to work and the phone rings. It's someone in
(17:00):
Black Flag has found found the work number. Hey, Henry,
we're auditioning singers. Dez wants to move to rhythm guitar.
You're pretty crazy last night. You want to come up
here to New York and audition. We'll pay your train fare. Like,
what do I have to lose? I'm twenty, I'm going
nowhere three seventy five an hour. I have nothing to lose,
and I'm not a tough guy. I don't have a
lot of guts and courage. But I said, this is it,
(17:21):
this is a shot. This is never happening to me again.
No way, shouldn't be happening now. So I said, I'll
be there tomorrow, give me an address. Met the met
at Odessa Polish diners great, a lot of food for cheap.
That's why they liked it. I ate there so many
times in Black Flag since anyway, I said, so what
are we doing? I still like Clay that we're gonna
go to a practice place and you're gonna sing two sets.
(17:44):
I said, I don't know any of the words. They
hardly have any records out is it sucks to be you?
What was out at that point? The yellow Yeah Jealous again?
In the Yellow twelve inch six pack was the EP
they were touring on, and then there was the Damage,
the Damage One in Louie Louis on Posh Boy, the single,
and Nervous Breakdown EP. So not much, not much at all,
(18:05):
not TV party and Rise the Bob and all the
big stuff and in your world? What was Black Flag
to you at that time? Before thing? To me? It
was the ultimate band. And they asked me, like, what's
your favorite song of ours? I said, Damage One, the
slow one with the wrong chord, liked and I was like,
that's the song and they went, you like that, you
(18:26):
like the slow one. I'm like, yeah, that's the one.
They want to go and kill everyone. They went, you're
all right. They were fascinated that I liked the slow
wrong one, classic gin weirdo chord, which is genius, and
that was my jam and they went, okay, you're interesting.
And so we get in this tiny practice room and
I literally am holding a microphone a fifty seven, not
(18:50):
a fifty eight, and I pinched myself because I did
I didn't believe. I said, so what song you want
to start with? I said, well, I didn't even know
many of the song titles. I said, Police Story and gain.
He has an on off. He doesn't have a tone thing.
He took that out and just put an on off switch,
so that all the early Black Flag records you hear,
and that's just him hitting on and the thing starts howling.
(19:13):
With feedback. It's a Dan Armstrong. We could pick ups
floating in resin, so it's a feedback machine. And all
I can remember is and ninety minutes later, we've done
every song twice. I'm completely soaked in sweat. I have
no real memory of it. All I remember is I
just kind of went ooh wah wah and yelled and scream.
I had fun. And they said, okay, we're gonna have
(19:34):
a band meeting. You go wait in the front lounge.
I ran across the street, got one of those cool
glass bottles of tropicana. Not from concentrating. I'm like cool
live in large dollar thirty five and I'm sitting there
waiting for the verdict, which I figure is gonna be
like hours. They're gonna take out the skull and light
the candle and with out the sacred verses. Now they
came out in like three minutes, and one of them,
(19:55):
I think it was Dakowski, said so matter of factly,
you're in. And I said, excuse me, you're in? I
said in what in Black Flag? Who? You me? Yeah?
Doing what? You're the singer of who? Black Flag? Because
they were like, He's like, so you're in. And I
was in disbelief. And one of them finally said you
(20:15):
want the job or not? I was like, yeah, wait,
wait a minute. I was scooping ice cream yesterday, is
this happening? It was unreal? So I said, so what
do I do? And I forget which maybe it was Dakowski.
He hands me this massive folder of lyrics. You know,
they were prepared, and they said, you learn these, you
go home, you kiss your little mommy goodbye, you quit
(20:38):
your job, you give all your stuff away, you pack
a bag. Here's the tour, I tinner, you meet us
as soon as you can. And then one of the
road crew guys are laughing and what's so funny? Like, man,
we got we gotta make the album soon. I said,
what album? The first Black Flag album? I said, aha,
so who's singing on that? And they went, you do
you get it? I feared it would be Daz like
(21:01):
the Farewell Das album. I didn't know, And I get
on the train, numb like speechless, kind of holding this
folder like it's not even mine. And I go to
work and Ian Mackay calls because there's no internet, he said,
where have you been? Let me talk every day he said,
I said, okay, I left town like yesterday, the day before.
(21:23):
I didn't have time to tell you anything. So here's
what just happened. And I don't ask advice of people.
I just go and make a mistake and you know,
limp away. But I asked Ian, I go, so what
do you think? He said, are you kidding? This is
going to be great? And so it took me a
few days to pack, give things away, including that car.
Quit my job and my boss said, well, I'll give
(21:46):
you four dollars an hour, like you know, an incentive.
I said, I love my job. Steve. We're still friends
to this day. I said, I liked my job. He
helped me get my first department. He gave me, He
got me credit. He called the landlords that I got this.
If he screws up, I got this. That's how I
got my first department. So he means a lot to me.
Trusted me with his money. I ran his store, his
hog and does and so I said, I gotta go.
(22:08):
He said, no, you got to do this. This is
a shot. You're not going to get this again. So
if it craps out on you, you can have your
old job back. And I said, man, you never know,
I might be back. And a few days later, my
old band played with Black Flag in Philadelphia and I
sang the encore with Black Flag, and that was the
handing of the baton where Chuck went up to the
micazette and here's the new singer of Black Flag. And
(22:30):
I went out on stage and sang Louie Louie and
like one or two others, and everyone kind of went whatever.
And the owner of that club a few years ago
sent me the set list. Wow, he said, here's the
set list where you transitioned into Black Flag. And I
went back to d C because I still had to, like,
you know, clean up a few things. And a couple
of days later, I was on a Greyhound bus overnight
(22:52):
to Detroit. I still have the bus ticket. I take
a taxi to Clutch Cargo, the now famous punk rock venue.
I beat the band there. They're driving from some other
city and I come in with my duffel bag and
I walk in as a lady behind the bars. He
just canna help you. I said, you know I was
born play I said, yes, ma'am, And I've never said
I had never said this as a declarative sentence to
(23:13):
anyone in my life except this lady behind the bar.
It's like two in the afternoon. She said, can I
help you? I said, I'm the singer in Black Flag.
Like not even I thought she's gonna go get out
of here. She went, Oh, would you like a kolke want? Yes? Please?
What was the relationship from the beginning between Greg and Chuck?
(23:34):
How did that work? Founding members? Yeah and left side,
right side brain Dokowski hard on sleeve, you know, tears
up during songs. He's really like just ripped open. Greg
is the more hyper analytical. They're both smart, different but
they're utilizing different parts of the brain and you can
(23:54):
see it in the lyrics. Chuck is writing my war
other stuff was just ripped open emotionally. Greg is coming
from the more introspective. Both of them are super effective,
great songwriters, but where one is writing, you know, rise
above Greg American waste, which is like, let's burn America
(24:16):
to the ground before they kill us all, Chuck. But
when you have both sides of the brain, left side,
right side on one record, you have this fully realized,
introspective person who's mad. And so that's why, like those
early records really work, because all parts of your your young, angry,
insecure palette are being addressed. You know, you have a
(24:39):
Hall and oats and it worked. And later on their
relationship became antagonistic leading and I'm not talking out of class.
It's all documented, leading for Dakowski to eventually sell his
share of SST and move on, and so it became
Greg scene. Do you know what that was about. It's
just about the combination of Greg Ginn and Chuck Dakowski.
(25:02):
And if you look at the history of Greg Ginn
and everyone in Black Flag and every artist on SST,
I'm sure you know quite a bit about this. And
anyone wants to take the merest glance onto the internet.
I'm not trying to talk out of class. Kind of great. Plus,
anyone is a turbulent time stamped there. It will come
to an end, like there is a use by date,
(25:25):
and don't stick around after Monday when the thing is
just just leave. And so I left, and so they
were an amazing combination. The closest thing that I can
in my life was Bob moulding Grant Heart of Who's
Gerd Two Guys Again. Bob Mould the introspective, analytical Grant
(25:48):
Heart completely ripped open both insanely talented and almost knocked
down drag outfights with those two back in the day
because they're both you know, getting loaded or whatever. There's
this crazy young men, super talented. But I saw Who's
Grew do One? Oh, I'm in a band like that,
who are like you know, everyone is just like snarly
at all times, and that's why those records sound like
(26:11):
they do like you play them now. As a man
pushing sixty, I hear some of those songs every once
in a while somewhere and I go, yeah, that's music
you make when you're young and hungry and really mad.
I can't make that music now because I got too
much money in the bank. I eat three meals a
day and I nothing really inconvenience, just me, and I'm
(26:31):
just not there anymore. But when you're young, you're Ferrell.
And the way Black Flag lived it was a constant
like well there, let's hope there's not the second stabbing
this week at one of our shows, and so those
days you became your environment. We'll be right back with
Henry Rollins. After a quick break. We're back with more
(26:55):
from Henry Rollins. What was the difference in the shows
between the UK and the US? Far less antagonism in
England in those days, you know Reagan, Thatcher. It was
a bunch of people telling you to go home. And
I'm a guy who grew up in the record store.
So we're opening for the Exploited. I had the Dudes
records that was an hour's paid a guy by that
(27:17):
single and his road crew would come into our dress
room take our food and there, you know, we don't
want to. You know, they're all these Scottish maniacs. They
will kill you. So like take our four bananas and
the cold ham sandwich. So we starve. And the singer
hated us because we're from America, and he'd go on
stage and like, you know, kill the American wankers. And
(27:38):
we opened for Chelsea and I had those records too,
liked them. And this singer like, hey, hey California, Hey
mister America. I'm like, what have I done to you?
And so All these bands were really mean to us,
except The Damned in the UK subs, but all these
bands who I had records of were just awful to us.
And there's the spitting and when you're opening for a band,
(27:59):
they kind of don't like you, like when you open
for the Damn the audience wants to see one band
it's not you, and their audience was kind of nice.
With the exploited audience, they just want to beat you up.
And we're coming We're not shrinking violets either. We're coming
on with our thing, which is pretty insane in those days. Right,
you don't like us, we don't like you either, And
here it comes. So we came back to America basically
(28:21):
to a hero's welcome. You know, yeay, they already knew us.
You know, you're an American band who they already had
a built in audience. And so two nights later, you're
up in Boston doing two sets and on BCM with
Oedipus after the show in a heated van. It's all different. Yeah,
let's talk about the making of the first album. Sure,
(28:42):
it's made in autumn of nineteen eighty one at a
place which is now a trader Joe's on Santa Monica Boulevard,
a little west of La Sienega, and it was Unicorn
Recording Studios. Black Flag lived in the office as above.
We slept on the floor. There's a practice room on
that floor, so we'd practice there. He'd go downstairs to
(29:02):
their offices. Wood paneling, plush carpuses. Total nineteen seventies into
the eighties. Studio, tiny studio, but we didn't need much.
It was like a very bare bones environment. We knew
the songs and so we recorded by day with Spot producing.
But here's the thing now, is everyone's dead. We can
(29:22):
talk about it. What Unicorn didn't understand was we live
on top of the we're in the same building. They
go home at five pm. The owner this reception is
it's a record company with a studio. At five pm,
everyone's out of there. The way to get to the
studio from the upstairs is one door. You just turn
that little thing in the middle of the knob. You
(29:44):
just leave it open. As soon as they're gone, like
at five pm, we're like, oh, we're really tired, and
they'd leave and we'd leave at five fifteen. We're right
back in there. Over Dub's vocals till about seven thirty
in the morning, Open up the doors, air the place out,
because a bunch of man odor we've been in their
sweating all night singing the course of TV Party eighty times.
(30:07):
You air it out, turn everything thing off, and tiptoe upstairs,
sleep for forty minutes, and come back down having just
clocked a good twelve hours of free time. Because we
can't afford what it would really cost, and so we
would do everything at night, like tons of overdubs, and
finish the record at night. And Unicorn probably made plenty
(30:29):
of us, but we made that record on you know,
by using it at night. And who knows if they
knew or even cared, but we did that. But we
made the record very quickly because of all the demoing
and the years of playing those songs on stage. Some
of the songs were new My TV Party was super new,
but the rest of them were like, you know, a
(30:49):
couple of years old, So it wasn't like anyone had
a question about him. You've been playing them a hundred times.
By eighty three, we're playing the songs that wouldn't be
released until eighty four. In fact, my war slip it
in all those. We demoed those in eighty two. That's
how quick Greg and Chuck we're writing them. So we're
(31:12):
still doing the damage set, but we're playing the rock stuff.
And so we started playing those songs in late eighty two,
eighty September eighty two into eighty three, and the audiences
are just like staying there flipping us off. It's like, nope,
what is this? And by eighty four, it's all seven
minutes sludgy, slow songs, and the audience was off two minds,
(31:32):
either like, man, this has never been better, like this
is the most intense, or I hate you guys and
I paid my five dollars and fifty cents to come
here and abuse the singer. And it only became more
either with us or against us, because every album was different.
By eighty six, this shows the audiences were pretty angry
(31:56):
because they didn't like the new songs and a lot
of them they hadn't heard, and they wanted the old ones,
and they took it out on us, like things would hit,
the stage, equipment would get abused, the PA would get abused,
the l would get abused, the singer would get abused.
And so by the end of that In the last tour,
it was kind of a miserable hate fest of a
(32:19):
record or songs that people weren't that into lyrics. I
didn't quite get along with all that well in a
band that was incredibly unhappy. And I'm not trying to
put anyone down. It's just, you know, people are together
in a band very intensely. It is what it is.
You know, you're not You've you've been around a few
bands in your life. It's closer than a family. It's
(32:40):
a bunch of crazy, creative people all in a compressed
space doing the same thing every night, and everything smells
like somebody's laundry, and you're like, okay, I hate your guts,
so let's go on tour. And that's how it is.
As much as those people have made me mad over
the years, when it came down to it, I would
(33:02):
jump in front of anything bad coming their way. I
have to, because they're all in that battlefield and you know,
and some of those men make me very angry. But
if it was something bad was happening right now, I'd
be right there, like I got this hit me instead,
How did it work that you left the band? The
tour came the last show was in Detroit, two nights
(33:25):
at Graystone. We finished, drove back to La Greg said, initially,
We're going to take a year off because I'm going
to reinvent SST. Like, what's that going to be like?
Because I never understood an hour off from that band.
You were never far away. And I went a year
that might as well be ten years. I didn't know
what to do. And I was on the East Coast
(33:47):
visiting you know, Ian and all these people, and I
get the phone call from Greg and he said, oh,
I quit, and I'll never forget this. I said, it's
your band. You can't quit. He said, well I quit.
And I hung up the phone and went, wow, that's that.
And when you're a young guy and you go from
(34:09):
a minimum wage job and your first day in LA
you're in the La Times and you're in this very
intense band with a very strong work ethos, and everything
is a big damn deal, and all of a sudden
it's over in a phone call where the jet doesn't land.
It kind of drops out of the sky and goes
into a thousand pieces on the ground and you stagger
(34:31):
away from this wrecked bit of shrapnel. You don't go oh,
I'll do you like, ah, what do I do? How
do you breathe? Who am I without Black Flag? And
I'll never forget I read somewhere like on a fortune cookie.
If one seeks to change, one must be prepared to
seem stupid, and you got to go try new things
(34:54):
like okay. And right around that time, I got an
offer to audition for a film, and so I went
to New York and I auditioned for this film. I
have no memory of it, and I'm like, okay, I
did that. I'm going to try and act now. And
that was July August. By October I'm in Leeds, England
(35:14):
making my first solo record. So I realized, if I
don't hit the ground and run, I'm going to hit
the ground and rot. And so my old pal from Washington,
d C. Chris Haskett, he and I grew up together.
He had a really good band called the Enzymes in DC,
and he used to live in England. Chris said, as
a joke, if Black Flag ever breaks up, like that'll happen.
You and I should make a record, And I said okay,
(35:36):
and I called him. He was he happened to be
back in America visiting his folks because he was living
in Leeds, England. I said, hey, Chris, it's Henry the
Eagle has landed. I'm at I don't have a band,
And he was like, I got a band. I got
this like he had been waiting, like he knew before
I did, because I have a whole band there in Leeds.
I know a studio, I got a practice place. You're
gonna live in my room and we're gonna write songs.
(35:57):
I'll see you in England in like ten days. And
I had like twenty five hundred bucks to my name.
I got a standby flight and I remember getting out
of the plane. I took a bus a coach up
to Leeds with like a backpack and on fear of failure,
tons of tea and onion bogies. Chris Haskett and I
(36:19):
wrote like eighteen songs in four days, recorded him in
five days, like two take with his rhythm section from
his surf instrumental band. And I said, Hi, I'm Henry.
I'm about to terrify you the scariest lyrics you've ever heard,
and that they heard them like you're a scary guy.
I said, you have no idea, and so we made
a record called Hot Animal Machine and we made this
little record for no money and it's pretty good. And
(36:41):
so by April of eighty seven, like less than a
year after Black Flight broke up, I'm in band practice
in Trent, New Jersey with Andrew and sim of Greg
Gin's old instrumental band Gone, who had broken up Chris
from the Hot Eilm Machine record, and we called it
the Rawlins Band, And almost a year to the day,
we're back in leads at the same studio we recorded
(37:03):
Hot Eild Machine recording Lifetime, all new songs we wrote
on the road we were we road tested him, We
played him every night, and I since eighty one till
the end of the Rawlins Band, I never really kind
of put the mic down. Where is he he's writing songs?
Where is he now on tour? Where is he now
(37:23):
making a record? Around and round you go, like AC
DC and everyone else, trying to prove it every night.
And I did that for damn your twenty five years,
you know, and playing more than kind of any band
I know of besides maybe DA or like the Chili Peppers.
They go at it. They're gladiators, you know, they lay
leave for three month, three years. You know that they're
(37:44):
not kidding around. And we toured. That's what Black Flag
taught me. Play every night and suddenly you know, we're
rocking and Singapore, We're playing in Moscow. You know, I go,
you guys into this, They're like, yeah, we're playing in
Bootapest hungry. Who would have thought? And we just basically
said yes to every gig. And that's how I toured
to this day. We'll be right back with Henry Rollins
(38:07):
after a quick break. We're back with the rest of
Rick's conversation with Henry Rollins. What was the first speaking
engagement you did? Nineteen eighty three? The Harvey Kouberneck a
great local tastemaker producer in this town. He used to
(38:28):
do these shows where you get twenty people. Everyone gets
five minutes, and Dakowski would read from his little notebooks
of doom and talk about the apocalypse or whatever. I
would go with Chuck John Doe would go up and
sing a song. Jeffrey Lee Pierce to the Gun Club
would read from five minutes of his tour journal. It
was like really fun that real poets, performance artist, movie
(38:48):
stars would talk and I'd go with Chuck go into that.
We lived in the beach, we go to the big
I'd go to the big city, look at pretty women,
and you know, be in Hollywood with the real people.
And so one night Harvey came up to me at
the Loss of Club, I think, and he said, we're
doing a show next week. Chuck's on the bill. Why
don't you get on the bill. I'm like, what am
I gonna do? Say? You got a big mouth? You
never shut up five minutes, like ten bucks, I think
(39:12):
it was. I was like, and all I saw was
the money. I was like, ten dollars. How many almosts
can I get for ten? That's a lot of waves rancheros.
I was like, I'm just hungry all the time. And so,
you know, with sheer hutzpah, I went on stage the
next week with some writing folded in my ass pocket.
Read The Two Things told a story about what had
(39:33):
happened the day before band practice, when a neo Nazi
tried to run over Greg with his car as Greg
was on his way to the little store to get
a thing of orange juice, which is just Tuesday for
Black Flag. The audience, their jaws were on the ground.
I said, oh, I got my seven minutes or whatever
are up, and huge applause, and I remember two things distinctly. One,
(39:56):
I don't need a band in that I have no stage. Fright,
give me another half an hour. I got this. I
love being alone with a microphone. I could be George Carlin.
I was raised on all those records. I'm not comparing myself.
I'm saying I can get by without a band. And
people coming up to me after it was going one's
your next show? I said, well, I'm leaving on tour.
They go, no, no, not the band. When you just talk?
(40:19):
I went never. I got my ten dollar bill. Then
Harvey came up to me and he said, okay, you're
a natural, and I said whatever. He said, how about this.
I booked half the poets on tonight's stage. I manage them.
Three of them are doing a poetry reading at a
bookstore in wherever. Why don't you do fifteen minutes and
(40:40):
I'll give you twenty five dollars? Okay. Within By the
end of eighty three beginning of eighty four, some of
those poets, much to their chagrin, were opening for me
because I was drawing people. By the end of Black
Flag in some major cities. I could draw almost as
many people as Black Flag on my own and not
(41:04):
everyone in the band was cool about this. And so
suddenly I'm doing radio interviews about my writing and my speaking.
I'm on the cover of this magazine because of spoken word,
and so I had this whole other thing. And by
automn eighty five, when the Loose Nut Black Flag Tour
(41:25):
came to an end, I left almost immediately across America,
twelve to fifty people a night with our old sound
man driving the van and doing sound for me. And
we just did a talking tour from LA to New
York and back and it. And then by eighty five
I got invited to a poetry festival in Holland. Sure
(41:48):
it's me and Linton Queezy Johnson and who came up
to me after he said righteous mister Rollins, I said,
thank you, sir. Bill Burrows was on the bill, Jeffrey
Lee Pierce, all kinds of people, and with the Rollins band,
I finished the band tour, we made the Lifetime record.
They all went home and I was debt to all
(42:09):
of them. I owed them all money. So I left
on a talking tour like three days later, I'm doing
that entire tour again. And so I got back to
La December eighty seven and did two sold out nights
at the loss Of Club with Hubert Selby of Last
Exit to Brooklyn Fame opening for me crazy and so
(42:30):
from then to now I now do twenty one twenty
two countries. I sell out multiple knights at the Sydney
Opera House. I mean it's crazy. And you know, I
get amazing offers like keynote our convention. What's the convention
about software and progress? And make a speech about where
(42:53):
the world needs to go in the future. Really, Oh,
we think you're perfect for that. Okay, and speak at
this commencement. Just get these kids out of college. I've
done that a couple of times. I don't I take
work seriously. I take dedication seriously. But luckily I don't
take myself seriously. And so it's it's opened up this
(43:14):
whole other thing for me where I'm not the guy
in a band and a lot of my peers they
go out and we're doing the first album again twenty
five years later. Okay, I want to come along, No, no,
I don't. I'll pay money. I'll go see it but coming, no, no, no,
and so I don't have to go out there and
(43:35):
remember this one kids. My dad does. And so that's
where it is now when you're almost sixty, like you know,
I see all these old men. I know that old
guy from somewhere. Of course I'm his age. He was
at my shows. I remember that guy. The smart thing
I did is a younger man who was One day
I woke up in my bed and I went, I'm
(43:58):
done with music. I don't hate it. I just have
no more lyrics. There's no more toothpaste in the tube.
I called my manager at the time. I said I'm
done with music. And that was you know, fifteen percent
of that was a good thing for him. He's like, no, no,
I thought yes, And so luckily I had enough, you know, movies, voiceover,
documentary work, writing talking where that just filled in and
(44:20):
now I'm busier than ever. But um, I walked away
before I had to start saying, hey, kids, remember this one.
So I didn't have to put it on and dada
and go out there and put on the dog and
yelped for my dinner. And I've had gentle discussions with
major rock stars who you've produced and why you go
(44:42):
out there and I go, you go out and you
play those same songs every night for the last forty years.
And one of these people who I love dearly, said, yeah,
that's what people want. I go, you want to give
him what they wanted? What? Yeah, he's an older school guy,
even older than me, And he said, yeah, that you
want to make people happy. I'm like, you do Huh,
I never thought of that. That never has occurred to me.
(45:04):
What do you do? I go this what I's what's
on next? He went, huh, how's that treating you? I'm like, well,
I need must here to get home. But the two
different schools and his whole thing is what you put
on the show. Everyone goes yay. You play what everyone
wants to hear, and everyone's happy. And he said you're not.
I'm like, no, not necessarily. If they happen to like
(45:26):
what I'm doing, cool, If they don't, they can bite me.
And I'm sure in the last few years he has
sung that one, that one, that one, and that one
for the five hundred and seventy millionth time, and fifty
thousand people went ya, that's just not for me. The
right way for any of this stuff to go. It
really is up to the person it is and everyone's fine.
(45:49):
I mean, everyone's doing it their way as long as
no one's getting hurt. I used to put bands down
when I was a younger man. I had a big
head full esteem. I can't do that now. Music and culture,
you know, America is in a very interesting time right now.
I wouldn't say bad. I would just say eventual and interesting.
It's been. We've been working towards where we are now
for quite a while. If you watch this stuff, you're
(46:09):
not that surprised. But as far as culturally, I don't
know how much you voulivoo and hobnob in La. I
don't think La has ever been cooler since I've been
living here. As far as having an analog pulse, people
you want to actually talk to again, Clubs you want
to go to, local bands, you want to see every
(46:31):
time they play. Like if I was a younger man,
i'd be out more often. I just can't do five
hours to sleep and function all the time. I'd be
out way more often because there's so many good bands,
and there's so many great clubs being run by thoughtful,
conscientious people who love music. I've never seen audiences so cool.
(46:54):
The other nights at the Palladium for Labucherettes, that's a
band and bikini kill and it's like sold out four nights.
It's a love fest in there. There's no fights, no
one's getting their t shirt torn off, no one's getting groped.
And these are the gigs I see these days. I
go to gigs and there's like all these gay kids there.
Everyone's cool, like because that's nothing like the gigs I got.
(47:17):
You know, it was a blender of flesh and testosterone
when I got here. And so LA's never, in my opinion,
never been a cooler place to dig what's happening. And
so when someone gets cynical or everything sucks, I'm like, wow,
you've just decided today sucks, because the truth is it's
really exciting and there's a lot of things to fix.
(47:39):
But culture is really, I think, kind of is answering
some howling painful moan of homophobia that homophobia and racism
and misogyny in genders or illicits music is going on. No,
we got this, here's the news. We're going to neutralize
that with this, And so it's a great time to
(48:03):
be open minded things are better when you go to
the gig. Everything's better once you're you know, you're perforate
your can with a few holes and have to remind
myself of that a lot. You know, I will sit
alone in brood, so I push myself out the door.
Thank you for coming in and having a chat. Yeah, man,
I hope that was though. It was really fun to
talk to you. Same thanks to Henry Rollins for taking
(48:28):
the time to chat with Ray. You can hear a
favorite Black Flag and Rollins band songs by heading to
Broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to
our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast.
We're can find all our new episodes. You can follow
us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Records produced with
helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and
(48:51):
Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chaffey. Our executive
producer is Mila Bell. Broken Record is production of Pushkin Industries.
If you love the show and others from Pushkin Industries,
considered becoming a pushnick. Pushnick is a podcast subscription that
offers bonus content an uninterrupted ad freeless name for four
ninety nine a month. Look for Pushnick exclusively on Apple
(49:13):
podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, of course,
please remember to share, rate, and review us on your
podcast app. At the Musics by Kenny Beats, I'm justin Richmond,
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!