By Sean Flinn | August, 1999
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| Eye Scream: Henry Rollins live at the Brick by Brick in San Diego, Calif., August 1999. |
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Read Choler's second interview with Rollins
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Henry Rollins has been assaulting audiences with his brand of drill-sergeant vocal delivery for almost as long as many of his current fans been alive. He joined the hugely influential Los Angeles hardcore punk band Black Flag around 1980, and has never let his intensity flag in the 20 years since. When Flag guitarist Greg Ginn pink slipped the band in the mid-'80's, Rollins reinvented himself as rock 'n' roll's quintessential renaissance man. He still makes head-crushingly intense music (with his outfit the Rollins Band, recently reformed with a new lineup of musicians), and has become a widely respected author. His one-man shows virtually resuscitated the stagnating genre of spoken-word performance, and he enjoys a wild popularity as an orator. He tours relentlessly (both with the Rollins Band and by himself), and in his few spare moments, he runs 2.13.61, the publishing house/record label that releases revelatory classics by Nick Cave, Alan Vega, Iggy Pop, Exene Cervenkova and Michael Gira. Despite this workaholic regimen, he still manages to find time to provide other musicians and bands with guest vocals, to produce albums by bands he loves, e.g., the Mark of Cain, Die Cheerleader and Mother Superior, to do commercial voiceovers for companies like GMC and Merrill Lynch, and to act in the occasional movie (the roster of his film appearances includes David Lynch's Lost Highway, Heat, Johnny Mnemonic and The Chase). How he maintains his level of energy and creativity through all of this activity may be his most startling attribute.
A personal note: This interview was a big deal for me. Like countless people my age and older, I've been a Rollins fan since early on in high school, when my friends and I chanced upon the Rollins Band album The End of Silence. That record destroyed me and rebuilt me into something much stronger. Rollins's music and spoken word material has brought me and every one of my close associates through high times, low times and all the times in between. The man enjoys a loyal - even fanatic - fan base because he gives voice to emotions and experiences that a good many people go through, but can't quite bring themselves to articulate. When your average adolescent or post-adolescent feels at his most alienated and put upon, he/she can probably be sure that Rollins has been stranded in that same emotional landscape. His work maps the path around the multitude of our inner life's obstacles. I feel honored to have spent time talking with the man, and am inspired by his intelligence, drive and broad-mindedness. I hope Choler's readers and Rollins's fans will derive as much benefit from reading this as I did from doing it.
[Phone dials, Rollins answers, introductions commence]
Sean Flinn: Are you ready for our interview?
Henry Rollins : Oh, so ready.
That's good to hear. OK, I'll just ahead and fire into the questions then. The first set I have involve the new lineup of the Rollins Band. I noticed that in your newsletter and in your most recent press release, you mentioned that the new band is comprised of the guys from Mother Superior and yourself. I'm curious to know how you came to know of their work and came to become a fan of theirs, and then how you approached them initially.
OK, well, they're a local L.A. band and they're friends of mine. At one point they gave me a record of theirs. The guitar player worked at a record store I go into all the time and one day I was in there and he said "Hey would you listen to our record?" I said "Sure." I took it home a played it, thought it was great, and I called them and said, "Anything I can do for you? If you want me to pass your record on to somebody or whatever, let me know." And we kind of became friends like that, and started hanging out, and I produced a record after the one after that [first record]. Another record came out and I did the liner notes for it, and then another record called Deep came out, and I produced that one. And then I said to them, "Well, how about, um, we write some songs for me? Let's see what happens…" They said "Great," and so we went into the practice room and we started writing the songs. They just fell out of us…it was great.
So we just went into this practice room and started writing songs, because I was looking to do some more music and I thought, at best we'll write some songs, at worst it'll just turn into a jam and we'll have some fun. But the first night we ended up writing, like, three songs that are all on the record. By the end of the week we'd written an album, and the week after we went in and recorded it in four days. It was just great, you know?
That sounds kind of like a departure from the old Rollins Band technique.
Yeah, where it takes 18 months of discussion. Which is not because anyone is bad or not a good writer, it's just that we would get into overanalyzing music. And I wanted to go in the opposite direction where we use a Duke Ellington concept of "feels good, is good." So, if we liked a song, the song was done. You know? Of course we worked on it and made sure it was sturdy, but if we all went "it feels good to play," then that means it's a good song. You know? We didn't want to sit there and worry about it. It's not to worry about, it's just to play and let it rip. And so we took a break because I had to go off and do a bunch of gigs on my own, and we reconvened in the Winter and got together for like another week and a half and wrote another 13 songs and recorded all of those. I put some vocals on that I hadn't finished before and we mixed it all and ended up with 24 songs, 13 of which are on the new album. It came together very quickly and very naturally. There are no more than two or three takes of anything on the record, and a lot of the vocals are from the actual take. We just went in and nailed it.
We've got Wayne Kramer from the Mc5 on a couple of songs. He co-wrote one song with us called "Hotter and Hotter," and he guests on a jam we were doing. And Scott Gorham from Thin Lizzy plays with us on a Thin Lizzy cover that we did (because we're all big fans of Thin Lizzy), and we made the song as a present to Phil Lynottt's mother, Philomena. We sent her a tape of the song, and she wrote me and said, "Oh, it's so great," and she really likes it and "thanks very much," and she made us feel very good. She's so great. I see her around when I'm in Dublin, she's really cool.
I remember a spoken word piece that you did extolling the virtues of Thin Lizzy and Phil Lynott ...
Yeah…he's the man.
Is he still your "guardo camino?"
Yeah ... I never go on the road with anything less than two or three hours of Phil. And I told the guys the other day, "Man when we do that Dublin show next year - and we will be in Dublin - we're gonna put together the awesome Thin Lizzy encore, like, the 5 song mini-concert of Thin Lizzy songs." And they're like "Tell us when, man, we're ready." They're so into it.
I would guess then that the different recording approach resulted in a different sound on this record.
Yeah, it's really raw. Not raw unlistenable, it's just like big guitars opened up - a lot of guitars. I produced the record, and I wanted a very sturdy thing that you could play loud and have stuff vibrate off the table and drive recklessly to, and I got it. I got the exact sound I wanted. So it's hard rock, basically, not metal, it's just hard rock. And the hasty approach just gives it more of an immediate feel. It feels less like a studio record. I'm quite happy with it. I played it the other day. I had George Marino master it, he's a very, good mastering engineer. I think he's the best for hard rock. He does all, like, Metallica…he did all the Hendrix stuff, all the reissues, Zeppelin reissues. Pretty much all the good hard rock that comes through the pike, you'll see George Marino's name on it at Sterling Sound. So I had George do it, and he really put the big touch on it, and it sounds nice. You can play it real loud and get your ya-ya's out, which is exactly what I wanted. I wanted a real fun record, real up-tempo and really slammin', and we got it.
Speaking of having a guy from Thin Lizzy come in and having Wayne Kramer come in, you also had George Clinton come in didn't you?
Well, we…no. Yes, but no. We went on his record. So it's me and the guys and Blackbird from Parliament playing with George, and it's a song that me and George wrote and we did it and the guys…we all play on it. Me and George did the vocals the other night - that was really fun, playing with George. He's a crazy cat, man. He has a mind like a steel trap, you know? He remembers all the different sessions, so you can kind of go through all your P-Funk queries with him, and he remembers. It's pretty cool.
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