By Sean Flinn | March 3, 2000
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| Henry Rollins: The man is intense. |
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It was a kinder, gentler Henry Rollins that Choler met up with in late January, a month before the release of the new Rollins Band album, Get Some Go Again.
OK, that's not true. If you've ever read interviews with him or seen any of his innumerable spoken-word shows, you know Henry, the rock-solid core of Black Flag (through 1987) and the Rollins Band, is one of the kindest, most forward-thinking musicians on the planet. It would be hard for him to be any kinder, at least to those he cares about. He sweats blood to entertain his fans, loses sleep to keep his band, label and vanity publishing house (2.13.61, named for his birthday) funded. In short, he's a teddy bear. A buff, heavily tattooed teddy bear, perhaps. A sweaty teddy bear. OK, so maybe the stuffed animal analogy doesn't work here, but tatooed, buff and sweaty? Yeah, that's Rollins.
When he's not on his way to another spoken-word gig, Rollins Band concert, book signing or safari, Rollins lives amidst a mountain of records, CDs and recording equipment in a modest area of Los Angeles. Honestly, he could do with a good gardener and a picture or two on the wall. The man lives like a rock 'n' roll samurai, spiritually, physically -- totally -- committed to the Bushido of rocking the fuck out. Choler's Sean Flinn invaded his fortress of solitude to learn the code according to Rollins.
On recording the new Rollins Band album, Get Some Go Again
The record is very simple. There's nothing complex about it. A lot of bands will tell you, "We don't sound like anybody else. What we're doing is new and in uncharted territory." We made a hard-rock album. It's what we do. We're a hard-rock band. There's nothing new with [the chords] A-D-G-E-B. It's all been done. All the combinations have been done, and Chuck Berry, Lennon and McCartney, Leiber and Stoller, Doc Pomus got the best versions of it anyway. We just play with a lot of soul and a lot of commitment, with an intense fun factor and the will to rock the fuck out. And what you hear is what that is: It's just some guys rocking out, and there's nothing unique about the record. I mean, it's a rock album. You play it loud, it feels good, you break shit, you get thrown out, and you go home. And that's all I wanted to make. I think we succeeded.
In this day and age, when everything is pitch-corrected and beats are quantized and everything is sampled, I think it's a cool thing to make a handmade record. Nowadays, there's not a whole lot of that going on anymore. This was like an old-fashioned record. We made it like Deep Purple made Machinehead. We just went in and did it. And that's not a selling point or any kind of thing; it's just that I didn't want to make a complicated record. I wanted to make something that was super direct. Like a Creedence Clearwater Revival record -- not that we're on that level, but I mean, that's guitar, drums, bass, vocal. Hardly any overdubs. Wham. You play those records, they still work, and that's all I wanted to do.
On the new Rollins Band lineup
The previous lineup -- no one was fired. It wasn't like "Fuck you, I hate you" or "I don't like you anymore." Not even close. After 10 and a half years, I really felt we'd done it. No more music to make with us. We know our combinations. We know all our defaults. When he does that, everyone else goes "badoom badoom." And I thought, For all of us to grow and go on, we all have got to bail. It's time to graduate and get into something else. And the music I wanted to do, I knew without a doubt my guys wouldn't want to do it. Straight-ahead rock 'n' roll? They're just not into it. They're into a way more complex musically layered thing. The record you heard, Get Some Go Again, is the record I wanted to make, sonically. I produced it; I knew exactly what I was after. And I'm not Mr. Producer Guy. But a rock record? I know how to produce a rock record. I've been in the studio a few times. And I didn't want a producer because I didn't want a middleman. I wasn't trying to say, "I'm Orson Welles; I know where it all goes." It's just that, this time around, I didn't want to explain it to a producer, who is going to explain it to an engineer. That's one person away, one interpretation away from the tape. So I said, "I'll do it."
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| Click here to read our review of the Rollins Band's Get Some Go Again |
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And the band that is the band, the other three guys, when they're not with me, they're a band called Mother Superior. And I've produced their last two records, so they already know me as a producer. They know me as the guy behind the [mixing] board going, "Again!" We get along on that. We have that kind of respect. We're also friends, and we're also fans. They were fans of Black Flag and the Rollins Band; I'm a fan of Mother Superior. And so we kind of got together to make some music, not thinking it was going to be an album or called the Rollins Band. I finished producing an album for them called Deep, and I said, "Fellas, I've got a bunch of music in my head. I can hum it to you, but I don't play instruments. Would you guys be interested in helping me make a sonic notebook, basically? I need to get this [points to his head] on to two-inch tape." They went, "Great! Any time." I went, "Next week?" They said, "We're in."
So we went down the street to our rehearsal place, and at worst, [we figured we'd get] some blues jams, we'd all go home laughing and out of breath. At best, maybe a song comes out of it. The first night, we'd written three songs; by the end of the week, we'd written 10. Went in the week after and in four days recorded the 10 songs. We took a break because I had three movies, a TV show and 81 talking shows to do -- you know, my big obstacle: work. Came back in the summer of '98 and said, "Do you want to do some more?" And they're like, "Yeah!" Thirteen more songs in a week and a half of songwriting, thrown down very quickly. I mixed it all down the street with this guy named Cliff, the engineer. And [at this point] it's still not called anything. In fact, DreamWorks came to one of my talking shows at [Los Angeles nightclub] Luna Park -- I was doing a nine-week stand down there -- and during the talking show, I say, "Yeah, I just did vocals today on this song." And the DreamWorks guy came up to me backstage and said, "You're doing a record? How come we weren't told?" I said, "Because -- I love you dearly -- I just didn't want any cooks in the kitchen." I financed it. They asked, "When can we hear it?" I said, "You'll hear it when I've sequenced something that I feel like presenting to you. Until then, it's cool. Just chill." They didn't even know it was a new lineup. And so we handed them Get Some Go Again. Unmastered. And I said, "That's the record. What do you think?" They went, "Whoah. Well, great." I go, "Great. I'm glad we agree because if you don't put it out, I will."
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