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On the online music revolution
You're not going to get too much around Sony. Their lawyers are too big. Their technology is too strong. So you may have some righteous havoc, a little bit of mayhem, but it's not going to go far enough to where you'll have a great dynamic shift in the powers that be and who brokers the power. But on a more street level, less angering the legal department of a major record label thing, perhaps the MP3 thing enables small bands to get their music heard by A&R people, by potential fans. I've talked to young bands; they go, "Yeah, man, we just MP3-ed our demo, and we're getting fan mail from Finland."
Well, part of the reason that some people make music is to communicate. It's not all about money. And if the MP3 thing gives other people access to music, to art, to stuff, great. Some people can take that and make a buck out of it. You take anything with freedom -- you take something as beautiful as the Internet, which is an amazing concept, free information, free access, communication; well, here comes the white power movements, and they're using that same tool to kick you in the guts. Not so great. And their freedom is -- well, they have the same freedom I do. They can post their hatred, and I can post my dumb newsletter. And in a way, it's all the same, in that it's something you can point and click to.
So with the MP3 thing? Yeah, there will be some people angering some other people, but I think it would be great to see independent bands and independent labels and bands who are just trying to get in the game have a bit more of a foothold than they did before. There're a lot of righteous bands who are working by day and playing by night, and they're really good, but no one's going to hear them because they don't look good. They're not cute. They're living in St. Louis, and there's no labels there. They're living in Pacoima. No one is signing bands in those places. They don't have the bus fare to get to the city. Maybe this changes things. Cool. Why not?
On the Internet and the "fan" mail he receives
I get people taking advantage of Photoshop -- j-pegs, gifs, whatever. Sending me photos of me with a goiter and a horn, you know. Or just photos of whatever. You know, "Here's our band!" And all of a sudden, you have a thing to download. I've been getting a lot of mail and a lot of e-mail, 10-50 letters a day. You get e-mail where people are speaking Internet-speak. You know -- "I don't know whether this is really your site or some wanna-be guy trying to be you." Because you never would get letters coming to the P.O. box that would say, "Is this really Henry Rollins's P.O. box?" It's on the back of the damn record. It's probably Henry's P.O. box. But when you get an e-mail address -- and I've had the same e-mail address since '95 or '94, whenever it was that I got a modem, and it's never changed. Everyone knows it by now. DreamWorks posts it. I am not hard to find, and so I get a lot of e-mail.
And I still get these really caustic letters. Some kid will write, "If this is Henry, man, I just want to say you rock, and I think you're great." And I write back, "Hey, man, thanks. See ya in St. Louis." I get a letter back [that reads], "Yeah, right. Like you're really Henry Rollins. Henry Rollins doesn't have time to answer my letter. Fuck you, you clone, I'll kick your ass." So I have to write him back and send him, like, five newsletters. And they're like, [meekly] "Sorry." Or "Dude! It is you!" Well, yeah. And that's what I like about the Internet -- that it kind of shrinks the world a little. I don't have a lot of time to dick around on the Internet and answer a whole lot of mail. I'm behind on the mail. It just piles up. It's everywhere. [Rollins kicks around a few very full mail bins.] I do the best I can. I'm a busy guy. But I like the fact that someone can have access to me. I think that's cool -- in concept. Practically, it's not always the best thing, when I'm in eight places at once.
But I have found people who I have wanted to meet via the Internet. Our bass player is a huge David Bowie fan. Aren't we all? So he found Tony Visconti, the producer of Scary Monsters, Lodger, tons of Bowie. Thin Lizzy too. Tons of bands. Anyway, he found Tony Visconti's e-mail address or Website or something and wrote to him. He said, "Hi, I play with Henry Rollins, and we're all big fans of your work. Can we send you our record?" He said, "Great! Send it." So we sent it to him, and we get this glowing letter from Tony Visconti that read, "Henry, you have a new fan." And I'm like, "I just got mail from Tony Visconti!" The band said, "Yeah, we gave him your e-mail address. He's going to come to our next New York show, and he's really friendly. " When Bowie remastered all of his records, I wrote him and said, "Hey, I'm [comparing] Lodger, the new version and the old version. What do you think?" And he writes me back, "Well, blah blah blah." And I'm like, "Wow! I just had a conversation about Lodger and Scary Monsters with the producer of those records. How cool is that?" And that is the kind of thing that I think is really groovy. Like the kid in Czechoslovakia , or the Czech Republic, who e-mails me, and he gets a letter back. Voices are heard. You know? I think that's really cool. Because, maybe, to think really in a rosy Alan Alda-esque, tree-hugging way, maybe it makes the world, on some levels, perhaps, in the future, a more tolerant place.
Communication is the real enemy of ignorance. Because, how do you stereotype? How do you get people to be in fear? You give them wrong information … or you don't give them access to the whole story. "Well, those black guys are all angry!" And why do you think that? "Well, just because they're wrong, and they're bad." And you're like, "Man, it's obvious no one hipped you to a larger part of the story where you would be able to place yourself in someone else's shoes and go, 'Oh, shit. Hatred and fear isn't the way. Help is what's needed.'" And the less you keep people in the dark, ignorance doesn't stand a chance. And I always hoped that the Internet would be kind of a cool [pause] It's a foothold. It's not an answer. It's a gesture toward -- perhaps not a solution but a more positive direction. I look forward to future decades in this country because I really believe that young people aren't going to fall for the same racial ignorance and homophobic bullshit that maybe our parents or parents' parents fell prey to. Too many Snoop Dogg fans out there, too many Lauryn Hill fans, too many people who just go, "No, sorry, that just does not compute." So we say no to the New Aryan Resistance or whatever they're called.
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