Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Henry Rollins

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Henry Rollins · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. Henry Rawlins is intense about the things he loves.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: It's like he's on a mission from God, and he's
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: been that way since his days It's Black Flags frontman.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: In the eighties, their music was pure aggression. At shows,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: there was no delineating between the band and the audience.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: It was all just one big moshpian with Rollins physically
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: fighting off the crowd and dodging beer bottles hurled at
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: his head. Real punk rock Gallins, Gallard Riding lovedy. For
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: nearly twenty five years, Henry Rawlins toured the world relentlessly,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: first as Black Flag, then Rollins Band, and most recently
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: as a spoken word artist just before the pandemic, who
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: performed in twenty one countries and was the keynote speaker
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: at conferences for things as Munday in a Software but
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: also at cannabis conventions, which is funny for someone as
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: famously straight edge as Rollins. Henry and Rick Rubin, to
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: the most music obsessed dudes of all time, met way
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: back in the day. They even started the Infinite Zero
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: label together in the early nineties to reissue long forgotten
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: albums they both loved. Rick sat with Henry at Changela
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: pre pandemic, and in full Rollin's fashion, the stories just
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: poured out of him. Henry talks about the time he
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: was christened the lead singer by HR from Bad Brains,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: the day he woke up and realized he was done
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: right in music, and why he'll never be the old
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: guy on stage performing his greatest hits. This is broken
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmondson.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Here's Rick Rubin and Henry Rollins. I was thinking about
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: the fact that both of us have essentially made music
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: our lives, and neither of us, I would say, a
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: particularly virtuoso and my musician, I can't. I can't play
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: a note on any instrument. All I can do is
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: buy him and carry him upstairs. Yes, I can't, and
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: I've never wanted to. I mean, I've written songs in
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: my head. I co wrote a song with George Clinton
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: once and we hummed it to the band. He's like
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: I got something, and he hummed, I go, that's King Crimson.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: How'd you know I have that record? And he hummed
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: another one. I go, that's one of your own records,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: like oh man, And then we finally came up with
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: something that he wasn't already used. And then I hummed
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: something and we wrote this song together and neither one
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: of us. He could probably play something. I don't know,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: but we just found the music by just going due.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: And the band were like like this. I'm like, yeah, man.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: And it was fascinating to be standing in front of
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: these guys sitting he was at the old Cherokee studios,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Me and Clinton looking at these guys going and a
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: song happened. Yeah, with no one's with no one else
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: sitting at a piano or anything. Yeah, so if you
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: if you know what you want to hear. Yeah. And
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I've never been a musician, you know. I was angry.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: And they said, here's a microphone, here's a beat, do
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: your thing all right now? I can do yes. At
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: one time, our second bass player, Melvin Gibs, he heard
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: me singing. He goes, oh, just put it in E, man,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: what does that mean? Like you're E. I didn't know
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: what that meant until later, like this, just anyone get
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: hit at Henry, You're safe in E. I'm like, I
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: still don't know what it means. Really, I guess that
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: means I suck or limited? What was your first love
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: affair with music, go to the tell me your first
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: memories of like this is for me. A couple of things. Well,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: if my mom had pitch perfect taste in me music
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: and we rarely watched TV, but we she would play
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: one record after another, and we go to the record
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: store up to three nights a week. My mom was
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: a record buyer. Bartok, Stravinsky, Beethoven, Hendricks, Mary mcaba, Barbara
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: streisand showed too. It's like poor gay in best Miles
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Monk Coltrane. I mean, like perfect taste in music. I
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: don't necessarily need a Barbara streisand record every day, but
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: those are good records. I mean, she's not messing around.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: She's incredible Leadbelly, Dylan, both Guthries. My mom is like
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: her record collection is a mo And as a young adult,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: I went through her record collection as like a twenty
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: something who knew a thing or two, and I went, wow,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Miles Davis, like, how come how come it stops it?
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: In a silent way, she's I just couldn't. I stopped
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: understanding Miles at a certain point, and she said, I
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: used to go see Miles and Coltrane all the time.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: I said, you saw Miles, and she goes yeah, together separately,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: like you're killing me. I had no idea how cool
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: my mom was. So I was raised in good music,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: but the thing that really knocked me out was Ringo
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: drumming on Sergeant Pepper. I'm like, oh, I'm like eight
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: years old, hyperactive and just bouncing off the walls of
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: my little room. My mom gibbe Beatles records as electric
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: babysitters because I just play them over and over again.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: But it was Ringo on the outro version of the
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: last you know, the outro Sergeant Pepper riff on the
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: way out of the record where it's just like naked
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: just doing that that stacked up ringo beat, and I said,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: that's that's what I'm talking about. I didn't even know
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: what I was into. I just liked that and that
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: that that plays in my head all the time, and
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: that was the hook. And the first things I bought
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: when I made money, like throwing newspapers, was records, and
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: I bought you know, bike and records. It wasn't candy drugs,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: it was music. And I you know, records are four
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: dollars and ninety nine cents. Back when Carter was president,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: and I would make my money and go buy my
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: four dollars ninety nine cent. Some girls fly like an
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: eagle rocks toys in the attic, you know, whatever was
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: what was up? And so how old are you at
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: this time? Fifteen fourteen? Yeah, I was buying records steadily
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: by the time I was fourteen. I was a school
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: One time at prep school, all boys, and I walked
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: by one of the major jocks. He's got one of
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: those one speaker tape decks and he's got this crazy
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: music coming from and I took all the courage I
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: could someone like, you excuse me, sir, what are you
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: listening to? And he looked at me like I was
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: the dumbest guy on the planet. He's like Ted Nugent,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Like get a clue. I was like, duly noted. And
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: I went to the record store after school that day
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: because I always worked, I always had little pocket money,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: and I bought free for all and then I went
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: backwards and bought the first album and those are the
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Nugent records that were out, and I put him on
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: im like, oh, that's there, it is, That's what I'm
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: talking about. And then a couple of years later, me
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: and Ian McKay saw him live and I was kind
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: of like the one of the best things I've ever seen,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: and it was like, to this day, top five live
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: gigs I've ever seen in my life, and I've seen
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: quite a few gigs. And so music was an obsession
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: all through high school because it was the escape from
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: the drudgery of an all boys prep school where as
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: a hyperactive riddle and adult student which didn't do well
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: on any level in school. And that's when me and
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Ian McKay from Fugazi and Minor Threat, our friend, we
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: were gig guys. We would just go to the sea
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: the everybody Van Hale and Arrowsmith, Zeppelin. We saw everything
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: we could. And then when punk rock hit, that's when
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: music became like it went into the red as far
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: as collector guy need to know too much about everything,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: hair splitting, you know, magnifying glass out looking at the
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: label where I took way better care of my records
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: and just became super vinyl obsessive. What was the first
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: punk record for you? The first one you heard, first
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: one you got, first one I heard was the first
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Ramones album. I was. I was kind of birth purely
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: I read about these bands. He's like, what's this punk
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: rock craze? And I had Nugent Records that was my
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: crazy music. And a guy in my neighborhood he's on
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: a lot of the early discord records, rore Bert Queiroz.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Bert was like the cool kid. He's just a sharp guy,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: really sharp guy, has his ear to the ground, and
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: he knows about import records. And one day we're at
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: the skate ramp and I said, you know, my music
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: no longer addresses my issues. I was like sixteen and
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: mad at everything, seventeen whatever. I was just pissed and like,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: you know, fly like an eagle. Great record, it's just
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: not cutting it. You know, I don't understand the poetry
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: of the lyrics. I want to, you know, meet a
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: girl and burn something to the crownd. And so he said,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: come with me. So I went to his microscopic apartment
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: he shared with his mom, and he was like, I'm
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: going to loan you this record. I need it back tomorrow,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: this first Ramons album. And my mom wasn't home from
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: work yet, so I put it on her nice speakers,
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: not my crappyge in my room and I heard the
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: first Ramo album, and I don't get it. There's a
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: joke record, these four morons on the cover, and that's
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: not a rock band. They don't look like elo, Like,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: what's what's their problem? And then you get to the
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: end of it like okay, that's funny, that's not Then
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: you play it again because he said you need to
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: play it three times. I'm like, okay, it's a thirty
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: minute records because the first two times, the first time
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: you're like, this is hilarious, second time you're like and
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: then the first time you're like, oh, lightbulb, and you're like,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: this is my band. And with great regret and some reluctance,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I get the prize it from my grasp. And then
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: he said, okay, here's your next lesson. First clash Shop
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: because that's an import. Be careful. I go, what's an import?
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: He goes, that's a day's pay. That's what that is.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Twenty dollars record in nineteen seventy nine or whatever took
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: the remote the Clash record back and still to this
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: day one of my favorite records, and those records blew
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: my mind. I just didn't know you could do that
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: with I didn't know you could say that in a lyric.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Have not so many instruments on a record. I'm used
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: to elo ninety keyboards and feel I love those records.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: I walked through the snow to buy Out of the
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Blue or whatever the big double album is. I love
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: that record. But it's like eighty of everything, and it's
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: all so perfect. You can't get near it. With the remotes.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: You can hear the cracks like, oh, those are humans,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: And I never thought I could do that, but you,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: like you look at him, I could approach those guys.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: You're never going to meet Robert Plant, but you could
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: meet one of those guys. And all of a sudden,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: I went from seeing led Zeppelin at the Capitol Center's
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: gone Now We're the ind to seeing February fifteen, nineteen
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: seventy one, seeing bow Didley opening for the Clash, and
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: he said he looked at the crowd bunch a little
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: like all one hundred and fifty of us. Do you
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: remember when the coolest thing you're gonna have it was
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: a fifty five Chevy, A girl at your side. We're
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: like yay, Like no, you don't like okay whatever, We're
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: just trying to be there with you. Man, and so
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: bow Didley played. He was brought there. He's a DC guy,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: so he walked to the show. He lived right down
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: the street, so the Clash requested him because he knew
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: he's a DC native. And then the Clash play in
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: the open with Janey Jones or White Riot something, and
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: it was like getting hit with this blinding white light
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: and it just seemed to burn, like I'm burning, my
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: skin's on fire. This is like destroying every notion I
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: have of what music. So I used to watch from
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: like a block away, and suddenly within a year, I'm
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: being sweated on by De de ramon Luck's interiors down
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: to his underwear landing on me. I'm like, oh, naked man,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: Like it became real. The Bad Brains are breathing on
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: me because I'm standing in front of them at a
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: punk rock party. And that's when music went from this
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: spectator sport to this thing that I knew was going
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: to be my life, even if it's just fanboy, record store,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: go to guy going to a gig. Guy. I never
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: thought of being in a band until one night, hr
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: of the Bad Brains. He said, Harry, you're a singer,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: and I said, no, man, you're you're the singer. He said,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: you're a singer, and tonight you're gonna be in the
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: bat brightness. And I'm standing in front of him, and
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: he grabbed me by my arm, put me on stage,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: gave me the microphone, went back down off the stage
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: about as high as the couch we're sitting on, and
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: stud in front of me with his arms crossed. And
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: I knew those songs, we all did. And I just
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: call that a couple mid tempo was I could try
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: and get near and I sang them and I remember
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Hr looking at me with this intense scowl like se
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, well, I guess here's your
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: mic back. That was a thrilling three and a half minutes.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: But within a few months I was in a band.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: But so as me and some other guy. You know,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: we weren't that good. We had a lot of fun.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Our songs were forty four seconds, gigs were nine minutes
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: in length. All the songs we had fit on one
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: forty five and it's like at least five and a
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: half minutes of music. Yeah, how long did that band last?
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: I got into that band. They were pre existing and
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: the singer, some guy named Lyle Pressler, he never went anywhere.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: He was also a good guitar players, so he moved
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: across town to some band called Minor Threat. Oh yeah, yeah.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Then anyway, so Lyle leaves and he leaves behind this
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: band who needs a singer. So I go see his
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: old band, the Extorts, one night, and they're shopping for
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: a singer. So everyone knows who are seen as you
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: can fit them all in this room. It's not that
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: many people, so they know who I am. I know
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: who they are. So I said, I'll sing with you guys,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: and they went okay. I think they're too scared to
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: say no because they're just, you know, ah scary guy
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: with no hair. And so suddenly I'm at band practice
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: having to write lyrics, which amazingly was not that difficult. Well,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: I can't say anything about the quality of the lyrics,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: but it came to me I was probably pretty pedestrian,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: like I'll sing on every snare beat because melody's not
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: my thing. But suddenly I'm in this band and it
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: felt right, It felt really right. It felt like I
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: was a fish dropped into water. No stage fright, none, zero,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: like I couldn't wait. And that was October eighty By
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: July eighty one, I'm in California at Black Flag practice.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: How did that happen? That's crazy. I'll give you the
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: hyper condensed version. I knew those guys because they would
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: come through town and when they're in DC, they'd stayed
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: in Ian's mom's basement. So Ian's house is the coolest
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: in DC because you could go there and excuse me,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: miss McKay, is Ian home. He's downstairs with a black Flag,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: and so we're all like, you're in black Flag. We're
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: just like staying and they're like, oh gooey on the inside.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: So I got to know those guys, and you know,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: they're just broke touring band, as I was student to
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: find out, and they were doing a tour on the
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: East Coast. I met him in March April. They came
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: back in July, not playing DC, so I took a
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: drove my car up to see them at Irving Plaza
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: and guest list. I hung out with them all afternoon
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: because I kind of sort of knew him. Drove with
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: them to another show at Second and A there and
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: I helped him load in Me and John Joseph at
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: the chromag loaded their gear in which a guy gets stabbed, like, okay,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: that that just happened. Here's the snare. And I'm looking
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: at my watch. I gotta drive to DC and do
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: a full shift at hogandahs on no sleep. But I'm young.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: I can totally do it. Just one thing. I've top
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: ramen noodles. I'm good to go. And so I looked
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: at my watch and I said, hey, they're playing this
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: tiny bar. I said, can you guys do a song
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: for me? It's called clocked In. It's a great riff.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: And Dez, the great singer at the time, he said,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: this is for Henry. It's called clocked In because he's
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: got to go to work. And he's like, who's that?
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: And I looked at I have no memory of this.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: I looked at Des and Dees looked at me, and
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: suddenly I'm standing on stage with him, and I must
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: have had quite a look on my face because I
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: looked at him. He just gave me the mic, like,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: don't hurt me. Here's the mic. I'm like okay, and
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: the band was like, oh, Henry's gonna sing. I knew
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: the words. It's like a ninety second song, and I
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: sang the words the way I thought those songs should
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: be sung, where like vital organs fly out of your mouth,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: the audience is terrified and Rome burns to the ground,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: and I do the thing, and I remember two things.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: I remember the audience going like ah like looking at
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: like they're being assaulted, and Greg and Chuck looking at
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: the center of the stage at me, going like huh,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: like that's keeping us awake. And I gave the mic
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: back and I got into my wounded nineteen sixty eight
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: VW fastback with the dent in the hood from where
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: the mace canister bounced off it when my mom was
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: locked in a traffic jam riot in the sixties. I
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: drive the wounded car to my work shower in the
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: work sync, pull on a new shirt, and I'm scooping
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: ice cream, thinking I was in Black Flag for ninety seconds.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: I've been you know, I'm twenty. My life is one
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: humiliation after another. Minimum wage jobs are going to be
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: my life. This is I got no plan, but man,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: that was right. I was. I was in the right place,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: and I got band practice. I go back to go
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: back to work and the phone rings. It's someone in
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Black Flag has found found the work number. Hey, Henry,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: we're auditioning singers. Dez wants to move to rhythm guitar.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: You're pretty crazy last night. You want to come up
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: here to New York and audition. We'll pay your train fare. Like,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: what do I have to lose? I'm twenty, I'm going
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: nowhere three seventy five an hour. I have nothing to lose,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: and I'm not a tough guy. I don't have a
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: lot of guts and courage. But I said, this is it,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: this is a shot. This is never happening to me again.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: No way, shouldn't be happening now. So I said, I'll
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: be there tomorrow, give me an address. Met the met
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: at Odessa Polish diners great, a lot of food for cheap.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: That's why they liked it. I ate there so many
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: times in Black Flag since anyway, I said, so what
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: are we doing? I still like Clay that we're gonna
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: go to a practice place and you're gonna sing two sets.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: I said, I don't know any of the words. They
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: hardly have any records out is it sucks to be you?
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: What was out at that point? The yellow Yeah Jealous again?
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: In the Yellow twelve inch six pack was the EP
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: they were touring on, and then there was the Damage,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: the Damage One in Louie Louis on Posh Boy, the single,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: and Nervous Breakdown EP. So not much, not much at all,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: not TV party and Rise the Bob and all the
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: big stuff and in your world? What was Black Flag
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: to you at that time? Before thing? To me? It
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: was the ultimate band. And they asked me, like, what's
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: your favorite song of ours? I said, Damage One, the
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: slow one with the wrong chord, liked and I was like,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: that's the song and they went, you like that, you
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: like the slow one. I'm like, yeah, that's the one.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: They want to go and kill everyone. They went, you're
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: all right. They were fascinated that I liked the slow
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: wrong one, classic gin weirdo chord, which is genius, and
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: that was my jam and they went, okay, you're interesting.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: And so we get in this tiny practice room and
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: I literally am holding a microphone a fifty seven, not
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: a fifty eight, and I pinched myself because I did
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: I didn't believe. I said, so what song you want
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: to start with? I said, well, I didn't even know
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: many of the song titles. I said, Police Story and gain.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: He has an on off. He doesn't have a tone thing.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: He took that out and just put an on off switch,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: so that all the early Black Flag records you hear,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: and that's just him hitting on and the thing starts howling.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: With feedback. It's a Dan Armstrong. We could pick ups
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: floating in resin, so it's a feedback machine. And all
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: I can remember is and ninety minutes later, we've done
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: every song twice. I'm completely soaked in sweat. I have
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: no real memory of it. All I remember is I
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: just kind of went ooh wah wah and yelled and scream.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: I had fun. And they said, okay, we're gonna have
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: a band meeting. You go wait in the front lounge.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: I ran across the street, got one of those cool
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: glass bottles of tropicana. Not from concentrating. I'm like cool
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: live in large dollar thirty five and I'm sitting there
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: waiting for the verdict, which I figure is gonna be
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: like hours. They're gonna take out the skull and light
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: the candle and with out the sacred verses. Now they
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: came out in like three minutes, and one of them,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: I think it was Dakowski, said so matter of factly,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: you're in. And I said, excuse me, you're in? I
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: said in what in Black Flag? Who? You me? Yeah?
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Doing what? You're the singer of who? Black Flag? Because
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: they were like, He's like, so you're in. And I
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: was in disbelief. And one of them finally said you
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: want the job or not? I was like, yeah, wait,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: wait a minute. I was scooping ice cream yesterday, is
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: this happening? It was unreal? So I said, so what
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: do I do? And I forget which maybe it was Dakowski.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: He hands me this massive folder of lyrics. You know,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: they were prepared, and they said, you learn these, you
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: go home, you kiss your little mommy goodbye, you quit
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: your job, you give all your stuff away, you pack
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: a bag. Here's the tour, I tinner, you meet us
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: as soon as you can. And then one of the
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: road crew guys are laughing and what's so funny? Like, man,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: we got we gotta make the album soon. I said,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: what album? The first Black Flag album? I said, aha,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: so who's singing on that? And they went, you do
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: you get it? I feared it would be Daz like
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: the Farewell Das album. I didn't know, And I get
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: on the train, numb like speechless, kind of holding this
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: folder like it's not even mine. And I go to
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: work and Ian Mackay calls because there's no internet, he said,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: where have you been? Let me talk every day he said,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: I said, okay, I left town like yesterday, the day before.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: I didn't have time to tell you anything. So here's
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: what just happened. And I don't ask advice of people.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: I just go and make a mistake and you know,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: limp away. But I asked Ian, I go, so what
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: do you think? He said, are you kidding? This is
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: going to be great? And so it took me a
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: few days to pack, give things away, including that car.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Quit my job and my boss said, well, I'll give
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: you four dollars an hour, like you know, an incentive.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: I said, I love my job. Steve. We're still friends
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: to this day. I said, I liked my job. He
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: helped me get my first department. He gave me, He
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: got me credit. He called the landlords that I got this.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: If he screws up, I got this. That's how I
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: got my first department. So he means a lot to me.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Trusted me with his money. I ran his store, his
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: hog and does and so I said, I gotta go.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: He said, no, you got to do this. This is
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: a shot. You're not going to get this again. So
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: if it craps out on you, you can have your
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: old job back. And I said, man, you never know,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: I might be back. And a few days later, my
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: old band played with Black Flag in Philadelphia and I
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: sang the encore with Black Flag, and that was the
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: handing of the baton where Chuck went up to the
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: micazette and here's the new singer of Black Flag. And
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: I went out on stage and sang Louie Louie and
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: like one or two others, and everyone kind of went whatever.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: And the owner of that club a few years ago
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: sent me the set list. Wow, he said, here's the
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: set list where you transitioned into Black Flag. And I
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: went back to d C because I still had to, like,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: you know, clean up a few things. And a couple
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: of days later, I was on a Greyhound bus overnight
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: to Detroit. I still have the bus ticket. I take
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: a taxi to Clutch Cargo, the now famous punk rock venue.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: I beat the band there. They're driving from some other
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: city and I come in with my duffel bag and
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: I walk in as a lady behind the bars. He
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: just canna help you. I said, you know I was
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: born play I said, yes, ma'am, And I've never said
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: I had never said this as a declarative sentence to
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: anyone in my life except this lady behind the bar.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: It's like two in the afternoon. She said, can I
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: help you? I said, I'm the singer in Black Flag.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Like not even I thought she's gonna go get out
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: of here. She went, Oh, would you like a kolke want? Yes? Please?
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: What was the relationship from the beginning between Greg and Chuck?
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: How did that work? Founding members? Yeah and left side,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: right side brain Dokowski hard on sleeve, you know, tears
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: up during songs. He's really like just ripped open. Greg
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: is the more hyper analytical. They're both smart, different but
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: they're utilizing different parts of the brain and you can
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: see it in the lyrics. Chuck is writing my war
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: other stuff was just ripped open emotionally. Greg is coming
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: from the more introspective. Both of them are super effective,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: great songwriters, but where one is writing, you know, rise
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: above Greg American waste, which is like, let's burn America
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: to the ground before they kill us all, Chuck. But
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: when you have both sides of the brain, left side,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: right side on one record, you have this fully realized,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: introspective person who's mad. And so that's why, like those
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: early records really work, because all parts of your your young, angry,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: insecure palette are being addressed. You know, you have a
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Hall and oats and it worked. And later on their
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: relationship became antagonistic leading and I'm not talking out of class.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: It's all documented, leading for Dakowski to eventually sell his
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: share of SST and move on, and so it became
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Greg scene. Do you know what that was about. It's
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: just about the combination of Greg Ginn and Chuck Dakowski.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: And if you look at the history of Greg Ginn
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: and everyone in Black Flag and every artist on SST,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you know quite a bit about this. And
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: anyone wants to take the merest glance onto the internet.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: I'm not trying to talk out of class. Kind of great. Plus,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: anyone is a turbulent time stamped there. It will come
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: to an end, like there is a use by date,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: and don't stick around after Monday when the thing is
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: just just leave. And so I left, and so they
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: were an amazing combination. The closest thing that I can
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: in my life was Bob moulding Grant Heart of Who's
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Gerd Two Guys Again. Bob Mould the introspective, analytical Grant
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Heart completely ripped open both insanely talented and almost knocked
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: down drag outfights with those two back in the day
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: because they're both you know, getting loaded or whatever. There's
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: this crazy young men, super talented. But I saw Who's
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Grew do One? Oh, I'm in a band like that,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: who are like you know, everyone is just like snarly
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: at all times, and that's why those records sound like
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: they do like you play them now. As a man
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: pushing sixty, I hear some of those songs every once
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: in a while somewhere and I go, yeah, that's music
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: you make when you're young and hungry and really mad.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: I can't make that music now because I got too
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: much money in the bank. I eat three meals a
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: day and I nothing really inconvenience, just me, and I'm
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: just not there anymore. But when you're young, you're Ferrell.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: And the way Black Flag lived it was a constant
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: like well there, let's hope there's not the second stabbing
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: this week at one of our shows, and so those
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: days you became your environment. We'll be right back with
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Henry Rollins. After a quick break. We're back with more
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: from Henry Rollins. What was the difference in the shows
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: between the UK and the US? Far less antagonism in
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: England in those days, you know Reagan, Thatcher. It was
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: a bunch of people telling you to go home. And
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: I'm a guy who grew up in the record store.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: So we're opening for the Exploited. I had the Dudes
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: records that was an hour's paid a guy by that
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: single and his road crew would come into our dress
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: room take our food and there, you know, we don't
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: want to. You know, they're all these Scottish maniacs. They
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: will kill you. So like take our four bananas and
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: the cold ham sandwich. So we starve. And the singer
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: hated us because we're from America, and he'd go on
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: stage and like, you know, kill the American wankers. And
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: we opened for Chelsea and I had those records too,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: liked them. And this singer like, hey, hey California, Hey
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: mister America. I'm like, what have I done to you?
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: And so All these bands were really mean to us,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: except The Damned in the UK subs, but all these
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: bands who I had records of were just awful to us.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: And there's the spitting and when you're opening for a band,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: they kind of don't like you, like when you open
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: for the Damn the audience wants to see one band
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: it's not you, and their audience was kind of nice.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: With the exploited audience, they just want to beat you up.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: And we're coming We're not shrinking violets either. We're coming
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: on with our thing, which is pretty insane in those days. Right,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: you don't like us, we don't like you either, And
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: here it comes. So we came back to America basically
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: to a hero's welcome. You know, yeay, they already knew us.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: You know, you're an American band who they already had
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: a built in audience. And so two nights later, you're
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: up in Boston doing two sets and on BCM with
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Oedipus after the show in a heated van. It's all different. Yeah,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: let's talk about the making of the first album. Sure,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: it's made in autumn of nineteen eighty one at a
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: place which is now a trader Joe's on Santa Monica Boulevard,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: a little west of La Sienega, and it was Unicorn
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Recording Studios. Black Flag lived in the office as above.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: We slept on the floor. There's a practice room on
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: that floor, so we'd practice there. He'd go downstairs to
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: their offices. Wood paneling, plush carpuses. Total nineteen seventies into
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: the eighties. Studio, tiny studio, but we didn't need much.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: It was like a very bare bones environment. We knew
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: the songs and so we recorded by day with Spot producing.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: But here's the thing now, is everyone's dead. We can
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: talk about it. What Unicorn didn't understand was we live
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: on top of the we're in the same building. They
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: go home at five pm. The owner this reception is
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: it's a record company with a studio. At five pm,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: everyone's out of there. The way to get to the
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: studio from the upstairs is one door. You just turn
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: that little thing in the middle of the knob. You
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: just leave it open. As soon as they're gone, like
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: at five pm, we're like, oh, we're really tired, and
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: they'd leave and we'd leave at five fifteen. We're right
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: back in there. Over Dub's vocals till about seven thirty
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: in the morning, Open up the doors, air the place out,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: because a bunch of man odor we've been in their
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: sweating all night singing the course of TV Party eighty times.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: You air it out, turn everything thing off, and tiptoe upstairs,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: sleep for forty minutes, and come back down having just
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: clocked a good twelve hours of free time. Because we
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: can't afford what it would really cost, and so we
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: would do everything at night, like tons of overdubs, and
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: finish the record at night. And Unicorn probably made plenty
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: of us, but we made that record on you know,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: by using it at night. And who knows if they
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: knew or even cared, but we did that. But we
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: made the record very quickly because of all the demoing
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: and the years of playing those songs on stage. Some
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: of the songs were new My TV Party was super new,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: but the rest of them were like, you know, a
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: couple of years old, So it wasn't like anyone had
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: a question about him. You've been playing them a hundred times.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: By eighty three, we're playing the songs that wouldn't be
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: released until eighty four. In fact, my war slip it
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: in all those. We demoed those in eighty two. That's
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: how quick Greg and Chuck we're writing them. So we're
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: still doing the damage set, but we're playing the rock stuff.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: And so we started playing those songs in late eighty two,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: eighty September eighty two into eighty three, and the audiences
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: are just like staying there flipping us off. It's like, nope,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: what is this? And by eighty four, it's all seven
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: minutes sludgy, slow songs, and the audience was off two minds,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: either like, man, this has never been better, like this
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: is the most intense, or I hate you guys and
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: I paid my five dollars and fifty cents to come
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: here and abuse the singer. And it only became more
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: either with us or against us, because every album was different.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: By eighty six, this shows the audiences were pretty angry
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: because they didn't like the new songs and a lot
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: of them they hadn't heard, and they wanted the old ones,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: and they took it out on us, like things would hit,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: the stage, equipment would get abused, the PA would get abused,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: the l would get abused, the singer would get abused.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: And so by the end of that In the last tour,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: it was kind of a miserable hate fest of a
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: record or songs that people weren't that into lyrics. I
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: didn't quite get along with all that well in a
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: band that was incredibly unhappy. And I'm not trying to
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: put anyone down. It's just, you know, people are together
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: in a band very intensely. It is what it is.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: You know, you're not You've you've been around a few
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: bands in your life. It's closer than a family. It's
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: a bunch of crazy, creative people all in a compressed
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: space doing the same thing every night, and everything smells
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: like somebody's laundry, and you're like, okay, I hate your guts,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: so let's go on tour. And that's how it is.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: As much as those people have made me mad over
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: the years, when it came down to it, I would
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: jump in front of anything bad coming their way. I
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: have to, because they're all in that battlefield and you know,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: and some of those men make me very angry. But
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: if it was something bad was happening right now, I'd
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: be right there, like I got this hit me instead,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: How did it work that you left the band? The
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: tour came the last show was in Detroit, two nights
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: at Graystone. We finished, drove back to La Greg said, initially,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: We're going to take a year off because I'm going
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: to reinvent SST. Like, what's that going to be like?
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Because I never understood an hour off from that band.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: You were never far away. And I went a year
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: that might as well be ten years. I didn't know
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: what to do. And I was on the East Coast
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: visiting you know, Ian and all these people, and I
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: get the phone call from Greg and he said, oh,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: I quit, and I'll never forget this. I said, it's
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: your band. You can't quit. He said, well I quit.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: And I hung up the phone and went, wow, that's that.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: And when you're a young guy and you go from
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: a minimum wage job and your first day in LA
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: you're in the La Times and you're in this very
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: intense band with a very strong work ethos, and everything
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: is a big damn deal, and all of a sudden
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: it's over in a phone call where the jet doesn't land.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: It kind of drops out of the sky and goes
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: into a thousand pieces on the ground and you stagger
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: away from this wrecked bit of shrapnel. You don't go oh,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: I'll do you like, ah, what do I do? How
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: do you breathe? Who am I without Black Flag? And
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: I'll never forget I read somewhere like on a fortune cookie.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: If one seeks to change, one must be prepared to
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: seem stupid, and you got to go try new things
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: like okay. And right around that time, I got an
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: offer to audition for a film, and so I went
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: to New York and I auditioned for this film. I
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: have no memory of it, and I'm like, okay, I
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: did that. I'm going to try and act now. And
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: that was July August. By October I'm in Leeds, England
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: making my first solo record. So I realized, if I
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: don't hit the ground and run, I'm going to hit
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: the ground and rot. And so my old pal from Washington,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: d C. Chris Haskett, he and I grew up together.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: He had a really good band called the Enzymes in DC,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: and he used to live in England. Chris said, as
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: a joke, if Black Flag ever breaks up, like that'll happen.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: You and I should make a record, And I said okay,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: and I called him. He was he happened to be
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: back in America visiting his folks because he was living
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: in Leeds, England. I said, hey, Chris, it's Henry the
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Eagle has landed. I'm at I don't have a band,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: And he was like, I got a band. I got
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: this like he had been waiting, like he knew before
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: I did, because I have a whole band there in Leeds.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: I know a studio, I got a practice place. You're
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: gonna live in my room and we're gonna write songs.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: I'll see you in England in like ten days. And
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: I had like twenty five hundred bucks to my name.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: I got a standby flight and I remember getting out
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: of the plane. I took a bus a coach up
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: to Leeds with like a backpack and on fear of failure,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: tons of tea and onion bogies. Chris Haskett and I
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: wrote like eighteen songs in four days, recorded him in
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: five days, like two take with his rhythm section from
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: his surf instrumental band. And I said, Hi, I'm Henry.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: I'm about to terrify you the scariest lyrics you've ever heard,
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: and that they heard them like you're a scary guy.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: I said, you have no idea, and so we made
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: a record called Hot Animal Machine and we made this
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: little record for no money and it's pretty good. And
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: so by April of eighty seven, like less than a
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: year after Black Flight broke up, I'm in band practice
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: in Trent, New Jersey with Andrew and sim of Greg
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: Gin's old instrumental band Gone, who had broken up Chris
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: from the Hot Eilm Machine record, and we called it
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: the Rawlins Band, And almost a year to the day,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: we're back in leads at the same studio we recorded
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: Hot Eild Machine recording Lifetime, all new songs we wrote
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: on the road we were we road tested him, We
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: played him every night, and I since eighty one till
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: the end of the Rawlins Band, I never really kind
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: of put the mic down. Where is he he's writing songs?
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Where is he now on tour? Where is he now
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: making a record? Around and round you go, like AC
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: DC and everyone else, trying to prove it every night.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: And I did that for damn your twenty five years,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: you know, and playing more than kind of any band
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: I know of besides maybe DA or like the Chili Peppers.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: They go at it. They're gladiators, you know, they lay
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: leave for three month, three years. You know that they're
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: not kidding around. And we toured. That's what Black Flag
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: taught me. Play every night and suddenly you know, we're
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: rocking and Singapore, We're playing in Moscow. You know, I go,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: you guys into this, They're like, yeah, we're playing in
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: Bootapest hungry. Who would have thought? And we just basically
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: said yes to every gig. And that's how I toured
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: to this day. We'll be right back with Henry Rollins
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: after a quick break. We're back with the rest of
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: Rick's conversation with Henry Rollins. What was the first speaking
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: engagement you did? Nineteen eighty three? The Harvey Kouberneck a
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: great local tastemaker producer in this town. He used to
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: do these shows where you get twenty people. Everyone gets
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: five minutes, and Dakowski would read from his little notebooks
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: of doom and talk about the apocalypse or whatever. I
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: would go with Chuck John Doe would go up and
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: sing a song. Jeffrey Lee Pierce to the Gun Club
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: would read from five minutes of his tour journal. It
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: was like really fun that real poets, performance artist, movie
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: stars would talk and I'd go with Chuck go into that.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: We lived in the beach, we go to the big
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: I'd go to the big city, look at pretty women,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: and you know, be in Hollywood with the real people.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: And so one night Harvey came up to me at
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: the Loss of Club, I think, and he said, we're
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: doing a show next week. Chuck's on the bill. Why
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: don't you get on the bill. I'm like, what am
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: I gonna do? Say? You got a big mouth? You
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: never shut up five minutes, like ten bucks, I think
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: it was. I was like, and all I saw was
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: the money. I was like, ten dollars. How many almosts
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: can I get for ten? That's a lot of waves rancheros.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: I was like, I'm just hungry all the time. And so,
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: you know, with sheer hutzpah, I went on stage the
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: next week with some writing folded in my ass pocket.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: Read The Two Things told a story about what had
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: happened the day before band practice, when a neo Nazi
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: tried to run over Greg with his car as Greg
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: was on his way to the little store to get
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: a thing of orange juice, which is just Tuesday for
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: Black Flag. The audience, their jaws were on the ground.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: I said, oh, I got my seven minutes or whatever
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: are up, and huge applause, and I remember two things distinctly. One,
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: I don't need a band in that I have no stage. Fright,
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: give me another half an hour. I got this. I
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: love being alone with a microphone. I could be George Carlin.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: I was raised on all those records. I'm not comparing myself.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: I'm saying I can get by without a band. And
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: people coming up to me after it was going one's
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: your next show? I said, well, I'm leaving on tour.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: They go, no, no, not the band. When you just talk?
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: I went never. I got my ten dollar bill. Then
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: Harvey came up to me and he said, okay, you're
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: a natural, and I said whatever. He said, how about this.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: I booked half the poets on tonight's stage. I manage them.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: Three of them are doing a poetry reading at a
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: bookstore in wherever. Why don't you do fifteen minutes and
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: I'll give you twenty five dollars? Okay. Within By the
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: end of eighty three beginning of eighty four, some of
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: those poets, much to their chagrin, were opening for me
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: because I was drawing people. By the end of Black
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Flag in some major cities. I could draw almost as
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: many people as Black Flag on my own and not
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: everyone in the band was cool about this. And so
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: suddenly I'm doing radio interviews about my writing and my speaking.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: I'm on the cover of this magazine because of spoken word,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: and so I had this whole other thing. And by
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: automn eighty five, when the Loose Nut Black Flag Tour
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: came to an end, I left almost immediately across America,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: twelve to fifty people a night with our old sound
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: man driving the van and doing sound for me. And
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: we just did a talking tour from LA to New
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: York and back and it. And then by eighty five
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: I got invited to a poetry festival in Holland. Sure
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: it's me and Linton Queezy Johnson and who came up
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: to me after he said righteous mister Rollins, I said,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: thank you, sir. Bill Burrows was on the bill, Jeffrey
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: Lee Pierce, all kinds of people, and with the Rollins band,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: I finished the band tour, we made the Lifetime record.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: They all went home and I was debt to all
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: of them. I owed them all money. So I left
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: on a talking tour like three days later, I'm doing
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: that entire tour again. And so I got back to
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: La December eighty seven and did two sold out nights
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: at the loss Of Club with Hubert Selby of Last
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: Exit to Brooklyn Fame opening for me crazy and so
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: from then to now I now do twenty one twenty
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: two countries. I sell out multiple knights at the Sydney
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: Opera House. I mean it's crazy. And you know, I
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: get amazing offers like keynote our convention. What's the convention
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: about software and progress? And make a speech about where
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: the world needs to go in the future. Really, Oh,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: we think you're perfect for that. Okay, and speak at
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: this commencement. Just get these kids out of college. I've
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: done that a couple of times. I don't I take
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: work seriously. I take dedication seriously. But luckily I don't
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: take myself seriously. And so it's it's opened up this
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: whole other thing for me where I'm not the guy
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: in a band and a lot of my peers they
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: go out and we're doing the first album again twenty
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: five years later. Okay, I want to come along, No, no,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: I don't. I'll pay money. I'll go see it but coming, no, no, no,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: and so I don't have to go out there and
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: remember this one kids. My dad does. And so that's
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: where it is now when you're almost sixty, like you know,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: I see all these old men. I know that old
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: guy from somewhere. Of course I'm his age. He was
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: at my shows. I remember that guy. The smart thing
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: I did is a younger man who was One day
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: I woke up in my bed and I went, I'm
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: done with music. I don't hate it. I just have
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: no more lyrics. There's no more toothpaste in the tube.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: I called my manager at the time. I said I'm
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: done with music. And that was you know, fifteen percent
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: of that was a good thing for him. He's like, no, no,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: I thought yes, And so luckily I had enough, you know, movies, voiceover,
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: documentary work, writing talking where that just filled in and
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: now I'm busier than ever. But um, I walked away
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: before I had to start saying, hey, kids, remember this one.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: So I didn't have to put it on and dada
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: and go out there and put on the dog and
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: yelped for my dinner. And I've had gentle discussions with
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: major rock stars who you've produced and why you go
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: out there and I go, you go out and you
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: play those same songs every night for the last forty years.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: And one of these people who I love dearly, said, yeah,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: that's what people want. I go, you want to give
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: him what they wanted? What? Yeah, he's an older school guy,
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: even older than me, And he said, yeah, that you
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: want to make people happy. I'm like, you do Huh,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: I never thought of that. That never has occurred to me.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: What do you do? I go this what I's what's
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: on next? He went, huh, how's that treating you? I'm like, well,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: I need must here to get home. But the two
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: different schools and his whole thing is what you put
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: on the show. Everyone goes yay. You play what everyone
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: wants to hear, and everyone's happy. And he said you're not.
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: I'm like, no, not necessarily. If they happen to like
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: what I'm doing, cool, If they don't, they can bite me.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: And I'm sure in the last few years he has
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: sung that one, that one, that one, and that one
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: for the five hundred and seventy millionth time, and fifty
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: thousand people went ya, that's just not for me. The
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: right way for any of this stuff to go. It
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: really is up to the person it is and everyone's fine.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, everyone's doing it their way as long as
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: no one's getting hurt. I used to put bands down
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: when I was a younger man. I had a big
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: head full esteem. I can't do that now. Music and culture,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: you know, America is in a very interesting time right now.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't say bad. I would just say eventual and interesting.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: It's been. We've been working towards where we are now
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: for quite a while. If you watch this stuff, you're
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: not that surprised. But as far as culturally, I don't
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: know how much you voulivoo and hobnob in La. I
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: don't think La has ever been cooler since I've been
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: living here. As far as having an analog pulse, people
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: you want to actually talk to again, Clubs you want
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: to go to, local bands, you want to see every
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: time they play. Like if I was a younger man,
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: i'd be out more often. I just can't do five
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: hours to sleep and function all the time. I'd be
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: out way more often because there's so many good bands,
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: and there's so many great clubs being run by thoughtful,
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: conscientious people who love music. I've never seen audiences so cool.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: The other nights at the Palladium for Labucherettes, that's a
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: band and bikini kill and it's like sold out four nights.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: It's a love fest in there. There's no fights, no
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: one's getting their t shirt torn off, no one's getting groped.
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: And these are the gigs I see these days. I
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: go to gigs and there's like all these gay kids there.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: Everyone's cool, like because that's nothing like the gigs I got.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: You know, it was a blender of flesh and testosterone
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: when I got here. And so LA's never, in my opinion,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: never been a cooler place to dig what's happening. And
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: so when someone gets cynical or everything sucks, I'm like, wow,
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: you've just decided today sucks, because the truth is it's
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: really exciting and there's a lot of things to fix.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: But culture is really, I think, kind of is answering
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: some howling painful moan of homophobia that homophobia and racism
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: and misogyny in genders or illicits music is going on. No,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: we got this, here's the news. We're going to neutralize
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: that with this, And so it's a great time to
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: be open minded things are better when you go to
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: the gig. Everything's better once you're you know, you're perforate
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: your can with a few holes and have to remind
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: myself of that a lot. You know, I will sit
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: alone in brood, so I push myself out the door.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: Thank you for coming in and having a chat. Yeah, man,
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: I hope that was though. It was really fun to
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: talk to you. Same thanks to Henry Rollins for taking
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: the time to chat with Ray. You can hear a
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: favorite Black Flag and Rollins band songs by heading to
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: Broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: We're can find all our new episodes. You can follow
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Records produced with
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chaffey. Our executive
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: producer is Mila Bell. Broken Record is production of Pushkin Industries.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: If you love the show and others from Pushkin Industries,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: considered becoming a pushnick. Pushnick is a podcast subscription that
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: offers bonus content an uninterrupted ad freeless name for four
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: ninety nine a month. Look for Pushnick exclusively on Apple
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, of course,
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: please remember to share, rate, and review us on your
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: podcast app. At the Musics by Kenny Beats, I'm justin Richmond,