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| Get Some Rollins |
| 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. |
| Writer: Spiff |
Jan 06 99 |
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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."
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."
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.
On the song "L.A. Money Train" and working with legendary MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer
It began as an idea I had taking a shower upstairs [while getting ready to be] on my way somewhere. And I said to myself, "L.A. A place where what you drive up in determines who you'll be driving home with. A place where what you dress up in will determine who you'll be undressing." Because this town is all about the surface level -- the boob job, the tattoo, the piercing, the hair, the car you're driving. The car tells people how you are. So people equate Porsche with success, with "He's a good guy." Why? He's got money. But what if he's some pedophile? But he's got a Porsche. Oh. But he's on Warner Brothers. Oh. But he's an agent. Oh, well, then I'm taking my clothes off. So, knowing that, and being an East Coast person from D.C., living in the middle of this, not really buying into the whole thing too much, I wanted to do a thing that kind of takes a wry look at what I've seen in my 17 years here. And all the things I talk about in the song are things I've seen.
So I ask myself how I'm going to do this, and I say it'll sound like James Brown's "Escapism, Parts 1 and 2," where the band's just laying down this thing, and everyone's listening to the singer, following me. I'm goofing, I'm hanging out with everybody, I'm making this point, I'm doing this thing. It's a really cool thing he did, this thing called "Escapism." And I went into the band room that night, and I said, "OK, fellas. 'Escapism, Parts 1 and 2." And everyone's like, "Yeah? We know it." I go, "Jason [Mackenroth, the new drummer for the Rollins Band], hold down a beat. You guys, don't make too much of a racket because I'm not going to be yelling. So don't kill me. Just hold it and listen to me and follow me." And they go, "OK."
It's an improv vocal, so we did a version of it that night. I was walking around the room going, "You know this town blah blah blah," and everyone's playing and laughing, and I'm like, "Stop. OK, we're going to do that in the studio. OK?" They said, "Great." So we went in, and we're setting up, and I said, "We need to have a guest." Because James Brown is always calling up people: "I'd like to bring to the bandstand a young man who's given the world so much love." So I said, "We've got to bring in a guitar player to do a solo because I don't know any horn players. Who's a great guitar guy who I want to be on a record with? Wayne Kramer! He's my bro, he lives down the street, he's in town, and he's always ready to play." Called him up, pretty confident in the answer, and said, "Wayne, I'm in the studio. You've gotta come down and jam." He's like, "Name the time and place." "Cherokee studios, tomorrow." "I'm there." He did it in one take. I explained the concept, and we riffed on the riff for a minute. He tuned up, and we hit it. And that was it.
" That's how a lot of those deals go down. It's not about talent; it's about who you know, who you're screwing. " When we got to the end, I said, "You hear that saxophone player in the background?" I'm in the vocal booth, and everyone's looking at me. I said, "Don't worry about it." We get to the end of the song, and everyone asks me, "Sax player?" I tell them it's going to be an overdub. We're going to bring in a sax player. It's the joke. He's the session man. He doesn't even know me. We're like actors in a porn film, where everyone's like, "Hey! Good to be acting with you today!" So I said, "Now we've got to find a horn player." And Jason, our drummer, goes, "Well, I play sax." "Really?" "Well, it's going to take me a couple of weeks to get my chops back, and I've never played for a record, but yeah, I'll try it." So we have our sax player. So he took some time and wrote that very Maceo sounding part, and he went in and laid it down. And that's the sax. That's our drummer.
And where I say, "You see the guy in a band who used to be on Geffen, he used to be dating the big-titted porn star. Well, now he just works behind the counter at Blockbuster, renting you her video. But now you're the man. You're living up in the Hills. She's your next-door neighbor, and she got the money by divorcing him." Like the guy in Warrant who married the chick from the "Cherry Pie" video. I think they got divorced, and she probably got a lot of dough. And I'm sure that guy, he wrote all those songs, so his publishing is intact. But you could be in a situation where the nympho stripper chick you married ends up with all the dough, and you are driving a UPS truck. My friend lives on the route of a UPS driver who used to be in Quiet Riot, so he says. This is what can happen. And driving a UPS truck? There's nothing wrong with that; that's an honest way to make a day's wage. But it isn't working at the Forum. It's not free sex with a 14-year-old in the back of your tour bus and a glass bowl of coke. It's a different reality.
A lot of these bands go up and then go down. And then you watch people who are total fuck-ups, who really are not very competent, and you watch them, over the years, fall upwards. How is he doing that? Look at him go! And that's why I said, "You know, sometimes failure brings success, and I've got the proof. I know a story about a man that got kicked out of a fifth-floor window fell way up on the roof." You know? He got fired from the assistant A&R job and ends up running the A&R department. How the hell did he get there? Well, it's right time, right place, good rap, nice face. It's like, "Well, I met this guy at the Roxy, and we hung out, and we both like the Doors, and we have the same analyst, and we were both at Exodus together." And that's how a lot of those deals go down. It's not about talent; it's about who you know, who you're screwing.
On filming a video and travelling in Calcutta, India
I was going to go there anyway. I had planned a trip to India for quite a while. So we're in the meeting room and wondering what we we're going to do for a video to this song -- Performance? Animation? I said, "Look, I'm going to India. Why don't you get a film crew, and we'll shoot at least the verses out there. India's got to be more interesting than a sound stage … It's got to be cost-efficient because I'm going out there with my frequent flyer miles. So I'm taken care of. You bring out a two-man crew, use Indian locals grips and whatever, and we just knock it out. It's got to be cheap enough to do half a day in Los Angeles to do all the band pickups, like the guitar lead and all that." Management loved the idea. Record company [DreamWorks] went, "India? Green light. Great idea."
So we got in touch with this amazing director [Peter Christopherson, award-winning director of Rage Against the Machine's "Bulls on Parade" video and member of the band Coil] and his amazing producer -- and the producer knows India very well, been there a million times. And they assembled their U.K. film team, which had been to India before, and this crew of what they call "fixers." You want to get to a weird neighborhood where you don't know your way around? They handle it. You want to get to the Ganges and do a shot with the sun, but an ox cart is in the way? The ox cart's gone; they handle it. So they got us to places where no tourists go, where people are coming up, going, "What are you guys doing here?" I mean, we went to some really extreme, funky locales.
I told them, "I want a basket with some Indian cobras in it, and I want to play with an Indian cobra," because I used to have an Egyptian cobra when I was growing up. I used to keep snakes, and I've always wanted to play with an Indian cobra because they have the big hood. And it was done. I met Kalu, the snake wrangler, and he brought this banded crate and three Indian cobras -- and it's gonna be in the video, this cobra striking at my face, and I'm holding it. I saw the photos yesterday: full hood and then me. I'm framing it. I'm a snake geek. And that's the kind of stuff I wanted to do.
So I guarantee that, in the video, you'll see stuff you've never seen before -- unless you've been there -- because India is like Mars. If you've never been there, nothing prepares you for it. It took me, like, three days to kind of throw out a lot of Western values. The notion of personal space is a whole different thing where we were. In Calcutta and Bengal, albeit, there's a very different vibe than in Bombay or Goa or other places where there's more money and more tourists. If I get right in your face -- me going up to you, Sean -- it means something. I'm in your face. It's confrontation. I'm saying, "What's up?" You get in a woman's face, that's a hit-on, it's a threat, it's language. In India, people walk right up to you. And the first five times of that while waiting to get my suitcase thrown in the back of a car -- this is immediate, right at the airport, they're right on me, and I'm like, "Yeah?" And the producer, this woman named Fiz, said, "Henry, it's not about that. So just throw that out. They're just curious. They've never seen those kind of tattoos; you're here with four other white people and a bunch of movie cameras. They think we're all movie stars. They're curious." And you look right back, and they look right at you, but it's not like "I'm lookin' at YOU." It's like, they're just curious. And you go, "How're you doin'?" And they go, "Uh, Merry Christmas." They'll just speak any English they know. They try and shake your hand. And you're totally disarmed. Immediately. And then, you just kind of start opening yourself up to it.
So it was a good time. And the footage we got? Mind blowing.
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