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