Episode 143 - Henry Rollins
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Are we doing this?
Marc:Really?
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Are we doing this?
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
Marc:What's wrong with me?
Marc:It's time for WTF!
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:With Marc Maron.
Marc:Okay, are we doing this?
Marc:Let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what-the-fuckers?
Marc:What-the-fuck buddies?
Marc:What-the-fuckineers?
Marc:What-the-fucking-nuts?
Marc:What-the-fuck-a-ricans?
Marc:More than one.
Marc:More than one of you out there.
Marc:Also, someone sent me an email that suggested what-the-fuck skis, which I liked.
Marc:I didn't think I would hear one that I hadn't heard before, but what-the-fuck skis is definitely one of them.
Marc:I just got back from San Francisco.
Marc:I don't think I slept last night.
Marc:I did Sketch Fest over the weekend.
Marc:We did a live WTF.
Marc:with Bobcat Goldthwait and some other comics, Maria Bamford as well.
Marc:Who else?
Marc:W. Kamau Bell, Nato Green, Baron Vaughn, Will Franken.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:I hadn't seen Bobcat in years, and he was funny as fuck.
Marc:Great to see cats who had a tremendous amount of success for a specific thing and then kind of evolved out of it for many reasons, and now he's just a funny guy.
Marc:Bobcat Goldthwait, very funny.
Marc:We'll put that up soon.
Marc:What else have I got to tell you before we get into the guts of this show?
Marc:The app.
Marc:People are digging the apps.
Marc:And we got apps for everything.
Marc:We got an app for your iPhone, your iPad, or your iPod Touch.
Marc:You can get those at the iTunes App Store.
Marc:Android is out!
Marc:Android app is there at the Android Marketplace.
Marc:Go for it.
Marc:With these apps, it is really the only place that you can hear the older episodes of WTF.
Marc:And they're available on all those apps, so enjoy that.
Marc:We will be getting those slowly back up on iTunes in the album section, starting with some of the bigger names.
Marc:So that's all happening, and that's just the way it is right now.
Marc:Today on the show, very excited.
Marc:I'm going to talk to Henry Rollins, who I haven't seen since we worked together.
Marc:And Rollins, as many of you know, is a very intense man.
Marc:And he's quite a talkative fella.
Marc:So the challenge is to have a conversation with Henry Rollins.
Marc:That's what I'm gunning for.
Marc:A little back and forth.
Marc:I love Henry.
Marc:Always like listening to him.
Marc:Always has interesting stories.
Marc:And he's a big thinker.
Marc:So I was up in San Francisco.
Marc:And I had that thing, you know, where you go to sleep, but you can't sleep.
Marc:So you try to convince yourself that you're sleeping.
Marc:And you get like locked in some kind of hypnotic, not a meditative state, though I will address that in a minute in an email.
Marc:I got a kind of a funny email about the need for me to meditate.
Marc:But I kept insisting I was dreaming.
Marc:And then as soon as I would really legitimately dream and not be aware or mindful of what was going through my head, even though I was trying to force dreams, as soon as I would legitimately fall asleep and have what seemed to be a dream, I'd wake up and go, shit, I was sleeping.
Marc:I just I did it.
Marc:I slept.
Marc:So I kept doing that all night.
Marc:That's what I did.
Marc:Conan O'Brien was fun last week.
Marc:Thank you for all the wonderful emails from people who have never heard of me.
Marc:I appreciate those emails, but I also appreciate the emails from people who have heard of me saying that they were proud of me.
Marc:And I love you all because it's hard for my parents to say that.
Marc:I think my mother sent me an email that just in the subject line, in all caps, of course, said, great.
Marc:There was no text to the email.
Marc:So that was good.
Marc:I mean, she did what she could.
Marc:And I had a great time seeing Conan and Andy again.
Marc:I got to be honest with you.
Marc:I don't I think I talked about this a bit before, but I'd gone over there to Conan's show to meet with his production company about something else.
Marc:When I was over there, I was walking around the set and I got very saddened by the fact that I knew everybody and literally my heart hurt like.
Marc:Because they were saying, when are you going to be on?
Marc:When are you going to be on?
Marc:I'm like, I don't know.
Marc:Don't make me cry.
Marc:And I did it the other night.
Marc:And it was great.
Marc:It was just seeing Andy there, seeing Conan there.
Marc:I had such a history with these guys on television.
Marc:I don't really socialize with either of them off the television.
Marc:But it felt exciting and comfortable and fun.
Marc:And I really had a great time.
Marc:And I hope they have me back soon.
Marc:And it's always funny to talk to Conan in between takes.
Marc:You know, when the cameras go down, I said, you know, you're doing great, man.
Marc:I'm really happy for you.
Marc:This new show is great.
Marc:How are you doing?
Marc:He's like, yeah, I'm all right.
Marc:I'm like, what do you mean you're all right?
Marc:It's great.
Marc:Look at the desk.
Marc:Look at the moon.
Marc:Look at everything.
Marc:He's like, yeah, I got my issues.
Marc:And it was almost...
Marc:He was like, you know, trying to trump me a little bit and that he's like, you know, you're not the only guy with issues.
Marc:So maybe if he takes me up on that invitation I gave him very publicly to come out here into the garage, we will talk about some of those issues.
Marc:Be happy to talk to him about anything he wants.
Marc:He's a very smart and funny guy.
Marc:A couple of emails.
Marc:This one I found to be humorous.
Marc:Subject line, easy money.
Marc:Hi, Mark.
Marc:Just wanted to say great job on Conan tonight.
Marc:I've been a listener since the beginning and a subscriber for almost a year now.
Marc:And I must say the recognition in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and now Conan are well-deserved.
Marc:It becomes more and more clear every day that pirating the Air America studio, buying the mics and equipment, moving to L.A., setting up the garage, going on the road, doing satellite interviews and amazing live shows, booking the guests, creating the stickers, mailing the T-shirts, keeping up on social media, engaging in heartfelt conversations, fixing the deck, sending the emails, making amends, exposing the weaknesses and sharing every detail of the Marc Maron experience with honesty and profound insight isn't just another way to make an easy buck.
Marc:The show keeps getting better.
Marc:If I had to pay what it's worth, I couldn't afford it.
Marc:Thanks.
Marc:Congratulations and keep up the good work, Mark.
Marc:Thank you, Mark.
Marc:Here's a classic email from a classic person.
Marc:I don't know who it is, but her name's Amy.
Marc:And the subject line just said polite volume request.
Marc:Mark.
Marc:Hey, I'm a big fan of the podcast with a polite, nerdily specific volume request.
Marc:I listen to your podcast while I do my dishes, which could take up to an hour since I don't have a dishwasher.
Marc:And I literally bring my laptop with a shitty built in speakers.
Marc:Remember that.
Marc:In the kitchen with me.
Marc:I enjoyed your last podcast with Joe Mandy, but some of it wasn't loud enough for me to hear through the shitty speakers and over the running water.
Marc:Can you please raise the volume level on the podcast a bit or at least the level to whatever your cold open and closing are?
Marc:Those are always the right volume.
Marc:By the way, I enjoyed your interview on Conan.
Marc:Don't worry.
Marc:You didn't look fat, Amy.
Marc:Amy, maybe you should get some new speakers.
Marc:How would that be?
Marc:Am I being a dick?
Marc:No, seriously, Amy.
Marc:Am I being a dick?
Marc:Seriously.
Marc:Maybe you should get some new speakers.
Marc:A couple of quick thank yous.
Marc:Chase in Portland, thank you for the coffee maker, the coffee.
Marc:And what else did you send me?
Marc:The book?
Marc:You sent me a book.
Marc:Very nice.
Marc:I'm trying to figure out how to work that coffee maker now.
Marc:Jennifer, the vegan baker, San Francisco.
Marc:Thank you for the cake.
Marc:We all enjoyed it.
Marc:Bobcat thought it was wonderful.
Marc:Jennifer or Jessica, now I can't remember her name, but she comes to my show with her boyfriend.
Marc:Homemade cat toys.
Marc:And you said there was organic catnip in that?
Marc:LaFonda is fucked up.
Marc:She is fucked up right now.
Marc:She went outside, then she didn't know what to do outside.
Marc:She came back in, she didn't know what to do inside.
Marc:She went back and chewed on the toy some more, then she went back outside.
Marc:She's fucked up.
Marc:And China, thank you.
Marc:It was a pleasure meeting you.
Marc:And thanks for the book on the history of sex.
Marc:That's something I really need to get into.
Marc:Now let's talk.
Marc:Oh, and could I do one more, please?
Marc:A guy emailed me.
Marc:He's an artist, and he makes these goofy pillows.
Marc:He made me a pillow that just says, I'm going to be bigger than Picasso.
Marc:Actually, it says, I will be greater than Picasso.
Marc:And it's just got this little kid in a caricature holding his finger.
Marc:Very weird pillows and artwork.
Marc:But I liked them.
Marc:And I think you should go see his stuff at www.dangolden.com.
Marc:He's an artiste.
Marc:All right, let's talk about things.
Marc:What do we got?
Marc:I lost my shit in San Francisco.
Marc:I'll be honest with you.
Marc:I was a little edgy.
Marc:I had some problems.
Marc:I get aggravated with, I don't want to say kids because I don't want to be that guy.
Marc:I don't want to be that old guy.
Marc:What's with the fucking kids these days?
Marc:What's with the kids?
Marc:And I don't know if it even was a kid, but something something hit my nerves, struck my nerves, stuck in my craw.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I was on stage at the Purple Onion, a venue that I like, and I was telling that drug story that many of you know, because the theme was drug stories.
Marc:It was the one about I did a Viagra story, and then I did the one about going to see Jerry Garcia.
Marc:I mentioned the Grateful Dead, and I hear some girl in the audience go, boo, boo.
Marc:I said, the Grateful Dead.
Marc:Boo!
Marc:And I snapped.
Marc:I was ready to snap all weekend.
Marc:I don't know if I'm manic or exhausted or...
Marc:overworked but I'm edgy I'm saying shit I shouldn't say you know I'm getting off stage making comments I'm making comments about uh to comics about other comics I'm yeah I'm just like I'm just a live wire and I'm a little manic and that might have been why I couldn't sleep but I heard it I said grateful dead boo grateful dead boo and I was like fuck you who the fuck are you cannot dismiss
Marc:the history of a band, of cultural icons who changed the game a bit, who created their own sound, who represented a type of lifestyle.
Marc:Look, I'm no great deadhead, but I cannot take this dismissing, this condescending sort of whatevs dismissal.
Marc:It's sort of like saying, I don't like the Beatles.
Marc:You don't like all of them.
Marc:You don't like the whole Beatles catalog.
Marc:You can't just dismiss with one word without saying something else.
Marc:Why don't you like him?
Marc:So I, of course, said to her, look, don't dismiss the Grateful Dead just because you hate your dad.
Marc:Don't dismiss the Grateful Dead because you had a weird experience with a white guy with dreads who smelled funny in college.
Marc:Don't dismiss the Grateful Dead for their legacy.
Marc:And I'm not even a big deadhead.
Marc:It's just you cannot just...
Marc:You've got to have a conversation around some things.
Marc:I have this weird issue with the fact that there is no linear history anymore because of what we can do online, because of the information available.
Marc:Everything is vertical.
Marc:Everything is happening now, now, all at once.
Marc:There is no linear sense of history.
Marc:We live in a day and age where it wouldn't surprise me if I overheard someone in their 20s say, wait, Hitler was the guy with the mustache, with the funny mustache?
Marc:That was Hitler, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He was a dude with the uniform and the mustache.
Marc:German guy.
Marc:No context.
Marc:No anything.
Marc:And I think it's frankly dangerous.
Marc:Am I being just old guy?
Marc:Am I being like, these kids, they don't care about anything anymore.
Marc:And then I had a conversation with a couple other guys my age.
Marc:One of them was talking about movies with some high school kids, I think it was.
Marc:And he brought up Gone with the Wind.
Marc:And one of them says, that movie's so old, that was made in like the 70s.
Marc:There's got to be context in order for there to be any evolution of creativity or any appreciation of what we can do as human beings.
Marc:You have to have some context.
Marc:Boo!
Marc:Boo!
Boo!
Marc:I'm a little edgy.
Marc:Henry Rollins is in the garage here at the Cat Ranch.
Marc:I haven't seen you since we performed together, really.
Marc:About 2008?
Marc:Is it that long ago already?
Marc:I believe so.
Marc:I just remember I was a fucking mess, and I felt bad.
Marc:Because I got back to L.A., the wife split, and that week in L.A., I was like, oh, God.
Marc:I was barely getting through.
Guest:Oh, I don't know.
Guest:Well, I didn't know that.
Marc:You didn't?
Guest:I'm surprised.
Guest:I thought the shows were good.
Marc:They were awesome.
Marc:They were fucking great.
Marc:I was catching up.
Marc:I don't know what I was doing.
Marc:I was looking on YouTube and stuff.
Marc:I got into some sort of panic sometimes because I hadn't seen you in a while.
Marc:We don't talk a lot, hardly ever.
Marc:And I know you travel all around the world because I've been trying to get you on here.
Marc:But I actually found there was an interview with you.
Marc:You must have been, it was 1982.
Marc:And it was just some girl interviewing.
Marc:You'd been with Black Flag two years.
Marc:And what was interesting about it was your tone, though much younger, was fairly consistent.
Marc:That you sounded kind of the same.
Marc:Your disposition, though not developed into the sort of earnest, badass wall of Rollins that you are now, was still sort of consistent.
Marc:Do you find that?
Marc:Because I'm just thinking about my own life and I'm seeing where you evolved to.
Marc:Do you find that there's something in your heart that you've maintained through that whole time, that you've honored something that was there from the beginning?
Guest:That's a good question.
Guest:For me, perhaps an attempt at integrity, which is kind of a slippery object in this business.
Guest:Because when you want to work, someone will say, oh, you're selling out.
Guest:And I go, no, man, I'm trying to eat.
Guest:I'm trying to do some stuff here.
Guest:I've always tried to be very forthright and very honest in interviews and all of that.
Guest:As an older guy, I'm 50.
Guest:It's not so easy to get my proverbial goat as it used to be, nor do people go after it.
Guest:When I was younger, I was the guy who the skinhead youth had to take on and fight after the show.
Guest:And it was like, take a number.
Guest:I'm going to kick your ass.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Sit on the couch.
Guest:We'll see you in a minute because I have to go fight this other guy.
Guest:And a lot of the interviews were like, so what's up with that?
Guest:And I don't...
Guest:It's kind of hard to go anywhere from that.
Guest:And so sometimes I would lay it on people who didn't lay it on me first.
Guest:Like, hey, Henry, how are you doing?
Guest:Like, what do you mean?
Guest:And you can't do that to people.
Marc:That interview was actually with a woman, and it looked like maybe, I don't know where it was, it wasn't really backstage, but she was very nervous, and you weren't very guarded, and you were pretty open, but she was clearly trying to put words in your mouth, which I don't think happens anymore.
Marc:No, not much.
Marc:But what I was noticing in my own life, because when I first, I think, came in contact with what you do, was not with Black Flag, but it was really reading an article when you'd started the publishing company.
Marc:And that, you know, there was a lot of press around you.
Marc:And at that time, it was like, you know, Brand Rollins.
Marc:You were one of the first guys to sort of create this, you know, self-driven empire on your own expression.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:in the sense that you were writing, you were publishing other people's books, you were putting out your own records, and there was just this lot of press, and I just remember seeing pictures of you thinking, holy fuck, that guy means business.
Marc:And then I saw you at Crunch Gym in New York City, because I was going there, and again, I didn't really know much about you, but I may have bought a couple books of poetry, but you used to sort of just own this corner in the gym and exude this fucking sense of self of like, don't even go over there.
Marc:And your neck was the size of a log.
Marc:Do you remember that?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah, I lived down the street from that gym.
Guest:And that corner that you speak of was the... If you walked in the door, it was the far right corner.
Guest:It was just a power cage where I could do all my work.
Guest:And thankfully, it was kind of a utilitarian and brutal piece of equipment that no one really...
Guest:had any interest in because it's so primitive.
Guest:And that's the kind of lifting I was doing.
Guest:So usually I was the only person, there was nothing else to do over there.
Marc:I was just a pussy on a treadmill going, look at Rollins, lifting things.
Guest:But the treadmill is my primary thing now.
Guest:I do a lot of treadmill, about an hour a day, six days a week.
Guest:You run?
Guest:Well, I use an elliptical treadmill.
Guest:My legs are shot.
Guest:There's no running left for me.
Guest:From lifting heavy shit?
Guest:My left leg has a lot of nerve damage and sciatic nerve damage, which is very common.
Guest:You see older men clumping around.
Guest:One foot doesn't come off the ground very well, usually the left one.
Guest:And that's because a sciatic nerve runs down it.
Guest:When the doctor looked me over, he said, motorcycle accident, car accident, skiing, falling.
Guest:And I said, well...
Guest:I think what it may have been is since the sciatic nerve starts up by your shoulders, I used to squat really heavy.
Guest:And that bar is right across your shoulders.
Guest:And so I'm up near 500 pounds squatting.
Guest:And I think the bar smashed the nerve pretty good because I've been in car accidents.
Guest:But nothing like where I flew through a windshield and like ruined vertebrae in my neck.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So I think it's that.
Guest:But it's kind of kept me off running for a while.
Guest:The leg doesn't, you know, doesn't work very well.
Guest:So I got to kind of use the elliptic.
Marc:You seem sort of committed to this idea that you're old now.
Marc:You talk about it a lot.
Guest:I have fun with it.
Guest:I mean, you are as old as you are.
Guest:There's nothing you can do about it.
Marc:But you have this idea that all kids are looking at you like some crumpled old guy that represents some bygone era.
Marc:Well, in a way I do.
Guest:In that I am a representative, one of them, of a time that is now seen as some legendary time.
Guest:Like, wow, you were at a Black Flag show?
Guest:Yeah, I was at a few of those.
Guest:And some of those...
Guest:A guy like Shepard Fairey, the graphic artist, he depicts a lot of those scenes, those images from those times get a lot of mileage.
Guest:Some documentaries come out about those days.
Guest:Those days were playing in front of 250 people in a place where you could smell the men's room throughout the entire venue for about $175.
Guest:And so maybe...
Guest:Later on, it looks legendary, but at the time, you're just getting by.
Guest:But I get asked about those days, especially these days.
Guest:I think a lot of people are kind of turning around and looking to see where it came from or what have you.
Marc:What happened to that energy I think they're looking for?
Marc:I don't think that exists anymore.
Guest:Well, I think that, you know, Chuck Takowski of Black Flag, you know, he's one of the guys who raised me intellectually.
Guest:He's a really smart guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, he's like an older brother to me.
Guest:And we still keep in touch.
Guest:He's a fascinating guy.
Guest:I mean, he's the first person I met besides Ian McKay.
Guest:You've got to have those guys.
Guest:Yeah, you really do.
Marc:You're lucky.
Marc:The guides.
Marc:Especially if your dad was shit.
Guest:Yeah, well, that was my situation.
Marc:Yeah, me too.
Guest:My dad was this racist homophobe.
Marc:Well, my dad wasn't that.
Marc:He was just a little unavailable.
Guest:Well, my dad was available but awful.
Guest:And so you're like, well, no thanks.
Guest:Yeah, I gotta go find a new dad.
Guest:Yeah, and so Chuck Tchaikowski and my friend Ian McKay, who I grew up with, those are both two guys who actually would think about things.
Guest:And me, I'd never think.
Guest:I would just run at it and do the wrong thing, and you make a fool of myself.
Marc:That's a way to learn, though.
Guest:Yeah, if you learn.
Guest:But if you just keep doing it and just like, wow, you're pretty scarred up.
Guest:That's right, man, because I keep running at that wall.
Guest:Well, the wall's not moving.
Guest:Yeah, well, you know.
Guest:And I'm not even trying to break it down.
Guest:I just didn't have the sense or the, you know, I just had to keep running at it.
Marc:Just commitment to hitting the wall.
Guest:Yeah, but Dukowski, you know, he saw a lot of what was to be before it happened.
Guest:And he said, you know, where this punk rock and independent thing is going, it's going towards a static state.
Guest:And it's going to become very commercialized and it's going to become very regimented and look out.
Guest:And he was right.
Guest:It became very precious.
Guest:You're a star-bellied snitch.
Guest:Oh, you don't have the star.
Guest:You can't come in and play with us.
Marc:Isn't that inevitable, though, in a consumerist culture that once it figures out, once the system figures out how to sell it, it'll co-opt it and sell it?
Guest:I couldn't have put it any better.
Guest:And that's exactly what happened.
Guest:It became...
Guest:what Dukowski called defanged and declawed.
Guest:Right.
Guest:A paradise flawed.
Guest:And so it became a thing that you could sell.
Guest:You could put it on the T-shirt, you could put it in Macy's.
Guest:And by the time the early 90s came,
Guest:It became grunge, and it was selling millions of copies of records.
Guest:A guy like Kurt Cobain or Nirvana really broke the door open, even for guys like me who got to kind of coattail in on that.
Guest:All of a sudden, that music's okay, and MTV wants to talk to you now.
Guest:Like, really?
Guest:I've been around before MTV, and now you want to talk all these years later.
Guest:You know my name.
Guest:Interesting.
Guest:And it's because there was a buck in it a long time ago before anyone smelled a buck.
Guest:The only person who was interested in you was the dysfunctional youth who your music addressed and the cops who wanted to just, you know, beat the daylights out of you because they saw some kind of perceived threat.
Marc:But it seems like what in you that this integrity that we speak of.
Marc:Look, you know, I met you.
Marc:We hung out for a couple of weeks.
Marc:We're doing shows together.
Marc:and uh you're an archivist of sorts you're you're an incredible fan and preserver of music and you downloaded it was very interesting i mean because you put on my itunes i can't i think i i don't remember how i think he sent me the files but it was james brown jerry lee lewis iggy pop miles davis the misfits ornette coleman and brian eno and this was a lot of shit i mean you had more jerry lee lewis and i think he even has and the iggy pop stuff you know it
Marc:And I'm a huge fan of Iggy's, you know, Iggy, and we talked about Iggy and your remix of the first album that you were like, no, no one's ever going to hear that.
Marc:No one's ever going to touch that.
Marc:That what I see the common thread among those individuals is one integrity and also to some sort of raw commitment to their particular form of expression.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it seems to me that you also exemplify that, even though you tend to give yourself short shrift a lot that, you know, you're not talented, you can't hold a pitch, you just do what you do.
Marc:But all these guys were like that.
Marc:And obviously, you're an incredibly skilled performer.
Marc:You're a great musician, whether you like it or not.
Marc:And I think that that to me and also, you know, we can talk about Manson because let me see if I can tie this all around.
Marc:The 60s did the same thing with the music of that time.
Marc:There are a lot of radicals that, you know, became co-opted in that.
Marc:Then that defined a generation of music.
Marc:Then Manson came along and was used by the press to basically kill the 60s.
Marc:There's a bunch of drugged up hippies that, you know, this could happen to your kid.
Guest:I'd agree.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Shit.
Marc:Sorry.
Marc:But.
Marc:But my question is, is that what is that fire that you see in yourself?
Marc:And obviously, you know, I, you know, I relate to and all these people that you seem to identify with.
Marc:What is that?
Marc:That because that seems to be the definition of integrity and that seems to be what you've maintained.
Guest:For me, it's a constant reference point that it's always your true north.
Guest:The man is always going to try and shut you down.
Guest:If you are doing anything good.
Marc:Any man.
Guest:Well, no, the man.
Marc:Yeah, right, but that's a lot of big men.
Guest:Well, well.
Marc:I get what you're saying.
Marc:I just mean like whether it's corporations, other people, everything.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Yeah, precisely.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And to me, the man is every hate letter I get, which makes me know I'm doing something right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Get out of my country.
Guest:Ah, yes.
Guest:Perfect.
Guest:The nerve.
Guest:I've touched it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or when the cops have problems with you or some talk show host, because I know I'm doing a good thing because I'm the one who wants your kids to be literate.
Guest:I'm the one who wants your kids to come to peaceful ways to resolve conflict.
Guest:I want everyone to be fed.
Guest:So I know I'm on the right track.
Guest:So when I get, as Joe Strummer taught me, when I get aggression, I give it two times back because it's fun.
Guest:But when I get that kind of resistance, I know I'm doing the right thing.
Guest:And so that has always been my constant, is sticking it to the man.
Guest:And it keeps the fire going, and it keeps you kind of at a... It keeps you kind of leaning into the wind.
Guest:And a lot of the people I like musically...
Guest:They never really compromised.
Guest:They may have gotten waylaid by bad management, like when James Brown started doing disco at one point.
Guest:You're like, no, James, you're supposed to be the cutting edge.
Guest:You're not supposed to follow trends.
Guest:You're supposed to make them.
Guest:But, you know, the guy was looking to get paid.
Guest:And it was a very pervasive thing.
Guest:And so some of these people may have, you know, a lot of great jazz artists, all of a sudden they're doing little green apples because the producer said, here's a way to get on radio.
Marc:Yeah, you need to sell a few records.
Guest:Yeah, and that's a lot of people did that for a minute and went no, and they got back to their work.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Henry Rollins standing alone with a microphone talking is fairly broad sure and and when I watched Iggy like these guys I don't think they were as conscious of Intellectually fighting the man, but Iggy has harnessed some sort of energy that is beyond explanation really and and it makes you uncomfortable it makes you Enchanted it makes you you know question your own integrity yeah sexually and as a person and
Guest:He makes you question yourself on all levels.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:He is the pure element.
Guest:Whenever I talk about him, I say he's like a leopard.
Guest:Leopards don't know that they have spots.
Guest:They don't know that they're graceful and sleek.
Guest:They're just too busy being a leopard.
Guest:Iggy doesn't know necessarily that he is this kind of pure maniac.
Marc:Oh, that story you tell about trying to outdo him is hilarious.
Guest:Yeah, you should have seen me wheezing like some old uncle.
Guest:But he did say to me after this show, he said, okay, you know.
Guest:You did what you could?
Guest:Pretty good, man.
Marc:Well, what do you think is the primary difference?
Marc:Because I see you when I've talked to you before and even now, and I think we share this, is that
Marc:We're a little self-conscious.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:And that these guys, it seems to me like Iggy and Jerry Lee and some of these, and certainly, well, Manson probably was very self-conscious because he was very orchestrated in his methodology.
Guest:Yeah, I think he was an egomaniac.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But do you find that your self-consciousness is a barrier to you?
Guest:Well, yeah, it keeps you from getting to the work.
Guest:The older I get, and this can't be unique, the older I get, the less self-conscious I get because I am just less precious about how I look in that I think the body should be maintained so you get good use out of it.
Guest:Like put oil in the car, be nice to your body, because you've got to use these joints every day.
Guest:But at this point, I'm only interested in what I can learn, what I can think, and what I can do.
Guest:rather than how I look, how the chicks are digging me.
Guest:That really doesn't mean much to me at this point in that... Did it ever?
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:When you're 20-something, it's me, me, me.
Guest:And as an older guy, pretty well-traveled, seeing what I see, getting the access that I do, and I get quite a bit of access...
Guest:What's important to me is more of the we, we, we.
Guest:And I'm not trying to impress you and, oh, he's so altruistic.
Marc:No, but that was a conscious decision, right?
Guest:Well, it was experience.
Guest:It laps around the track.
Guest:The conscious decision was to put more stamps in the passport.
Guest:Like, I got some money.
Guest:How am I going to use it?
Guest:I'm not going to buy a fleet of Ferraris.
Guest:I'm going to go places.
Guest:I want to be like the National Geographic.
Guest:I want to go check it out.
Marc:But that was for your own curiosity, because it seems to me that you've become sort of a self-styled missionary raconteur.
Marc:That what you're sharing is your own experience in an earnest way.
Marc:And as you evolve as a person, which you're talking about right now, these shared experiences, you want to become communal experiences with your audiences.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's how I justify...
Guest:My, the crass idea that you're going to sit down in a seat, shut up and listen to me and pay me.
Guest:And it's, it's irretrievable time.
Guest:Not even Proust can get this time back for you.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so it's not the money thing.
Guest:It's not wanting to have any member of that audience walk out going like, wow, he took my Saturday night.
Guest:I'm not getting that back.
Guest:I should gut that guy for taking that Saturday.
Marc:Has that ever happened though?
Guest:Well, I do my damnedest.
Guest:to sling the best hash i can but you do like three hour shows well sometimes yeah i'm much better if i do less i mean you know too much of anything is too much but um how long did it take you to learn that well well you know i mean it if you keep sidebarring yeah people go come on man get to the meat of the thing stop giving me the yeah anyway
Guest:The way I justify myself being on stage in front of you, the audience, is to go far and wide, get those stories, burn lean tissue out there in the world and come back with something that was really hard to put in the sack and bring back.
Guest:something that is trying to bite.
Guest:And I go pretty far, and it takes quite a bit of time and effort.
Guest:And it's great.
Guest:I learn a lot.
Guest:I'm humbled constantly by who I meet and what I see.
Guest:But that's, at this point, what I bring to the stage.
Guest:And when someone says, why should I listen to you?
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because I just came back from northern Uganda and southern Sudan
Guest:And I talked to young people who were abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army who were made to hack people into pieces.
Guest:And they're only 15 years old.
Guest:And it took me over an hour of gently prodding them to even get them to say a word to me.
Guest:And you should hear what I'm going to say about that.
Marc:Now, when you go in to do that, because in the sense of this ego thing, because you're a fairly monolithic guy.
Marc:I mean, you represent Rollins.
Marc:When you say Rollins, people know Rollins.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I'm all I've got.
Marc:I mean, no, I get that.
Marc:But like when you go into these things in order to have the humility to absorb the emotions of those situations that you're putting yourself into.
Marc:I mean, you know, how do you approach that?
Marc:What is your real agenda out of just instead of just curiosity?
Marc:When you say I've got to get this information, I've got to engage in this because that's a very tragic story.
Marc:Like when you went in to talk to these kids, you know, how did you how did you go about it?
Guest:It was really tough.
Guest:I mean, you have to play analyst.
Guest:We asked them about all kinds of things they were doing.
Guest:What are you learning in school?
Guest:And then, okay, after about 45 minutes, literally, we interviewed these kids for almost three hours just to get them to say a sentence.
Guest:This was like three weeks ago.
Marc:Say a sentence related to the horror.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Just to get them, and then slowly we go, okay, so you were abducted.
Guest:How long was your abduction?
Guest:What were you made to do?
Guest:And all of a sudden these kids go from...
Guest:quiet to very, very silent, and then finally one will say, you know, little sentences come out, and we got some information, but by and large, in two different interviews, we interviewed a total of seven children who had been abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda.
Guest:And they had to hike into southern Sudan, and they committed atrocities.
Guest:It was tough, but...
Guest:I try and get an understanding of the world.
Guest:It's one of the ways I try and understand my own country, America, is to leave it and see how it manifests itself in other countries, how it washes up on other shores, what globalization really looks like, what Thomas Friedman's wet dream looks like in Cambodia, in Vietnam, and these places.
Guest:That's what I attempt to do.
Guest:And then when I come back to the stage, I can go, look,
Guest:From, you know, seven, eight thousand miles from here.
Guest:Here's what I here's what I found out.
Guest:And I'm not trying to say I know more than you.
Guest:I'm better.
Guest:You know, but it's how I justify you sitting down for 20 bucks.
Marc:And it's like Gonzo reporting and storytelling that, you know, you're sort of bringing the pain.
Marc:But when you're in a moment like that, because I interview a lot of people in here, and granted, none of them have committed atrocities either voluntarily or not.
Marc:What does it inform you about your own life?
Marc:I mean, like when you're talking to 15-year-old kids who are forced to kill people, I mean, do you find yourself crying or feeling emotion or feeling lucky?
Guest:Oh, I feel lucky.
Guest:But for me, the older I get, with the luck comes...
Guest:responsibility.
Guest:And just being an American, you're pretty lucky because you escape a lot of the beatings that a lot of the world's population goes through.
Guest:Just like getting through a day in parts of Africa or parts of Southeast Asia, man, it's a trial.
Guest:If you're not a dentist or a doctor or what have you, if you're just working...
Guest:Man, Hanoi is just... By the end of the day, you're just used up.
Guest:And I've been to Africa 11 times now.
Guest:And I've seen a little bit of it.
Guest:And boy, some lifestyles there, we got nothing to complain about.
Guest:And so even...
Guest:As far as geographically, we're very lucky in that there's not a lot of drought here in America.
Guest:There's cold, but you're not going to freeze to death unless you're drunk and you fall asleep on the sidewalk.
Guest:And it's kind of hard to starve to death in America.
Guest:Someone will eventually pick you up and feed you.
Guest:Yeah, we hope.
Guest:But in other parts of the world, life is way more desperate and kind of on the edge and very, very uncertain.
Guest:And so I go into these environments and just open ears, open mind, open eyes, just trying to get it.
Guest:And I try and erase my Western filter because, you know, you judge stuff.
Guest:Well, that guy's pretty broke.
Guest:Ask him.
Guest:What?
Guest:And what how does he know if he's broke in that he's too busy getting to the next food bowl?
Guest:He doesn't have a bank account.
Guest:You can't talk to him about the concept of life insurance.
Marc:But what about like, you know, in terms of like open heart?
Marc:I mean, like sometimes when I've watched you perform that, you know, you're very generous, you're very earnest.
Marc:And you're a great storyteller and you've had a lot of experiences.
Marc:But does this stuff ever crush your spirit?
Marc:I mean, do you ever get overwhelmed?
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:Where like you're sitting alone.
Marc:What do you do when you sit by yourself?
Marc:What happens?
Guest:Sometimes it catches up to you.
Guest:It runs over you.
Guest:That's why I don't like to stop moving too much.
Guest:December is hard for me because usually I'm done with the tour or whatever.
Guest:Like this year, I arrived back in Los Angeles for about 13 months of travel and tour.
Guest:And it's a hard month because I sit still.
Guest:I kind of cool.
Guest:I have to catch my breath.
Guest:Otherwise, I won't be any good, you know, for the next year.
Guest:And things catch up.
Guest:And, you know, you go through your photos.
Guest:You go through your journal entries.
Guest:And the entirety of what you just dealt, you know, endured and saw kind of catches up with you.
Guest:Like PTSD.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It can bite back.
Guest:Nietzsche, who, you know, you should stop reading by the time you're 18.
Guest:But, you know, he had that thing that I never understood until I really understood it, where he said, he who looks into the abyss must know that the abyss also looks into him.
Guest:I didn't get that.
Guest:I go, what does that mean?
Guest:I read it when I was like 16 or 17.
Guest:Now I get it.
Guest:When you look into this stuff, it's going to check you out, too.
Guest:And it's going to look very hard into you.
Guest:And so what it makes me want to do more and more is be part of a proactive movement or working with other people who are trying to make things better.
Guest:And that's the way to go, OK, that situation sucks.
Guest:So let's go.
Marc:So you don't feel that you so you don't stay in the despair.
Guest:Not for too long and just make it.
Guest:Well, if you're going to do it, you can make it a catalyst to get you up and running into something else.
Marc:I think I'm sorry.
Marc:I think that's like the thing that makes me and you different.
Marc:I think it's some it's the way people see you, too, that you're the application of will and discipline in your life.
Marc:You exude it.
Marc:Now, that means like the amount of stuff you churn out, whether it's music, spoken word, books.
Marc:I mean, you get the sense when you think about Rollins, like this fucking guy never stops moving, writing, talking, making music, putting things together.
Marc:And I think that discipline is, was that hard for you to come by?
Marc:I mean, have you always had it?
Marc:Are you running from something?
Yeah.
Guest:Probably all of that.
Guest:Well, that's what I'm accused of.
Guest:This woman who's been working with me for 13 years, that's what she says as to my work ethic.
Guest:She goes, you're just running.
Guest:She said, you're just basically a coward.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She says, if you had real guts, you'd stay home, you'd enjoy your house, and you'd live here.
Guest:And cry.
Guest:Or just deal with yourself.
Guest:But you're always on tour.
Marc:You're always running.
Marc:Do you go in for that psycho?
Marc:Do you ever analyze yourself?
Marc:Do you put any credence into that?
Marc:I live alone.
Marc:I analyze myself night and day.
Marc:It's the nature of our business.
Marc:But sometimes you can't trust that analysis.
Guest:Well, true.
Guest:I do work a lot.
Guest:And part of it is I...
Guest:I come from – my father was Army.
Guest:My stepbrother was Navy.
Guest:My schooling was a naval prep school for boys, you know, that douchebag outfit and basically the kid you want to punch the lights out of when you see that uniform.
Guest:It wasn't like drilling with rifles, just being told to shut up and a lot of standing up and saying, yes, sir.
Guest:But all of that and a pretty healthy work ethic I got from both of my parents who are both kind of work maniacs.
Guest:Very smart, hardworking people.
Guest:I had a job when I was very young.
Guest:I never had an allowance.
Guest:I enjoyed making money.
Guest:I'm in eighth grade.
Guest:I can rock a cash register.
Guest:I loved that.
Guest:I did a little of that.
Guest:I really liked the freedom of that, having the key to a store.
Guest:on my keychain in high school.
Guest:I was like, check me out.
Guest:Making the deposits?
Guest:Yeah, and the bosses would always trust me to make the deposits because I wouldn't steal.
Marc:So the man respected you?
Guest:Well, I had good bosses.
Guest:Actually, some of them still, they come to my shows in D.C.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, and it...
Guest:It moves me when I see them because my old boss from the ice cream store still comes to see me and he's backstage and he'll tell anyone in that room.
Guest:They all know him anyway.
Guest:And they'll say, he's the best employee I ever had.
Guest:And we're talking about a $3.75 an hour job.
Marc:And you were 17, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I was like, yeah, I was 20.
Guest:This is like 1980.
Guest:And I still kind of puff up a little like, yeah, I did scoop that ice cream as much as best as I could.
Guest:And I kind of do everything like that.
Guest:I come from that kind of work ethic.
Marc:Do you think you're looking for approval?
Guest:Sure, absolutely.
Guest:I like an audience that likes me.
Guest:That's why I answer all the mail.
Guest:Hey, Henry, I liked last week's radio show.
Guest:Hey, thank you, man.
Marc:But doesn't he get into that spin where it's like, you know, the speedball of like, hey, there's a good comment.
Marc:That's a nice email.
Marc:That's, oh, this fucking guy hates me.
Marc:And you feel that rush of anger and self-inspection.
Marc:And then you got to fight whether or not you're going to attack him back.
Guest:Well, sometimes, yeah, because I'm only human.
Guest:Do you attack them?
Guest:No.
Guest:I'd love to say that I have a thick skin, but I'd be lying.
Guest:Like, you can get to me.
Guest:There's no problem.
Guest:I mean, stuff does not bounce off me.
Guest:What has gotten to you lately?
Marc:Bullshit comments?
Guest:Like, oh, you're just this elitist whatever.
Guest:I'm like, wow.
Guest:What?
Guest:I am?
Guest:I better curb that.
Guest:But I can't understand how I am.
Guest:But maybe I am.
Guest:Maybe I'm just full of it.
Marc:So the fraud thing gets you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I think I'm swinging at it as hard as I can.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it's all out in the open.
Guest:Like when I miss the pitch, oh, you'll know.
Guest:Like, oh, boy, he screwed that one up.
Guest:It's right out there.
Marc:Aren't those moments the best?
Marc:So have you ever had those moments on stage where you fuck up and then all of a sudden you find yourself embarrassed?
Marc:And in that the moment of embarrassment is some sort of weird portal into someone's self that, you know, there's that moment where you're seen, you know, like for real, like, you know, I fucked up.
Guest:Well, I've made honest mistakes on stage where, you know, I got a date wrong, but I try and not exactly be underprepared on stage, but I try as actors say, I try to be in the moment and never dial it in because that's when, like if you're trying to be funny, you'll always put the cart before the horse.
Guest:Like, you know, Lenny, I have to, but why?
Guest:You know, but you and my, I saw my best friend in bed with my, oh man.
Guest:And so you'll always screw it up if you're like, I know what they want.
Guest:And so I go in basically to report to the audience and tell them what I know.
Guest:And sometimes I trip over humor, you know, during the show.
Guest:Sometimes things are funny and I'll just report to you clearly.
Guest:And well, that was funny.
Guest:Well, no, the situation was funny and I'm just bringing it to you.
Marc:It's just interesting to me that someone as disciplined as you, I'm sure you've been called a control freak before.
Marc:Have you?
Marc:Well, a little.
Marc:But you put yourself into these moments.
Marc:All of us feel that, but you put yourself into these situations where people are dealing with real shit.
Marc:I mean, as Americans, like you said before, there's a limitation to the real shit we deal with.
Guest:Yeah, we're spared.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:A lot.
Marc:So you go into these moments where you deal with real shit.
Marc:Have you ever been fucking frightened?
Guest:No.
No.
Guest:And I'm not a tough guy.
Guest:I'm not brave.
Guest:I mean, I've met tough.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And believe me, I'm not it.
Guest:I've met strong.
Guest:I'm not it.
Guest:And I'd like to say I was, but I'm not.
Marc:Who are these people?
Guest:People you meet in Africa.
Guest:I just spent three weeks traveling with a guy who has fought in southern Sudan against the north for 20 years.
Guest:He and I went back to places where he had fought.
Guest:And on the ground still are a bunch of bullet shells.
Guest:And he's looking down in ditches going, oh, there's that ammo can.
Guest:And my best friend died underneath that tree.
Guest:And I said, how many times have you come back to this place?
Guest:He goes, this is the first time I've been back here since 1996.
Guest:And the guy's like, you know.
Guest:hyperventilating and what's that mound in the cornfield?
Guest:Oh, a mass grave and people's clothes are coming out of the dirt and the corn is growing on top very well because of the human fertilizer under the ground.
Guest:That's tough.
Guest:And all this guy wants is peace and freedom for Southern Sudan.
Guest:He loves his children, got beautiful kids, an amazing wife.
Guest:And we've got dudes with their baseball caps on backwards going like, get your tits out, dude.
Guest:And when you see a guy like this who has killed a lot of people, has been shot at, has eaten rotting animals to survive, has been through this whole thing, and never curses, is this soft-spoken guy.
Guest:When you encounter that, it makes you check any of your...
Guest:You know, what are you looking at?
Guest:You realize you don't have much of that.
Marc:Because I think that's an example of the abyss looking back at you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I go into these situations and I learn a lot.
Guest:And yeah, you learn a lot about yourself.
Guest:And so for me, I try and be real honest, call it as I see it.
Guest:And it's just for me, it's just how much...
Guest:How honest do you want to get with it?
Guest:How far will you go to get real answers?
Guest:And having done a lot of work with the USO, having been to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Marc:How do you reconcile that?
Marc:There was an issue that I had at one time that if you're against a war, which I know you are to some degree,
Guest:To a complete degree.
Marc:So then when you work with the USO and you perform for the soldiers and you also sort of get a sense of this country or where we come from, like I'm finding as I get older that a lot of the anger I had
Marc:towards ignorance i've had to sort of shift a little bit towards empathy in order to to understand myself and understand who i'm dealing with absolutely now now when you when you perform for the troops that you're obviously you know empathetic for their situation you know that the position they're in but how do you reconcile being so anti-war and yet still you know in support of of of the troops
Guest:Well, that's a really good question, and I'll do my best to attempt to answer it and not parse words because I'm not trying to be a lawyer.
Guest:I'm against any war.
Guest:I don't believe there's the good war.
Guest:The reason I can justify doing USO stuff is...
Guest:is because I like the soldiers.
Guest:They're young people.
Guest:They're just getting their heads around it.
Guest:I've never yet met one person of the hundreds, maybe thousands of soldiers I've met in many, many trips all over the world with the US.
Guest:So I've never met anyone who says, boy, I sure love getting up in the morning and killing people.
Guest:I've never met anyone who says that.
Guest:They're like, I miss my kids and my wife.
Guest:I hope they wait for me.
Guest:I've gone to Walter Reed many times, Bethesda Medical.
Guest:Bethesda Naval Medical many times and met people with everything from parts of their brains gone, testicles gone, any manner of internal organs, arms, legs, eyes, combinations thereof.
Guest:And all the families crammed into this little room.
Guest:And you feel worse for the mom because the guy's like, hey, sir, how you doing, sir?
Guest:And the mom is looking at her kid with the legs gone.
Guest:She feels like mother hen unable to put the legs back on.
Guest:You see the pain in her face.
Guest:And you're like, man, she'd chop her own legs off and put them on that kid if she could.
Guest:You know how mothers are.
Guest:And so it has given me an insight into this conflict that I could not have gotten from merely watching the news, reading the newspapers and reading all those big ass books.
Guest:Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, places like that are not easy for a guy like me to get to without the military.
Guest:And so I think I've become someone who knows quite a bit about this stuff.
Guest:Well, I know more than I could have known had I just been someone reading on the sidelines.
Guest:And I think I've been able to use that information in a useful way on stage, writing-wise, getting across a message, an insight that would... No way I could have gotten that insight any other way but to have gone and seen it, smelled it, walked through it.
Guest:I was in a mortar attack in Baghdad years ago.
Guest:I'm not trying to sound like some, you know, it's not a war story.
Guest:I was in a fortified building.
Guest:They could have dropped a B-52 on the building.
Guest:I would have been fine.
Guest:But the concussion of those two mortars, it's like a fist in your chest.
Guest:It was really incredible, the force of this thing.
Guest:You go, wow, someone just tried to kill me two times.
Guest:Damn, it really moved me.
Guest:It was one of those experiences like, this is real.
Guest:And it just makes me want peace more than ever.
Guest:And boy, if anything can turn you into a peacenik.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, I think that like, you know, I don't I want to make it clear to to to my listeners that like I have nothing against the troops and sort of it's just a question that I want very few people do.
Marc:I think it's just a question I wrestled with because being being the guy that, you know, fights a man that, you know, instinctively is gunning for the underdog.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:In the sense, I mean, in a positive way that you're on the side of the underdog and that we are all in our own fights against the man that that's there's something interesting that happens when you have an all volunteer army that understands duty, understands country, but also understands that it's their choice to be there primarily.
Marc:Out of what?
Marc:I think for a lot of people, it's a paycheck.
Marc:Yeah, I used to do a joke about that, that they're going to be able to recruit soon just by saying hungry.
Guest:Yeah, well, imagine a man, a woman, a human, an American cannot work 40 hours a week
Guest:And sustain his or her existence in a house or an apartment.
Guest:A guy like Glenn Beck has his Beck University.
Guest:And one of the people in his crosshairs is Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the provisions of the New Deal.
Guest:Man, I try and memorize parts of the New Deal.
Guest:I want to be conversant in the New Deal.
Guest:Some of the ideas in the New Deal, like the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938...
Guest:abolishing child labor and establishing a minimum wage, that stuff, and it sounds corny, it moves me almost to tears that we got that, that one guy said, you know what, not living in fear of starvation and foreclosure and being homeless, that should be a right, not some privilege, and that someone wants to take that away.
Guest:Some rich guy is telling you, yeah, don't take it anymore.
Marc:Well, the system is designed to really... People like Beck and people who are business-first people that are anti-socialism, they really just see it as some sort of applied social Darwinism, that if you can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps, if you can't make it in the system as it is, then we've got no fucking time for you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So die.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But unfortunately... Or join the forces.
Guest:Yeah, unfortunately, those people who go right on...
Guest:They're the ones getting foreclosed upon.
Marc:That's the weird trick.
Guest:The captors are protecting the captors and shooting at the liberators.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And I found that what's interesting, because I always wondered that.
Marc:How do you get people to vote against their economic self-interest?
Marc:And the fundamental sort of racism around the welfare state idea is that there's a pride to people taking handouts.
Marc:I can never understand how white poor people would fight the idea of help.
Guest:Because, you know, I'll tell you, I mean, you already know this answer because it's been made into a black thing.
Guest:That's what non-whites do.
Guest:You know, as my father used to call African-Americans, Marvin food stamp.
Guest:That's what he used to say.
Guest:They're all Marvin food stamp.
Guest:And that's all they want is, what did he say?
Guest:Loose shoes, loose women in a warm place to shit.
Guest:That was my father's words to describe the D.C.
Guest:black guy.
Guest:Like, great.
Guest:And so, thankfully, he didn't rub off on me.
Guest:Is he still alive?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I have no idea.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Guys like him are too mean to die.
Guest:I think they look at Death and go, come on!
Guest:And Death goes, no.
Guest:When was the last time you saw him?
Guest:1980-something.
Guest:Really?
Guest:In no contact?
Guest:No.
Guest:I have no idea where he lives.
Guest:You know, I don't get revenge on people.
Guest:I just split.
Guest:If you rip me off or do bad to me, I leave.
Guest:I don't come back.
Marc:No curiosity?
Guest:No, not really.
Guest:No, I really, I left the litter.
Guest:I got no curiosity about what he's doing, where he's at.
Guest:He never told me much about him.
Guest:Like, he has brothers and sisters.
Guest:I don't know any of their names.
Guest:I don't know how many of them there are.
Marc:Where's Rollins come from?
Guest:Rollins comes from a college my friend's sister was going to.
Guest:Oh, so that's not your real name?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, when I joined Black Flag, the first thing they said was, give yourself a little bit of room between you and the cops, because this time tomorrow you're going to be in the L.A.
Guest:Times.
Guest:And they were right.
Guest:How much do you think you were driven by spite?
Guest:Well, I was told in high school that I was going to be mopping floors and I was told I would never succeed.
Guest:And so that was a great impetus to work, work, work.
Guest:And one of the things I always wanted to do was do better than my parents, which I'm sure in some ways they're probably very happy about because I'm sure I outgross them and outdo them on every level, which is what the offspring should do.
Guest:that's my kind of social Darwinism.
Guest:Like, yeah, do better.
Guest:And hopefully your parents give you the big alley up so you can get over the wall that they couldn't get over.
Guest:And then you have offspring and you get them over the wall that you couldn't.
Marc:But do you ever consider that, like, your father's disposition and whatever abandonment was there, are you ever grateful for the sort of fire he put into your soul?
Guest:Hubert Selby, the great writer, he told me to be grateful for all of that.
Guest:Henry, if he wasn't such a bastard to you, you wouldn't be on this stage tonight.
Guest:You might be a banker.
Guest:And I said, you know, he's kind of right about that.
Guest:And, you know, when you see all those, you know, the comedians or people who get things done quite often, the home life was not so rosy.
Guest:They come from, you know, not not the best home life.
Guest:And it was quite the incentive to forgive him.
Marc:I don't really do forgiveness in that... Isn't that part of it, Henry?
Marc:Isn't that part of the missionary position?
Marc:No.
Marc:Forgiveness?
Guest:I just let him be his bad self, and I'm doing my thing.
Guest:But that doesn't harden your heart?
Guest:No, I'm just letting him do his thing.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And how am I returning the favor?
Guest:I'm not going to his house and breaking him into little pieces of the lead pipe.
Marc:So that's it.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And since I'm a cool guy, he gets to live another day.
Guest:But...
Guest:And maybe, Mark, that's my forgiveness.
Guest:I believe, and someone once said to me, I'm going to hack it to pieces, that you should not build a bridge so brittle that you can't go recross it if you have to.
Guest:And so that's pretty true.
Guest:If you're going to be like, tough guy, here it is, you're going to have to eat some of your own every once in a while because if you say it eventually, you're going to eat that sword.
Guest:And so I think in this life, we must be flexible lest we become huge hypocrites.
Guest:And I'm a hypocrite enough of the time anyway, being a human and complex.
Guest:That's what I'm telling myself anyway.
Guest:Anyway.
Guest:But you don't carry any pain.
Guest:No.
Guest:Well, sure, I carry some pain.
Guest:I just wish things had been better.
Guest:I do remember when I hit puberty, I remember thinking to myself, I wish I had a male figure in my corner.
Guest:I wish I had a guy, like a dad,
Guest:who was there for me, a guy where I can go, hey, older guy, I want to meet the chicks.
Marc:Give me some guidance.
Guest:How do I do that?
Guest:Or mom's giving me a hard time.
Marc:Take my side.
Guest:Walk me through this.
Guest:And so I didn't have that.
Guest:And a lot of people don't.
Marc:No, I know.
Guest:You may not have, but a lot of us don't.
Guest:You survive.
Guest:Humans are pretty bounce.
Guest:We bounce back from things.
Guest:But I do remember at times going, damn, man, I wish I had some traction because I'm seeing that it's giving me a lot of difficulty with peers.
Guest:Feelings of inadequacy, meeting the chicks and going to an all boys school definitely screws you up for that because you don't ever socialize with girls.
Guest:You know, there are these weird foreign objects that you kind of look at with a great deal of fear and trepidation.
Guest:Where I saw my friends going to public school, they were going through puberty with girls at
Guest:you know there and they're like well what do girls mean to you they're people I go to English class with oh for me there are ones I would you know with great trepidation approach at a dance and go would you like to dance because I didn't know that you could just talk to them go hi I'm Henry what's happening I didn't know you could do that so punk rock was the gateway then
Guest:Punk rock was huge for me in that any punk rock gig back in the old days, you'd walk into as Bobby Bird of James Brown's band used to say when he went solo, I know you got soul because if you didn't, you wouldn't be in here.
Guest:And if you just by the fact that you walked into that place, you must be cool because the bad brains were playing and you showed up.
Guest:And so you must be cool.
Guest:And all of a sudden girls are going, hi, what's your name?
Guest:You're like, whoa.
Guest:Well, this is cool.
Guest:And punk rock changed my life.
Guest:As David Lee Roth once said, music should look like it sounds.
Guest:And I think there should be a physicality to aggressive music.
Guest:That's just me talking.
Marc:But that's also what freedom looks like.
Marc:You look at Iggy, you look at Ornette Coleman, you look at these guys, like, you know, and Jerry Lee Lewis said his frenetic best is that when you discuss peace in terms of political and intellectual movements among people, communities, countries, you know, those are ideological, intellectual sort of hopes.
Marc:But when you deal with rock and roll or you deal with you on a fucking stage with that microphone just jamming, that's what freedom looks like creatively.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:But, you know, no one has to get hurt.
Marc:They do sometimes, though.
Guest:It comes with sometimes.
Guest:Well, I got scars all over me from my audiences.
Guest:I got cigarette marks on my leg, cigar burns.
Marc:What was that?
Marc:I saw a clip of you, like, you know, some guy was just taunting you, and you eventually just beat him up.
Marc:Well, what you don't see...
Guest:It is maybe what should be the director's cut of that whole scene.
Marc:You know what I'm talking about?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He hit me a lot, too.
Guest:So, no, he and I exchanged blows.
Guest:That's, I think, the Philadelphia Love Hall, summer 1982.
Marc:But it was interesting because there was some excitement about the taunting of it.
Marc:It almost looked like he was taunting an animal.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:Well, just FYI, that whole thing started before the show.
Guest:That guy was backstage giving us grief.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And no one in the band was really physically aggressive like I was.
Guest:Everyone was like, hey, Henry, go.
Guest:Go deal with that guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Go hit him with a chair, whatever.
Guest:But yeah, there was a lot of that in those days.
Guest:And so for me...
Guest:You know, the music was the place to go with all of that.
Guest:Like if you see Iggy on stage, as you probably have, it's a terrifying force of nature that you really don't want to get close to because you might catch a mic stand upside the head.
Guest:But after this show, when he's Jim Osterberg, and they are two.
Guest:Two very different people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Iggy's like this, you know, swearing maniac who like, you know, destroys himself on stage.
Guest:And after the show, he's Jim Osterberg, who's this very nice Midwestern guy with that Midwestern accent.
Guest:Oh, hey, man, how are you?
Guest:I'm Jim.
Guest:How do you do?
Guest:And he's really polite, like Boy Scout polite.
Marc:Was that a model for you?
Marc:I mean, when you were sort of coming up and you started to develop musically, was he sort of a role model?
Guest:Yes and no, in that I never did all the drugs, and I never went and did heroin and showed up on stage.
Marc:But you saw a lot of people.
Marc:It's amazing that you didn't.
Marc:What was that?
Guest:It wasn't even a temptation.
Marc:So many people died around you.
Guest:A lot of people.
Guest:I know a lot of dead people.
Guest:And if you talk to musician types of my age from that scene, they'll tell you that we all probably knew the same people, and a lot of them are dead.
Guest:You know, overdose, suicide, confrontation with cops, dead in prison.
Guest:But yeah, I know a whole lot of dead people.
Marc:Beyond temptation, though, were you afraid of it?
Guest:Well, I wanted to get somewhere.
Guest:I took my minimum wage working zeal into music.
Guest:and the bands like when i was in black flag we had our own label we were broke all the time and we're always trying to make that next record get that next tour happening and all of our extra money was going to two inch tape studio time food and equipment we there wasn't the money for the cocaine and the the that was just so not our scene we had a one to two sets a night a 400 mile drive
Guest:The driver was whoever was awake enough.
Guest:The other next awake guy was punching him in the arm so we didn't fly into the median and kill all of us.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's how we're living.
Guest:Like any independent band, R.E.M.
Guest:and the Chili Peppers will tell you the same stories of got to go play the next crappy venue.
Marc:But a lot of dudes did drugs in that life.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But I chose not to.
Guest:The scene I came from growing up with a guy like Ian McKay, who, you know, just not interested.
Guest:None of that was interesting to me.
Guest:And I'm 50 and I still don't do any of that.
Guest:You know, I drink tea and coffee and I don't even do aspirin, really.
Marc:What is the regimen?
Marc:What's breakfast like?
Guest:Breakfast is usually sometimes it's just two scoops of protein powder and half a glass of water because it's over in about a minute.
Guest:And that's about all I have time for before I lash myself back to the mast and try and achieve.
Marc:No oatmeal?
Guest:Sometimes I get into a good oatmeal jag.
Guest:Trader Joe's makes that nice microwavable brick of oatmeal that you can throw into the bowl and throw into the lonely middle-aged man's oven, the microwave.
Guest:But breakfast, it's the kickoff.
Guest:It's the most important meal.
Guest:Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper.
Guest:And I usually do it the opposite, the big dinner, then I go to sleep.
Marc:Do you cook for yourself?
Guest:Yeah, but I don't cook much.
Guest:I'm the microwave guy.
Guest:I don't like to spend much time, A, buying clothes or B, cooking or making food.
Guest:So you're just festering all day and working?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I did 14 hours yesterday.
Guest:I was working until 3 o'clock this morning.
Guest:On what?
Guest:I'm finishing the work on a photo book, which is one of the biggest efforts I've ever done where each photo gets an essay.
Guest:So there's like seven... I went from an 8,000 word to a 22,000 word file since last week.
Guest:And this is creative writing.
Guest:It's very painful to do.
Guest:I prefer my analytical mind.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Rather than the creative one, which it just hurts.
Guest:And when you have to willfully throw yourself, because I can do it, it's just going to hurt you.
Marc:We did a lot with the poetry.
Marc:I mean, I had some of those books and it seemed like, do you find that the first time you really started expressing yourself along those lines was after your friend was killed?
Guest:No, I was writing before that, through that.
Guest:When was that?
Guest:After that, that was December 19th, 1991.
Guest:But I was writing very much prolifically all through the 80s.
Guest:So I was already about a decade into writing inspired by the likes of Henry Miller and people like that.
Marc:But was that the moment where you realized how fucking dark people could be?
Marc:I mean, like what happened with that?
Marc:Because I know this I know you've talked about it before.
Guest:Well, it was just a classic American chapter of our dysfunctional society.
Guest:My friend and I, Joe Cole and I, we got robbed by two Crips in our neighborhood, which is a Crip neighborhood.
Guest:And my theory is, with 19 years of having all that time to kind of kick it around, is that the locals probably saw me on MTV.
Guest:And I was on MTV.
Guest:You can be broke and on MTV.
Guest:You know how that is.
Guest:Well, I saw you on TV.
Guest:Yeah, I can't pay my rent, but yes, you saw me on TV.
Guest:I was at that phase of my career where I was broke ass, but I was kind of famous.
Guest:Visible, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so at one point I realized, well, some people might have the wrong idea about me.
Guest:Like, wow, he's on TV.
Guest:He must have money.
Guest:And so at one point, a very well-known record producer came over to my little place in Venice to listen to my new record, which I had on cassette.
Guest:And he listened to it and he parked his Bentley.
Guest:In front of my place.
Guest:And he came out of the house and I walked into his car and the locals were looking at his big Bentley.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I went, wow, the neighborhood knows that a guy with a Bentley just visited my place.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I wrote in my journal, I'm going to get popped.
Guest:I'm going to get robbed.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And 48 hours later, got robbed.
Guest:And so I called it.
Guest:And so my theory is.
Marc:And they shot him in front of you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, no, not.
Guest:Yes, they shot him.
Guest:No, not in front of me.
Guest:It was basically a stick up.
Guest:Two guys, two guns.
Guest:Gun was at the back of my head.
Guest:And I don't know where the guy, other fellow, had his gun positioned on my friend Joe.
Guest:We were lined up, me, gunman, Joe, gunman, and told to go into the house, which, you know, I assumed was we're going to go in, we're going to get robbed, we're going to get executed, pillow over the head.
Guest:you know, one behind the ear.
Guest:And so I said, well, we're dead.
Guest:And it was a very, I was not afraid, not that I was being brave and getting ready to do some kind of Bruce Lee action.
Guest:I was just in that moment going, well, this is how it ends.
Guest:And so as I opened the door, I said, how can I slow this down?
Guest:And I saw the VCR deck next to the little TV.
Guest:I went, I'll give them the VCR because now you're just grasping at straws.
Guest:You are trying to stay alive.
Guest:So I said, I'll give them the VCR and they'll go away and I'll wake up from this dream.
Guest:And at that moment, I dropped my grocery bags.
Guest:I put my hands back up as I was told to do.
Guest:And I heard shooting behind me.
Guest:And I went, wow, gunshots sound really strange in this house.
Guest:And then the gunshot stopped and I noticed my legs had taken the rest of me through the back of the house.
Guest:And the legs had said, Henry, we are leaving now.
Guest:And I ran, went through my little room, through the backyard, over the wall, to the alley, ran up to the Pioneer Chicken.
Guest:on Lincoln and Brooks, and I called the cops.
Guest:And I said, look, we just got robbed, and I did not know what happened to my friend Joe.
Guest:And the cops picked me up, tackled me, threw me on the ground, and cuffed me.
Guest:I said, no, but I'm the guy who called you.
Guest:And they said, you fit the description of the guys you called about.
Guest:I went, okay, well, right.
Guest:So they frisked me, and they brought me back to the crime scene.
Guest:And that's when a cop told me that my friend Joe had been killed.
Guest:And so what I think happened was I heard scuffling sounds behind me.
Guest:Either Joe tried to take the gun from the guy or tried to run, but eventually he was shot twice and was killed.
Guest:The guy shot at me twice, and one went right next to me and lodged in the door jamb to my left.
Guest:The other one went high and to the right, and the slog was found in a box of Alka-Seltzer in the kitchen.
Guest:It ricocheted around and actually landed in a box of Alka-Seltzer.
Guest:Sounds so odd it has to be real.
Guest:No one ever showed me any bullet slugs.
Guest:But I did get to see the bullet hole and its extraction in the door jamb.
Guest:And the next day they took me back to the house and the detective said, stand where you were standing.
Guest:I said, okay, well, it was between those two grocery bags, which are still there.
Guest:It's a crime scene.
Guest:And I said, I was right here.
Guest:And the guy went, wow, that guy tried to kill you.
Guest:And the bullet is like right next to me, heart high in the door jam.
Guest:So I was lucky.
Guest:The guy, you know, pistol, if you've ever shot, you can hit the target.
Guest:But if you're on the move and if the target's moving slightly, the math of all of that changes.
Guest:It's pretty easy to shoot at a piece of paper at a range.
Guest:And I do a lot of shooting.
Guest:it's not so easy when the thing even moves.
Guest:All of a sudden, that whole thing changes, and that's how a lot of people get to go home.
Guest:That's why I'm still here, because the guy missed.
Guest:And so upon hindsight, you know, what happened to Joe...
Guest:is part of the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex, the lack of education in this country, racism in this country, how half of this country fought the Civil Rights Act, how we fight literacy, it seems.
Guest:We fight wanting to know more.
Marc:But in that moment, it was just you lost your friend.
Guest:Yeah, so there's that analog sadness.
Guest:But I have to try and look at a bigger idea.
Guest:And if I were to be able to get these two guys in a room, would I kill them with a ball-peen hammer?
Guest:Some nights of the year, yeah, I can go there.
Guest:But most of the time, I just would like to tell them how you killed an unarmed guy.
Guest:I don't know how that's cool.
Guest:But you killed one of the coolest and most strangest, wonderfully strange people I've ever met.
Guest:When anyone dies, of course, oh, he was the best guy.
Guest:He really was an odd dude.
Guest:dude and a really good guy and a very harmless person very gentle guy didn't you know whenever he would fight he'd get his ass kicked he wasn't good at it but he was a good guy and you know you saw like bands like sonic youth and whole dedicated whole albums to him he had a lot of friends like a lot of musicians liked him he's just a good guy and he died for nothing he died for the two twenty dollar bills in my pocket and it didn't have to be that way so as an older guy wanting to make my country better
Guest:Well, that means we have to bring back the death penalty.
Guest:That doesn't stop people from killing.
Guest:Well, we have to ban guns.
Guest:That doesn't stop people from killing.
Guest:They'll just find popsicle sticks.
Guest:You have to maybe raise them the way that I was raised or...
Guest:taking a leap perhaps how you were raised, not knowing how you were raised.
Guest:All I know is there's no way you're gonna get me to rob a liquor store.
Guest:I'll beg before I'll steal and I'll beg before I'll mug somebody.
Guest:I'm just not gonna do it.
Guest:So how did I turn out that way?
Marc:It's cultural and it's generational and it's economic.
Guest:All of that.
Guest:But as a guy who's 50, that matters.
Guest:But that's what I want to address until I die, is I want to get at that and turn that around so you've got a country full of more people...
Guest:like me, literate, who don't want to rob a liquor store or stick a gun in someone's face.
Marc:And that is the struggle that goes on forever.
Marc:I mean, these things, that abyss that looks back at you, is the darker elements of human nature that has always existed.
Guest:Yeah, and the bad forces capitalize on the fact that humans are easy to scare the living hell out of.
Guest:And as I've said for many years, when the going gets rough, the average gets conservative.
Guest:And it's really easy to make someone rope a dope and go, no, no,
Guest:Any black guy with a beeper, he wants to rape my daughter.
Guest:It's how they recruit people to the Aryan nation.
Guest:Like, do you want your daughter getting raped by some black guy?
Guest:Well, hell no.
Guest:Well, then come with us.
Marc:And there's also cultural dogma within the black community that generates gangs as well.
Guest:But it's also, and it's, again, society.
Guest:It's how you protect yourself.
Guest:But it's also how you recruit people for the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Marc:It's honor, it's community, it's fear, it's all sort of malignant when it gets to that level.
Marc:A perceived enemy.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And that's what the right in this country has done a really, really good job of doing.
Guest:When you go to those Tea Party rallies, and I've not been, but when you see the reportage, it's all about the enemy and Glenn Beck is telling you.
Guest:I rented a car in Virginia a few months ago, and so I listened to two broadcasts of Glenn Beck.
Guest:I went for the whole...
Guest:whatever two hours i did the whole thing two hours going down to this this place i had to go to no i was just kind of tripping on like wow this is that guy's nuts and it was all about this this whole big brother we're being watched our our you know it's tyranny like wow man you don't even know what you're talking about no he doesn't and the people who are going yeah they don't know what you're talking about
Guest:And the enemy you're swinging at really doesn't exist.
Guest:But you're going to take it out.
Guest:You're going to see it in me.
Guest:You're going to see it in the black guy.
Guest:And so all of a sudden, your countryman is now your enemy.
Guest:And it's, you know, dividing conquer.
Guest:And they've really done really, really well with that.
Guest:The other side that fights that has not done a very good job to combat it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because it's the harder job.
Guest:You're asking someone to share.
Guest:You're asking them to be fair and humane.
Guest:When someone says, no, my bootstraps, pal.
Guest:Society gave you your bootstraps, the streets to drive your bootstraps down, and the leather to make the bootstraps.
Guest:So shut up about the bootstraps.
Guest:My father was one of those bootstraps guys.
Guest:He was an economist and did come from a big family, was working at like 4 a.m.
Guest:as a nine-year-old.
Guest:He really did come from a lot of that.
Guest:but he wore it wrong.
Guest:Everyone else was just trying to get by and get something from him.
Guest:And that's what we've got in this country.
Guest:And some people say, well, government is the problem.
Guest:For me, government is the last defense against the free market.
Guest:I need the government to defend me from Chevron, who are not cool.
Marc:They're never going to be cool.
Marc:You believe that democracy can and will continue to evolve in a positive direction?
Guest:No, because as you make things desperate for people, it's harder for them to be kind, to be generous, to be altruistic.
Guest:It's hard when your food bowl is empty to say, yeah, I got to share half of my, half of my what?
Guest:Half of my foreclosure, half of my nothing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Half of my kids are hungry.
Guest:There's when there's nothing to share.
Guest:All of a sudden you get you tap into a a primordial fear that gets really scary really fast.
Guest:I don't know if you've ever been frightened in that kind of way.
Guest:I have a few times and it's thrilling.
Guest:And if you're intellectual enough to kind of ride it out.
Guest:I work for National Geographic.
Guest:I shoot documentaries with Nat Geo.
Guest:We were in a swamp, as you are with Nat Geo.
Guest:I was in a swamp recently, and we were filming this thing, and I hear this, I'm like, okay, sounds like an alligator.
Guest:Whoa, it's an alligator whose nest we were encroaching upon.
Guest:This barking, wide-mouthed mother alligator is coming out of the swamp saying, get away from where I'm going to lay my eggs, and she was gravid.
Guest:And we're there with one of those guys with a headlamp on his head 24 hours.
Guest:Don't worry.
Guest:That's just an Americana crocodiles, whatever.
Guest:And he's like poking it with a stick.
Guest:And the thing is like rushing at us.
Guest:It taps into a fear where you just kind of go.
Guest:And like you're eight miles away.
Guest:And all of a sudden like, did I just run like a little bitch?
Guest:I did.
Guest:I'm in a car with the doors locked.
Guest:Because that thing tapped that button that makes you run up a tree.
Guest:And when you get hungry, you tap into that.
Guest:And all of a sudden, when you're that hungry, you get real mean.
Marc:And when your solutions are limited, that's where the abyss looks back at you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or, as they say, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Guest:And I think some people have really given a lot of Americans that idea of like...
Guest:All you have is a hammer.
Guest:Like, no, we have solar panels, actually.
Guest:We have different ways.
Marc:Sure, a lot of solutions, yeah.
Guest:There's lots of solutions.
Guest:And when you see major corporations, you know, like that great documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car?
Guest:That's great, yeah.
Guest:That perhaps gave us the electric car and pushed enough people going, wait a minute.
Marc:But let me get to, because we're going to, you know, we should probably finish up a little bit.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And there's a couple of questions I want to ask that are more specific and not political.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:One of the things that I learned about you when I worked with you, which I really like, was the ritualizing of your microphone.
Marc:Now you have one microphone that you use.
Guest:I just retired it and I actually gave it to Shure and they're going to put it on display.
Marc:How many shows had you blasted through?
Guest:It did 10 years and over 700 shows on pretty much any continent you want to name.
Guest:Music and spoken word.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:The music mics I actually wear out because I sweat so much into the diaphragm.
Guest:I rust them out.
Guest:And so I sure sponsors me so that they'll switch them out with me.
Guest:But the one for talking shows, it got retired in Cape Town, South Africa earlier this year.
Marc:How many shows?
Guest:About 740 something.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And why why the commitment to it?
Marc:The mic.
Marc:Just because it's a piece of machinery you can depend on?
Guest:Well, what, that specific model?
Marc:No, no, no, I mean that particular, because there's something about having something that you know you've spoken through and it's been with you all that time that, you know, there's a loyalty to it.
Marc:It's not just that you could have 10 mics.
Guest:Yeah, and I do.
Guest:Well, I always bring two on tour.
Guest:I bring the backup.
Guest:And I've got mics to record the show.
Guest:I've got mics like I'm speaking into right now for my little studio setup.
Marc:What was it, a 58?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Or a 58 beta?
Marc:No, 58.
Guest:I can't rock the beta.
Guest:The gain structure, they feed back with my voice.
Guest:No, the 58's all I need.
Guest:I use them in the studio for band records.
Guest:Engineers are like, you're going to use a 58?
Guest:Oh yeah, man, handheld.
Guest:And they can't believe it.
Guest:And then they hear, they go, wow, that's good.
Guest:And so, yeah, I use that microphone until the mid-range.
Guest:And when you know a microphone is fried, the mid-range goes.
Guest:And so I told my sponsor over at Shure, Corey.
Guest:I said, Corey, I'm retiring this mic.
Guest:Do you want it?
Guest:He went, oh, man.
Guest:Yeah, I go, I want that in a glass box on your desk.
Guest:And I think they're going to bring it to the NAMM conference early next year, and I'm going to stand next to it.
Guest:But I have my new one, which resumed.
Guest:As soon as I got back to America from South Africa, the new one was deployed, and I started using it.
Marc:And the other question I have before we go is, see, I went through a period where I was pretty fascinated with Manson for whatever.
Marc:I've examined my reasons.
Marc:Now, I know you had a relationship with him.
Guest:Yeah, we slept together from 72 to 72.
Guest:No, many years ago, his lawyer, whose name I forget now, sent two cassettes to SST Records.
Guest:That was a label Black Flag had.
Guest:It's a label I was on for a while.
Guest:And the two cassettes were also sent to Touch and Go Records and all these independent records.
Guest:And those two tapes have been bootlegged.
Guest:But it's not Lie.
Guest:It's not the first album.
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Marc:It's not the Manson record.
Guest:These are recordings made.
Guest:In a prison cell or in some kind of room at Lockerville.
Guest:And so they were sent to us.
Guest:They were sent to Touch and Go and all these different labels.
Guest:That's why the bootlegs floated around because the cassettes went everywhere.
Guest:And so his lawyer said, are you guys interested in putting this out?
Guest:And the staff at SST was busy working on things.
Guest:They said, hey, Henry, you play these tapes.
Guest:So I listened to them and I thought that the songs were pretty good.
Guest:I said, there's definitely a record here.
Guest:It's not the greatest son of quality, but it is Charles Manson.
Guest:You think people are mad at us now?
Guest:Boy, they'll be hopping mad if we put this one out.
Guest:They said, okay, it's your project.
Guest:So I wrote Charles Manson a letter.
Guest:Dear Mr. Manson, I read a book about you when I was 14, when I was home with the flu.
Guest:It's called Helter Skelter.
Guest:I'm sure you've heard of it.
Guest:I am now your editor, I guess.
Guest:And he started writing me letters.
Guest:And, you know, hey, I saw you on MTV and he saw me on MTV.
Guest:You know, you look a lot like me.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:Great.
Guest:And and so more correspondence, years of it followed.
Guest:More music came to me and I eventually got enough tapes and.
Guest:And these other tapes were not circulated as much.
Guest:The master cassettes were sent right to us.
Guest:I made my edits.
Guest:We mastered the record.
Guest:A test pressing was made.
Guest:I think five were in existence.
Guest:And then the record was going to be released.
Guest:It was going to be called Completion as one of the poems or lyrics on the record.
Guest:And I came up with that title.
Guest:Uh, and I wrote Manson.
Guest:I said, here's what I think it should be called due to this thing that you said.
Guest:And he said, that sounds good to me.
Guest:And I said, look, man, I don't, I've sent your, your lawyer, uh, the, the, the record.
Guest:I don't know if you can hear it, but it's an edit of what you sent me.
Guest:And so he said, okay.
Guest:And then, uh, the LA times got ahold of the information and all of a sudden we are getting these incredible death threats on the phone where, uh,
Marc:From family members?
Guest:From Americans.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Saying, here's the address of your bass player, who was a female.
Guest:Here's your bass player's address.
Guest:We know where she lives.
Guest:You put out this record, we're going to gut her like a fish.
Guest:And these phone calls are coming in at like four in the morning.
Guest:And they got to the owners of SST to the point where they said, we're not putting out the record.
Guest:I said, oh, come on, we've been getting death threats since the beginning from the cops and everyone else, church groups, you name it.
Guest:White power organizations, they all hated us.
Guest:So I said, what's another death threat?
Guest:It's like complaining about the rain when you're already wet.
Guest:Who cares?
Guest:And they said, no, we're not going to do it.
Guest:They threatened Kira, the bass player.
Guest:We can't do it.
Guest:And so I had to write Charles Manson and say, look, here's what happened.
Guest:A lot of death threats, the company, and I had to try and explain the particulars, like, it's not my record company.
Guest:It's not my decision.
Guest:If it were me, we'd put this damn thing out and be done with it.
Guest:And so he got very angry at me, because I guess he didn't quite understand.
Guest:He goes, well, I always knew you were going to rip me off.
Guest:You're treating me just like the Grateful Dead and the Beach Boys did.
Guest:You guys are all the same.
Guest:And I wrote him back.
Guest:I said, damn, man, look, I...
Guest:Here's the situation.
Marc:You're Charles Manson.
Marc:A lot of people hate you.
Guest:But I said, it's not my label.
Guest:Yes, I'm on the label.
Guest:My band is on the label.
Guest:I'm in a band with the guys on the label, but it's not my label, not my decision.
Guest:And I couldn't make him understand that or he chose not to or whatever, but he cursed me out.
Guest:And then I wrote him one last time.
Guest:And said, hey, me and my guys were in my solo band.
Guest:We're going out on tour.
Guest:And he wrote back and said, well, good luck with that.
Guest:And that was like 23, 24 years ago.
Guest:And so that was it.
Guest:So I had this brief bit of correspondence, all of which I've held on to.
Guest:And I still have the cassettes.
Marc:So I'm coming over to listen to that and the Iggy mix.
Yeah.
Guest:And so it was a very interesting time.
Marc:But did you find him to be why?
Marc:Why is he so fascinating?
Marc:Why is there enough sympathy in your heart to have a communication with him?
Marc:Why was I so fascinated with him?
Guest:Well, I can't speak for you, but I was his editor.
Guest:Like, someone has to be his lawyer.
Guest:And I can't defend the actions of a guy who inspires people to go murder people.
Guest:But I was also 22 or 23 at the time.
Guest:So it was fascinating.
Guest:And I was fascinated.
Guest:And Charles Manson is writing me.
Guest:It was pretty cool.
Guest:Because this kind of poster boy for the end of the 60s and the epitome of counterculture...
Guest:Is writing me.
Guest:And he signs his name with this great flourish with this big swastika in the middle of his name.
Guest:And I always knew I got a letter from Manson when I'd go to my little P.O.
Guest:box and the entire USPS staff behind the counter would scowl it.
Guest:Yeah, I bet.
Guest:I'd walk in and they'd all give me the, oh, incoming mail from Charlie.
Guest:Otherwise, they'd be kind of plain face to me.
Guest:But on the incoming mail days from Manson, I'd get the angry face.
Guest:And it was consistent.
Guest:that Manson wrote that punk rocker again.
Guest:And so it was, you know, and I can't defend the actions of what, you know, he inspired those, you know, all those people.
Guest:You can't go cut people up and go, yay, there's nothing good about that.
Guest:But, um, he,
Marc:he's a very interesting character famous witch he's not stupid yeah and he's not a bad musician yeah so it was a very interesting time and one other question d well last time i talked to you when we worked together you had been given a bunch of cassettes of the ramones from joey's widow right not joey's widow uh johnny johnny's yeah yeah and what's the progress with that project
Guest:I transferred all of the cassettes.
Guest:I made analog and digital backups.
Marc:And these were practice cassettes?
Marc:You like new songs?
Guest:Demos, practice tapes, live tapes.
Guest:It was like a teaspoon into this huge ocean of media sitting at Johnny and...
Guest:his Linda's house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And after Johnny passed away, I called up Linda cause I was friends with them.
Guest:And I said, you should let me go through all the closets, all the notebooks, stuff, everything needs to be digitized.
Guest:It needs to be backed up.
Guest:You know, all the music media needs to be backed up analog and digital.
Guest:I mean, it's the Ramones, it's history.
Guest:It's important.
Guest:I said, I'd like to take a crack at that.
Guest:She said, great.
Guest:So I came over and grabbed a bunch of stuff, digitized the paper and,
Guest:And digitized and went analog back up on all the music stuff.
Guest:Gave it all back to her and said, it's your stuff.
Guest:And I made her a CD, because she doesn't have a lot of gear to replace.
Guest:I made her a CD of like 30 seconds of all the greatest hits of the cassettes.
Guest:So I said, you can walk this into Rhino.
Guest:and go, here, here's an audition tape.
Guest:Here's like 20 seconds of this board tape from the Agora, but you don't get the whole song.
Guest:And she goes, what do I do with this?
Guest:I go, it's a tease.
Guest:You have all of it here.
Guest:Here's your complete CDs.
Guest:It's like a publisher's cassette.
Guest:Here's the riff.
Guest:Here's the chorus.
Guest:Here's the money part.
Guest:But you only get 20 seconds of it.
Guest:And so I go, take that in next time Rhino wants to do some kind of Ramones thang.
Guest:Because as far as Ramones fans...
Guest:We would love to hear something like this.
Guest:And the fact that it comes from Johnny's closet.
Guest:Are you kidding?
Guest:This is what we've been waiting for.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's it's the chapter, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so it is her property.
Guest:It resides with her.
Guest:It's for her.
Guest:And I guess Joey's brother, those two run the estate.
Marc:OK.
Guest:So I have nothing to do with it.
Marc:And you did your part and you'll see what happens.
Guest:Yeah, I did my thing.
Guest:And I got a letter today because I also worked on Johnny Ramone's autobiography.
Guest:He died partway through his autobiography.
Guest:And he said, well, let Henry see it.
Guest:And so Linda said, here's the manuscript.
Guest:So I worked on it for quite a while.
Guest:And so his attorney wrote me today and said, hey, we're done with the book.
Guest:It's going to come out.
Guest:We want to give you some kind of credit.
Guest:Can we give you credit as a contributing editor?
Guest:Which is, I did edit.
Guest:So I said, yeah, that'll work.
Guest:Cool.
Guest:And so I'll get a little...
Guest:thumbs up on the book and it's uh well at least what i read was really cool because johnny was had a mind like a steel trap and was honest as day is long you might not like what he has to say about oh race yeah democrats yeah things but at least he'll tell you it's kind of like archie bunker with a guitar yeah and you know loved rush limbaugh loved the fox news but at least he'd kind of walk into the front door and let you know it was you know he kind of
Marc:So different than Joey, too, huh?
Guest:Yeah, Joey was on the other side of that.
Marc:Well, Henry, fuck, it's been great talking to you.
Marc:Great catching up.
Marc:Thanks for coming.
Guest:No problem.
Marc:Okay, I think we did it.
Marc:I think I had a conversation with Henry Rollins.
Marc:I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:That's our show.
Marc:Thank you, Henry, for coming.
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Marc:Huh?
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