Written by Jason Green Sunday, 14 October 2007 04:43

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Henry Rollins | One Man Wrecking Machine
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You're about to head out on yet another spoken word tour. What do you get creatively from those tours that you don't get necessarily from the TV show or the radio show?

It's such a long time to spend onstage, and it's such an involving experience in that I'm going to live for two months on a tour bus with shows 6 to 7 nights a week—there's no week that's below 6 shows. It just goes on and on. A few shows in, you kind of forget that there's anything else, which I really like. I like that obsessive focusing that you go through to really make this thing go, where you live for the shows.

When I'm finishing a book, when we're in final edit, I'll do two shifts at my office: come in, do the day, go home, eat, come back and do the 7 to 12 shift—what Fitzgerald called "living in the book." And that's why I like going out on long tours. It becomes more than just, "Oh, here's this thing I'm doing." It's your life. And where some people get worn down and they miss home, for me it becomes this opportunity to really give more and more onstage.

I'm looking forward to that, and that leads to more creativity, for me at least, because a large part of the day there's nothing else to do. You're either in the tour bus, or backstage at the venue. It's kind of like when you're waiting for an airplane and you get a lot of reading done: when I'm on tour, I get a lot of work done, because there's not the distraction of "Oh, here's all my records. Here's all my books. I'm home, here's my stuff." I'm on the road. I'm living out of a DeWalt tool bag and a backpack, and I've got a gig that night which hangs over my head like a Damoclidian dagger.

So I just have this very focused, albeit somewhat narrow, day. Because it's all about 8 PM. That's what it's all about—hitting the stage—and so the day is basically a funnel, getting me to that moment, so by 6 o'clock I'm done with work and I'm now focusing on the show. And I like living that way, because you strive for excellence every night. It suits me.

 

Do you notice a difference in the crowds at your spoken word shows as opposed to your rock shows, and has the difference become more pronounced since the IFC show has established you as a talk show personality?

Well, the talk shows draw a very large audience, and a very divergent demographic...50/50 men/women, as far as I can tell. I mean, I really don't study the crowd much. I'm trying to concentrate on what I'm saying because I'm really trying not to let the ball hit the ground. I've noticed the age group is very wide in the talking shows, whereas it's somewhat more narrow in the band shows.

But as far as getting a bigger audience because of the TV show: I wish that happened. I mean, I wish the thing fairly exploded because of the TV show. Like, "My God, it sold out?!" But that did not happen. There has not seemed to be any kind of, "Well, I watched his show, I never knew the guy before, and he's coming to town? By golly, let's go!" I really would have liked for that to have been the case, but it's not.

The shows do fine. No town ever says, "Sorry, you didn't draw enough, we don't want you back"...quite the opposite, so I'm lucky there. But I can't see any perceptible bounce in attendance because of, really, anything I do. I can gauge it by the mail order that we do here, the books and what not, and you figure all these people would say "Ah, let's go to his website!" Nah. We've done very well this year, mail order, but it's not been, like, five times [as much]. We did a little better in the summer months, when everyone's usually out having fun and no one bothers to buy a book. It doesn't change a lot, but usually we're usually fairly dead, [and] it's been fairly lively, but not where we're looking at each other going "What the hell's going on?"

And I don't know what that's due to. Apparently, the TV show rates fairly well; IFC says every year, more people watch, and they're very happy with the amount of people who are watching, hence another season of work. But I don't know if there will be any crossover. It very well could be we'll see something like that happen this year, I don't know.

It's been six years since the last full Rollins Band record. Do you see that part of your career as still going and just on a break?

No, I really don't look at it in that way. I've done a lot of records and a lot of touring, and I don't really think anyone is really waiting with baited breath for me to do anything musical. And that doesn't necessarily determine my action. I don't wait around for enough letters to come in. I get the odd letter every day or every other day, "Hey man, I'm in Germany, you guys haven't shown up in a while! Hurry up!

We went out last summer, me and the group, and did a lot of shows in late July, all of August, and a few days in early September, like five and a half, six weeks. And the shows went well, very well-received, and we played well, so we get the gold star. But I came back from it and I didn't want to just jump right into the practice room and start writing songs. Which would be the ritual, where you tour all summer, then everyone takes a week to visit friends and family, and then you throw into the practice room and practice ‘til Christmas and work on songs, which was a great ritual for many years of my life.

I didn't feel it this time, and I think you should go in honestly knowing you respond to that and that if anything feels forced, and the art will show it. You can always tell. You've probably been to a few shows in your time; you can always tell when a performer is dialing it in. No one fools anyone, it's like trying to fool a dog. Hey, now! A horse knows when you're scared. And audiences have that, they have a collective instinct. If one guy's not getting it, the guy next to him, just the way the person's standing, it rubs off. So if you're not going to do something that you're desperate to do, then don't do it.

And with a band, you're talking 4 or 5 guys, over a number of weeks, at great personal, emotional, and financial expense, and I didn't know if we'd have all 5 people wagging their tails vigorously, waiting to get into the practice room, and I looked at my own tail and it wasn't that way. So I said, "I'll see you guys around the university" and I went home. The last show was in LA, I literally hopped into my mighty Subaru Outback and drove back to my house, and I haven't seen those guys since, and that was about a year ago.

I just haven't really thought about it. I've been more working on the TV show, the radio show, gearing up for this tour—which is pretty ambitious—and doing a lot of traveling. A lot of learning, a lot of note taking and reading. I think where I admire Mick Jagger, and a lot of these people, that they go out and they do it, and they do it very well. I mean, Mick Jagger's what, 60-something? And there's no slack in his act, and he's out there singing "Brown Sugar" and "Satisfaction," 30 year old songs. They are effectively a ceremonial ritual outfit that supplies old music to medium-to-old people. That's kind of a vaudeville act, it may as well be a cover band. There's nothing new happening, and the band knows full well that if they play more than one or two songs from the new album, everyone starts looking at their watch.

I don't want to do that. I understand the ethic - "Put on the show, it'll be great!" But I don't want to be one of those acts. Basically, it's nothing Miles Davis or John Coltrane ever would have done. They would move on to some new thing, and they'd suffer the slings and arrows both critically and attendance-wise. Miles especially, because he was out there for so many years. He'd get a new line-up-"Whoa, whoa, what're you doing? There's a wah-wah pedal onstage? I don't think so!" And Miles would say, "Well, then don't show up." Never look back. So many other bands, at this point, that's kind of all they do, and that's what we did last summer, we just played songs that we knew because we hadn't written anything. And that's okay for one tour, that's okay for 40 American dates, but if we went out this year and did that? Shame on us for ripping off the audience.

Until I come up with something I'm burning to do, losing sleep over, musically, I'm going to do the stuff that I am losing sleep over.

[Continue to page 3 to read Rollins' thoughts on acting in horror movies, as well as his thoughts on the upcoming U.S. presidential election.]