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Henry Rollins-- Dig Interview Exclusive!
By Jarrod on Thu, Oct 30, 2008 4:49 pm
del.ico.us
reddit!With less than a week left until November 4, Henry Rollins will take the stage at the Orpheum on Saturday night to bring his one man spoken-word show, "Recountdown," to Boston. Spouting off about the election, the world, and his long running career as an outspoken American original, Rollins sheds some light on where's he's at today and where he hopes to be going as an American.
You've had a pretty long run in the game thus far. Is there anything that has remained a constant for you from you days with Black Flag to the present?
Well, in those days we never thought much past the food bowl. You get used to your allotted life—the grind: smelly men in a van and playing to 50-1200 angry people every night in clubs that smelled like a men's room. You'd go to a record store and look at records because you couldn't afford to buy any. So many nights Greg Ginn and I would just walk through Tower Records in LA and just look at records, say "wow, I bet that sounds really cool," and then leave. It's kind of like dry humping the cover of a playboy magazine and saying "wow that was my date." You can't take anything for granted and you're stupid to do so. A guy like me would be wise to bring extra portions of gratitude wherever he goes, and that's what I do. I'm always in my minimum wage mindset. Always in the mailroom.
Musician, spoken-word artist, writer, talk show host—all of these apply to you. Are they simultaneously relevant to you?
They're all rich on one common theme, all coming from the same basic batch. Sometimes I've got a band behind me and sometimes it's just me on my own, but it's all expression. Sometimes you can take it to the page, other times it could be the songs you put together for a playlist on a radio show. That's the commonality of it—it's all in the key of "me," or something. As I get older, and I'm very aware of my age, the talking shows make more sense to me. They're more relevant to how I'm living and processing information at present. When you're 20, you see the girl and you write a song, you want to sing about it. As a guy who's nearly 50, I go to Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and I see things—I go to these places almost every year and it makes me want to talk about it, not necessarily write a song. I want to comment on this election, I want to say things about it, and that's where the talking medium lends itself more to where my interests are now.
There seems to be a lack of any real youth movement going on in the country at the moment. Do you think that the election provides a chance for the kids who came up post 9/11 during the Bush administration to define themselves?
I think there's a more voyeuristic take on things with the advent of 24 hour media and convenience—you know, cell phone, internet…--it allows a young person to be almost functionally illiterate now that you can speak in text language, which is destroying the English language, now that you can point and click, or do nothing. No one's asking you to really contribute. You can get the idea, wrongly, that democracy is not yours to lose, that you should not be civically erect and vigilant and contributing to the maintenance of what you think is your birthright. You've got to fix the roof, otherwise, the house leaks and falls over. It should've been the youth vote that kept Bush from getting four more years. I used to say that people had to vote because they're never going to have a politician that you're going to love as much as Ozzy Osbourne, who makes you want to pump your fist and go "hell yeah!" I think I'm wrong now. I think that's Barack Obama. Look at the size of the crowds. Who get 75,000 people besides Freddie Mercury? I think a lot of young people now have their guy—it's a younger, vibrant, "hell yeah" Lollapalooza demographic. I think Obama has ignited these people's imaginations and inspired them, and that's what may be the key to what some might call disaster, what I call progress, in America.
Do you think America is ready progress and change as a nation or do you think, come November 5th, we'll have chosen to stick with what's familiar and "safe" to us?
I often wonder how many more foreclosures it's going to take, I wonder how many republicans and people who support Bush and McCain need to get kicked out of their homes, lose their jobs to somewhere overseas , or lose their children to the bloodbath in Iraq for them to say "it's time to do something different." It's like the guy who has to spend $150,000 on cocaine before he can come to the conclusion that cocaine is probably a dead end. I often wonder if America's woken up enough to say "what is the source of the unrest?" To say that, I guess you hate the troops and hate America and all that. It's very hard to lead people to change. It's very hard to lead a country that's 46 in literacy to change. It's very hard to lead a country that doesn't seem to dig books, we don't seem to travel much, a weird fraction of people don't hold their passport. So you have a country that has potential to easily be goaded into another unsustainable, unending conflict. You have the media, which is utterly complicit. I think CNN is covered in as much Marine blood as Dick Cheney. I can say the same thing about the New York Times and the Washington Post—they knew and they did not tell. They knew stuff. They should have done something. They did not. I'm mad about that. There are a lot of things greasing the rails to help us not learn and not be ready for change. Change shouldn't be that scary. It should be jumping into some cold water, but you acclimate. I know what I'm ready for, I know what I can't wait for, and I know what I'm pushing for. As to my neighbor, those who vote against me, who oppose what I think the right thing is to do, I just always like to know that when they become broke-ass I'll do my best to feed them. I'll give them an Aretha Franklin record and a sandwich and hope that helps.
Interview conducted by Jarrod Annis on 10/29/08
That Lucky Old Son of a Bitch
By Jarrod on Fri, Sep 26, 2008 2:10 pm
In lieu of any actual mythological history belonging to this country, I have long since adopted rock and roll and, to a larger extent, pop music in general, as my own personal mythos. Pop provides a canon of tales and fables running the gamut of triumph and tragedy, replete with its own stable of heroes, villains, wizards and weirdoes. When I get tired revering normal, everyday folk as demigods because they happen to be able to sing and play an instrument, the next best thing is watching one of these hapless heroes crash and burn in plain view of the public eye. Despite the sadistic pleasure taken in watching another fall from grace, what I and many others like myself in this country really love is a good, old fashioned redemption story. Enter Brian Wilson.
Brian Wilson became, arguably, pop music’s greatest composer in the 1960s before he suffered a severe mental collapse at the end of the decade. With the release of his new album, That Lucky Old Sun, the former Beach Boy has made himself relevant for the first time since completing his long abandoned SMiLE project in 2004. His legend often overshadows him. After all, here’s a guy who tried to top Sgt. Pepper, drove himself nuts, filled his living room with sand and stayed in bed for the better part of the 1970s. Brian Wilson may very well be rock and roll’s own village idiot, a sort of pop music savant who I can sympathize with because he seems virtually incapable of doing anything, with the exception of writing gorgeous pocket-sized symphonies about surfer chicks and hot rods. Now believe me, you will find no greater fan of Wilson’s oeuvre than myself—I happen to think that Pet Sounds and “Good Vibrations” are monumental pop records and that “Surfer Girl” is one of the most beautiful songs ever recorded by anybody— but, I mean, if you cut the man, he would probably ooze sunshine and beach sand. So, why do we keep him around?
Well, Jason Fine’s recent profile of Wilson in Rolling Stone sums it up almost perfectly in a quote from Wilson’s collaborator Scott Bennett, “…what moves people about Brian Wilson, beyond the beautiful melodies and harmonies, is ‘Here’s Brian Wilson. He’s survived; he’s alive.’” That’s it in a nutshell. He’s still alive. When Keith Richards finally kicks his overdue bucket, Brian Wilson will be sitting at his piano in a daze, writing a song about a car, gloriously filling his Depend undergarment while he enjoys the last laugh. Wilson has been on top, been through hell, and pulled himself up by his boot…or, rather, flip-flop straps and he’s still here damn it! That’s got to count for something, right? Well sure. Let’s be honest, Brian Wilson isn’t doing anything new and innovative, he’s essentially been making the same record for almost 50 years, he’s just been getting better at it.
Case in point: Wilson’s plans for his next album, as he outlines in Fine’s interview, “It’s called Pleasure Island: A Rock Fantasy. It’s about some guys who took a hike, and they found a place called Pleasure Island. And they met all kinds of chicks, and they went on rides and—it’s just a concept…” What is this crap? I consider myself to be a fairly positive person, but I’m sorry, some things are just inane. It seems that Wilson himself and the albums he composes have a very major similarity: they both seem to exist in some nostalgic fantasyland where everybody runs around in Bermuda shorts and bikinis for a while, hop into their two seat coupes, and go to some beach where guys and girls don’t even want to have sex, just hold hands and kiss a lot. Not only does this sickly sweet Southern California not exist now, I’m not sure it ever did.
There’s a part of me that’s comforted though, by the fact that there is still a place for Brian Wilson in America today. Wilson represents the type of innocence that I believe we all secretly wish we could have again. The fact that simple songs about fun, sun, and love are still resonating with people makes me feel good, like there is still hope for a culture poisoned by cynicism and apathy. God forbid we’re all happy for no good reason. Brian Wilson comes from a time when pop music could change the world, and that’s still what he’s trying to do. Pleasure Island may sound like the most sappy, simple, overly idealistic place I’ve ever heard of, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to go there.
