Full Flex

Rip It Up, Issue 201, 1 May 1994, Page 28

Full Flex

From his humble beginnings as a hyperactive, dysfunctional kid in Washington DC to his current position as highly respected one man creative empire, Henry Rollins has simply done what he needed to and moved on. His days with Black Flag are legend and the Rollins Band are reaching that status. He has a very successful book company, 2.13.61. that puts out his own blood and guts writing (seven volumes in print now) as well as work by the likes of Nick Cave, Exene Cervenka and others. This has expanded now to include a fledgling video arm and 1994 will also see the release of the first CDs through Infinite Zero, a label Rollins runs along with Rick Rubin. Let’s not forget the movies as well. After working on The Chase with Charlie Sheen last year, Rollins has landed a part in Johnny Mnemonic which is based around a novel by cyberpunk guru

William Gibson and stars Keanu Reeves. Filming in Toronto has just finished and by all accounts it’s a pretty impressive deal. Factor into all this a touring schedule for both the band and Rollins’ spoken word shows that could kill most bands and you have an idea of how this man works. But it’s the band thing we’re going to concern ourselves with here as that is Rollins at full flex. With bass player Andrew Weiss gone and ex-Defunkt, Decoding Society and Ornette Coleman bassist Melvin Gibbs in his place, the Rollins Band have found a new creative kick and the result of that is the most recent album Weight. It’s a downright scary record by a band that seem perfectly in control. They bludgeon you then nurse you back onto your feet so you can go another few rounds. Like Rollins himself, it’s very upfront, honest, powerful and unforgiving. It’s helped restore my faith in all things Rock and the live experience will probably plain fry your mind. Henry Rollins does nothing half-assed, interviews included. He’s brutally frank and has a memory for dates and events that is pretty damn phenomenal, so for once the rock interview procedure is downright entertaining. Let’s start at the beginning. What was your initial push into music? "Me and lan Mac Kaye were always into music as fans, as record buyers and as gig attendees. Only the big arena rock shows though because this was before there was any local scene. We saw Zeppelin, Nugent, Aerosmith — the more aggro the better. We eventually got into punk and a lot of our friends began playing in bands, lan got a band and I became the roadie because I couldn’t play but I could carry stuff. We started buying all these 7"s and seeing bands like the Bad Brains and the Cramps, and it went from there.” The DC thing is still going strong and you still seem to have a lot of respect for it all. "Yeah, that’s because people like lan Mac Kaye and his brother and sister — all of who I’ve known since I was 11 — were cool then and are cool now. A lot of the other people I grew up around like Mark Sullivan of Kingface are just really stand-up people. These people have always maintained a high level of integrity and out here in California you meet people and remember when they were cool, but you don’t exactly remember when they fell off. In DC even when the people who aren’t doing music are still doing something they’re not burned out, strung out or evil. You can learn a lot from them, and you gotta respect that.’’ So how did the move from DC to Black Flag happen? “Well, we were friends with the Flag, lan had contacted them and they knew of his band the Teen Idles and stayed at lan’s house when they toured. They hung out with everyone in our little scene. We took Chuck to get a haircut and they were really cool guys, easy to talk to. Chuck kept in touch with me, he’d call and be like ‘You should check out Sabbath’. He’d tell me about these band and see

how my band SOA was going, how lan was doing and it was totally cool. Out of nowhere the guy from Black Flag was calling me. Then they came East again several months later in June 81 and New York was the closest date to me, so I drove up and saw them play Irving Plaza with the Bad Brains and UXA. After that they played a little after hours place called 7A which is still around, and I went to the gig. I asked Dez to play ‘Clocked In’ so I could hear it as I had to drive back to DC and go to work. Basically I just got up on stage and was like ‘Can I take the mike?’ and I sang the song as best I could. It was fun, more like a party than a gig and the crowd was going nuts. The guys in the band were looking at each other like ‘Whoahl’ ‘cause I was just ‘WRRRAAAHHH!’ It was how I thought the singer of Black Flag should be, I was just a 20 year old spazz. So a few days later in DC the band calls up and asks me to do an audition as singer because Dez wanted to play rhythm guitar more. I went straight up to New York and went to a practice place called Mi Casa and we just started with ‘Police Truck’ and

played their set twice, what I didn’t know I just yelled over, anything to keep it moving. They talked about it for a few minutes and just said ‘You’re in!’ So I went back to DC with the lyrics that would later comprise ‘Damaged’, quit my job, sub-let my apartment and gave my car to my old roommate. I called up lan and said ‘You’re not going to believe this but I’m joining Black Flag!’ He was really excited and told me not to worry about it ‘cause I was a little nervous. Next thing I’m on a Greyhound and meeting up with the band in Detroit. Which is funny as five years later to the month we did our last show in Detroit which sort of took it full circle. So that’s how I joined Black Flag and in July 86 it broke up and by Halloween I was in England with Chris Haskett • recording ‘Hot Animal Machine’ with some friends of ours.” Black Flag did some pretty legendary stuff — the Saturday Night Live washout for instance. “Yeah, John Belushi was a friend and fan of Black Flag, friends with Chuck Dukowski and Greg Ginn. He dug the music and dug the attitude and wanted to help the band out some, so one day he called up and said ‘l’m going to get you and Fear on Saturday Night Live'. Fear went first and all the guys from DC showed up. I don’t know how they found out about it, I forget, but they were there and it’s true, it’s all on film. It was a very small set and these kids were allowed to come up front so when Fear went on they all went nuts. lan,' all the famous little DC faces,? they demolished the place. Cameras were knocked around and stuff was broken, the whole deal. You hear differing reports on how much damage was done but it was just 11 rumbustious guys enjoying themselves, no ill will intended. But Saturday Night Live’s people were like ‘OK, that s it!’ and Flag was canned. We were also, due to; go on the Johnny. Carson Show but he heard about it and decided punk rock mayhem was not for him. The most interResting thing was that lan and Belushi hung out afterwards and lan said he was a really cool guy. He had lan’s record and dug the whole j scene. Very cool.” Black Flag was always the total road band, you toured perpetually which is something bands don’t seem to do any longer. Nowdays they get signed after a few shows and a demo. “It’s their. loss too, they don’t have any history to draw on except their record collections, they don’t know about going out and playing. They might have done maybe 30 gigs where the PA sucked but we did 500. I’m not saying it’s necessary but I think there’s something good about a band that comes up a little slower and has to survive a few winters, the whole ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ thing, except it’s what doesn’t break you up makes you a better band. It’s all relative though. If you look at the Stooges, they’re as brilliant as it gets and they played and played, Iggy got beat up a lot and no-one made any money. They’d look at Flag and say ‘Well, don’t they have it nice!”’ So on to the Rollins band, it came togther in England?

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