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There was a time in my life, I’d say somewhere in the 1986 range, where if you’d told me that I’d be sitting here in 2007 finalizing an interview I did with Henry Rollins, I’d have laughed in your face, kicked ya where it counts, and told ya to go get me another beer. But that was a lot of years ago, and I didn’t think I’d make it to 30, let alone to 37. I didn’t think I’d be a professor, either, or a parent, or still interested in Henry Rollins’s output (or, hell, that’d he’d still have one). That said, you can imagine that life got pretty interesting when an old friend, our dear Editatrix, decided to offer me a stab at chatting with Rollins last month. My first response was, “Hell yeah!” My second response was, “Hell no!” My third and final response was, “Oh, fuck. What did I get myself into?” But being the mature grown-up that I am, I sucked it up and added it to the huge pile on my summer vacation work table. I drummed up some questions, none of them about the punk rock swill years, (frankly, I’m sick of hearing about the "punk rock question"), based on what I researched about Rollins in the past ten years(ish). Truth be told, I haven’t cracked a Rollins book since Pissing in the Gene Pool and Art to Choke Hearts and I’m not up on what The Rollins Band is doing as of late. I listen to Lifetime, Hard Volume, and Hot Animal Machine and a lot of Black Flag. I summarily live in the past, I guess, but reading up on Rollins made me want to know what’s making him tick these days. I caught a Tivo’d episode of The Henry Rollins Show at a buddy of mine’s pad and started with the questions. What follows is the raw shit. And after all the years of Henry-bashing that’s gone on in the world of would-be Black Flag enthusiasts, I’m officially loathe to hear it now. Rollins, like me, has grown up. He has an opinion still, sure. It’s still strong, sure. But, he’s also got a sharp and critical mind worth paying attention to. This interview became about the Iraqi invasion, cell phones, truncated letters, and patriotism. It wasn’t all bitching about bad dates and sweaty punk rock t-shirts replacing his good ones at a show in the middle of nowhere. Sure, that stuff’s still there in his repertoire, but…

As per usual, my job was interrupted by our beloved Murphy and his Law that likes to always bite me in the ankles. It was time to call Hank, my phone was dead. I fiddled with the cord and time beat on. I called the publicist, and the number she gave me bleeped the fax bleep. I panicked, trying again to connect. I call Henry on my cell phone to tell him what the hell is going on. There's no answer. Tried the publicist's number a third or seventh time. She finally answered. It's eight minutes into a short, twenty minute interview. We decide to postpone for a month since my phone doesn't seem to work. I pout and call the phone company, who inform me that there's a billing problem. I look up the number of the cancelled check that's paid the bill, read it off to them in a rage, they apologize, and tell me I'll be connected between 2 and 48 hours. I keep checking back anyway, and twenty minutes later it's working. Then, back on the line with Henry's publicist to tell her in case Hank finds the time I can do the interview. Ten minutes later, I'm talking to Henry. The good news is that now he's got no other interview after me, and what was to be a 20-minute interview turned out to be an hour.

Okay, folks, here we go...

HENRY ROLLINS: This is Henry.

SARA SUTLER-COHEN: Alright man we are in business.

HR: Alright.

SS-C: So I guess all these things make life a little bit interesting, right?

HR: Uh, I guess. Phone hassles are more frustrating for me than anything. (laughs)

SS-C: Alright. So thank you for making time for me. Now I don’t have to wait a month to do this interview. I know you are heading out to Europe tomorrow so I really appreciate you doing this.

HR: Oh, it’s alright.

SS-C: Alright, so, my name’s Sara, I’m calling you from Seattle, and I’m doing this for Crusher Magazine out of New York City. There’s a lot I want to talk to you about, so we’ll see how far we get and you can just cut me off and say you gotta go when you gotta go.

HR: Alright, fair enough.

SS-C: There was an episode of The Henry Rollins Show, the one with Shane McGowan, and you do this monologue and it really stuck in my head. In my other life I’m a sociology professor, and what you said I grapple with myself. So I thought we would start there and then segue into “Provoked” and I’ve got a whole smattering of other things. In your monologue (Episode #315, The Henry Rollins Show) you discussed revisionist history. And not your garden variety revisionism where someone might call The Civil War "The War Of Northern Aggression" or "The War Between The States", right?

HR: Right.

SS-C: You almost set up this dystopic future where people have these blinders on and where everything is sort of candy-coated like the stench of a sweet decay, I guess. I wonder if you could just take a minute, remark on this phenomenon a bit more, add to what you had already said, and my question here is: What are the real dangers here, in your eyes, of this modern day revisionism in America?

HR: I think we’ve done that quite a bit. Ever since the Cold War, Truman to now, I think we endlessly revise and cleanse our history so America has not done anything bad, and so all these “Jihadists” these “Islamo-facsists” they just [take] our freedom. And this middle-America or whoever is listening to this crap is led to believe that out of some vacuum comes Osama Bin Laden. That there’s been nothing that led up to it whatsoever and if you say, “Do you think there could have been anything that could have got us to that point,” [then you get] “No, the U.S. is cool man,” and you go “Okay,” and when you try and talk to them about, "What about the overthrow of Mossadeq in 1953 in Iran? What about the fact that we put a base in Saudi Arabia?" You know, we’re not defending the Taliban. If you think that there’s not going to be some blowback, some fallout, some collateral, some fifty years of going in, kicking out their guy, putting in our fascists, if you think the Arab culture, the Persian culture, they’re thousands of years old--we’re like twenty minutes old--and so, if they didn’t have problems, I would be surprised. I might not agree with the action they take, but we’ve killed a lot of them, too, and taken away a lot of their stuff and called it something else. So, if that erasure of that immediate history--and you can go back thousands of years--if you want to go back sixty years, that’s like a bit of a nanosecond, historically. And so with that cleansing, that’s how you sell the Iraq War to Americans. You go “Yeah, all of them, those fuckin’ towelheads!” And you get this basic ignorance of Islam. And you have Islamic scholars, and they can’t even get to the bottom of it, it’s so convoluted and ancient, as is ancient history, where their neighbor has a different dialect. That’s pretty deep. That’s a deep idea to try to get your head around.

And so, in this last few years with the advent of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, you have this manipulation of history, where if you point out something you have some raving lunatic misspelling every third word and never signing their letter, telling you to get out of their country. “You treasonist! Why do you hate the troops!” [People tell me] “You don’t support the soldiers!” [But] “I thought that’s what I was doing!” And so you get into these crazy and illogical discourses with these people like Sean Hannity. This is how these people make their money. Banking on the fact that you (the general you) will not go investigate some history. And there will be the person to tell you “You need to get your history straight.” And I’m like, “Really. Okay, because I think I’ve been spending quite a bit of time trying to do just that and when I do, it leads me to wonder how we’ve been getting away with this for so long.” And so, it’s very, very dangerous in the short term and the long term--in any term you care to mention. It’s poisonous and if we keep pounding at that square peg into the round hole, well, you’re going to get endless bombings, and suicide bombings. They hate you in their country so much they’re willing to blow themselves up to get you out. Some people call that patriotism; some people would call that something else. There’s a lot of ways of looking at this awful predicament. Those who don’t learn this history are gonna be, you know, willing to send their sons and daughters out to fight in it, and it will be what the neoconservatives want for the War in Iraq, because the profit margin is the gift that keeps giving.

Last night I was, oddly enough, looking around trying to find information about how much it costs to incarcerate someone. Like, if I go to the liquor store and you’re behind the counter and I shoot you, the bullet costs seventy-five cents, but to put me up and keep me fed for thirty years, it costs like 1.3 million dollars. And that’s an incredible amount of money. And then when convicts get past a certain age and they need medical attention, it jumps up again. And so this is kind of what we’re dealing with. It’s America’s disconnect with…well, that crime is making people [involved with Halliburton] a lot of money, and that the problem makes a lot of people money.

SS-C: Thanks, man. Let me ask about something in your press kit. There’s a quote here that says that [on the “Provoked” tour] you’re going to “incite, enrage, and enlighten.” Talk to me a little about what you think your audience is going to take with them on the tour. This seems a bit of a departure from what you’ve done in the past [politically speaking].

HR: Well, it’s not a great deal different from any other tour that I’ve done in the last several years in that, I travel, I come back with a story, I tell you about it. That’s pretty much what I do, in a nutshell. And so this tour will be not really different than that. This year I was in Iran, in Syria, in Lebanon, in Jordan, in Israel. I was also in United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi and Dubai, in Bharain--it was basically one long trip. I was in Djibouti near Somalia. So, I saw a lot of things. All of that stuff enters into what I’m bringing on stage. [For example,] I was in Lebanon a couple of weeks ago and I couldn’t find any Lebanese people in any of the advertisements, and I was hard-pressed to find anything Lebanese walking down the streets of Beirut, bumping into the Virgin Megastore and Burger King, McDonald’s, Calvin Klein ads and pictures of Kate Moss looking like she hadn’t eaten in a month and a half, and I go, “Where the hell is Lebanon?” It’s with Tom Friedman. And so this is what I’ll be talking about, and this is why I go to these places so I can come back and say, “Well here’s what I thought. I didn’t get this out of a book. I got this from walking around.” People were very nice to me; in fact they go out of their way to tell you how much they love America. It’s interesting. They love America. They’re scared of Bush, but they love America, which is encouraging, because I think America is a good country, full of good people. It’s bad management right now, but that’s temporary. So, this is what the tour will comprise. You know, travel stories and me pontificating and waxing and elaborating on all this stuff. Perhaps it will tick some people off. There’s always the girl who brings the boyfriend, “Oh you gotta see this, you’re gonna like it, man.” She doesn’t know that she’s dating a raging dickhead and he gets extremely offended that I have a conscience or something and [says something like] “Oh that faggot….” And you know, we laugh later. But I’m sure to enrage someone down the line. “What do you mean you don’t think Bush is a visionary genius?” Well, because I can operate a light switch. So there’s bound to be someone walking away with their sensibilities ruffled. It’s not like I’m advocating gutting children. I find this is a good fight, and in that, I don’t care who I offend. I don’t think I’m saying anything provocative; I think I’ve been provoked. And I say, “I’m provocative? Look what these guys just did--to your kids--on your watch--in your face. And you’re calling me provocative? Well, you better get a different definition of that word.”

SS-C: Well, sure, I end up having the same issue when I’m teaching with the kids in the back of the class that sit there and yak and talk about their boyfriend problems, and I just stop and I ask, “How many of you thought about war today?” And they freak out. “But this is just college, why are you talking about this?!” I get the same kind of thing, that I’m being provocative.

HR: Yeah, and in that being completely American. What about being a conscientious American? I get asked “Why are you so opinionated?” I say, “I’m not opinionated. I’m an American.” That’s kind of one of the great things about being American is that you get to talk a lot. Everyone just shuts up and goes along with it, but, it ain’t gonna be me.

SS-C: Okay. So, last year Howard Zinn wrote an article called, “Patriotism and the Fourth of July” where his main point in the article is that Americans are woefully ill-informed about the difference between country and government. He quotes Mark Twain in talking about how when he was criticizing America’s invasion of the Philippines, Mark Twain called it “monarchical patriotism” where basically “the King could do no wrong.” Then Zinn also talks about how the Declaration of Independence actually says we can take down our government if we don’t like what they’re doing. I’m interested in your take on this, because he’s talking about patriotism, he’s talking about the 4th of July, and everybody’s all about “Love my country!” But they’re not understanding that there’s this huge difference between country and government. I’m interested in trying to understand how you perceive patriotism.

HR: Patriotism, well, that’s a word that gets misused more than used. It gets abused more often than not, and for patriotism--for some people it means calling French Fries, Freedom Fries--when patriotism is ensuring anyone who asks, that America is the first and safest place for Bill to marry Tom. You’ve got to put up with Rush Limbaugh and defend his right to do that, to call Obama, “Osama.” You have to go, “Yep! He’s part of the team, too!” And those gay guys that are getting married, “Yep! That’s because it’s America.” Land of the free and home of the brave, and if you can’t handle that, if you’ve got problems with that, maybe you’re the one who needs to hit the road. Not Bill and Tom, they’re doing that American thing.

I had a really interesting conversation about this with [my pal] a few weeks ago where that’s what it is to be patriotic, is to love this place and be angry. Like, really angry that America’s public education system isn’t the envy of the world--that we don’t make other countries jealous. What do we do? We’re what 46th, 38th, in literacy? It’s embarrassing! It’s appalling. We put a man on the moon, I think. And this is how we treat our countrymen? And this is not by chance. We want these people, whatever class status they come from, whatever color skin they happen to hop out of the chute with, you know, [to] stay that way. Your neighborhood will stay that way because we’ll either make you into a soldier or a criminal. Halliburton will make money either way. We’re gonna bill the government thirty bucks for that tray of crap food, no matter which path you take and so there’s not really an impetus for it to get better.

A real patriot will look at any American being disenfranchised and think, “Well, I’m being disenfranchised. I’m going to throw garbage on the White House lawn because this neighborhood hasn’t improved in years, and these people still aren’t reading and you’re making me mad. These are my countrymen.” That America didn’t go apeshit and riot after the Katrina disaster, why that didn’t make people hit the street and just lose it is a mystery to me. I mean, if that’s not genocide, I don’t know what is. So, that to me is what patriotism is all about. Looking at Mississippi and going, “Yeah, you’re part of my country. As much as you people can anger me, I can’t kick you off the ark.” It’s an inclusiveness. That, to me, is patriotism, that great inclusiveness that should be part of America. That whole thing where the patriot patronizes [people] by saying, “I don’t hate the sinner, just the sin.” Oh, please. I mean it’s so condescending. It’s so mean. This is what I can’t stand, and these people with their flag lapel pins. All [they] do is live on the blood of people from South Carolina who fight your wars for you and you wear that button? You either need to get a new flag or that should just be some insignia of some little Masonic group you’re part of. But you don’t get to call yourself an American because you’ve got the dumb bumper sticker. If you call yourself a patriot, you better really take a moment and understand what that entails and what it means and see if you really want to go there. I can understand a lot of Americans maybe not wanting to go there. Going, “Yeah, I’m an American, it’s cool, I’d much rather be here than Russia, sure.” But if you’re calling yourself a patriot, you better check yourself.

SS-C: That reminds me of that John Prine song, “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore.” It came out in the 70’s and it’s all about the same thing, and it was written thirty years ago.

HR: Yeah, well these kinds of people were around during the Viet Nam War and people wanted to end the war. I’ll never forget. I don’t know how old you are, but when I was like six, five…the weekend visit was me and my dad. I’d go up and visit my dad, and we’d go to one of the two McDonald’s in the D.C. area. My dad bought a lot of stock in McDonald’s, and we’d always go. One day, I forget which station, maybe Gulf? They’d give you these American flag decals. Everyone had them on their car. This hippie couple had them on their car upside-down. My dad went over to them and started yelling at them in the parking lot of the McDonald’s. This is like ’68 or something, [maybe] ’69. Screaming at them so much and the woman, she’s wearing a button-up shirt, and she ripped her shirt off in anger. And then my dad came back to the car, and I just sat there in terrified silence. He started ranting about how “They had the American flag upside-down, and you never disrespect…” and I’m like, “Jesus Christ, what a fuckin’ psycho!” That’s when I knew, at this early age, that my dad was a psychotic--amazing revelation to have. Like, “Wow! My dad is out of his fucking mind! Incredible!”

SS-C: And to not know that’s a way to represent your country in distress, right, that’s all it means when you fly it upside-down. Isn’t that patriotism?

HR: Yes, and that’s kind of what they’re saying, to me, flying the flag upside-down is as patriotic as flying it any other way. You have to care, to do that.

SS-C: And if you do that, you’re thinking, you’re conscious.

HR: Well, there’s all kinds of people at the party, but by and large, yeah, considering what can happen to you, I’m sure no one does that for nothing, considering there’s guys like my dad around who want to have a word and maybe not be so friendly about it.

SS-C: Alright, I do want to talk about the internet for a second, and I want to ask you about IFC also. You have remarked quite a bit on freedom of speech and the internet. While I happen to agree with you about the need for internet freedom, I can’t also help but wonder if we are a Nation, or albeit a world, equipped to deal with the speed with which technology is burning along here. I wonder if it just sort of dumbs the dumb down a bit more, like, sucks them into this eternal sort of haze they can’t seem to get out of. I see it every day in my students, and it’s fuckin’ scary! What do you think about the notion that technology is getting ahead of people. In other words, are we evolutionarily prepared for what’s to come, whatever that might be?

HR: Well, I think we lose a lot of skill. I mean, I remember when I first got a phone that had speed dial, and of course it’s the new gadget, so you’re storing all the numbers that you use and you immediately forget all those numbers! And that’s when I got rid of the speed dial! I didn’t want to forget to remember. I don’t want that muscle to atrophy. I like my memory; I like to work on it. Every once in awhile, I’ll go through my record collection, CD by CD, album by album, just to reacquaint myself with this music. I think that with any technological innovation comes convenience. With convenience, can come apathy, atrophy--not always good. I remember back in my day you had to get up to change the channel. That would be fairly unthinkable now. I remember thinking I couldn’t leave the room, for whatever reason [waiting for a phone call]. Now it’s “Oh, where are you?” “I’m in a helicopter!” I think all of that, that had an effect, especially on young people. Communication for them is maybe different than…I mean, do they write letters? Do they put pen to paper? And a lot of young people will write me and go “Hey man, you should check out this band.” And they’ll write down something, and I think, “What language are you writing with? Is this Pidgin English?” I’ll ask, “Do you write very often?” And they say, “No, I don’t.” So I say, “You should, uh, you should work on that!”

SS-C: Yeah. My follow-up question to this is really about the effects of the last decade of technological speed, and I’ll share a quick story with you. When the fellow at Virginia Tech shot all those people, I stopped class and talked about it, and I stopped class and said, “We’re taking the day off. We’re just going to talk about this stuff.” We got into this whole conversation about technology and this disassociation and how you walk outside and all you see are people walking around together in groups, on the phone!

HR: Yeah…

SS-C: So we’re talking about this, and so I’m giving them an extra credit assignment. I said, “I want you all to take 24 hours off. No e-mail, no cell phones, no homework. Read a novel, take a bath, do nothing, meditate.” These kids are about 19. They freaked out. They couldn’t do it. They argued with me. I had one of them actually try and whittle me down to letting her do four hours. And I’m thinking, “What was I doing when I was 17 years old? Well, I was hanging at The Farm, I was going to punk rock shows, I was enjoying my life.” So, I wanted to share that with you and run it against this follow-up question about “Who are these people?” I wonder, with this technological speed going so fast, what is it going to be for these teens that are growing up with it now, and how do you think they’re going to differ from our generation, for better or worse? You are in communication with a lot of people, and I want to know, what are some of the fundamental social differences that you see?

HR: The downside will be an amelioration of social skills, of the ability to look at people and go, “Oh, you’re different.” Or just, in the market, people would come up and talk to you, where now we have this prophylactic covering between us. And, people write me and they make up names, or they just don’t sign a letter. If someone doesn’t sign a letter, I don’t write them back. Or I write them and go, “Am I just some utility you write like you’d write on a can of Coke, or you poke me and a candy bar comes out of me?” Usually they write back and go, “Oh, I didn’t even know I didn’t sign it.” And I go, “Well, start taking responsibility for what you say.” I come from, perhaps, an older school where anything I say about anyone, I fully expect that person to hear about it forthwith, so then they get back to you with, “What’d you say?” I fully expect that to happen. I say it for it to happen. Where, with the internet, one is sometimes afforded a great deal of anonymity and with that, you get away with shit. Maybe stuff you shouldn’t get away with. When you say it and not suffer the consequences for your actions, I think that is going to be the downside of all this groovy technology, is that there will be a breakdown in the idea of community. Now, we’re bombarded with images and advertisements in the streets where we used to go to hear what’s going on. Where I live in Hollywood, I drive down the street and there’s nothing but Kate Moss’s vulva assaulting my windshield, and I’m thinking, “My God, can you make these women and these boys any younger in these ads?” I’m not so politically correct where I’m going to write a letter, but man, I guess you can sell the side of your building for money now. And hell, if it was my building I might be in on that business. Things are changing and young people might end up being very cold. What kind of parents will that make them?

SS-C: Right, that’s real interesting. I wouldn’t say they were antisocial, they’re asocial.

HR: Yes.

SS-C: They’re just so disconnected. I have to make my students talk to one another.

HR: See how uneasy people are when you suggest that.

SS-C: Yeah, well, they go right to their phones, “Let me get your number,” when I’m giving them time to talk right there.

HR: It’s probably easier for these people to sit next to each other and text one another and not even have to look at one another. That might actually be easier on them.

SS-C: It is! It absolutely is.

HR: If I do it right with my cell phone, I rarely know where it is. People remark on it because they go, “Wow, they still make those? I haven’t had one of those for five years!” It doesn’t ring very often, which I’m very happy about. With some people, you can’t get them off the phone; it’s just a pain in the ass to be around people like that, for me, at least.

SS-C: We’re gonna get a little fluffy here. You have been called an icon, a role model, as well as all sorts of mean and nasty things. Truth be told, like it or not, “Henry Rollins” is a household name and now that you’re on IFC you get to come into some nice places and not our shitty little punk rock flophouse living rooms with the rabbit ears that don’t get the networks you have to pay for. How has it come to this, and what has the trajectory been like for you?

HR: Well, I just work. Any popularity or fame or whatever you wanna, celebrity notoriety that comes my way, I’m not always aware of it. I’ve just got my head down, working, and I kind of pull my head up and someone goes, “Wow, Henry Rollins!” Or, when someone runs to open a door and says, you know, “This way, sir!” I’m like, “Me?!” So, I come at this arts and entertainment stuff from a very utilitarian kind of take on it. I’m just working. I’m just doing my thing. I appreciate it that people like what I do enough for me to keep doing it, but past that I’m just grateful for it more than anything, that I get to keep doing it year after year. So, the trajectory? I don’t really know what to say. I get recognized a lot, I get talked to a lot, thanked a lot. I get very laudatory letters. Usually the letters say “Hey, your book had a big influence on me.” I always like that. There’s a lot of people I would like to write and say the same thing to. You know, if I could talk to F. Scott Fitzgerald or Thomas Wolfe or Henry Miller, whatever, there’s a lot of people I’d like to thank. And so every once in a while, “It’s you,” and well, alright! I don’t take it past that. I don’t walk around going, “People dig me!” I just kind of quickly run on to one of the many deadlines I have and try and get it all finished so I can have a couple hours to sit on the couch or whatever and not have to jump up and do something. But I end up doing it anyway.

SS-C: The other day, I was reading your Dispatch and I read from a few weeks ago that there’s going to be another season of The Henry Rollins Show, and from what I’ve poked around reading, I understand in the beginning they gave you a lot of artistic license. So I’m wondering how much you still have, and how has it been working for IFC over the past few years, and of course I’m going to ask you the ‘dreaded list question’. Who are the folks at the top of your list to interview for the coming season?

HR: Well, the IFC people have been incredible to me. Never once have they said, “What the hell are you doing there?” Never. They’re totally cool. They’ve never said, “That was a little bit much.” The show you see, if you’ve ever seen it, is the one that we sent to IFC. They’ve never said, “We like it, but you’ve got to change this, this, this, and this.” I’ve never done that in three years, which is extraordinary when you do anything with someone else’s money. I’ve never heard an idea coming from the IFC people where I go, “Oh my God, what the fuck are they thinking?” It hasn’t happened. They’re very switched on. I think they get me. I think they understand what they got when they ordered it, which is cool. Top of my list? Werner Herzog was one of the people at the top of my list, and we got it. So is Gore Vidal, so both of them were in there. As far as bands go, I’d love Dinosaur, Jr.; I think they’re a tremendous band. So we got [them] on the show. I would love to have David Lynch on the show, Robert Baer the CIA officer who’s a very interesting writer. There’s a lot of people who interest me--James Nachtwey, who they did that documentary on, the war photographer--he’s interesting, an intense dude. I’d like to talk to him. There’s a lot of interesting people doing interesting stuff out there I’d like a shot at to ask them a few things.

SS-C: Cool. Okay, so for me, for a lot of people--just watching you pisses me off--in a good way. It’s like having some intellectual ammunition. I’ve thought about dragging some of my students out to see you here in Seattle on Halloween.

HR: Oh yeah, I’ve done that Halloween in Seattle before at The Paramount a few years ago. It’s a great crowd. I love doing shows in Seattle. It’s why I did my last DVD there, because if there’s going to be any one group of people who are gonna get it, it’s going to be that audience in Seattle. You can kind of count on it. With a $60,000 shoot, you have to be able to bet on it.

SS-C: Okay, so when you’re bringing stuff up that’s important to me and I get enraged about it, I can only imagine the rage inside of you. I’ve heard you talk a lot about just getting pissed and getting out there and doing your part and all, but I want to ask you, how do you keep going, and do you ever feel like it’s too much or too heavy, and what do you do at that point?

HR: Well, I do sometimes just get physically and psychically, I don’t know if that’s the right word, I just get exhausted. But beyond being physically tired, I just can’t summon whatever wherewithal to just grab the pack and hump it up the hill. It’s just like more than just being tired, your mind just can’t shoulder it, and so usually I should read that as an indicator of “OK, it’s time for you to take a breather. You’ve been out there hittin’ it hard and it’s time for you to do something else for a couple of weeks.” I try and do that. I’m not all that good at it. So what do I do? I find something else to do. So basically, for myself, I like to be gainfully employed pretty much all the time, and so I will just find a new pot to hop into. You know, I’ll do band stuff for awhile and then before I burn out on it, I will go do talking shows. And I’ll be doing a lot of talking shows this year. By the time I get to the end of that, I bet I’ll be kind of done with those for awhile, which means I’ll get a couple weeks off and then I’ll start the European and Australian dates, which will be a whole other thing. So basically, hit it hard, and then recharge.

But sometimes, I guess the question you’re asking, it becomes difficult to keep facing it when you are given an incredible vantage point. I’m not saying “I’m in there, man…” but I go a lot to read [to the soldiers], and I meet the young men with their faces blown off and their genitals surgically removed, you know, limbs gone, and gruesome combinations, men with parts of their brains removed, where one part doesn’t work. Men who will be spending the rest of their lives in diapers, men with so many tubes coming out of their bodies so that basically their whole body is just run by a machine. I meet with these people, and I do this every year I go and I hear the stories and now guys send me photos, “Well, a bomb went off today, and here’s a bunch of charred bodies, and here’s the Iraqi people just hosing’em down and getting on with their lives, because that is how they’re living.” Anyway, it’s very personal for me now. Sometimes, when you’ve got this chorus of voices, that becomes difficult to address. And I can’t see that being easy for anyone. I live alone and do not confide in people, but I just work it. But there’s some moments that are kind of hard to deal with.

SS-C: Yeah, and then you get to recognize your privilege, right. Then you get to take time off to deal with it.

HR: Yeah, right and then you get to see that and you have this great opportunity to kind of sound the alarm and to talk to people and go “Look, here’s what I saw.” Don’t think this is macho, but I mean, these war movies are just bullshit. Here’s what it looks like, it’s a twenty-two year old man who craps his diaper every day. That’s what it is. And I stood in the room and smelled it. I don’t think anyone wants a piece of that. I can’t squander that opportunity to tell that truth to people, and it’s an honor and it’s a privilege to be able to do that, and so I see it as a responsibility. I feel responsible to that truth, and I can’t deny it because everyone’s looking at me, and to deny it would be to betray it. So, it’s like one of those things where if you don’t use what you see and the access you have to do good, then “Fuck you. Like, double fuck you. You are the enemy. You’re as bad as Rove. You’re as bad as Cheney.” So, it’s a privilege and it’s a curse, and if you feel any kind of moral obligation, which I do, then you lose sleep over it and you wake up every day going, “Okay. What do I do now?” I raise a lot of money for agencies I agree with. I give a lot of money away. And I spend quite a large amount of time working on the behalf of other people. I’m not trying to impress you. I’m just saying this is what I think is what you do with that access, that privilege. Otherwise you’re this cool stuffed animal shaking hands and going “Thanks, man, thanks. Bitchin’. Thanks.” That’s just not working for me. It’s nothing Ian MacKaye would ever do, and nothing I would ever do either.

SS-C: Right on. Alright, I’m gonna skip the punk rock questions, because at this point, I don’t care. Let me ask real quick, I heard a rumor that you put out a book of poetry by Roky Erickson.

HR: Many years ago, we published Roky’s lyric book called, Openers II. It sold, not very well; he’s kind of an obscure taste. Roky’s brother, Sumner, who’s been the reason why Roky’s back in play…

SS-C: He’s doing Bumbershoot here in Seattle, which seems bizarre.

HR: Well, if you were hanging out with Roky a few years ago and were going, “Yeah he’ll be playing Bumbershoot,” you would have said, “No…don’t think so.” It’s Sumner who got him away from Evelyn, his mother. I’ve named her “Devilyn” and set up the Roky Trust Fund, which people like myself have contributed time and money to. If you ever see Roky smiling and you see all those straight white teeth? That was me. I paid all of his dentist bills on that. They were kind of green before. In any case, Roky’s back because of all the good people coming to his aid. What was the question? I kind of went off on a tear there.

SS-C: That’s okay.

HR: Well, Roky, yeah. We put out Openers II.

SS-C: Are you doing something else now, though?

HR: No. Sumner bought up all of the copies and you can now get the book on rokyerickson.com. So there was a book, we put it out in like ’96. We got the call from King Coffey from the Butthole Surfers who suggested they call me up, and I said, “Yes, and I’m on my way.” I flew to Austin right away. We brought the book out for South by Southwest. We brought the book out and had Roky sign, and he was good for about three signings and then he just wandered away with a line out the door. And we’re like, “Folks, Roky’s gone to get a Pepsi,” and well, they know what the deal is. But now the last time I saw Roky, Sumner walks up to my tour bus and I ask, “Where’s Roky?” and he goes, “Oh. He’s parking the car.” I go, “Roky’s driving?” So I go on over there and there’s Roky, in a car and I stick my head in and I go, “Hey Roky,” and he says, “Hey Henry, how ya doin’?” It was the first time he ever called me by name.

SS-C: Lucid, and totally present.

HR: Yep! Shook my hand, looked me in the eye and I was like, “Whoa!!” Because the last time I saw him he’d say something insane and not really know who you are.

SS-C: …and then go get a Pepsi.

HR: Yeah, then he’d have to wander off. “Make sure you turn the lights off!” I’d go, “Okay….”

SS-C: Okay, we’ve been going at this for an hour now and we’ve pretty much covered everything, but I’ve got one last question for you.

HR: Alright.

SS-C: Thank you so much for taking time, I know you’re totally slammed. So, what do you want to leave as your legacy? What do you most want to be remembered for?

HR: I really have no thought as to anything like that at all. I would like nothing more than to kind of know when I’m going to die so I can conveniently burn all my documents and just be cremated and have them put the ashes in the dumpster. If you’re going to leave anything behind, leave behind the books, leave behind the records like Jimi Hendrix and Edgar Allan Poe did. Leave behind some evidence that is an elective. If I don’t want to play your record, I don’t have to. Maybe they can all go out of print. What I would like to do is sometime get rich enough and then just put all my books online. “You want to read a book? Here. Take it.” Then make it like a Fair Use thing like Gore Vidal does with a lot of his articles. Read it. Don’t make a book out of it. Don’t make money out of it. Just pass it to your friends. I’d like to eventually do that with all of my stuff. Couldn’t do it with the music, because it’s a collaborative effort, but all the talking records and all the “Me” stuff, well, I could do that right now. At some point I would like to just leave a site that could be maintained by the estate. Kind of sad, I don’t think I’ve done anything that is all that relevant or worthy of keeping around. Maybe some musical moments, you know, like a record or two or a book or two, but it should be easy access and not talked about too much.

SS-C: Well, we’ll keep Hard Volume and Life Time in the stacks.

HR: There you go.

SS-C: Alright, well I think I’m done. Thank you so much, and I will see you in October here in Seattle.

HR: See you soon, then.

Henry Rollins's "Provoked" Spoken Word Tour is currently underway. Please check 21361.com for tour dates.