When I was 17 I bought a copy of Rollins book "Get In The Van". I am no exaggerating when I say it changed my life. Before I read it, I was expecting to grow up, work, marry, and die in the small town I lived in. After I read it, I realized there was this whole world out there and it didn't matter if I had talent or even money. I just had to get up and do it. Work hard good things will come. It inspired me to think bigger.<p>When I turned 18 I moved to Los Angeles with nothing but a phone number in my pocket and the ambition to work in the music business. I landed a job at a recording studio aligning tape machines, setting up mics, and fetching coffee. I worked my way up quickly to being the head recording engineer there. One day I came into work and guess who was slated to be on that session that day? Mr. Henry Rollins. Will forever be one of the coolest days of my life. He was very smart, very kind, and had more energy than anyone I've met since. He took me out to dinner and I got to hear a ton of seriously cool stories about his punk rock days with Black Flag. I didn't tell him how much his writing meant to me. He wouldn't have wanted to hear it anyways.<p>I have long moved on from that career path (turns out that programming is more lucrative than working in the music business...) but I'll never forgot that day. It showed me that hard work and courage go a long way. Say yes and take chances wherever you can. Your heroes are just people like you and some day you might get a chance to meet them and work with them.
I've been a huge Rollins fan since I was a kid in the 80s/90s. Some unsolicited recommendations:<p>Favorite spoken word album: Human Butt<p>Favorite Rollins Band album: Turned On (live)<p>Favorite book: Black Coffee Blues<p>Favorite flag with henry singing: My War<p>All his spoken word albums released on Quarterstick records in the early 90s were great, and I regret losing them.<p>The great thing about Rollins and Mackaye is that they have always cared deeply about fans. When Fugazi played my hometown, it was 5 bucks, compared to 15-20 for other shows. When I saw Rollins do a spoken word concert at UNC chapel hill, he hung out in the lobby afterwards and talked to every single fan and signed my copy of black coffee blues. When I wrote to dischord to ask them about a dag nasty reissue, they wrote me a letter back. Looking back, how many kids like me were there? must have been a ton. and yet.<p>Sorry this is kinda rambly but I'm obviously a huge fan still.
Anyone interested on the topic of creativity and the ways to 'channel' it, should watch this extremely relevant (and funny) video made by one of the members of Monty Python (John Cleese).<p>The points he makes and the relevance to anything creative makes this worth your time a x100 over.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EMj_CFPHYc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EMj_CFPHYc</a>
So strange to read just one side of what must be an actual interview. It reads like some guy talking about himself constantly, at length.<p>EDIT: guys, it says "From a conversation with Brandon Stosuy" at the top. There was clearly an interviewer whose words were omitted, this isn't an excerpt from his spoken word or an essay he wrote himself. (it'd be funnier if it was)
Great interview. My main touch points for Rollins are his music and some of his spoken word stuff from the 1980s; I did not know he has continued his high rate of creative output to the present time (I had a vague idea he does radio stuff but I don't follow it).<p>One point of context that's worth mentioning: In the early 1980s he was part of one of the most prolific small teams that ever existed in the music industry: Black Flag (Rollins, guitarist Ginn, drummer Bill Stevenson and bassist Kira Roessler) and their producer "Spot." From 1984-85 they released four full-length albums and toured incessantly. Even after the band broke up the individual members continued to produce, produce, produce. Rollins started Rollins Band and did poetry books and spoken word tours as well. Ginn ran SST records and did some other bands. There's a documentary about Bill Stevenson which shows how he kept up this crazy pace with ALL and Descendents and other recording projects to the present day. Roessler was part of a sound editing team that won an Oscar for their work on Mad Max: Fury Road. These people are incredibly prolific and creative in their own right, and when they came together it was a very intense period of output.<p>Anyone who is interested in the history of Black Flag and other seminal creative teams of the alternative/underground music scene of the 1980s (Minor Threat, Mission of Burma, The Replacements, Fugazi, Minutemen, Big Black, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Butthole Surfers ...) should read Michael Azzerad's "Our Band Could Be Your Life." He conducted some solid research and got many of the key players to talk to him, and the book is a great read. He made an observation that these bands were in many respects entrepreneurial ventures, albeit operating with only creative capital and bootstrapped energy. Quoting from his interview with The Paris Review (1):<p><i>The most lasting significance of the eighties American indie scene might have been the way these bands conducted their careers. The point wasn’t to play loud and fast; the point was to make the music they wanted to make, without compromise, to find and cultivate an audience for it, and to live within their means so they could continue to do exactly what they wanted to do and not be beholden to anyone but themselves. That’s really what the best indie bands today are emulating.<p>Also, much of what the bands in this book did was to make very unconventional music that attracted unconventional people—or maybe even showed conventional people a different mode of thinking. Not necessarily because of anything in the lyrics, but just because of how challenging and unorthodox the music was.</i><p><a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/05/19/michael-azerrad-on-our-band-could-be-your-life/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/05/19/michael-azerr...</a>
I respect Rollins but a more useful and informative interview for HN and entrepreneurs would've been Ian Mackaye. That guys is a business legend for me.
I'm seeing a few comments where people recommend their favorite Rollins material. I have a question for the group mind: what writings or performances of his stick out to you on the topics of Discipline and Work Ethic.<p>Those are two themes he touches on repeatedly and I've found a lot of what he says helpful, but his output is so voluminous that I've probably only heard a tenth of what he's published.
This video of him is fantastic: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkvEpoqFx6c" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkvEpoqFx6c</a>