Pushkin

Henry Rollins is intense about the things he loves.

It's like he's on a mission from God, and he's been that way since his days as Black flags frontman in the 80s.

Their music was pure aggression. As shows, there was no delineating between the band and the audience.

It was all just one big moshp with Rollins physically fighting off the crowd and dodging beer bottles hurled at his head, Real Punk Rock.

For nearly 25 years, Henry Rollins tore the world relentlessly.

First was Black Flag, then Rollins band, and most recently as a spoken word artist.

Just before the pandemic, he performed in 21 countries and was a keynote speaker at conferences for things as mundane as software, but also cannabis conventions, which is funny for someone as famously straight edge as Rollins.

Henry and Rick Rubin toured the most music-obsessed dudes of all time, but way back in the day.

They even started the infinite zero label together in the early 90s to reissue long forgotten novels they both loved.

Rick sat with Henry at Shangri-La pre-pandemic and in full Rollins fashion, the story is just poured out of him.

Henry talks about the time he was christened to lead singer by HR from Bad Brains, the day he woke up and realized he was done writing music, and why he'll never be the old guy on stage performing his greatest hits.

This is Broken Record, line of notes for the digital age. I'm Justin Richmond.

Here's Rick Rubin and Henry Rollins.

I was thinking about the fact that both of us have essentially made music our lives, and neither of us I would say are particularly virtuoso.

I'm a musician, neither. I can't play a note on any instrument, all I can do is bim and carry him upstairs.

And I've never wanted to. I've written songs in my head. I co-wrote a song with George Clinton once, and we hummed it to the band.

I got something. I got that's King Crimson. How do you know I have that record? It had come to another one. That's what it was.

We finally came up with something that he wasn't already used, and then I hummed something.

We wrote this song together, and neither one of us could play something.

I don't know. But we just found the music by just going, and the band was like this, and I'm like, yeah, man. And it was fascinating to be standing in front of these guys sitting.

It was at the old Cherokee studios. Me and Clinton looking at these guys going, and a song happened with no one sitting at a piano or anything.

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