
Henry Rollins on defining success - bastian
https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/henry-rollins-on-defining-success/
======
vikingcaffiene
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.

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.

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.

------
pcsanwald
I've been a huge Rollins fan since I was a kid in the 80s/90s. Some
unsolicited recommendations:

Favorite spoken word album: Human Butt

Favorite Rollins Band album: Turned On (live)

Favorite book: Black Coffee Blues

Favorite flag with henry singing: My War

All his spoken word albums released on Quarterstick records in the early 90s
were great, and I regret losing them.

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.

Sorry this is kinda rambly but I'm obviously a huge fan still.

~~~
jkestelyn
Another huge fan here since the Black Flag days.

Rollins did a book of poetry in the 90s called "See a Grown Man Cry"...had a
profound impact on me, and I've never run across anyone else who read it.

~~~
pcsanwald
I've read it! Also "Now Watch Him Die". I still have all the original books
from 2.13.61, including a copy of "The Demon" signed by Hubert Selby!

~~~
rurban
His tour with Selby was the best. Changed my life

------
kelvin0
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).

The points he makes and the relevance to anything creative makes this worth
your time a x100 over.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EMj_CFPHYc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EMj_CFPHYc)

~~~
cableshaft
Seconded. I actually included a few of his arguments in a talk I gave for
writers on preparing for Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) last year. I
didn't belabor his point where he said you need time, though, because, well,
during Nanowrimo you don't really have time.

~~~
tonecluster
We have 30 days of time for NaNoWriMo. That's a lot of time! Can get a lot
done in that amount of time, or get nothing done, depending on how the time is
occupied.

------
justin66
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.

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)

~~~
randomdrake
Sounds about right. I'm an old Rollins fan from his punk hardcore days in D.C.
Some context would be helpful to this article I think. Talking of Ian MacKaye
(Minor Threat, Fugazi) and such, it's important to note that the scene was
very much about positive influence alongside self-empowerment and promotion.
Bands in the scene were entrepreneurial both in their songs and their
existence.

Henry Rollins has a spoken word presence that is not to be missed, in my
opinion. He gets up on stage with a microphone, takes a fairly aggressive and
active physical stance, and just goes... for hours. When I saw him for his
first stop on one of his tours, there was a bottle of water near the base of
the mic stand that remained untouched for the entirety of the show.

While it may seem a bit jarring to read him going on, at length, it's sort of
what he does these days.

"Knowledge without mileage equals bullshit."

The guy lives a very interesting lifestyle and a great deal of what he
practices and preaches is highly applicable to the entrepreneurial spirit and
existence. Pretty stoked to see him on Hacker News.

~~~
metaobject
"it's important to note that the scene was very much about positive influence
alongside self-empowerment and promotion. Bands in the scene were
entrepreneurial both in their songs and their existence."

I grew up in the punk/hardcore scene in the D.C. area many years ago and this
statement definitely held true. One thing I noticed was that most of the kids
I used to hang out with ended up being fairly high-achieving adults. Most
everyone has their undergrad degree and many of them actually work in software
engineering. Now when we talk, we talk about Linux, Python and C++ in addition
to recalling old shows at 9:30 Club, Wust, and the Safari Club.

~~~
gglitch
Is there a definitive history or record of how this scene was created, how
those values came to be?

~~~
mgcross
May be only one facet, but "straight edge":
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_edge](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_edge)

I mostly remember the militant (and distinctly not positive) NYHC variant
trickling down to Birmingham and Atlanta scenes in the late 80s.

~~~
baldfat
Ugh I HATED Straight Edge! Henry Rollins also doesn't like the term Straight
Edge. While I don't drink (Never had the desire and have a disdain of all
drugs (Except non-pain prescriptions and caffeine. I know hypocrite) I am not
straight edge.

Straight Edge really have a ton of different groups but the Militant Straight
Edge ruined the word for me. I would see people light up a cigarette and then
people would beat them up. They would smash cans of beers out of people's
hands etc. Personally I loved eating a Big Mac and drinking a caffeine soda to
see them think about what to do with me, which was nothing. (I was a pretty
"Big Dude" physically and number of friends in the local Punk Scene and didn't
let people get carried away)

Also NYHC was always violent and stupid. I was a CT Punk kid and we hated the
NYHC crap that they would bring. Usually once people started throwing punches
we would all walk off the floor and wait till they were done. If they tried to
hurt anyone by running into them they usually got thrown to the ground, but
not hurt them. They usually got the idea.

Rollins was always about enjoying life and working hard to make a difference.

------
ilamont
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).

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.

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):

 _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.

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._

[https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/05/19/michael-
azerr...](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/05/19/michael-azerrad-on-
our-band-could-be-your-life/)

~~~
mjrbrennan
His show on KCRW is pretty great [https://www.kcrw.com/music/shows/henry-
rollins](https://www.kcrw.com/music/shows/henry-rollins). He has quite
eclectic musical tastes, so it's a good way to get out of your musical comfort
zone. Rollins has such a great energy and knowledge of the tracks and bands he
plays too, it's wonderful to listen to. He is clearly passionate about
everything he does.

------
nthcolumn
"You better do it while you still have knees." Truth here.

------
SandersAK
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.

~~~
YanceyKSR
Ian Mackaye was the first interview we did for The Creative Independent:

[https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/ian-mackaye-and-
br...](https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/ian-mackaye-and-brandon-
stosuy-on-independence-creativity-and-the-creative-independent/)

(TCI is a side-project launched by Kickstarter)

------
pavedwalden
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.

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.

------
paulpauper
It's much easier to beat the 'writer's block' when there's a large,captive
audience for your work.

~~~
coldtea
Citation needed.

If anything, most pop/rock musicians do their best work on their first
records, when there's not any audience yet. It's the rarer beasts, like
Beatles, etc that improve with later releases (this doesn't usually apply to
jazz and classical, where maturity and experience matters more).

Besides, the idea of an artists having a writer's block because they have to
follow a large hit, or feel pressured by their huge audience and the demands
that entails, is so common it's almost a cliche.

~~~
cousin_it
Correction, they do their best work on their breakout record. Doesn't have to
be their first. And the obvious explanation is regression to the mean, same
reason you feel better after visiting a doctor.

------
Yancey
Love seeing this on HN!

------
pebblexe
This video of him is fantastic:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkvEpoqFx6c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkvEpoqFx6c)

