IRC chat with Henry Rollins on some website, February 11th, 1997.
The highlights lowlights, and very lowlights…
`Orko`: what inspired you to write “Liar”?
Rollins: i wanted to write the meanest love song i could come up with
Mr: hello henry..will u be producing the next Mark of Cain record and also…what is the progress of the band in the USA and what do u think of their potential future there?
Rollins: Don’t know if they want me to work with them again. I think they could do well in USA.
fieldy: What would you say was the main reason for getting the huge tattoo on your back?
Rollins: because i thought my mother would like it
AngelDust: What do you think of Mr Bungle????? Have you ever seen em live???
Rollins: it would be easy to see at this point that I don’t give a tinker’s cuss about Mr B.
Moon_Man: why are you so Psycho?
Rollins: it’s completely fictional
WAYWARD: I dont think tattoos make ya punch harder what do u think????
Rollins: spare me
Henry is leaving now. [He has another engagement so thanks to everyone but no more questions.] in his words ‘the idiot is leaving the building’.
Was he or wasn’t he? Did he or didn’t he? Back in 1999, Morrissey fans over at Morrissey-Solo.com debated whether Morrissey was indeed at a spoken word show where Rollins allegedly ripped through him. Some Rollins fans chipped into the debate too, and the discussion quickly degenerated into a hilarious Rollins vs Morrissey affair – read the thread here.
When Henry hosted the music video show Rage on Australian TV, he raised a few eyebrows by choosing to play the video for November Spawned a Monster by the object of his disdain, Morrissey. He explains:
“The reason I picked Morrissey, because in my opinion Morrissey just embodies every horrible trait that a human can possibly possess. I mean he’s British he doesn’t have to work very hard. I mean they have a handicap anyway. You notice all the great musicians who are English, moved. Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi and Bill Ward the members of Black Sabbath one of the worlds most greatest bands, even though they are English. They moved to America which is great.
“I just love this video because it captures our hero Morrissey lounging about on lonely isolated terrain in this hilarious shirt and I just… when ever I see the video of ‘November Spawned A Monster’ I’m always here with a twinge of regret that it was not I who got to direct this video because in the last scene Morrissey would just be dowsed with gasoline and set on fire. And then we’d just get some wild sound that could just catch the sound of this hair and the polyester shirt burning into his skin and his last cries on earth. And what we could do is we could take that and put a house beat behind it, put it on a 12 inch and sell it to all these emaciated kids with bad teeth, who don’t have enough vitamin c, who never get outside. It’s like, Morrissey cheer up! It’s not that bad! When you have as much money as that guy does, I’d be happy. You know David Lee Roth once said money can’t buy you happiness but it can buy you a boat big enough to sail right up next to it (laughs) so I think the guy should cheer up.
“So I think we should play this video today to show everybody you know the traits they shouldn’t cultivate. Look at Morrissey and just be… jump up and down in joy that you’re not him. That’s why. And I know that this might be a little cruel and I might of bashed our beautiful friends over there in Britain and you know I really don’t care. I really don’t care. Personally I wouldn’t want to burn him up. I would like to tie him to a chair and tease him until he pees his pants and promises never to do it again.”
If the hit Japanese show Iron Chef had an Iron Chef Pancakes, perhaps Henry would be the one to rise into Kitchen Stadium complete with chef’s hat and whisk. If memory serves me right, Issue #8 of Just Another Teenage Anthem featured a letter from a reader recounting a story of Henry’s late night pancake wizardry:
A waitress at the restaurant I work at used to live with Henry Rollins in Vancouver (just after he split from Black Flag.) She said that he’s the smartest guy she’ll ever meet, but that’s not the cool part. While she lived in the place with him and a bunch of other folks she was working at a bar, late nights, lousy customers etc. None of the other roomies had jobs, so they went and partied all night… all except Henry! Mr. Rollins, in a truly selfless gesture, used to make my friend’s life a little easier by making her blueberry pancakes in the middle of the night when she got home from work. Not just any blueberry pancakes, apparently they were world class, the best. To hear this, I was thoroughly impressed and my opinion of this vicious looking vent (Henry) was elevated immensely. I guess the only semi-point is that Henry wouldn’t be Henry if he wrote songs about blueberry pancakes.
Now that, we would like to hear!
