DM: Let’s start with your passionate advocacy for keeping the sanctity of an unregulated internet alive. Have your views altered today?
Henry Rollins: With any new technology, there’s new freedoms afforded and with them come more concerns and potential problems. My main concern with any regulation of the internet is ‘The Man’ having access to me and my information and also, anything that could be considered an effort to keep certain people, perhaps from an income class, away from the information afforded by the internet. If the internet, or “internets” as my soon-to-be gone war criminal president likes to call them can be regulated, it will really mean deregulation for the providers and they can have different rates of speed for different prices, levels of access, etc. Soon, you have an elite class with access and then everyone else. This kind of thing is the enemy. Of course, equality is the enemy of some, look at my country’s foreign policy.
DM: While Radiohead’s Abbie Hoffman style marketing riff continues to shake up the music industry, where do you stand on free vs regulated music downloads and who should be in control?
Henry Rollins: That’s a good question. I think what Radiohead did is really cool and incredibly punk rock. Anything that gives the music industry a shove is a good thing I think. I don’t think it’s a good thing that you can download some band’s album and let them starve. If you like them, then you should drop something into their open guitar case as you walk by, that’s basically what royalties are. The way the industry is set up, the artist is the worker on the farm and The Man gets the lion’s share of the earnings and does all he can to keep the artist away from payment. Now the fans can do it too. It must make them feel so great to wield such power. I reckon if you like the band, you want them to be able to pay their rent and stuff so you would support them. That’s just me though. When people tell me they have downloaded my stuff for free, they often ask me how I feel about that and I always tell them the same thing: I would rather be heard than paid. I wish people would do it right, but I can’t play cop with this kind of thing. I have bigger fish to fry in the time I have left.
DM: So is Steve Jobs the new Tommy Mottola (former Sony Music Ent CEO)? Can technology really be blamed for the last gasps of the music industry as we knew it?
Henry Rollins: No. Technology is not to blame. Technological advancements are like the weather – they happen. The last gasps of the music industry is the fault of the music industry. The weight of their greed, contempt for the audience and other factors all contributed to all the lights going out in those big buildings. They should have run their companies like the Dischord or Touch & Go labels, perhaps they wouldn’t be ailing the way they are now. Greed and contempt really don’t get you anywhere in the long run. I mean look at what a piece of shit Dick Cheney is.
DM: How have social networking platforms like MySpace, Facebook etc amplified your relationships with your audience and have they translated into and increase in sales, or enhanced revenue from touring?
Henry Rollins: I have never been on any of those sites. It’s not all that hard to be anyone you want on sites like those. Now and then, someone will write my company’s address and say that I am on MySpace, trolling for men or boys or whatever. Problem with that is, I’m not gay and if I were, I don’t think I would look for company in this manner. So, all of those sites are absolutely meaningless to me. When someone writes in and says, “Someone on Facebook said you . . . .,” my response is basically, “Shhhhhhhh. The grownups are working.” I am a busy motherfucker and have no time to mess around with people who think they have extra time on their hands and want to enslave me with it. I have no idea as to what these sites have done to the breadth and scope of my audience. My site is easy to find. I am easy to find. At shows, the people there are the ones who showed up. I don’t know how they arrived at the conclusion that they should come to the show that night. I am glad they made that decision, of course, but don’t really check on how they found out about the show, I am too busy doing the show.
DM: You appear to be a consummate geek – how has the digital realm transformed your life as an artist in all your guises?
Henry Rollins: I do enjoy being able to take a lot of music on the road with me in an iPod. I do like backing up rare analog sources digitally so I can cc band members on the source with CDRs so the information is backed up easily and efficiently and preserved. It’s made my radio broadcasts very good. I guess it has helped artistically because I can record live talking shows very cheaply and make the records very cheaply and pass that onto the listeners at a very cheap price. I like to keep prices very low. Digital has helped with that big time. Also, making documentary footage look good. Digital allows me to do great shoots for my TV shows and keep prices down. Basically, digital technology allows me to move very quickly with an acceptable level of quality.
DM: Do you fear that the flip side of the benefits of direct consumer engagement brought to us by the internet MySpace will perpetuate a commoditisation of music?
Henry Rollins: I think it’s the iTunes and others who are now leading the way and perhaps the majors will have to play some catch-up. They should have seen the writing on the wall with Napster and jumped quicker. I think that most artists were lost in the shuffle and what’s happening now is a response to that. Seems to me that music is now returning to the people. I buy small label releases with great regularity to the point to where if a record is on a major, I hesitate, knowing there’s a good chance the “product” will have no teeth. It’s the same reason I don’t watch CNN or other major news carriers, I mean, come on. I think music is in better shape than in many years. Major labels have been relegated to peddling the likes of Hannah Montana, U2 and other tepid musics, let them go have fun with that. The rest of us can have our good time out here. Basically I am saying that there’s nothing really to stop, just other places to go.
DM: What is your advice to emerging unsigned artists on how to handle the rapidly shifting music business and how should they immerse themselves on the digital opportunities? Any advice for the major labels or carriers?
Henry Rollins: My advice to the young bands is to take advantage of the technology provided and find your audience. The Man only wants you on the farm chopping cotton so that’s a waste of time. There’s a good chance you won’t make it past your area code. There’s a lot of bands out there and not all that many get out there and get across so you have to want it real bad. That’s one of the things that makes the music good, you really have to love it until you almost kill yourself over it and even then, that doesn’t mean you’re going to get anywhere. Doesn’t mean you don’t give it all you have and have a blast on the way. To the majors, I offer them the chance to wash my Subaru Outback for a few bucks now and then and also that I heard there’s a sale on Kraft macaroni and cheese at the Rite Aid on Sunset and Fairfax they might want to take advantage of as winter is soon approaching. As to the carriers: be cool. If you fuck us. We will go over your heads like we did with the major music industry and you too will be in line to wash my car. Music is for the people and they will get to it no matter what. You are not bigger and more powerful than we are. We are bigger and more powerful than you. Take heed. n
