The Dollar Bin: Henry Rollins

He is a musician, author, actor, speaker, archivist, and business owner.

Guest, please introduce yourself.

Hello, everyone.

My name is Henry Rollins.

I was born in Washington, DC in February of 1961 at DC General Hospital, which is now gone.

I had straight jobs until the summer of 1981 when I fell in with a pack of degenerates called Black Flag, and my life has been twisted and fairly illegal ever since.

I'm now 65, AARP, and I get wonderful fat envelopes from Medicaid telling me about my benefits.

And so I'm involved with a lot of things more on the archival end of things at this point, because soon I will be archived, at least either on paper or maybe floated in a large vessel of formalin, and we can watch my tattoos fade into my skin.

And so I'm here with a with these two fine gents, and they're going to upgrade my intellect for as long as we three stick together.

That's arguably the best intro we've ever had on the show.

Henry, thank you so much for talking with us, man.

And to start it off, if you don't mind, was there a record in your history that you first got either given to you or purchased or an album that you got in your hands and you went, I have to collect these.

I have to have these in my life.

It was punk rock in general that turned me into a collector.

Before that, I would buy Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, which is all great.

For $4.99 at a record store called Kemp Mill on M Street in Georgetown, and I used to work in shops in Georgetown, some girls comes out, I go barreling in there for $4.99, I got a record.

And I never took very good care of them.

I had like a close and play GE record player that, you know, the cartridge mauled the records.

But it was spending an hour plus of minimum wage pay to get a punk rock single from across the pond that made me very careful with my records.

I prized them.

And so it was punk rock that turned me into a collector and one who never touched the vinyl with his greasy hands ever again.

because it was music that changed my life.

And I'm not saying Zeppelin didn't, but Zeppelin didn't affect me the way The Damned, The Clash, and bands like that did.

And so I think it was getting the first Damned album and realizing they have singles, and then going to Yesterday and Today Records in Rockville, Maryland, on Rockville Pike, near the D.C. area, and meeting Skip Groff, who produced our early records and became a friend, Ian McKay and I, were the two speakers at his Memorial when he sadly passed away a few years ago Skip would pull out uh well here's uh four different Buzzcocks covers for the same record I'm like how does that happen Belgium Holland England Germany and I was like oh and I had to have them and then oh same thing with the damned in the photos are even cooler and I'm like well I have to have those too He said, you know, there's promo records where only industry people get them.

Here's Dancing With Myself, mono, stereo, whatever, industry only.