Henry Rollins Names the First Item He’d Grab if His Extensive Music Collection Caught on Fire

What item would Henry Rollins grab first if his extensive music and memorabilia collection were to be in danger of a fire? The iconic punk musician turned custodian of music history shared with Full Metal Jackie the most personal piece of music memorabilia he has in his collection and why it would be at the top of his list to save should anything ever happen to put his collection in danger.

Rollins was on Full Metal Jackie’s weekend show to discuss the latest volume of his Stay Fanatic book series, which has detailed his passion for collecting music memorabilia over the years and documenting it. Within the chat, Rollins also shares where his days of collecting first began, why writing has overtaken music as his most prominent form of expression and what he thinks about the way vinyl is presented to music fans these days.

In addition, Henry discusses being a radio host and shares one of the newer bands that’s moving the needle for him these days. And after a career that’s included being a musician, an activist, a spoken word artist, an actor, a radio host, an author and a collector, he reveals the one thing that he would still like to do that he’s not gotten to yet.

Check out more of the chat below.

It’s Full Metal Jackie. And this week I am so excited to welcome author, musician, actor and activist Henry Rollins to the show. It’s good to have you back. You’re back with the fourth volume of your Stay Fanatic book series, subtitled Lessons in Possession and Confessions of Obsession.

Henry, you have been smart enough to have the foresight to save a lot over the years and become a passionate collector. When did your fascination with collecting begin? And do you remember some of the earliest pieces you obtained as part of your obsession?

I remember exactly when I became a collector of music stuff. My best friend Ian McKaye from the bands Fugazi and Minor Threat and I were putting up fliers for his early band, the Teen Idols Idle. We’s have our parents’ Scotch tape. That’s how ready we are for the world. So we’re putting up these fliers on light poles on a street called M street in Washington D.C. with one inch wide Scotch tape from a 3M dispenser. And we turned around after like four blocks of this, and someone had walked behind us and just torn the flyers down and crumpled them up and thrown them on the ground, basically saying the band doesn’t exist.

I was so mad and I said, “That’s it. I’m keeping like two of everything because someone wants to erase what I thought was like this amazing thing that’s happening. I became to really enjoy the art on the fliers and the record covers. It was punk rock and like working for a living. An hour of minimum wage pay could buy you a single import 7-inch from England. So you started to value those records a lot.

I started to take really good care of the records. And I would just grab fliers and if there’s a test pressing, because suddenly everyone I know is in a band and they’re making records and they’re making fliers and we’re putting records together, we’d get the picture sleeves flat and you’d invite all your friends over with scissors and glue sticks, and everyone would listen to music and cut and paste and make the picture sleeves for the records. It was a very kind of DIY hands on experience.

So I tried to keep one of everything, all the fliers of all the shows I was going to because it was so exciting, this scene. You knew the guy who made the flier and sometimes I made the flier. And so I became very enamored of all of that furious activity. And it looked cool. That’s the bottom line. It all looked really neat.

Henry, you were talking about the early fliers and vinyl and the scene you were in. Tell us more about how you became this collector.

I became a musician guy touring the world and we’d go on tour and come back from Europe and there’d be all these beautiful posters the venues would make for the shows. And I’d come back with this ridiculous bazooka tube of all these posters. And my bandmates are saying, why are you keeping that stuff? I go, “Well, it’s history.” And the bottom line is it looks really cool.

Then eBay happened and you can go find your favorite band’s posters from 128 years ago. So you mix that with an ever widening obsession with ticket stubs, set lists, fliers and then like the T-shirts the guy wore onstage. So that’s 40 some years of me doing this.

I wanted to start documenting it in a way that people could see it, because at this point, Dave Vanian of the Damned left his shoe here and I have the address and I have the shoe. I wanted a format where I could write about these things and then show it to you. So I needed like an 8 and a half by 11 format and a scanner.

So I hired a friend of mine who works at the Smithsonian. I said, can you fly out to L.A.? Let me hire you to teach me scanning metadata data and look over my archive and tell me if I could use an upgrade. Nicole, who does all the work at Discord Records, she came out and I hired her for a week and we put her up and she was at my office like 10 hours a day. She got me a scanner and set it up and she taught me how to do everything. And that was was years ago. And she’s inspected the archives multiple times in the years after, even here in Nashville. And she goes, you’re doing great.

So it has turned into this very scholarly effort where everything’s archivally maintained in a climate-controlled environment. And there’s literally like thousands of documents, thousands of records, acetates, test pressings, contracts, correspondence, tickets, set lists. I’m trying to preserve this stuff so it doesn’t get flooded in someone’s basement or get eaten by bugs, which happens sadly, more often than I’d like to think.

That’s why I do those books and do that writing and am searching all over the world all the time for the thing that got left behind.

Rollins Band, “Ghost Rider”

Henry, being a recording artist has fallen more to the background. Your interest in writing seems to be going as strong as ever through your books. Why has the exercise of writing become the form of expression you’ve gravitated to the most, and what has made it so rewarding for you?

For me, writing is kind of like a virus that won’t go away. Put it this way, if I could stop writing, I would. I’d rather not. But I just can’t stop. And so maybe that’s good. But truly, it’s not like I don’t enjoy it. It’s just that I can’t stop. I literally write every single day. I don’t take days off because I keep a journal. So somehow I’m writing every day. But then there’s all these other projects.

Many years ago, I woke up in Los Angeles and I concluded I was done with music. It was just like this thing popped up in my head and went, you’re done. Because I had no more lyrics and I no longer thought lyrically. I thought more like op ed, essay, journal entry, travel writing entry, research project. So I told my manager at the time and he flipped out because he saw 10 percent of that going up in smoke. I called my band members and said, “Fellas, we’ve made the long march to the sea. We’re done.” And they all got jobs the next day and were off with other bands.

READ MORE: Henry Rollins Explains Why He’s Done Making Music

So I filled it in with acting work, touring on my own, which I do all over and just doing shows by myself and writing. So the music for me was a time and place. Once it was over for me, I never considered myself a musician. And so I never want to not have something to do. And so the writing has become the kind of the 9 to 5 when I’m not on the road.

I just finished two years of touring, doing shows by myself, and that was 261 shows in 28 countries. But even when I’m out doing that, I’m writing every day. And so now I’m off the road and writing every day. And so it allows me to apply my mind, what’s left of it, to get something that I can do something with, like a book or a foreword to someone else’s book or liner notes for a record. And I do all of these things and I do them every day.

Henry, you’ve discussed being a custodian of music history. You’ve gone to great lengths to obtain special test pressings and rock memorabilia, artifacts. Certain things will have more personal special value to you. What is the crown jewel of your collection in terms of what it means to you?

Well, the thing that means the most. At this point, I got a lot of cool stuff. And in the last few years, the thing that’s happening is a lot of old geezers like me are just quitting collecting after like 40 some years of collecting. And they contact me and go like, you want to buy all this stuff? I’m like, “Yeah, I do.” And suddenly you can take advantage of someone else doing a lot of heavy lifting. And my promise to them is, I’ll never sell any of it. You’ll always know where all of it is.

And I keep the collection intact for the integrity of this person’s effort. So a thing that means a lot to me that I have, I once asked my friend Ian about his first record, the first Minor Threat ep and it came out in four different colored picture sleeves.

With each new printing, he changed the color. And so I said, I’m missing the second pressing sleeve. Do you have an extra one? And he said, yeah. And he said, here, be careful with this one. It’s the one that belonged to my mom. I grew up in his house, and his mom, we all miss her a lot. And I said, “That’s your mom’s?” He went, “Yeah.” I said, “Are you sure you want me to have this? It’s your mom’s.” He goes, “Yeah, but you love my mom.” I go, “Of course”. He said, “Well, it should be with you.” I said, “Okay, this is really heavy.” So if my place caught on fire, I would probably grab that one and run out with it because of just the heaviness of it, who it belonged to and who gave it to me. That’s pretty massive.

Henry, I feel like we all grew up in a golden era of music. And yes, the resurgence of vinyl has brought some of that back. But I’ll ask. There are so many things that can make a record stand out to a collector, and we’ve got a lot of that from the albums we grew up with. Do you think that how music is being released in modern day is conducive to attracting the collector? And what would you like to see more of?

Well, I think now the vinyl industry to a great extent is being built to turn people into collectors. When I was young, there’d be some record that had a DJ copy and you’d go to the record store and somehow your pal Skip at Yesterday and Today Records was able to get a few of those and it was an extra dollar, so it was like $3 instead of $2.

I liked it because it was a record industry record then, only the DJs got them. Well, now I’ve got one too. And now someone like Taylor Swift, she gives away more records than I ever sold ever. I’m just saying it’s just a different idea. And when she does like limited colored vinyl, she only made like 30,000 of that one, like, oh boy, run before they’re all gone. And that’s cool.

I just hope that the people buying those records actually have record players. And I wonder if sometimes it’s not a case of the tail wagging the dog where they’re making records that are just collectible items and you don’t really need a record player, you just need to buy the thing before it’s gone, where it’s more about consumerism than a record.

Why do you want that certain pressing of Led Zeppelin II? Because it sounds better than the other pressings and there is a difference in these records. And why do you want that pressing of that Beatles record? Because it sounds so much better than the pressing afterwards. And so that kind of collecting is really cool.

The kind of consumerism where even punk rock bands are doing like 35 color vinyl. You’re just making your fans cough up money over and over. It’s like you saw them coming because you helped make them.

I became a record collector just because I wanted to hear all this music because it changed my life. And then I became fascinated with the mechanics of record companies, like how they worked, like promotional materials and posters for the record store, posters for the radio stations. All of that fascinated me.

Henry, you were talking earlier about when you became a record collector. Tell us more about how you see the sort of vinyl and music business now.

Now I think it’s more that some record labels are almost predatory and they see the fans as people to be fleeced. There’s some nice kid in the Midwest who makes a modest sum of money, but they’re going to sell that kid 40 versions of this one record. And that’s a bit much for me because it’s knowing they’re out there and we’re going to get all their dough. So there’s a bit of that. That for me is a turn off because money and music, to me that walks a very fine line. That’s a weird balance, art and commerce.

As Leonard Cohen once said to me, “Henry, your struggle and your life is going to be balancing art and commerce.” I said, “Okay. Interesting prognostication.” He told me that in 1989. I didn’t quite understand what he meant. I think he was trying to say, a lot of money’s coming your way. I hope you handle it well. So I think these days there is a vinyl resurgence, but I talk to a lot of industry insider types, and they say it’s probably a bubble, and a lot of people are going to be selling a lot of that vinyl because it sat on their shelves at home for seven years, and they never even played it. Now they don’t even remember why they bought it. And that’s what I’m afraid of.  In an industry that was artificially enhanced will very realistically go bust because it’s raiding over capacity and it drives up costs and all of that.

So I just hope that when people go to the record store on Record Store Day, they’re going to really go home and play those records, because there’s really nothing like the sound of music on vinyl. It is quite different than the digital experience. And it’s not a subtle difference. You could take a listener with the most coarse set of ears and play them their favorite song, analog and digital, and go, “What did you think?” “Well, I liked the first one better.” “Why?” “It just sounded more real.” Well, yeah, and that was the vinyl, where the other one sounded louder, but the other one sounded better. And that’s the difference between digital and analog. Once you have kind of a rock and roll heart and an analog point of view, digital is a convenience that I use on airplanes and backstage areas when I can’t bring my record player with me.

Henry, you’ve spoken of coming up middle class, and obviously you found your musical footing with a punk ethos as a young man. How much has that played into the man you’ve become over the years and your work ethic?

It’s kind of been the stamp on me in that fame and notoriety have come my way, and I’ve done my best to not pay attention to it and to not let it ruin an otherwise good situation. Because nothing gets in the way of art and creativity more than fame and notoriety and money and all of that.

So I buy my clothes at places where they sell them by the ton. I drive a cheap car. I eat clean, simple food. I live in a house that’s very small, and I work every day. I get recognized. People go, hey, man, you’re Henry. I’m like, yeah. Like, what are you doing here at the supermarket? Buying spinach? Like, what do you want me to do? I don’t have a staff fetching it for me. Basically, my goal was never to be famous or well paid or whatever. It was to do output.

I’m 63. Yeah, 63. After 60, you lose count. You have to really confirm it. And I get up every day with one thing on my mind. Get my work done. And that’s it. I work obsessed. What does it pay? I don’t know. I gotta get it done. And so I live to work. And as far as getting recognized in all of that, okay, they say hi, I say hi back. It’s cool. You come into the gym all the time. I’m like, yeah, like, I see you in here. I don’t want to bother you. This is not a bother. You know, we’re neighbors. Uh, I thought it was you. I go, yeah, you thought I’d be taller, right? They’re like, well. I go, no, no, it’s okay. You can say it. And I make fun of it, And that’s because I come from the middle class, where I never missed a meal. Both my parents were very successful, very intelligent, hardworking people, but both of them were solidly middle class, which means the roof never leaked and my underwear was always blinding white and from Sears and Roebuck.

So while there was domestic turbulence, there was never like, oh, I don’t have any toothpaste. And so I never endured those hardships. That kept me fairly rooted in reality. And the kind of punk rock, the strain of punk rock I came up in was a very egalitarian idea.

Like, there’s a girl playing bass in one of the bands in our scene, no one went, “What’s she doing in a band?” No one cares that you’re a girl in a band. You got fingers, you’re playing bass, Hooray. We didn’t have those kind of misogyny hang ups and we had a lot of gay people in our scene so there wasn’t any homophobia and anyone was welcome. There wasn’t any of the racism and any of that like in the real world. And that’s kind of how I was politicized. And that’s kind of the ethos by which I kind of run my life.

Henry, I do have to mention your outstanding work as a radio host of course as well. On top of everything else that you do, it’s always great to check out what’s spinning and is interesting to you on your KCRW show. You highlight some of the bands you love through your show. Who is pushing the needle for you that’s garnered your interest of late.

There’s a really cool band from Washington D.C., at least they say so on their Bandcamp page, and they’re called Ekko Astral. And they have an album out called Pink Balloons and I think it’s getting to probably be my favorite album of the year so far. It’s just really interesting. And I think they describe themselves as like the lipstick mosh pit band of D.C. or something like that. They have very activist vocals or lyrics.

A person I know wrote me and said, “I was in Washington D.C. i saw this band and if you haven’t heard of them, I think you should listen to them.” So I go to Bandcamp, I listen, I’m like, wow. Bought the record and plugged in the songs and the woman who wrote me about them said, “Hey, what do you think?” I said that I think it might be my favorite record. So she flipped me to the singer and said, “Hey, thanks for liking our record.” I said, “Hey, I’m plugging the songs into my show and if you keep in touch with me, if you make a new record, keep me in the loop because guys like me, we find out last because we’re old and no one cares about us.” She goes, “Okay, I promise.” And I beg these young bands, I go, don’t forget me if you make a new record. Like, I’m old, I will not find out until a year later.

Ekko Astral, “Baethoven”

There’s bands I’ve actually helped get signed to labels, and I’ll be telling people, oh, they made this great record. It’s going to come out one day. It’s going to be great. Like, Henry, that record came out 14 months ago. Like, oh, and I write the band. Like, were you guys going to tell me? They’re like, oh, dude, we forgot.

Because you’re old and we’re young and we know you’re not really part of our world. I can’t overstate how much I understand that. I totally get it is like, me, Dick Cheney and Joe Biden, we’re on the way out.

And so I just said, you know, if you make a new record, keep me in the loop, because there’s a very good chance I won’t find out. And so I try and keep these bands around me, because I want to pay attention. I’ve realized that people are living their lives, and so I must be very proactive. So I’m always looking for new bands to listen to because there’s nothing better than five new records in a weekend.

Henry, you were talking about how you discover new music and what you’ve been playing on your radio show. Where can people find out about what you’re listening to and what ends up on the show?

Anyone can go to kcrw.com and listen to the show for free on archive and or go to my website, henryrollins.com and see the show notes for the show. And you can hear my shows on Saturdays. I post the show notes, like, here’s what we’re going to listen to tonight.

Here’s some records I’ve been listening to that you might like. I post those notes a few hours before the show. So you can always see what the show’s gonna be. And I’ve been doing that since you and I were both on Indie 103.1, like, at least 100 years ago. When I had dark hair. Well, it was pepper anyway, I’ve been doing that because I want everyone to know what’s coming in case they get curious. Like, what was that song? Well, go to the website and find out. And so I just want full transparency. In case you become interested, you can pursue those interests and find the record.

Because a lot of the bands I listen to we play on the show. They’re like, living in vans, they’re playing in basements. I want this music to get over the wall. And the best email I get for the radio show, it happens zero to three times a year. More like zero to one. It’s a band will write me, like, “Hey, Henry, we’re on tour. And every night, we finish the show, we run to the merch booth and sell T-shirts. And people say, I came to the show because I heard your band on Henry’s show.” And the band will write to say thank you for playing us, because you’re actually getting people to our show. I’m so glad because people should go see this band.

That’s one of the main reasons I have a radio show is to get these bands over the wall. Let’s get the word out. And it’s great having a megaphone, because the radio show is not about me. It’s about this great music. So when people say, oh, you have a good radio show, I’m like, well, thankfully there’s John Coltrane and whoever else to put in good music. It’s not me. It’s, at best, I’ve got good taste. And even that gets debated because I get a lot of letters like, I think your show sucks. But at least the guy had to listen to find out, right? So we have him for at least one night. But that’s the main reason I have a radio show. Besides wanting to be a ham and just having a big mouth.

What made you ever want to have your own show before you were born?

The film American Graffiti was in the theaters the first time around. And my mom took me to see it. Cause we had a membership at this theater in Washington. We would go every two weeks to go see some film because of the membership. I saw American Graffiti, which is a perfect film. And the soundtrack, all that 50s music. I’m like, “Wow.” But there’s a cameo by Wolfman Jack. You can watch it online. I recommend people watch the whole movie, but you can watch the Wolfman Jack material. And he does this amazing cameo in the film, and he’s just being himself with that amazing voice and his charisma.

I saw him as this DJ in this lonely station in the night, and all the kids listened to him. And I’m like, “Oh, I want that job.” And I heard that music and saw that film when I was like, 11, and I always wanted that job. So when I got to be on the radio, man, I’ve been clinging to that one with great tenacity because of that film and now it’s more like the idea of it has expanded. But the initial idea was I want to be that voice with the music.

I used to listen to a lot of radio because I was a lonely boy, and that the person playing the music became my fake friend who I’ve never met. But they were playing Kool and the Gang and all those FM bands back in the day. I kind of made imaginary friendships with the DJ, as I think a lot of people do. And hopefully I am that for someone out there. Let’s listen to Henry’s show. He. He plays good music or he’s got a lot of enthusiasm, that guy. What’s his prescription?

Wolfman Jack Scene in American Graffiti

Henry, the resume is quite impressive. With all that you’ve done in various forms of entertainment, you’re always occupied with something. Is there still something on the to do list that you would like to approach if the open block of time ever presented itself?

Yeah, I would like to do museum curation, to have some kind of role at a museum and work in preservation. It’s a very academic idea, and I’m only a high school graduate, so maybe I carry the stuff from the truck into the building or learn some menial task, but that would be some kind of carryover or extrapolation from the collecting, the preservation and the archiving of all this stuff.

That is something as an old guy that I would like to be able to do, because as far as being on stage, I don’t necessarily think I’m done, but there’s not a lot that’s new about that for me. It’s just something I like to do very much. There’s not a lot that’s new about doing a radio show in that I don’t take it for granted. I’m just saying, I think I know how to do a two hour music radio show at this point. And so I’ve done a lot of tv, a lot of film. I wrote one screenplay. I’m one for one. It got made into a film and I’m happy to leave it at that.

So I’ve written for magazines and newspapers. I’ve authored 30 some books. I’ve done a lot of different things. It’s true. Been to about 87 countries, something like that. So as far as something I would run to go do, it would be some kind of museum idea, like working at a museum at least maybe like part time, maybe as a volunteer. That would be cool. My mom was a volunteer at the national gallery in Washington D.C. because she knew the contents of the museum by memory. She was a tour guide for free because she could take a school group through it and from memory, give us an entire school bus of kids a tour of the National Gallery in D.C.

I have to say, it was a magical time working with you at Indie 103.1. I miss being able to see you regularly.

It was too good to last that station. There’s something about it. I’m like, “We’re having too much fun here.” This can’t last.

I would randomly be at the station and Steve Jones would be on middays and one day invited me in while he was doing his show because he would just wing it. And then he goes, “Oh, look, it’s Full Metal Jackie.” And [Indie 103.1 program director] Michael Steele was like, “That is your new name.” And I’ve used that name. How is it better to be named than named by a member of the Sex Pistols?

Oh, forget it. For a radio show, that’s perfect.

Thanks to Henry Rollins for the interview. You can keep up with all of Henry’s endeavors through his website. ‘Stay Fanatic, Vol 4’ is currently available there as well. And you can follow Henry on Facebook, X and Instagram. Find out where you can hear Full Metal Jackie’s weekend radio show here.