Henry Rollins - On the Dennis Miller Show 1992 lyrics

Dennis Miller: My next guest is back for his third performance on our show, he's just about to start a new American tour with the Rollins Band but tonight he's here with a spoken word performance. Please welcome Henry Rollins. Henry? Henry Rollins: Hello, hello, hello. How you doing fellas? My name's Henry Rollins for those of you that don't know me. First off, don't worry I'm not running for office, I'm not trying to sell you anything, I don't care if you like me or not and I'm not a comic so you can relax. I've been allowed three minutes of your time - thanks Dennis - so I figured out what I want to say in three minutes. I figured since you all are here and I'm here and we're both doing the same thing, which is breathing in and out, maybe I could shortly communicate with you. I just wanted to remind you of something. What I want to remind you all about is something I call "life time" because if you think about it you might say "life is short" but actually life isn't short or long it goes whether you're here or not. You die, life goes on. You die tomorrow, I'm still here, I'm still alive, life goes on. Time isn't running out, it just keeps running before and after you but your lifetime is running out every second. So I wanted to remind you of that fact and remind you of the fact that you live in a very dangerous country and you live in a very dangerous landscape and if you're in the 213 area code which we are presently in which is Los Angeles you're living in a very dangerous and violent climate. Part of this city burned for nothing. A few months ago in Venice, California, my best friend was shot in the face and had his brains blown out on my front porch for nothing. You can do a lot of things for nothing and you can waste a lot of your time and do nothing and I figure you get born with this body and if it functions I figure you're really lucky and why anyone would want to screw it up is beyond me. So with the minute and a half I have remaining I just implore you to stay away from the h**n, the dope... why any of you would like to take those beautiful lungs you have and put cigarette smoke in it is totally beyond me. I mean, what's the matter with you? You guys were raised by wild dogs or something? But anyway you are what it's all about. If anyone tells you you're lame or something no one has anything that you don't have. You're what it's all about, you're it and you're doing something really great which is breathing in and out which is a lot more than my dead friend is doing and so you have to hold onto that. It's all about lifetime and I just wanted to remind you of it because I don't know any of you but I like you and I want to make sure you stay around, live long and strong because I think that's much better than ending up in a plastic box in Burbank, California. Thanks. Dennis Miller: Man, that's a real down-shift for you, I'm used to seeing you out there raging at the heavens... which do you prefer? Henry Rollins: The band or talking? Dennis Miller: I know they're different things but you know they're completely different rhythms for you it seems. Henry Rollins: I like the band better because there's the noise and the fury and all that. I do a lot of speaking dates all over... this year I've done Australia, parts of Europe, America. I usually hit between 8 and 16 countries a year just by myself talking. A lot of universities, dog shows, you know whatever... Dennis Miller: Well, you do poems too don't you? Henry Rollins: No... well I write books that have short stuff in it but I don't like to use the P-word. I think labels are really boring. Anyone who says I'm a writer it's like pfft... if you're going to write, shut up and write. Ted Bundy never said "I'm a serial k**er" he just went out and did it. Dennis Miller: I think the sentiment behind that was... I think I got what you meant. Henry Rollins: You never see him in a Nike hat. Dennis Miller: Jesus, Henry. Where did you get your cut-to-the-chase mentality? What happened in your childhood.... I see you as a pretty directed guy, you seem to get from A to Z without all the baffle chamber of crap most of us have in between. Henry Rollins: No, there's no time - Dennis Miller: Where'd you get that? Henry Rollins: From knowing what I want to do. Dennis Miller: Did you lose somebody close to you at a young age when they were young or something? Where's this no time thing come from? Henry Rollins: Just from wanting to do a lot of stuff and having to do a lot of it myself. You know, you want to put a book out? Okay, start a book company. I want to do records? Well I got into the independent record business. Want to do a band? Alright you put a band together and load some bad equipment into a van and start learning how to starve creatively. Dennis Miller: Did you... where you on your own early on in life? Henry Rollins: In a way, my mom worked for a living and I lived with her so I raised myself in my room with my records. You know she'd come home shove some mal-po under the door slot. I'd let myself in, cook dinner, listen to records, eat. Dennis Miller: Like the latch-key kid, what records did you hear? Henry Rollins: Everything. Mostly my mom's records, I'd destroy her records. I'd sneak them back in... she turned me on to stuff like Isaac Hayes, Janis Joplin. She's really sharp I mean her record collection is pretty amazing. Like Sonny Rollins, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Coltrane, Monk, all kinds of opera and cla**ical, show-tunes, Miriam Makiba you know all kinds of world stuff. Dennis Miller: A really great story about Sonny Rollins, I don't know if it's apocryphal or not. He was thought to be a genius by his peers but he thought his playing was so deficient he used to sneak out to the middle of the 59th street bridge in New York... Henry Rollins: Yeah he did an album called The Bridge. He was always bumming on himself, he was playing with Miles and he'd go "I'm not good enough! I'm not worthy!" And he'd go away for years and come back yeah he was a really good player. Dennis Miller: He said I'm not worthy? Henry Rollins: Yeah he was always down on himself. He'd go have great spells of inactivity because of apparently because he was so bummed out. Dennis Miller: He was going to get sued like Wayne and Garth if he doesn't like himself. You tough on yourself... Henry Rollins: Absolutely. Dennis Miller: ...or you enjoy the artistic exercises? Some people have trouble bellying up to their creativity. Is it easy for you...? Henry Rollins: I'm not a creative person. Dennis Miller: No? You don't think of yourself that way? Henry Rollins: No, no no. I'm just hard working. I don't have talent so I just work, I get up earlier. Dennis Miller: The proletariat ethic. Well, Henry's Rollins Band tour kicks off this Friday at 6am in Henry Rollins: "Drop and give me 20!" Dennis Miller: In Houston, Texas, and in the US throughout August. Henry Rollins, folks. Thank you, Henry. Henry Rollins: Thanks again.