Henry Rollins Quotes

I was in bands, but they were punk bands, and you plug in the guitars, you turn them up really loud, you've got four or five other people on stage with you, you've got some protection from when they throw lighters. You can always hide behind the lead singer or the bass player.

The Heartbreakers were what you imagine being in a band would be like - best buddies and great players and guys who took it all really seriously.

I spent 2010-2012 in Stockholm, trying to figure things out. I caught up on life! At the end of 2012, the relationship I was in ended, and I took the first plane to L.A. where my Swedish label has been setting up base. I felt so much more inspired to write and record than I had ever been, and the songs just started coming.

A lot of people think that punk rock musicians don't know what they're doing.

It was really unusual to go from being in university for four years to all of a sudden acting every day. I'd never been able to do it exclusively like that. It was always sort of like my secret thing that I did privately.

I was once a student in a punk T-Shirt hooked on screwed-up scenarios. That's how I became the esteemed cultural figure that I am today.

I'm playing 10 feet from Mike Campbell every night. I look across the stage, there's Howie. Tom's in the middle and we're playing all this stuff I love. It's great.

A lot of people have wondered what I've been up to. I retired from my career after 24 years. My feeling was that it was time to play my biggest part - Myself!

I was a groupie for a year and followed a band. I dated the drummer of the band.

When we were 15, my brother and I were getting really into Nirvana, Green Day, and The Beastie Boys. We started going to shows and realized we really wanted to be on stage.

I have always been interested in the idea of self-reinvention.

High school and college were my punk, formative years. I was playing hardcore, learning to be a musician. In bands, you tour, but you're paid nothing; you're playing to 50 people in a basement, sleeping in a van, and you love it.

I moved from Philadelphia to California when I was 25, after traveling abroad for a year. I thought I'd come home eventually and settle down, but I didn't.

As you know, I was a solo singer, something I just got very much used to. Turns out I'm quite enjoying being in a band!

The band I've played with for 10 or 12 years now, we've been all over, but we mostly play in LA.

All your travelling is together, you eat together, you're on stage as a band together, when you get to the sound-check the band and the crew are all together.

The worst thing about the life of a jazz musician on the road is getting to the gig. Once you're there and playing, it's marvelous.

I wished that I could have been down there because Paul actually wanted me to do the tour with him, but then he realized that it just wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be a solo tour anymore. It would look like just half of KISS.

At 23, you can completely, literally reinvent yourself if you want to.

After being a mom, we are now in a different chapter in our womanhood, and instead of trying to be our old selves or get our old body back, we should embrace who we are now.

When you're in a band, you spend most of your time in a van. Like, there were four of us, we toured all the time, and you're stuck looking at three other people for a month straight. And all of those times, we all just liked making fun of people, doing impressions of people, coming up with songs.

I was such a private person before I started 'The Talk.' I don't know what happened! It almost feels like I've started a second life. In my previous lifetime, I didn't talk about stuff. Now I'll discuss anything. It's crazy!

For us, punk rock and even hardcore music was something we did because we didn't fit in in high school. We had nowhere to go, so we went to shows.

I had four great years at Palace but just felt it was the right time to start a new chapter of my career.

Even from the very beginning, the type of fans the Ramones generated were the kind of people who wound up running industry, who became professors and scientists. Our staunchest fans were always a little bit more on the outside, the type of people who didn't fit in with society.