Henry Rollins Talks About His Publishing, Literature, etc

The Modern Word Website has a great interview with Rollins and he talks extensively about books and authors he has published:

The other book I wanted to ask you about was Michael Gira’s book, The Consumer.

Yeah, we put out The Consumer. And I’ve known Michael a long time and I just remember, he had all this writing, which I have a lot of – xeroxes and things he gave me in the mid-80s. And I remember just how crazy this stuff was. Like, you’d never read anything like it!

I did shows with Michael, I’ve got tapes of Michael reading at shows, and you can hear hair growing, it’s just the delivery, like, “You kill me,” “I drink my own blood,” “You’re a cop, you own me, I love you.” God, it’s so unrelentingly heavy, the audience would just be bludgeoned into complete obedience. At one point in the 80s or early 90s, I called him and I said, “Hey, Michael, what about all that writing, should we do a thing here?” and he went, “Yeah.” And he got to work and he assembled and edited and presented us with The Consumer, and we put it out, it sold very well. It sold through the print run. And I called him and said, “We’ve sold through. What do you want to do? You want us to do it again?” And he goes, “No, this time around, I’m going to put it out, I’ve got my Young God label, I’m going to do Young God Publications and I’m going to put it out.” And I said, “Good luck to you. Go ahead.” Because a lot of times, the author, after four years of having the book in print, has figured out that he can do it himself. And that’s okay, because I would never endeavor to own anything of Michael’s.

So now until he gets it out, it’s one of those silly pricey things on Amazon.com, like $70 or something. But hopefully Michael will put it back out. I mean, I’d put it back out if he wanted me to. But he says he wants to do it because he’s got his Young God thing going.