Henry Rollins Quotes

Being in a band is far more than playing an instrument. It's surviving. It's getting an album together.

Starting a band is the easy part. Once you've formed the band, you have to tell a story, and that story requires songs. And not just good songs, but great songs. After a while, great songs won't do - they have to be the best. Success doesn't make it any easier. Each time I start a new record, it's a brand-new search.

When I was a kid, award shows were super-interesting for me. But when I started making music, it was kind of hard to watch because I believed in what I was doing and yet knew I didn't really have a shot.

I had left the music industry at the end of 2001, after 10 years, and had spent three years writing every single day - producing two unpublished novels, one abandoned novel, and three unproduced screenplays. The word 'no' and I were on more than nodding terms. The word 'no' and I were talking about going on holiday together.

I feel like I've been fighting in music and creating new ways and new opportunities to make things work even when people thought it wouldn't.

Albums take a lot out of you.

Paul forced the Beatles to work a lot harder than they would have otherwise, and he did the same thing with Wings.

As a songwriter, I've always loved to tell stories. But in my band, it was always about what would make sense for a band to put out.

I wanted to play in bands and get signed by a record label and tour the world and stuff, but that never really worked out.

It's easy for me to write songs but hard for me to write an album; that's been my experience.

I am completely done with music.

People think this is a competition between bands, when the reality is the more successful bands the better.

Actually, zero labels were jumping toward me, and I couldn't get to anybody. Nobody was paying any attention. And I was like, 'OK, I'm going to put my nose to the ground and really work on writing and creating some good songs that people could gravitate to.'

After ten years of struggle I reached somewhere, and then I see some people pulling me down. I tell myself that if this is what singers have to go through, I would never let my kid enter this field.

It's really exciting working with a new band when you feel like you hit something that's great, and you helped them bring something out.

I've done so many albums where I've been in the studio for 14 hours a day for six months just trying to come up with things on my own. It's a nice change helping other people with their music and not being all about what I'm trying to do myself.

If you try to make interesting films, you're going to be disappointed most of the time. I choose just not to look at it that way.

I felt kind of bored at the prospect of writing some more of my own songs because I really wasn't saying what I wanted to say.

You have to change musically. Bubble gum pop was good for the first time you have sex. They didn't want to give the OK on some really good music. It was the frustration of being signed to that label. I was depressed.

If you're in music, you're in music, and if you're in music you just want to keep making records and playing. That's what it's about, isn't it? At least, that's what I always thought it was about, anyway.

Sometimes when you do things right, there's no results.

Anytime you spend six months on a song (Born to Run), there's something not exactly going right. A song should take about three hours.

Doing is overrated, and success undesirable, but the bitterness of failure even more so.

After a long day of trying, to make my songs pay, making love all day against the wall in the hallway.