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    A Mad Dash
    A Mad Dash
    A Mad Dash
    Ebook427 pages8 hours

    A Mad Dash

    By Henry Rollins

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    About this ebook

    A Mad Dash picks up where 2007’s A Preferred Blur left off. A seemingly endless stream of words, one after another, details his travels all over the world, over one hundred performances and the shooting of five documentaries. The book goes right to the end, only stopping at the last page.
    LanguageEnglish
    Publisher2.13.61
    Release dateNov 1, 2010
    ISBN9781880985939
    A Mad Dash
    Author

    Henry Rollins

    Originally from Washington DC, Henry Rollins fronted the Los Angeles-based punk band Black Flag and is well-known for his hard-hitting writing, music, and acting.

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      A Mad Dash - Henry Rollins

      00. How It Starts

      01-01-08 LA CA: 2307 hrs. I am leaving town in about ten days. I have been here for a couple of days now and can’t wait to get going. Today was a waste. I worked on radio and other stuff until about 0300 hrs. and then fell out. I was hoping to get up early and get things done before I had to go to the station and do the radio show. I ended up sleeping all day. Now and then I would wake up and try to get going but I stayed down. I guess I needed it. I am familiar with this kind of sleep, something in me just tells me to keep sleeping. Finally, Engineer X’s phone call woke me up around 1630 hrs. I have to get on a good sleep schedule this week to be effective at the office. Also, I need to get my head around the upcoming shows. If I think about them too much now, I’ll get too wired to sleep.

      01-02-08 LA CA: 0425 hrs. Got up at 0314 hrs. I am done with sleep for now. I will head to the office soon and get things going there. I hate waking up depressed but it happens more and more as I get older. Things will be better when I am back on tour and onstage every night. It’s the duty to the show that keeps me on my feet. It’s something to serve and something to try and improve every night. When I am not on the road doing shows or working on something goal oriented, I feel useless. It’s a problem. I will use this week as preparation for the shows coming up and beat myself into shape so by the time I hit stage in Sweden I will be good to go. I know that none of this stuff matters to anyone but me. If this is what it takes to do good shows, then so be it.

      2001 hrs. Glad to be back at the house. I worked all day at the office and got a lot done but didn’t want to be there or deal with things. I did phone press and Heidi and I filled a lot of orders and after that was all done, I took the mail to the post office and then came back here. I had a fantastic headache so I laid down and slept for a couple of hours. I shouldn’t be doing stuff like that but at least I feel a little more even now. If I work out, I’ll feel better. I have to get my head together.

      2333 hrs. Done with workout and everything else I can get done tonight. I got a couple of letters from a soldier who doesn’t like me because I am against the invasion and occupation of Iraq. He said I am dead to him. It’s sad when these guys buy into the bullshit. I just hope he doesn’t end up dead to his family.

      Earlier today I got a letter from a woman who has been writing me for over a decade now. She never puts a return address on anything she sends. She lives somewhere in Germany. She has sent me everything from Chistmas cards to short stories she has written that has the two of us as main characters. We are always in love. The letters always start with, Henry, I love you! Over the years, I don’t know how many letters she has sent me. At one point she actually came here and camped out near the office. Carol met her at the door but luckily I was out of town. She sent 500 Euros to me last week. We kept it here in case she ever makes her return address known, we can send it back. In the letter she said that the money was for the hotel room I would need since I was coming to visit her. Of course, there’s no address or any way to contact her. I guess she’s insane. I came across one of her letters today, very sad. She sent stencils of tattoos she had just put on her body. The tattoos are of my name in block letters. She put them on both arms and legs. I imagine she’ll send photos of them at some point. As far as I know, she has never come to any of my shows. I don’t know what her deal is. I get the idea she lives at home, perhaps too unstable to live on her own.

      01-04-08 LA CA: 2228 hrs. I kept moving tonight and stayed awake. Lately, I have been falling into a couple hour evening power nap that leaves me slow and inefficient. So tonight I started packing, that always gets me revved up, I like the ritual of it. I have a closet that is devoted to the pack. I have year’s worth of accumulated adaptors, chargers, whatever else. Getting the pack going allows me to start focusing on the work that is to come. Soon it will be a show a night like it was a few weeks ago. It will take me a night to get back into that mode but I’ll get there. I will get in it and stay in it. There are shows every month for the next five months. There is no choice but to totally commit to them and what it takes to deliver. It will take a few shows to get back to the hardness I had by the last week of shows on the first leg of the tour last year. I have not been off the road all that long so it will come back fast. I am flying out to the first show a couple of days early so I can be alone and get my head around all I have to do this year.

      I drove down to the grocery store tonight and saw a full grown coyote on Hollywood Blvd., he looked really confused. I don’t think he had been hit by a car or anything but it kept wandering off the sidewalk and into the street and back again, barely getting out of the way of oncoming cars, like he didn’t understand what they were. I have never seen a coyote that close to a main street before. Where I live, they come to the quieter streets when they are really hungry, perhaps it’s the garbage cans or people’s pets that attracts them. I think it would be great to see them all over Los Angeles. It would be awesome to see coyotes attacking parking police with a bunch of people standing by applauding. Death by coyote, could be cool. I remember once I was walking with Joe Cole and he saw a woman writing up a parking ticket for a car and he started going off on her, telling her that her job was wrong. It was great. She came on with some line about how he had to be quiet and he said that he was within his rights and he kept yelling, it was really intense. She just stood there and took it. I don’t know what set him off like that. I guess he didn’t like parking cops.

      A woman wrote me tonight asking about Joe and how I deal with the fact that he’s dead. She told me that she had suffered a miscarriage and even though it was years ago she can’t get over it. She had a breakdown and had to give custody of her two children to her ex-husband. It’s sad that she’s in that much pain. I think it would be scary to love something that much. I don’t know how parents let their kids out of their sight.

      Rain is battering the roof and Friday night is almost over. I will finish the pack tomorrow so I don’t have to think about it any more. I am out of here on 01-10. This week was hard with getting back here, the screwed up sleep and the depression but I got through it. If you sit still and let the world climb all over you, it will break you. It will humiliate you and make you timid. I don’t live in harmony with life. I live in spite of it. I live in opposition to it. I live to break it. I don’t want to be in love. I don’t want to breed. I don’t want to settle down. I want to wear down the parts until they break and then dump it. Earlier tonight I was looking at the bookshelves next to my bed and all the books on them that I have not touched for so many months because I have been reading up on these fucking cowards in the White House. Just looking at them made me feel like I had gone from black and white to color. I pulled down one of my volumes of Francis Bacon prints and looked at them for a few minutes. His paintings of people are how I see them. He is my favorite artist. There’s a lot of good books on those shelves: Fitzgerald, Jarry, Breton, Lem, Gide, Proust, Cendrars, Gogol, Houellebecq. I have it in my head that by reading fiction or looking at my art books, I am giving the fuckers a minute to breathe. I think I am going to read from some of those books this weekend. Fuck it.

      01. From Town To Township

      01-10-08 LAX: 1506 hrs. At gate 76, waiting to fly to London Heathrow. I was just there two weeks ago. So now, finally, I am heading out again. Ten days into January, the year starts. The last several days have been depressing. Erratic sleep, anxiety, all the usual pre-tour stuff. This will be a good run of shows. I like my new material and the fact that I have been doing a lot of shows lately is good. I want to get a few shows into this leg and get my voice back in shape.

      I have nothing but 2008. I am going to wear it out and make it wish it never happened. I am going to stay out on the road and out in the world as much as I can. There’s nothing else to do. Fuck it. I’ll hit it alone and see what I can find out. Fuck life. I hate it sometimes. I can’t wait around for it to do something. It moves so slowly. I pass life by. I scorch the hours, inhale and exhale centuries in this dying light. This new century is already crumbling, not even ten years old and it’s filthy and corrupted. Fuck it. Stay out, stay loose and keep moving. It’s the only way I can stand it.

      It’s amazing how much fucking pain you can put yourself in, how much misery and nervous tension one can generate by being screwed up in the head. That, to me, is the genius of man. I am mad all the time. It’s not even the fake war in Iraq that makes me mad, that’s just how America does business, how little it thinks of its people. We are just willful cannon fodder to them. It’s obscene and pathetic but not one aspect of it is new. Perhaps the scale of the corruption and lies is much bigger or due to the internet and other alternative news sources, we can see more of it but what’s behind it is business as usual. What makes me mad is how difficult it is to get through the hours, the days. Basically, it’s hard for me to do time.

      Everyone has a 60 second minute and no one has an easy life. Mine is one lucky break after another so I can’t complain. I am grateful for the kindness of people. They have given me more than I deserve. I like them very much but life is, at times, unendurable for me. That’s why I stay alone and keep moving as much as I can. Sometimes I can forget I am alive and by doing that, I get by.

      I am a lucky bastard. Lucky to be alive, lucky to be sitting here but a lot of the time I just feel like breaking shit. I am grateful for 2008 and for the opportunity to work, a place to go, something to accomplish. That’s what the band tours were, something to be accomplished. A peak to summit, a long trail through all weather conditions, something that would take it out of you and by doing so, teach a lesson. That’s over now I guess. That 2006 tour was very sad. The playing was good but it was hard to be around those people in the context of being in a band with them. There was no code, no sense of duty, mission or direction. It was a waste of time, resources and manpower. At least I know now and never have to ask again. 1630 hrs.

      01-11-08 Heathrow International Airport: 1732 hrs. I have been here for hours. The flight from LAX was diverted to Boston because of a medical emergency. That knocked us off schedule and I missed my connecting flight, ending my night off. I had high hopes for this night, Stockholm, darkness, cold, some time to walk around, could have been great. Now I’ll be getting there very late. I have been having bad luck with travel lately. My bag has been going missing almost every flight. The Boston diversion screwed me out of one of the only nights off I will be getting this year. There’s nothing to do about it, it’s not like you want to make the sick guy just shut up and take it so things can run on time. It’s not like the guy’s a Gitmo detainee! That’s just how it is with travel.

      1757 hrs. Now sitting in a cramped airplane. It’s packed in here. It’s great to be escaping the Sargasso grip of Heathrow though. You do a lot of walking in that airport. The more they add onto it, the more inefficient it seems to get. Had I known things were going to be this fucked up, I would have taken my night off in London.

      I remember the first time I went to Sweden. It was 1983. I don’t think the show went all that well. I think they threw snowballs at us. Nice. We went back again in the summer of 1984. At one of the shows, some skinhead gave Kira a hard time because she was wearing red. He told her that she was a communist. I think one of us told him he would be beaten severely if he didn’t leave the room immediately. He left and lived. Who cares? None of this stuff is worth fighting about. As much as it occurs to me to calmly shoot people in the head when they cut in front of me in line as they did so frequently today, I don’t get too invested in the stupidity of others. Humans are really not worth the expenditure of time or moral caloric burn. Humans do the same thing for the same reasons century after century. Almost without exception, humans have a few basic motivations and they often use their gender, color and social standing to leverage themselves into prime positions. Now and then, someone like Coltrane or Einstein comes along but the rest are, for the most part, just working their angle. Cheney, Bin Laden, Chavez, they’re just hustlers. It all depends on how much you want to buy in and if you have a preference as to who hustles you. These people are all the same. They will tell you different but they know what they are. The thing that I can’t understand is when they don’t think others see it plain as day. That’s the downfall of the Bush administration. They don’t understand that millions see right through them. Some get it and some don’t. I can understand why some people are into the havoc they are wreaking. If you’re making money off the invasion and occupation of Iraq then you will justify anything to keep it going. It’s nothing to lose your mind over, it’s just business. It’s a hustle and you have to make up your mind as to what, if anything, is in it for you. If you’re making money, that’s a motivation. If you have told yourself that you’re fighting the war on terror and defending your country by hanging out in a region that has no military, money or weaponry to attack anyone anywhere, that’s your pay. It’s a well played hustle. Bravo to the Bush administration for rolling the entire country. Way to go, player! 1830 hrs.

      01-12-08 Stockholm Sweden: 2122 hrs. Sitting in a restaurant down the street from the hotel. I got in late last night. I stayed up for quite some time and went walking for a long time. Glad I brought my coat. Talked to a guy I met on the street for awhile named Gustav. Mostly, I just enjoyed the cold and watched drunk young people as they waited in line to get into clubs, stood around smoking and talking, or walking by yelling into the night. I came back to the room, read, wrote and watched a film called The Kingdom, which wasn’t all that good and more of an exercise in Wahabi-baiting than anything else. After that, I fell out for a few hours. I got up and knocked out a piece for Swindle Magazine and sent it to Shepard Fairey and Roger, who run the magazine. They both wrote back and seemed to like the writing. I don’t know when the next deadline is but figured I should get it done.

      It is cold and wet on the streets of Stockholm tonight. Where you are is where you’re at, of course, but for me, I always reference where I am by using America as point A. Not Los Angeles specifically but America at large. When I am not in America, that’s when I feel like I am somewhere. Outside of America is an adventure for me. Walking around the streets here, I feel like I am doing something with my life. It’s more than just an adventure, it’s a different way of living. It’s a freeing up of things. Living all over has allowed me to think much differently and see things differently than I ever could have living any other way. When I am out here, I feel like I am really living on my own terms and I don’t feel so depressed. All around me, people are laughing and talking in Swedish and it’s music to my ears. I am alone and free in Sweden. A couple of weeks ago, I was in Pakistan and now I’m here. This is what it’s all about.

      As I sit here, young people walk by in groups. I wonder if they will remember this night and how they were all together. I have re-lived nights of my past, just small things like hanging out at someone’s house, playing records or walking down the street on a night like this so many times and always wondered if it meant anything to anyone else.

      01-13-08 Stockholm Sweden: 1649 hrs. It’s dark outside. I have been walking for quite a ways, looking for a coffee place that’s not so packed. There are many coffee places around here but all of them are full of people. The one I am in now, Café Merci, is not so crowded. It’s much colder out tonight than last night. It’s going to be great for walking later.

      I slept a bit too long today. I’ve been feeling pretty good since I’ve been up, knowing the shows start tomorrow night. I want to get going. Touring is how I live, it’s how I know life. For decades now, I have been all about the show and the tour. At the end of 1994, I was off the road for about three months, that was the longest I had been in one place since 1981. It was strange at first but I got used to it. The older I get, the harder it is to be off the road. Life catches up with me, the horror has a chance to well up inside me and all I want to do is kill and die.

      The shows give me somewhere to go and some kind of purpose for my life. I can’t wait for the shows to start. I am tired of feeling useless.

      There is a television in this café and all it’s showing is models walking down a runway, it’s an endless parade of women. A few days ago I was thinking of a fashion show that had women dressed as Hamas fighters wrapped in belts strapped with explosives. I searched for pictures of Hamas warriors online and found several. Damn, that’s an intense look. Makes all those American militia psychos look like overfed weekend wannabes. The Hamas warriors, they are ready to do it! That’s something that a lot of people in America can’t handle. The can’t deal with the fact that there’s at least thousands of people all over the world who are ready to die. They are good to go right now. A lot of Americans are willing to put an idiotic bumper sticker on the back of their SUV but that’s about it. That’s why there’s so many pejorative terms to describe Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and the like. Americans can’t handle a view point that extreme. I know I can’t handle it but at least I can somewhat understand what drives them to their conclusions. I fear that extremism as much as anyone but I try to keep my head clear enough to try and understand the motivation that makes someone want to blow themselves up and take out as many others as they can. I am fascinated by that kind of extreme behavior, that kind of commitment. In a way, these extremists are like samurai or kamikaze. That is some intense shit. If people started suicide bombing in America, that would be it. America would be like Israel, where it’s anytime, anywhere. I sometimes wonder if that’s the future of America.

      One thing I see for America is a radical distancing of the economic classes. I am not an economist and I am sure my sentiment is, at best, generic. With the middle class all but gone, I think we will soon be at the point of having just rich and poor. The chosen few in gated communities with private security and everyone else fighting it out on the streets. There’s a lot of gated communities near where I live. Rod Stewart apparently lives in one. It’s places like these that the wealthy will live in, guarded seclusion and vigilantly maintained protection. Naomi Klein talks about this in her book The Shock Doctrine. The more unevenly the money is distributed, the more society will attempt to regulate itself. Basically, there will be a rise in crime. The fences will grow higher and moats will be dug, heated, of course, for the guard crocodiles. Biometric identification systems for the help, some will have tracking chips implanted in case, like cattle, they are stolen. One day all of Beverly Hills will be gated and will be considered a green zone and you will have a damn hard time getting in without the proper credentials. It’s American companies destroying and rebuilding Iraq, why shouldn’t they do the same thing in America? Actually, it’s not a question of why not but a question of when. When are agencies like Fox News going to ratchet up the rhetoric and call the anti-war protestors in America terrorists and just get it over with? They probably will sooner than later. The more Iraq becomes like America, the more America will become like Iraq. Makes sense. KBR taking care of most of the construction, the same private security companies providing cover. Isn’t it interesting that in Iraq, one of the most dangerous places in the world, there are thousands of employed Americans seeking a better future? They had to go all the way to a disaster area to make better pay. If you think those who are making a profit on this are going to let this opportunity loose from their teeth, you’re fooling yourself. Mexicans break into America to do the jobs Americans don’t want to do, Americans go to Iraq to do the jobs Iraqis aren’t permitted to. 1801 hrs.

      01-14-08 Goteborg Sweden: 1843 hrs. Backstage listening to Something That I Said by The Ruts. I miss those guys, Segs, Ruffy and Paul. That was an amazing time last summer. I’ll be telling that story tonight.

      I am so happy that the wait is over and I am back on tour, back with the stories and the chance to go out there and do it. It’s the best feeling I know. I am always somewhat nervous before a show but I am more excited than anything. I might have some voice problems if I go too hard at the top of the set. The first show of a tour beats up on my voice. I have made my set list of ideas and I am good to go.

      I screwed up today and let that afternoon nap go on for too long. I should have pushed through it but I fell out hard. I’ll adjust as soon as I can. On in about 20 minutes, can’t wait. 1910 hrs.

      01-15-08 Goteborg Sweden: 1133 hrs. Last night was a great time. A little scratchy at the top of the set voice wise but it settled down about ten minutes in. I don’t know if I’ve done a talking show in this town before. The audience was fantastic and I am so glad to have the first show of the year done. I am at the airport now, with a surprisingly good cup of coffee. I know this sounds stupid but I have always liked the airports in Scandinavia. The Stockholm airport is so well designed, from the hardwood floors to the lighting. This airport is another nice piece of work. The airports here are very well considered and not nearly the people processing institutions like Heathrow and the major airports in America. That being said, the airports here have not the fraction of passengers that a place like Frankfurt International, London Heathrow or Chicago O’Hare has. Yes, I know, I bore you. My apologies.

      So today, I fly back to dear old Stockholm and hit stage at 2030 hrs. Very early lobby call tomorrow for Munich Germany. I meet up with Road Manager Ward and the tour bus there and we get this thing going. I think there are a total of 21 shows on this European leg. There’s some days off here and there, not many, mostly for the long drives. Before I got to the airport today, I checked the mail and read a letter from a female writing in from Russia. There was a jpg attached that I didn’t look at but her use of English was great. How anyone can hold more than one language in their head is amazing to me. So many people in Europe do it. I think that has to make you smarter somehow, to be able to consider an idea in two different languages has to give you something you couldn’t get by only speaking one language as so many of us do. It must enrich your perspective. Speaking of perspective enrichment, I am reading a book called Frontline Pakistan by Zahid Hussain. I am learning a lot about the Taliban and Pakistan’s role in their rise to power. I am also learning about the ISI, Inter-Services Intelligence, which is basically Pakistan’s CIA. I learned a bit about the ISI by reading books on the Soviet-Afghan War and was never able to fully understand if they were on our side or not. Perhaps the answer is somewhere in the murky middle or perhaps they switched sides when it was to their advantage. Hussain’s book talks about all the fucked stuff the ISI did. As bad as they were and perhaps are now, they don’t hold a candle to the level of mayhem and murder perpetrated by the CIA. We’re number one! 1214 hrs.

      1912 hrs. Stockholm. Backstage, waiting to go out and do it. I got in with no problems and got through the day without sleeping. I will be doing different material than last night. I was here last May and want to concentrate on all new stuff. I hope the new material will make me reach for it harder. I have to keep tomorrow’s travel out of my mind now as it’s distracting me. I have an early lobby call tomorrow, a long flight, press and then a show. I can do it but I can’t help but think about it when I should be thinking about the show. I am so relieved there’s a show tonight. I don’t think I could have taken another night off. Here’s the letter from the Russian girl:

      Hello, dear Mr Henry Rollins!

      Sorry for my english. I have looked your site and I like your music. Strange, but in Russia we are not hear about you and your band. So, i sow your last film also)), it’s terrible nice. To me interestingly your creativity and your show became valid. I am an actress, but not a metal genre though since the childhood adored the punk and fate. It probably therefore to me so please your songs. Probably, when I will gather with forces and spirit and I will arrive to the USA of what I already for a long time think, I will necessarily visit your concert. I live in Moscow and I have no any information about you, except for your site. I apply 1 of my photos that you can see too, who writes to you. I am so sorry, if my letter has appeared inappropriate. In any case I wish you creative successes and success in your life. Bye! The casual visitor of your site—VS, Moscow

      It almost reads like a poem. Nice.

      This is going to be a very full-on year. The only way to get through it is to think of nothing else. This is what keeps me honest. This is what I need to do with what’s left of my life. Leisure would be the end of me. 1929 hrs.

      01-16-08 Stockholm Sweden: 0801 hrs. At Stockholm-Arlanda Airport, waiting for the flight to Munich. I didn’t sleep much last night. I dozed off for a little while around 0500 hrs. and got up at 0600 hrs. I feel a little burnt but not so bad. I will get some sleep on the flight and will have some time on the bus to get my head down for a little while. In addition to all the press I have to do, I have been doing a lot of e-mail interviews. People ask me if I will do an interview for their fanzine or whatever and I usually say yes. I don’t mind. I try to do one or two a day. I have to keep moving on other projects though. I want to get the Fanatic! book finished up although it’s still a long way from being done.

      Last night’s show was good. It was a tricky one as I was in Stockholm so recently and I didn’t want to repeat material. Luckily, I have enough new stories to tell.

      The last time I performed in Stockholm was when I had that interesting conversation with the taxi driver from Iraq. I talked about our conversation onstage that night and some television station here actually found him and interviewed him about driving me to the venue. The man told the interviewer that I was very polite.

      I hope I get enough sleep before the show tonight. Munich can be a rough room. It’s a pretty tough part of Germany. I have always done pretty well there though. 0814 hrs.

      1917 hrs. Munich Germany. Got in several hours ago. Met up with Road Manager Ward at the airport and we hopped on the bus. All buses have a history and ours is no exception. Marilyn Manson was just in this one and before that, Dolly Parton. The back of the bus has a master bedroom as well as a bathtub. That’s a first. Apparently, Mr. Manson was in a bad mood one evening so there’s a brand new flat screen in the front of the bus as well as replacements for some other things that were demolished. Neither RMW or I can deal with the master bedroom so we’ll use that area to store t-shirts. I will be in one of the bunks on the left side of the bus as usual.

      I am looking forward to the show tonight. A different country a night later, that’s so cool. I have had a great affection for Germany ever since I started coming here in 1983. I had press until soundcheck and I have to be onstage in about half an hour. 1928 hrs.

      01-17-08 Zurich Switzerland: 1830 hrs. Backstage at a very nice venue called Kaufleuten. We have been told that Lenin spoke here once. I’ll have to see if I can get more information on that.

      The show last night was good, very friendly audience. It was great to be back in Germany. After the show I talked to Dietmar Lupfer, who used to be my agent in Europe. I have known him about 20 years. He gave me copies of some of my old books and records he found at his place. Among the things he gave me were Hungarian pressings of the Lifetime album. I don’t remember ever being told there was such a pressing. I bet there’s no accounting for it either. I asked him if he ever told me about this edition of the record and he insisted he had. I don’t know about that. I bet I would have remembered seeing this particular version of the record. I think it’s part of the grand scheme to keep artists away from their wages, lest they get too used to getting paid and stuff. It’s all in the past and I have a couple of copies of the record now so all is well. Sometimes it’s hard to see faces from the past. Seeing Dietmar makes me remember the early days of the band.

      Some of those times were very difficult but I remember the hunger of those days with a degree of fondness. We were very intense about everything back then. Our earnest devotion to the band was total, there was no room for anything else. In those situations, you have to be a maniac or you won’t get through it. I strive for that compression and narrowness as often as possible, it’s how I get the best out of myself. I fear losing that kind of focus. In those days, there was nothing else. The lack of options was frustrating at the time but great for the work. It’s much more difficult to maintain now. The present is far more confusing for me: A lot of options, a lot of room to move and so many ways to lose sight of the objective. I go to extremes to keep it happening. I know the truth. Only with vigorous work and pressure will I get to anything that’s real. There are so many paths of distraction that lead to a normalized, and in my opinion, compromised position. This is what is true for me. For the last several years, the desire to keep things lean and intense has become quite an obsession. It’s one of the reasons I take on the amount and variety of work that I do. It keeps me nerved up and struggling. One could argue that life is too short for such aggravation. I say life is fucked and I am at war with it. Time to get ready to get out there. The promoter came in a moment ago and told me that tickets were not moving for this show until the press I did came out and then things went much better. Keep struggling. 1923 hrs.

      01-18-08 Zurich Switzerland: 2239 hrs. It’s almost the end of the night off. The first four shows of the year are done and so far, all is going well. The audiences have been fantastic and I think I have been pretty good up there. Today I walked all over the city and went into some record stores. There are some serious vinyl stores here. I didn’t find anything but it was good to get outside and see things. We will stay here for another couple of hours and then depart around 0100 hrs. tomorrow for the show in Frankfurt Germany. It’s great to be back in Europe again. I have spent a lot of winters here over the decades so there’s a lot of memories that come up. In Munich the other night, talking with Dietmar really took me back. Just hearing his voice made me remember all the time I spent on those tours. We used to spend weeks in Germany. Those were very good times and some really good shows. The first time I played in Switzerland was about 25 years ago. It wasn’t a very good time but things got better later on. I am glad to be back on the road. The down time was a drag.

      The history of Lenin in Switzerland is interesting to me. From what I’ve read, Lenin came to Switzerland briefly in late 1907 and then returned in 1914 and stayed for a few years. The house he rented is still standing. I don’t know much about the guy but it’s interesting that he was here for awhile and strange to have been on the same stage. There’s a lot of that in Europe though, there’s so much history here. So many times, I have been in a venue that was used for something in WWII or Hitler had been in the place, you kind of get used to it. Like a lot of the world, Europeans live in a wash of culture and history. I think it gives them a sense of being connected to something, a context that allows them to make good decisions, like Germany not going into Iraq. They know history. In America, we tend to forget it and re-sell it a decade later to a new crop of young heroes. 2320 hrs.

      01-19-08 Frankfurt Germany: 1745 hrs. Backstage. I don’t think I’ve ever been in this place before. It’s a great venue, pro lights and sound, so it should be a good show.

      A good day off in Zurich yesterday. RMW and I walked all over the place checking out record stores. I found one thing of interest, a vinyl pressing of The End Of Silence. It’s kind of strange to buy your own stuff but it’s hard to find and I think I only have one copy so I picked it up. I must say, I bought the album with mixed feelings. It’s good for documentation but just looking at the record made me think of those times. When the album came out, Joe Cole had just been killed. It was an interesting time. Joe was dead, the album came out and we knew it was good and that it was going to do well and so every waking hour was filled with conflicting feelings. I was gutted about Joe, happy about the album, glad to be on tour but feeling guilty about feeling good about the album doing well. It was not an easy time. After the tour was over, about 11 months later, it wasn’t the same anymore, playing, touring, the music scene, our line-up, it had all changed. That album represents a simultaneous high and low mark. So anyway, I got the record with some reservations. It’s always sad to see one of your own albums orphaned at a record store. This thing, once adored, bought with enthusiasm and then sold back at a fraction of the initial cost paid. The small life and death of a record.

      Zurich is an interesting city. It’s like a first class seat on a sold out flight. Even though it shares a crowded, noisy planet, Zurich remains serene with extra leg room. The sidewalks are wide, the streets are well-lit and well considered, there is an ease and sophistication in the people on the streets. From the way they conduct themselves, it seems that they know no other way. After the show, we walked from the venue back to the hotel

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