Rollins Expounds on Four Coming LPs

February 15 -- Punk legend and workaholic Henry Rollins will be the center of four full-length releases during the first few months of 2001. He apparently wasn't slowed by the expiration of his contract with DreamWorks Records after disappointing commercial sales of last year's Get Some Go Again.

"They lost money on me, and record companies are about money, not about soul," he says. "Nice people, but … when you have a DreamWorksguy come up to you and say, 'Hey, man, are you going to tour on this record?' and you're already 40 shows in … that is record-company speak for 'You're already extinct at this label. No one knows you exist.'"

Rollins explains that the A&R representative at the label never even met the members of his band. "At the end of the day, everyone's happy. They no longer have their money drained and I no longer have a bunch of lazy senior executives."

He says that the label was gracious, however, in allowing the band to keep outtakes from the album's recording session — 65 minutes of which they will release this spring on its Web site as a limited-edition album titled Yellow Blues.

On Tuesday, Touch & Go/Quarterstick Records will also release Rollins in the Rye, a live "talking" album recorded during the spring of 1999 at Cafe Luna in Los Angeles. "I hate that 'spoken word' term," he says. "It just sounds like a gig I would never go to. It sounds like some substitute school teacher reading bullshit."

Also on its Web site, the Rollins Band will release A Clockwork Orange Stage — a live album recorded last year at Roskilde, the night after nine people were crushed to death. Both headliners — Pet Shop Boys and Oasis — had refused to play in honor of the deceased.

"The Pet Shop people and the Oasis people came over with their corny, self-righteous, 'Well, what're you going to do?'" Rollins recalls. "And we told 'em, 'Well, we're going to rock.' They're like, 'Oh my god. How can you?' I was like, 'Man, go back to your bus before you have my big American foot planted up your ass.'