Reserve your signed copy of Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 1, the new book by Henry Rollins, at this location. 

Rollins offers a rather lengthy description of the book, what it’s about, how it came to be and what went into its completion. It reads:

"Somewhere in 2012, I was missing all the music writing I had done for the three volumes of Fanatic! and wanted to do more but I wanted it to be different. Those three books were notes from my radio show on Indie FM 103. I wanted to get to the core of record collecting, rare records, the obsession and excitement that has never left me in over forty years of hunting for, talking about and playing records. 

In my mind, I wanted to do a kind of writing that captured the limitless joy that music brings, where it seems almost unbelievable that something can be so amazing. For me at least, nothing gets that better than music. Since I was young, it’s been music and records. That’s what I was after. I also wanted to be able to write about my obsession with records. I wanted the writing to be exactly how I think about them; endless amounts of detail, making mountains out of molehills, everything pretty much slammed into the red with enthusiasm. I would allow myself to repeat a topic if it occurred to me, as one will do, to go on for way too long on any subject and most importantly, capture the intensity of obsession. Imagine if Joel Cairo and Kasper Gutman, the two maniacs from The Maltese Falcon were into records--like that.

I started writing but it wasn't 'the thing.' I kept at it, gave up, resumed, over and over, on and off for several months. In the middle of 2013, while in South Korea to see the Stooges, I got some traction and took off." 

"The format of the book, in part, came about from something Heidi said to me years ago. We were at the office and I was showing her some rare record I had just found and she said that it was cool but that she was one of the only people who got to see parts of my collection and for the most part, it just sits unseen and that at some point, there’s something wrong with that. I agreed. I decided that the book should be 8.5” x 11” and there should be a lot of images. Posters, flyers, set lists, promo photos, picture sleeves, and whatever else would be really cool to look at, in fact, the book should be very image driven. If there’s nothing interesting to look at on almost every page, then it’s not nearly Fanatic enough.

I wrote and collected images for at least two years before I dared to look back at what I had written, for fear that it was fun to write but might just be an unreadable mess of enthusiasm over substance.  

I started working on the writing from 2013 to 2015 as a manuscript. In June of 2018, I had beaten it into shape enough to be proofed. Heidi and I have been proofreading my work together for well over a decade. The method, which I think is a really good one, originated with her and Carol. When working on the copy edit on one of my books, they read the manuscript out loud. Hearing a sentence being read is a great way to find its flaws. For hours at a time, shoulder to shoulder, I read out loud to Heidi while she listens and takes notes. When I lose the plot or something isn’t clicking, she’ll stop me and we’ll work on the sentence. On a good day, we get through about five thousand words. Earlier this year, we were done and sent the manuscript to Carol for the final proofread. After she was done, we sent the manuscript to Dave Chapple, our long time layout pro. The book has about 250 images, so almost every page presented a design challenge. I did almost all the scans, which was slow and time intensive work but totally worth it. 

I decided to call the book Stay Fanatic!!! because the first music books I did were called Fanatic!, which is how the show notes for my radio broadcasts start, 'Stay Fanatic!!!' is how the show notes end. It connects the two series but allows both of them to be their own thing. Whoa. 

Several weeks ago, after 300 hours of meticulous layout brilliance logged, Dave was done. We sent the files to the printer, they made a test copy, sent it to us, we approved, and now it's here!

This book is in no way anything you haven’t seen before. It’s a 330 page fanzine. Hopefully, it’s fun to read and with all the images, tells a cool story. 

If you like music, going to record stores, to shows, if music is one of those things that is and has always been one of the best friends you’ve ever had, you might like this book. 

You’ve probably noticed that the book’s title has 'Vol. 1' in it. I’m afraid that the second volume is being edited now. I’ve been writing Fanatically in this mode since 2013. When I say that I’m afraid, I mean that I’m afraid. I’m afraid that at some point, we’ll be back in proofread/edit/layout too-late-to-turn-back-now land and there will only be me to blame. 

There was a moment a few days ago Heidi and I were in the office, running the figures on how long everything took and how much it cost and we both thought that perhaps we had built a mountain too big to summit. We then concluded that this is the book we wanted to make, the book we wanted you to have and that’s all there was to it. 

Life is short and as much as possible, you have to do your thing. For better or worse, the success or failure of what I do is approval based. I have the choices of disregarding any possible downsides and moving forward to completion, or over thinking it and pulling back. I’ve chosen the former. I hope you like the book. Stay Fanatic!!!"