Musician, spoken word artist, author, poet, actor. It's hard to talk about Henry Rollins without calling him a renaissance man, though the title certainly fits. Since replacing original Black Flag singer Dez Cadena in 1981, Rollins hasn't rested for a minute, always creating more and pushing himself to find new ways to present his unique worldview. The sheer numbers are astonishing: Nine records with Black Flag, 11 Rollins Band albums, 10 spoken word records, seven books, a dozen movies, a couple of TV shows and annual tours that stretch on for months at a time. He also owns his own publishing company and record label that reissues classic punk albums. A complex and puzzling figure, each of Rollins' endeavors reveals a distinct side of his personality.
Rollins the musician, for example, couldn't be more different from Rollins the spoken word performer. With a band pummeling away behind him, he morphs into a grunting, hot animal machine, taking no prisoners and barking lyrics like a drill sergeant. Conversely, his spoken word performances are decidedly low-key affairs, with Rollins revealing a humorous, insightful underbelly that is all but missing from his music.
Henry Rollins recently released his spoken word album, "A Rollins in the Wry."
Now 40, Rollins (born Henry Garfield) hasn't mellowed a bit. While other rockers "age gracefully," Hank has remained vital. His 2000 Rollins Band release, "Get Some Go Again" was as fast-paced and smashing as anything he's done to date, his lacerating vocal style having lost nary a step. Of course, a new record is already being mixed for release this summer, with a world tour to follow.
Currently, he's just released another spoken word album, "A Rollins in the Wry," and is taking his act on the road for the umpteenth time. Rollins has a longstanding tradition of not relying on his past, rarely performing classic Black Flag or Rollins Band material in concert, always bringing a whole new set of songs to the stage. His spoken word performances are no different. Rather than resorting to well-trodden routines, Rollins goes out on a limb for his art, taking chances that few modern artists are willing to take. His willingness to take those risks "smashing yourself into stuff to make some juice come out" as he says is part of the reason he's been around so long.
Rollins phones on a recent morning from his Hollywood home, full of energy and good humor. ("I live down the street from Marilyn Manson," he says laughing.) A music writer couldn't ask for a better interview, as Rollins loves to talk. And talk he does, buzzing on black coffee and filling the air with the sound of his own rapid-fire rapping.
Do you think the creative process of your spoken word stuff is similar to the process you go through doing music or writing?
"For me, the music is a bit more about going into the practice room and bashing it out. But then it's time to hone the lyrics, and that's me with one to five pieces of paper in a semi-circle around me trying to put something together. With the talking shows, I'm just cooking on-stage, and the resulting record every two years or so is from the one to three shows that we bother to record from a tour. We listen and go, 'That's cool, that's cool, that's cool, that's the record.' So I'm not really sitting there somewhere thinking, 'OK, that'll be something I talk about on-stage.' I mean sometimes I do. When I'm driving I'll remember something and go, 'Man, that's a good point. I think that would be something that would be fun to explore on-stage.' Or things happen like an event in the news or something in your own life happens where you go, 'Whoa, there's something there.' And it just kind of gets thrown into the stew pot."
Did you watch The Grammy's last night?
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Where: Liberty Hall, 644 Mass.
Ticket information: 749-1972
"I watched part of it with the sound off because I was in the studio mixing, and there's a TV lodged in the wall between the two speakers. We just put it on and watched it with the sound off. We didn't hear anyone perform except for Macy Gray. Did you see The Grammys?"
Some of it.
"Did you watch Macy Gray?"
No, I missed Macy Gray.
"If you ever get a chance to watch her shot again, watch her little moment. Look closely at her face. I wonder if she wasn't high on something. She looked SO stoned. Like dope. Like, eyes half open. And she kind of mumbled through it and everyone goes 'yeah' Actually the audience didn't seem all that into it, they just kind of went 'yeah, whatever.' and she just kind of waved and walked offstage. It was so strange. It was like, 'Gee did we disturb you. Did we wake you up?' It was exactly the way I saw her perform last summer. We did two festivals with her. Between two songs at one point she laid down on the back of the drum riser for seven minutes while the band kind of did these wanking solos. Very strange.
"So I watched a little bit of The Grammys, which to me is just really repellent to see these people so made up. I think what's the most repellent about those things is that if you're not up for an award that you would still go. Like, looking at Sheryl Crow in the most god-awful outfit. These people. (laughing) I don't know what compels them to dress up in the worst clothes. Like, lady here's a blanket. Wrap it around yourself and you'll look a lot better. Anthony Kiedis (Chili Peppers frontman) that boy's got some dress sense. Very nice suit! But you see those N'Sync guys. Fellas! You own Paraguay you know they're SO rich and you dress up like that? How do you look in the mirror and say, 'Man, I'm happening.' So we watched it with kind of that jaundiced eye one has when one actually does this stuff for a living."
Didn't you win a Grammy once?
"Yeah, I was nominated for the song 'Liar.' We performed the song on the show, and I was nominated for a spoken word thing which I won. So I got my Grammy six weeks later. It comes in the mail; it takes them that long to engrave it. And I gave it away."
Henry Rollins entertains punk fans at a Black Flag concert in the 1980s.
Who'd you give it to?
"I gave it to a couple who have a nice mantle on their fireplace and it looks good there. Where I live, no matter what I put it on, it looks like stolen property. And I don't want a trophy for art. It's just kind of too funny for me and I couldn't take it seriously. Also, that night I watched Sheryl Crow walk off with three of 'em. And anything that Sheryl Crow has three of, why would you want it on your mantle? And just the notion of getting an award, getting a trophy for art. Like, 'Your art kicks ass over this guy's art. You're art runs faster and jumps higher.' I don't know. I guess it's kinda nice because you're voted on by your peers. But as soon as you win a Grammy you can vote. So they send you this paperback-thick book of all these people to vote for. I looked at it the next year and I hadn't heard of half these people, haven't listened to the other 90 percent of it and had bought maybe one record out of literally a thousand artists that are on the thing. So what am I voting for? I'm qualified? I just threw it out I don't want to be part of that so I just chucked it. And I think after like three years they just stopped sending it."
What do you think about this whole rock/rap thing?
"I heard those records, and I guess if I was 16, they'd be cool. But what the guys sing about doesn't matter to my life. Like that Fred Durstian female problem. I remember that when I was younger, where I'd go out with a girl and she'd dump me and I'd go 'You bitch' and be all mad. Where now, I go out with a girl and of course I get dumped but now I kind of look at the whole thing differently. Like maybe I'm at fault here or maybe it's just not the thing. You know, there's no bad guy, she's cool, IT isn't cool. Or you can kind of look at it with a very Tom Waitsian, wry kind of thing like, 'What a gal! I'm still bleeding,' and just kind of laugh it off, where there was no humor to that kind of thing for me like 10 years ago. It was like, 'Aagh. I lay bleeding on the acrid desert floor.' Which is sides one and two of at least eight records that I've done.
"But now, those kind of themes don't matter to me and just that kind of empty lyric about how I'm such a bad ass. I've traveled pretty far and wide in my life and I've bumped up against some real bad people. Killers, pedophiles and people who are so quickly prone to violence. They don't talk about how they're gonna hurt you, all of the sudden you're looking at someone holding someone else's ear in their hand. I mean, really intense people. I'm not bragging, I'm just saying I've had the displeasure of being within spitting distance of some of these people. And they never brag about anything they've done. So when I hear that kind of gratuitous, 'I'm gonna kill you and I'm gonna slap her.' And I'm like, you know if you ever bumped into anyone like that, they'd scare the (expletive) out of you, and you wouldn't be so bad ass."
Why do you always get dumped?
"Oh, because I'm probably just a self-absorbed prick, and also the schedule that I keep, and the pace of work and the priority with which I hold it in. I'm into the work more than I'm into my own well being, and so were do you think a relationship would rate? You know, 'How come you haven't called me?' I'm like, 'Huh? Who is this?' You know, I don't even recognize the voice. I'm so like deep into what I'm doing and when I get that 'How come you haven't called me?' phone call or 'What's up with the tone of your voice?' which happened to me with a girl I went out with last year. She called me, and I was jet lagging in Germany. I had to swim across the bed to find the phone. I wake up in this black cube, I don't know where I am. All of the sudden the phone's ringing and I'm clubbing the table hoping a phone will be in my palm at some point. And I'm like 'Hello?' 'What's up with that tone of voice?' I'm like, I'm getting yelled at, long distance? Click. I just hung up, I was done. And we broke up right then and there. And of course the phone rang again in 30 seconds and I took it off the hook.
"When I finally saw her a month and a half later, it's like 'What was up with that?' I'm like, 'You know something, you're a beautiful woman and I just can't take that kind of (expletive).' I'm not that interested in having company to listen to this (expletive). And maybe I gotta grow up there or maybe it just didn't mean that much to me, but it's hard to have a relationship and be moving around the world nine months a year. It must not be that important to me."
With all the stuff that you do and maybe it's an obvious question but do you feel driven to create? To have this sort of constant output?
"Yes. I think that's the job. I think you're supposed to be always gutting yourself and smashing yourself into stuff to make some juice come out. I think a lot of contemporary artists, well there's different schools of thought. At the end of the day, hey it's art, do what you want. I'm not like 'art Nazi.' I just wonder why these people aren't harder on themselves. I always thought the artist was kinda like the warrior. It's supposed to hurt, it's supposed to (expletive) you up. It did all my heroes, where they were so obsessed with it. It's not like John Coltrane beat himself to death playing the horn, but talk about a guy who was only into one thing. That was it. He'd wake up in the morning at four, meditate 'til six and then it's time to play the horn until like 9 p.m. That's a yardstick for you to measure yourself up against.
"I always thought that was the job, to be continually doing that. So you meet some guy whose music you like and he's a total prick, it used to kind of bum me out. Now I go, 'Maybe the art is the ONE thing he can pull off in his life and the rest of his life is a disaster. Maybe we should cut him a little slack and appreciate him for what he does and not necessarily bum out that he's not a fun guy to have dinner with.' That's why something like The Grammys or whatever, when you see these people spending so much time on their hair. Or they're always out and around, they're always at parties, always doing this stuff. How can you have any potency in your work if you're always out smiling and being so content? You're gonna make that happy-ass music which never means anything to me. You're gonna make that kind of splashy, fun I-work-on-my-hair kind of art.
"I've always been more enamored with the maniac who's kind of (expletive) up, who keeps going at it. That's more what I'm interested in. I don't ever go to any of those parties or any of those things. I don't even really hang out with a lot of people, which strikes people as odd. I think that's what led to the 'Henry is gay' rumors. You don't see me making the scene with some woman next to me. I've been with women. But (she's) like, 'Hey let's go out to dinner' and I'm like, 'OK.' And they can just see the pain on my face. 'People. We're going to be around people?' Like, 'Hey, there's this release party, this movie premiere. Let's go.' I'm like, 'Aagh. Oh my god, you're the anti-Christ. Go by yourself I don't want to go.' (laughing) There'll be those people there, those hand-shaking, self-promoting people I don't want to know."
Henry Rollins totes one of his favorite instruments.
You talked about these artists who crash up against it. For so many of them, drugs are part of that. I know it's not part of it for you. Why?
"Because that's a cushion against it. It's like Novocain. How are you gonna know about pain if you're always doping yourself up against it. I always wondered why you want to insulate yourself against the very thing that you're trying to be so close to? How can you do anything when you're drooling on your leg and falling asleep in front of the TV on a dime of heroin. People say, 'I need drugs to create.' I'm like, 'really? I heard your last record and it sucked. That's one you did while high? It's like a tenth of what you can do.' Then they clean up and do a record and it's like, there you go. Now that's hittin'."
You just turned 40. Did that have any special meaning to you?
"Turning 40 has more relevance to me in a funny way. All those connotations of turning 40 are kind of funny. You know, 'Oh, you're 40,young people can't trust you anymore, you're officially no longer hip.' Like I've ever had a hip moment in my life. I got all these birthday cards saying, 'Here's a coupon for Viagra.' One thing I thought was very funny which I talked about on-stage in Chicago, you know when you get the inevitable e-mail spam, porn offers or whatever? I got a bunch of those, and then I started getting 'Do you need a home loan?' e-mails. I'm like, 'No, I'm covered.' Then I started getting, 'Buy Viagra discretely online.' Have they found my age group and I'm part of the age group that needs Viagra? Or have they seen me in the shower and didn't approve of the intensity of my erection? What's going on here? What do they know about me?... And you realize they wouldn't be sending this (expletive) to a 21-year-old. They'd be sending him a straitjacket for his (penis) to restrain him from inseminating anything that moves. And I felt so Alan Alda-esque. Like, "Oh Christ it's time to buy a Volvo.'
What were your 30s like for you?
"Funner than 20s, less turbulent. It's been a process of knowing myself better as I get older and kind of having more fun with life. You don't have to (expletive) yourself as much. You can just get down to what the real gear is. Instead of wrestling your ego to the ground, you can just do the work which is where it's at for me. It's like what I was saying before with relationships, it becomes less about the (expletive) on both sides and it becomes more about these two people being together. You learn how to relinquish some ego and give some space and some slack. So that's been kind of what my 30s were about.
"I had a good time. Even the bad times were good. Getting the chance to keep working and exploring the music, that to me has been the real payoff. Because to keep being able to draw an audience and have anyone interested in what you do after a certain period of time, is not very easy to do. Five years from now, the biggest band in the world, N'Sync, will they be around? Three years from now? It's a hard ball to keep up in the air. It really makes you appreciate a Bob Dylan. I do not check out every Bob Dylan record, nor do I check out every Neil Young record. I mean, two will go by and I won't even know it. Then I'll pick up one, and you hear these guys still emotionally intense and still really in love with the music. That last Dylan record, that 'Time Out of Mind' one if that is the last record was this really nice collection of love songs. Kind of naked, raw, emotionally open songs. I heard that record and I went, 'Man, how inspiring.' He can still be hurt, he can still be in love or articulate that to make me feel it. That to me is a hell of a thing to do.
"We'll see if all of our Grammy winners are still around years from now. I'm sure U2 will still be bleeding away. It's a hell of a test to keep it up in the air. So the fact that I'm in year 21 of touring and recording, it's been real enjoyable just to get to do it."
I saw your last spoken word show at Liberty Hall in Lawrence. You talked for probably two and a half hours and managed to keep the audience with you that whole time. Is that difficult to do?
"Oh yeah. And that's the whole trick of the gig is to make it where I say good night and you look at your watch and go, 'What the (expletive)? That was like 50 minutes, what a rip-off.' And then you go, 'My god, it was two hours and 10 minutes.' And you didn't notice. I want it to be interesting, I don't want to bore you. I want you to be absorbed by it and yeah, that's REALLY hard. One guy keeping all these other brains at bay? You try it. (laughs) It's a hard tour.
"The band tours are nothing in comparison. That's physical. You're one of four people; if you screw up, the snare drum will save you. Your mistakes kind of fade into everyone else's, and by the next beat all is forgiven. But the talking tours, I look forward to them, but I always look forward to them with a mixture of anticipation and 'Can I do it? Can I still pull this off?' Right now I've got 57 shows coming up in eight different countries. But I always pull it off, it seems. I mean, I always get to the end of the tour and I've done it. But I always wonder how I'm gonna do it until I'm like 20 shows in, where I'm in the pocket. I can't wait to get out there for the first week, just to get it going. I'm basically standing on the side of the stage right now waiting for the curtain to open, and I'm also in the middle of mixing a band album. Somedays it's hard to concentrate on the music because there's a huge tidal wave coming and it's about a block away. I'd like to be surfing it, but I hate staring at it."
How did you get into spoken word performances?
"There was a promoter in L.A. back in '83 who had these open mike nights where you get 10 minutes and you can just do your thing. I would go to these as a fan because D. Boon from The Minutemen, Jeffrey Lee Pierce from The Gun Club, Chris D. from The Flesh Eaters, Exene (Cervenka, former X vocalist), you know, cool people reading poetry and reading tour journals or just going up and goofing off. One day the promoter said, 'How about you?' And I went, 'Well, I never thought of that. What do I do?' He said, 'Do anything you want. Just don't do a Black Flag song, you gotta do something else. That's the gig you gotta do something different from what you normally do.'
"So I got my 10 minutes and just told a story about what happened at band practice the day before. (Rollins tells a long story about Black Flag being nearly killed by white supremacists after a rehearsal in Samoan gang territory.) So I told this story and people in the audience went, 'What the (expletive)?' and I went, 'Thanks, good night.' That was it. It took all 10 minutes to tell and everyone ran up and went, 'Wow. That was great, when's your next show?' And I was like, 'There isn't one, you heard it. We're done.' And they went, 'No, man. You gotta do it again!.'
"I had a really fun time doing it. The same promoter had another show, and I did it again and read something I'd written and told a story, I forget what. And it felt good, it felt very natural. So the promoter had me open for these local poets ... Excuse me for the bean grinder (industrial strength coffee bean grinder whirs in background) ... Then a few weeks later the local poets were opening for me, which they didn't like very much. A couple years after that, I'm doing cross country tours, playing in front of 12 to 50 people. And I'll tell you what, you'll get a chuckle out of this, one of the first places I played outside of L.A. on a regular basis was Lawrence, Kansas, because they would have me. So Lawrence was actually like this cool place for me, and I always remember it with affection."
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