What sets Henry Rollins apart from the other oddballs, in the oddball world of the spoken word, is that he does not prepare his shows, not in the traditional sense anyway. He does not script his stories, he does not memorize gags, he doesn’t use a set list — he barely has a plan. He simply mounts the stage and starts talking.
“It’s like stir fry,” he said over the phone from his office in L.A. “I’m making it in front of you. My CD reflects that. It’s not slick.”
The CD is called, A Rollins in the Wry. It was culled from two (of about eight) shows he did in the spring of 1999 at Cafe Luna in Los Angeles. It is part diary, part sociopolitical satire, part expose, part flatulence, and part caterwaul.
Certainly, the thought of donning a stage and just “winging it” is horrifying to most folks, fascinating to the rest. But just spend a few minutes chatting with Henry Rollins and you quickly realize — his problem isn’t stretching the material to fill an entire performance. His problem is what to leave out.
Here’s why:
1) His research is thorough:
“If there is a topic I’m interested in,” he explained, “I pursue it. It’s why I don’t spend my weekends at parties, passed out on a couch. I aim myself at my art. If I want to talk constructively about George W. Bush, I better know what I’m talking about.”
2) He has stories:
Consider his manifold experiences with tragedy and success: He survived the nightmare of an abusive father, witnessed — at close range — the gruesome murder of his best friend, Joe Cole, toured the world with Black Flag, appeared in several major motion pictures (The Chase, Johnny Mnemonic), VJ’ed slots on MTV, penned a column for Spin, and owns a publishing company and a record label.
3) He has opinions: “They’re giving opinions away like kittens,” said Rollins. “I get to have mine too: Should Bono be mowing my front lawn and living in a cave so he’ll never make music again? Oh Yeees. But if some government agency tried to limit his access to a guitar, I’d be standing right next to him going Fuck you, no you won’t!”
4) He has energy: Watch how Rollins — singing or speaking — dominates the microphone. Notice his neck tighten when he sticks out his sledgehammer chin, or how he dips his head backward to release a primordial howl. He doesn’t just summon energy. He is energy. And he delivers it directly into your face.
“I’m like a New York mugger,” he shouted on Wry. “I telegraph everything I’m gonna do. If you get mugged by me, I should have your watch.”
While A Rollins in the Wry is primarily a humor/satire performance, it is not stand- up comedy.
“With stand-up comics,” he complains, “it’s all about the joke. It’s like a porno film: The dialogue just gets you to the punch line. I’d rather riff on topics where there’s no bada bing, bada boom.”
Also, unlike most comedians, Rollins’ spoken word can be quite sobering and is generally darker than what the new CD represents. Outtakes from the Cafe Luna shows is evidence of that.
“I do that, “Pull-your-head-out-of-your-ass-and-look-at-it” kind of stuff,” he explained. “Like I talk about how J.F.K. Jr. was an arrogant asshole for trashing himself and two innocent people. I say that the Kennedy males have been killing women and crashing vehicles into water for generations. I say that Joe Kennedy (J.F.K.’s dad) was a racketeering asshole, that J.F.K. was an adulterer who hung out with Mafiosos, and that J.F.K. Jr. was just a guy who failed the bar exam twice, had a famous dad, and carried out the generic Kennedy imperative — to murder and crash. And that’s not very funny.”
One thing that always struck me about Henry Rollins is how his solid stance against drugs and alcohol contrast the highly intoxicated world of hard rock.
“I did my drunk thing between the ages of seventeen and seventeen,” he said and laughed. “It made me feel miserable. I tried a few [drugs] but never stuck with them.”
“When you were with Black Flag,” I asked, “was there an enormous influx of drugs and were you constantly being put in the position to not-so-politely refuse them?”
“Black Flag was four starving vegetarians. We would’ve eaten meat if we had the money to afford it, but we didn’t. We didn’t even have the money for pot until the end. We never had the rock star life where a bunch of people were trying to give us cocaine. It wasn’t that kind of music. It was a bunch of speed freaks and stoners and they weren’t exactly running up to band members to part with their stash. Besides, offering us a line of coke wasn’t going to get you any where. We were playing in dumps with 400 people. Was speed somehow going to get you to the front of the dump? Besides, no one is going to get into a conversation with me by offering me a line of coke.”
Henry Rollins is the easiest interview I’ve ever conducted. Just give him a topic and he’ll rave until he jars your earwax loose. So I asked Rollins to riff on the topics of the day:
Napster V. Metallica: “If you’re Metallica,” he said after taking a moment and a breath, “you already have about seventeen percent of the world’s money in your bank account. . . . Why Lars [Ulrich] would be concerned about some college kid scrapping monetary crumbs from his whiskers, I don’t quite divine. At the end of the day,” he sighed, “I’d rather you hear what I do than not hear it, whether or not you’re gonna pay. I mean, I pay rent too, and making money is cool if you’re into regular meals and everything. . . . But I also think, that people in the music industry have always found a way to fuck the artist. . . . Just like the record deal itself: You get a loan from a record company. And for the privilege of that loan — which you must pay back –they own your record. You lose everything. So Napster boy is just one of the many masters that I have to answer to as a musician. And I just accept it. Because there is always someone to ream the artist. My asshole is so rounded out now, I no longer feel the new dick in it.”
XfL: “I guess it’s gonna be a bunch of steroided-out athletes — that couldn’t make the NFL — doing incredibly grievous bodily harm to each other, he laughed. “It’ll probably be huge because people like it when football players make brains spill out of each other’s helmets. And we’ll get to see some tits fall out of sweaters and G-string crotch shots that show great labial glimpses of vaj.”
Music writers/interviewers/critics:
“Many of the music writers of the day are musically illiterate. You read some of the appalling writing in a magazine like Spin. These people just don’t know what they are talking about.
“Let’s put it this way,” he added, “I’ve answered your questions honestly. You’ve been cool to me, so I’ll be cool to you. But will I read this thing you are going to write about me? No. Will I care what you wrote about me? Absolutely not. Will I take any word you say in print and weigh it with anything more than a feather’s weight? Absolutely not. I live in the comfort of knowing, 99 percent of grain-fed boys and girls could not handle me if I came across the table and got a hold of them. . . . I’ll only be happy if I’m going home with one of your ears.”
EJD
Circa 2000
