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| Interviews: Ash |
Welcome to Rollins
101 Henry Rollins: 30 October 1996 As ashamed as I am to admit it, I can't find the tapes of my interview with Henry Rollins. This is the story that ran in the Diamondback - half review of his talking show, half interview. I really wouldn't have room to run a full transcript of his two-hour show, anyway ... Punk rock legend Henry Rollins doesn't think much of college students. "I come to universities and I expect to meet people whose brains are on fire," Rollins said Wednesday night in the Grand Ballroom. "Instead, it's (in a drawling stoner voice) 'Yeah, I got a Hootie record (sigh). I hang out (sigh). I drink a little (sigh). I drink a lot (slump).' It blows me away when I come to universities and I meet people who are somewhat illiterate, or boring, or apathetic. ... "It would be a luxury for me to go to a place and read and learn for 12 hours a day. Oh my god, I get a woody just thinking about it. Imagine going to Princeton and reading the letters of Hemmingway or manuscripts of F. Scott Fitzgerald's. As a student, you can check this shit out, man. I can't believe people are at a university and they're (a) bored, when you have access to the Internet and a mile-long library, or (b) they get fucked up on booze and puke on their leg for half of the four year term." Welcome to Rollins 101. Most of the audience didn't go to Rollins' spoken word performance Wednesday to hear about the value of a college education. They went because Rollins, the former vocalist for Black Flag and current singer for the Rollins Band, is a legend in the music world. He lived out of a van for several years as Black Flag toured the United States in the early '80s, sleeping on floors and playing gigs to earn enough money for food and gas to the next show. Four years ago, Rollins' best friend was killed at his side during a botched robbery, an incident that has haunted him ever since. During this three-hour performance, though, Rollins had his audience alternately roaring with laughter and in hushed silence as he talked about everything from sending harassing faxes to his throat doctor who also treats the Evil Bolt-man (Michael Bolton) to a recent visit to Auschwitz. It was all vintage Rollins, though he stood alone on the stage, no chair, just a water bottle. His voice boomed, slipping in and out of character voices as he told his stories, his body contorting, those veins busting out of his neck and forehead, threatening to burst at any second. He started off with some comedy about living in New York. It was better than your average stand-up routine, but it wasn't really all that special, as he discussed his problems getting an apartment, shopping for household goods and how he discovered why New Yorkers are pissed all the time. He got more laughs, though, when he got personal and addressed the issue of his sexuality, which had been the subject of rumors for the last few years. Because Henry isn't in the public eye much and isn't married, engaged or in a long-term relationship, people began suggesting things. "Last year, I was accused of being gay," Rollins began, to much laughter from the crowd. "People started calling me: 'Henry, I don't care - I've known you for a long time, and, um, you're not gay, are you?' At first I'd go, 'No. If I was, I'd tell you. I don't give a fuck who puts what where.' So when the rumors got bigger, I decided to have some fun with it. People call, 'Henry, are you gay?' And I'd say, 'What do you mean? Gay, like, happy?' "'No, you know, you don't like guys, do you?' "I'd go, 'Well, I like you. You're my friend, right?' 'Yeah, but Henry - are you a homosexual?' 'Gee, I don't know. Do you want me to be?' "I was just trying to see how much homophobia I could get out of these guys. 'Relax, I'm not a leper. I can still be friends with you. I like chicks.'" As the evening wore on, though, Rollins ventured into some far more serious territory. The audience went silent as he described a meeting he had with Marius Bannister, an Australian teenager suffering from leukemia. One of Marius' biggest wishes was to meet Rollins, who dropped by while on tour in Melbourne. "I was sitting there on the edge of the bed, and there were three of us in the room: Marius, me and death." As Marius laid in his bed, forced to stay there because of the tubes in his chest, Rollins said the teenager told him that he was afraid to go to sleep because "[Marius] was afraid he'd die in his sleep. He said, 'If I die, I want to die with my eyes open.' That was one of the most intense things I've ever heard. It sounded like fiction coming out of this 17-year-old kid." Later, Rollins offered his ideas on world peace (have the leaders meet in the White House and bond by giving each other hand jobs) before again turning to a more somber topic: authorities' building walls between countries and people. "I was sitting in this airport, thinking ... and building a wall is a metaphor for so many things in this country. There are so many ways to build a wall. I'm not saying 'You're just another brick in the wall.' I'm not being utterly sophomoric and stupid. All I'm saying is that there are a lot of attitudes you can have: having racial intolerance, having no time for a different skin color. "To supply energy to that thinking and all that goes with it, and the harness that it puts you in, and the weight that you have to carry, you are building the wall. You are creating this purposeless fucking thing. You are servicing someone that you would probably hate if you met. I have a hard time with racial intolerance, with sexual-preference intolerance, and I think that if you're any of those things, you're serving the man. You're horse shit." After the show, a student came up to Rollins as he was signing books and CDs in the hallway. "God, I can't believe I'm meeting you," she said. Rollins smiled and signed her book, a copy of his See A Grown Man Cry. Later, he'd shake his head as he was asked about it. "I never understand that shit," he said. "I mean, it's not like I'm this thing. It's so weird I mean, I'm human. Cut the kissing up." If people think it's such an honor to meet him, he surely gets kids coming up to tell him that he's their hero. Rollins stopped. 'Yeah,' he said, as an embarrassed look came across his face. "It makes me go, 'Aw, come on.' It makes me really uncomfortable." He may be uncomfortable with it, but Rollins admitted that a lot of fans come up to him after shows and tell him that he has changed or, in some cases, saved their lives. "I think that in a lot of ways, we're in a vacuum in this country, and that a lot of young folks aren't getting any strong words from their parents or their teachers or MTV or something, and I say some stuff that's pretty blunt, pretty brutal," he explained. "It's like, And here's what I think. If you don't like it, well, you don't like it." "A lot of people go, 'Whoa, that wakes me up. It's not a mediocre idea; it's absolute. I don't agree with that idea, but boy, I sure dug the fact that he said it.' And I think that that may be inspirational to some people. It makes them think, perhaps. But I don't go out there thinking that I have something to tell people that I know something they don't. That's very pretentious." Rollins laughed off the suggestion that he was some sort of motivational speaker, but later he admitted that he's seen the evidence of his impact on his audience's lives, and he takes that very seriously. "Judging from the mail I get, it really has impact. Say I get a hundred letters in a week. Ninety of them are 'When are you doing another talking show?' or 'I saw you, and this is what I got from it.' I rarely get letters about the band. 'When is your next dumb album coming out?' I maybe get one of those a year. The rest of them are like 'I saw you, and what you said about drinking is so cool, because I'm trying to stop, and you got me pumped up to get my shit together.' So, it's like, 'Hey, great.' It's very cool." Just looking at Rollins, his stocky, muscular frame and multiple tattoos don't suggest a person who lives an entirely clean lifestyle, but Rollins shares the straight edge philosophy of D.C. Hardcore compatriots Minor Threat: no drugs of any kind, no alcohol and no tobacco. "I have a problem with anyone from 19 to 90 who's burned out," he said. "There's no reason to be burnt out whatsoever. I absolutely abhor drugs, alcohol and tobacco - it helps you build the wall. It helps you stay mediocre, and it keeps your thoughts mundane. I always thought alcohol was the ocean of mediocrity. That's why it's so easy to get to. That's why they have pitcher nights: 'Drink this fucking pitcher!' 'How bout a glass?' 'No! A pitcher!' 'I just want a glass!' 'Then you're a pussy, okay?' "It's no wonder to me that alcohol is so readily available. It keeps you flatlined. If you spend six hours at your shitty job, your mind has been pummeled by six hours at Burger King, and then you get enough beer in you to kind of slow your thoughts of revolution and burning the place down. You come home and lie down passively as Pamela Anderson insults your intelligence for an hour. You listen to some bullshit MTV and watch more TV: 'Oh, look it's Conan O'Brien and I'm still fucked up. Heh heh.' "And then all of a sudden you're 92 years old and a piece of shit and you've never had any dreams or any aspirations. And there are people in various branches of the government who go 'Yes! We got him! We turned him into a Wall builder! We turned him into a guy who's a slow thinker, who'll have no problem having his e-mail read, having his phone tapped, his taxes jacked and his prejudices exacerbated.'" Those prejudices became the night's most poignant moments when Rollins talked about his recent visit to Auschwitz concentration camp, which the band visited during a tour of Poland. As he talked, Rollins' face still betrayed the utter confusion and frustration that anyone who has been to a camp, the Holocaust museum or lost a relative during the war. But as he recounted walking around, looking at the Zyclon B chambers and the Wall of Death, his feelings became more focused in anger - a Rollins trademark. "I've always had a problem with racial hatred or racist attitudes, but I walked out of there with a very extreme sense of right and wrong," he said. "You always get into that corny argument at Denny's at 3 a.m. when you're full of caffeine? 'There's no such thing as right or wrong man, because what's right for you may be wrong for me.' Fuck you. There is right and there is wrong, and what happened over there was wrong. I know the answer to this argument, so fuck you. It made me realize that that there is an absolute enemy. If you are a freethinking person who is racially tolerant or tolerant to sexual orientation, there are people who are not into that. They are your enemy. I didn't think I hated anyone 'til I came out of that place. Oh, I hate a lot of people now." After this, Rollins lightened the mood by talking about recording a cover of "Funky Town" with Ru Paul in a tiny one-mike vocal booth that they barely fit in; the 6-foot-4 drag queen was literally squashing him against the glass, Rollins said. They had to ad lib a vocal over the instrumental track, with the idea that they would be dramatizing riding a motorcycle to Funky Town, with Rollins driving and Ru holding on. It started out innocently enough: 'Uh, Ru, do you have your pussy cat wig?' "Yeah, I got it cocked up on my head," Rollins lisped, imitating the diva himself. "How bout your hot pants?" "Sizzlin', baby!" "Alright! Wrap your long, lean legs around my chest!" However, producer Melvin Gibbs decided it wasn't good enough, so Rollins and Ru Paul had to make it spicier. "You know, Ru, when we get to Funky Town, we can do things that are illegal or immoral," Henry deadpanned. "Honey, don't make promises yo' ass can't keep," Ru sneered. But that still wasn't good enough. "So I looked at Ru and said, 'All the way?' He said 'Uh huh.' So we get on the motorcycle, he's wrapped around me, holding on to my dick, we head to Funky Town, I throw him in a room, strip his clothes off, throw him in the shower, scrub him off, throw him on the bed and yell, 'Okay Ru, here I come!' He's yelling 'Go, daddy, go!' Sweat is forming in the vocal booth We kept going 12 seconds after the tape ended!" But he made a point of coming back to education. Rollins is one of the more literate pop music personalities - it's hard to think of others who could quote Kafka, Steinbeck and Sartre at the drop of a hat. "I want to know everything, especially if I'm in a place and just learn, and there's a guy who's going to teach me who's studied the topic for twenty years and is going to lay it on me everyday. I'd be the first guy in the classroom," Rollins said. "So I don't understand why anyone would: (a) avoid class, (b) take shit they think is boring or (c) get too fucked up to read and take it in. This is a fantastic opportunity you have to take in information and knowledge and use your mind, because when you go out into the real world I mean, to be in an institution that's dedicated to learning and intellectual pursuit? My god, that's very sexy to me. Getting to spend four years or more in this kind of environment? I think it's a privilege and a luxury. If I won the lottery, that's what I might do. Get a house, no phones. Buy every book known to man and load it into the place. Buy every record ever made, bolt the doors down, make a hole for food and stuff and just take it in." |