Henry Rollins is an angry man. It’s not directed at you, just at the general situation. “The man,” he says. You should be glad he’s angry. It’s the fuel to his fire. It has motivated him to make music, to do spoken word tours, to travel the world, to host a television show.
He was the frontman for Black Flag and the Rollins Band, but these days, his focus has been more on the world, the war and a strong distaste for the current administration. His current spoken word tour, “Provoked,” is sure to touch on all of those subjects. Rollins recently spoke by phone from his L.A. office about all of those things. Here is the interview in its entirety:
“This is Henry.”
Hey, Henry. This is Jeff Hahne from Creative Loafing.
“Hey. How are you?”
Doing alright. How are you?”
“Oh, alright.”
Are you in L.A. right now?
“Yes.”
Where do I start? Every time I look, it seems like you’re into something new. What motivates you to stay so busy?
“A couple of things; not always anything very enviable. I’m angry and my anger kind of gets me going. You know, gets me out of bed in the morning. Also, I utilize work in a way to medicate. Keep busy, which makes me avoid myself, that’s what the girls at the office tell me. They think I don’t have the courage to be real. (laughs) So, the bottom line is I always thought that one should work vigorously. That’s what you should do. That’s what the job is. You should just really … (sighs) Put it this way, that’s what all my heroes did — Coltrane, Miles, my friend Ian McKaye — they work all the time. I’m not equating myself with them, I’m just saying that’s just what I think one should do. And also, it’s interesting. I think sitting still would be very depressing for me and extremely hard to do.”
I’m looking at your schedule for the upcoming tour. In the same way, you don’t take many days off. I guess that’s part of it — not having a day off so you can keep going, but does it not get tiring with all the travel?
“Well, I’m not driving. I’m on a bus. I do these kind of tours on a tour bus because I’m on the road so much. If I had to fly from show to show, that would be pretty hard to do. So, I’m on a bus, Tim is driving. I’ve got my own bunk. I can watch film. We have online on the bus, more often than not — sometimes in the middle of nowhere you can get no reception, but quite often I can be online. There’s a flat screen TV in there. I bring some DVDs. We can watch cable or satellite and there’s a shower in the back, so … how bad is it really?”
Doesn’t sound bad at all.
“Yeah, it’s not so bad. This is luxury for me. I’ve done a lot of tours where you’re crammed into a small vehicle, and you sleep with your cheek up against the window.”
With the band and everyone else …
“Yeah. It’s not unique — every band from R.E.M. on will tell you that’s how you do it. So, when they say here’s a primo bus you’re gonna live in, I’m like, ‘Well, yeah!’ And also, a night off — you usually have your nights off in somewhere like Joplin, Missouri, which is no bad place to be, but it’s a point between two points. So, your night is a cheap motel, the interstate for your view and, um, wow … there’s a Denny’s. I’m not gonna eat there. Well, um, how much does it cost to take a taxi into town and maybe find some real food, 30 bucks? Well, I’m not doing that either. And so a night off for me is I usually go back to the bus where there’s usually better reception online and I just set up my little office environment on the tour bus and I spend the night off in the tour bus. Every once in a while, you get a night off in a place like D.C., Chicago or New York. Well, yeah! Let’s go see something. Put it this way, if there’s a night off in the middle of nowhere or 20 miles down the highway there’s a small show that you can do in a small town, I’ll take the show. Gladly, and be so happy for the work. That’s why the schedule is vigorous. And again, if you’re on tour, why don’t you just go work?”
You touched on so many things I wanted to ask about, I’m not sure where to go next.
“I can flesh out any of these points for you.”
I apologize for bouncing around in advance.
“Don’t worry about it.”
You talked about being an angry person. You’re known as being this intense and sometimes intimidating person.
“Well, I would not like to be intimidating. I think it’s gratuitous and it obscures any real thing that you’re going to try and do. Like, ‘Wow, he was intimidating.’ ‘Well, did you hear what he had to say?’ ‘No, I was too busy wondering if he was going to come over and put an ashtray through my head.’ I’m not a big guy. I’m not a tough guy. I don’t burn cigarettes into my arm and go to strip bars and chew on rabbit legs. It’s really not my thing. But, intense? Sure. Angry? Absolutely. My anger is motivated anger. I’m not mad at you, and I’m not gonna kick a dog or something. I’m mad at the man, basically. That motivates me to not smoke and drink myself into a stupor and mug people; it motivates me to go do a benefit to go raise money for something or to fly in the face of what I think is an illegal war, etc. When I get mad, money gets raised and good things happen, I think.”
It’s not an anger of stress; it’s an anger of motivation.
“Yeah! I don’t have any of that ‘How come I didn’t get any of that?’ I’m getting mine for me. If I wanna make a book, I own the company, I make the book, I publish it and that’s that. To be an American in 2007 and not be angry and to be aware of what’s going on, or to not be aware, to me is just not pulling your weight. Your countrymen are getting blown up in a country where they’re not wanted. There’s a lot of Iraqi people getting blown up for stepping outside their house. They didn’t do anything to deserve getting blown up. So, it’s a time for people to really be looking at their country and their country’s place in the world, etc. and wanting to change. You want to consume 25 percent of the world’s oil for the rest of your life? Are you proud of that? Or do you love your country enough to go, ‘We should change that. We should improve upon that. Why is my country 40-something in literacy in the world. Shouldn’t my public education system be the envy of the world?’ Well, yeah, it should. And until it is, I’m pissed off about that and I want to do something about it. A lot of my anger comes from — why don’t you want to improve upon the model? Why are you so happy to let it rot? Then, the more you learn, you see there’s a lot of profit in the rot. That this country has over 2 million incarcerated people, what’s the good part of that? Well, if you’re the guy that sells the cheese sandwiches to the inmates, then you’re loving it. The only thing that screws your day up is a decrease in crime. If you make bullets, or if you provide troop services, what gets in your way? Peace. (laughs) So, may it never end. For some people the only thing that screws their day up is peace in the Middle East, so of course there’s not going to be peace or literacy. If you learn history than you’re doomed not to repeat it. That’s all we do around here is repeat it so it’s obvious that we’re not getting the history across.”
Do you feel it’s a change in the fundamental system? I mean, even going back …
“Going as far back as Truman and see how the military-industrial complex has shaped foreign policy and you see what we do to other countries. We spread democracy rifle-barrel first. That’s not changed and it might take a long time to change. It was that way under Clinton. It was that way under Carter. That’s kind of the model.”
Yeah. I was wondering … I guess my thought was looking at how the system is set up with the two-headed system of Republican-Democrat, electoral college and all of that.
“That might need a shakedown, but I think if it was run properly that might be OK. At this point, I’m just wondering if the votes are correctly tabulated. I have no faith in a machine that can be hacked. And let the person with the most votes win and if it’s not the person that I voted for, then that just sucks for me, but at least it was honest. I don’t mind a fair fight and I don’t mind losing a fair fight. It’s not being sure whether the fight was fair that bugs me.”
It’s feeling that the fight was fixed.
“Yeah! And seeing a graying guy like Karl Rove. I look at him and I just don’t trust him, but that’s just me. Things need to change, and I think for some people in this country, real accountability is not going to move in their favor, so why should there not be any accountability.”
When you’re doing a spoken word tour, are there certain things you sit there and think, ‘I need to talk about these things’ or is it kind of free form of what’s on your mind or what’s on the news?
“No. It’s never free form in that I’m not going to go on stage and ramble and waste time. I want to make it count. So, I’m very targeted. I make an outline. I read the news every day because if someone is going to be caught soliciting sex in a men’s room while I’m on tour, that’s … well, people get caught soliciting sex in men’s rooms all the time, but rarely are they politicians. So, that’s gonna get talked about, maybe that night. And maybe not in the way you think I’m gonna talk about it. That’ll be an add — I’ll whack that in and make notes before the show. I basically have a few set pieces, you know, set stories I’m going to talk about and riff from. They’re usually based around trouble because I go to different countries every year and learn things and find things out and bring back travel stories. I abstract off of them and riff off of them and tie them into other things — even tie them into events from my past — and those stories become a night-to-night thing I pull out and tell different … talk about different aspects of the trip. I’m never changing the truth of the story, of course, but just talking about different parts of the room. If a travel story is a house, sometimes I don’t get past the living room or sometimes I come in through the back door and spend time in the kitchen. If you go on a big trip, there’s often quite a bit to talk about. I just came back from Syria and Lebanon a couple weeks ago and both of those trips were eventful, as was the grilling I received by three guards when I got back to San Francisco International Airport.”
Was this a USO tour?
“No, just me. I go places because I want to see them and experience these people. I went to Tehran this year and kicked it in Iran for a week. Just on my own, I flew out of Dubai on New Year’s Day just to go see it and to have my own stories from Iran, not just something I read in a Stephen Kinzer book.”
Do you get nervous on trips like that?
“No … I’m not a tough guy. I’m not trying to impress. I gotta really trust the moment. I’m starting to sound like some actor. I just gotta go with my smile, and I’m hoping that these people will see that I’m just happy to be there and they may take me as a traveler first and an American second. Sometimes being an American in these countries — it might not go down all that well.”
Well, that’s what I thought. I mean, the way you look — “here’s an American, let’s make an example out of him.”
“Yeah, that can happen, but that can also happen in Compton or Detroit. You can find trouble. It’s been my experience that you almost get this weird respect. Walking alone in Tehran and someone like a salesman selling carpet will say, ‘My friend! Let me give you a card. Where are you from?’ You’re not from Iran, that’s probably for sure. And I say, ‘America.’ ‘Wow!’ And that’s probably because they think you’ll be European. ‘Wow, America! I like America.’ I said, ‘I like Iran.’ Shake hands, talk for a few minutes and keep walking down the street. That’s as much as ever happened to me in these places. No one’s ever said, ‘Get out of here!’ No one’s done that, yet. I’m sure it can happen in Columbus, Ohio. No, I don’t get nervous. I’m eager to engage. I’m eager to go. I think people see that because I think it just kind of comes off. When I flew to Damascus, I flew there from Paris. I got to the guy at the passports — you know, the little glass booth. And the guy said, ‘Why did you come to Syria?’ and I smiled and said, ‘In all honesty, actually, I’m here to meet you.’ And he said, ‘Excuse me?’ And I said, ‘I just want to meet people from Syria, man. I’ve got no road map.’ And I just smiled. He looked at me and smiled and stamped my passport and said, ‘Welcome to Syria.’ I said, ‘Thanks man!’ and he was the first Syrian I met and I just kind of go in like that. I am honestly interested and glad to be in these places cause I want to see the planet. I’m just one of those guys who’s geeked on travel.”
Was that a surprise for you — just being that you go to these places that are notorious media-wise as being ‘Oh shit, don’t go there.’
“Yeah.”
You go there, and hang out and meet people and it hasn’t been a problem. Knock on wood, nothing’s happened.
“Well, I have found that usually the people of a country are one way and their governments are quite another. Like, if you look at the actions of the Bush administration — they throw their weight around on other countries pretty hard to where if you took all Americans and thought of them as you think of the actions of Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld, you might go, ‘Americans, woah! I don’t know, man. They come in and rearrange your living room and charge you double.’ Then, if you see past that and see that Americans are perhaps quite different than this odd group of men and women, then you go, ‘America’s a really good place.’ That’s one of the reasons I travel is I like to tell that to people. Some people go, ‘What’s America like?’ And I go, ‘America is full of really good people and very generous.’ I really think we are a very good country. They say things like, ‘That’s what I thought.’ I was talking to one guy in Damascus where Nancy Pelosi did all the photos and I said, ‘What do you think of America?’ And he said, ‘Besides Syria, it’s my favorite country.’ I went, ‘Really?’ and he said, ‘Yeah!’ And I said, ‘Do you get many American tourists?’ And he said, ‘Not any more but we used to.’ And I said, ‘What do you think of American tourists?’ He goes, ‘You’re all very friendly and you spend money which we like because we need you to buy stuff.’ I go, ‘What do you think is the problem with the two countries?’ and he said, ‘Bad politic.’ I go ‘Yeah, OK …’ I found that to be — and I’ve been fairly far and wide, parts of Africa and parts of the Middle East and Asia — and I’ve found people to fine and reminiscent of people I deal with here. They’re parents. They drive cars. They have jobs. They worry about getting home on time. They have real normal concerns. They’re not all living in caves going, ‘Death to America!’ (laughs) The American media has a way of taking the four nut jobs and … What if the White Power was the only thing they talked about in America and it was seen as the dominant political party? What do you think the perception of America would be over a five-year period? That we’re all drooling Neo-Nazis. When you assign radical Islam to Islam. I got into it with some Republican douchebag radio guy months ago, when in Denmark they ran the depictions of Mohammad. Some Muslims got very offended by that and took to the streets. And the guy said, ‘Look at what mainstream Islam does about this.’ I said, ‘Sir, don’t start. That’s not mainstream Islam.’ He said, ‘That was 10,000 people.’ I said, ‘Yeah, you’re talking about a religion with millions and millions of adherents, so 10,000 people is a proverbial drop in the bucket, and if you don’t think that those kind of protests aren’t something a little about Mohammed but a lot about get out of my country, stop blowing up my buildings and waving your dick around in my tea every morning. If you don’t think it’s also about that … I know you know different, but you’re trying to be Glenn Beck and stir things up.’ It kind of tripped him out a little. ‘Oh, so you sympathize with these extremists.’ I go, ‘No, but let’s put it in its proper context because you’re not doing that.’ And so, I think a lot of things are taken out of context. It’s very obvious the Bush administration wants a war with Iran and they’re going to say and do a whole lotta stuff and eventually they will push Iran into a war. That’s why Condoleeza Rice flew out with the Secretary of Defense to Saudi Arabia and Egypt and said, ‘Look, for the first time in the history of America — Saudi Arabia, some of you who took our towers down — we’re going to sell you joint direct attack munitions, JDAMs — the first time we’ve ever sold these. Then we’ll do the same for Egypt.’ What does this do? This makes Iran real nervous. So, what do they do, they’ll go into the streets and buy some nuclear get-back. Then we’ll say, ‘Well, there they go. Gotta level it.’ We’ll do some kind of air attack, because we don’t have the manpower. Hopefully, they miss all the people I met. I went all over Tehran and it’s just a city. It looks like a bunch of people going to work on time. If you blow them up, I don’t think you’ll be able to call yourself the greatest country in the world. The American media has really let down America by not doing their job, by not bringing this stuff to light and being so complacent. It’s corporate media — if you do something against the party line, Rupert Murdoch just says, ‘Shh’ and changes the edit. It’s too bad that people with such intensely slanted opinions get to dominate what gets put out there for the good men and women to absorb. If you want the truth — well, versions of it — you’ve got to be pretty sleuthy on the Internet. I’ve given up on anything that’s remotely like Paula Zahn because I know where that information comes from. It goes through the Palmolive filter before it gets to me. Of course, the president is going to say, ‘It’s going great in Iraq.’ But the numbers don’t bear that out. If it was, he wouldn’t be asking for; how much more does he want moneywise? Where’s this money gonna come from? Kinkos? I don’t do finances, but how do we keep sourcing all these billions of dollars? We keep getting them from somewhere and if we had them all the time, why couldn’t you have thrown a few billion at the American public education system and put a laptop on every desk, unless you don’t want people learning history so they don’t repeat, or unless you make more money off the problem than you would the solution.”
Right.
“That’s the only reason why America is 40-something in literacy is because dumb people are easily manipulated. If you learn history, you’d see that we’re doing that thing that we do and it’s time to stop it. History is deleted here in this country. I’m not talking about ancient history — it’s even the Cold War until now.”
You’ve done, is it, seven USO tours?
“Yeah.”
Do they ever … have they …
“Tell me to check myself?”
Yeah. It’s no secret you’re against the war. Has that ever been an issue with you going over there?
“No. Uh-uh. The most I’ve ever gotten … I’ve never gotten anything from the USO like, ‘Hey, cool it.’ I don’t go to Kuwait or Baghdad and say, ‘Hey, I think this war is …’ The war they’re fighting and the war that we’re speculating upon from the comfortable environs of our living rooms is two different conflicts. The reality for an infantry guy — he gets up in the morning or whenever and he does 12 hours or more and his mission is don’t get blown up today and get myself and my buddies back to this chow hall at sunset. That’s the job — do what I’m told; don’t get killed. So, when you say ‘unjust war,’ they’re like, ‘Pal, I don’t really hear you and, um, walk a kilometer in my boots.’ Your opinions don’t really mean much because the whole thing is different over there. All they know is ‘I’m 23 and people try to blow me up and blow up my friends and I have three dead friends to prove it. You’re going to tell me about pre-war intelligence being manipulated by the … Pal, I’ve got 12 hours to do. Why don’t you make me laugh and then get the fuck off my base.’ That’s kind of more of where it’s at in my opinion. You see very quickly that there’s no need to say, ‘I disagree with this war.’ They probably do too, but they’re in it and they’ve gotta complete their orders. So, the soldiers I like. It’s this war that I think is completely bogus. The soldiers are great. They’re just very motivated, highly trained men and women doing this incredible and insane thing, but they do it very well. They are taking their orders. If you told them to lay down in hammocks for 12 hours and watch McGyver, they’d also do that. You know what I mean? They’re taking orders. Getting mad at the soldiers is like getting mad at a cop for the law. You can’t right it. So, no, I’ve had a really good time, and it’s been extremely meaningful and gratifying for me to be able to go meet these guys and crack ’em up or distract them for a period of time because what they’re going to do the next morning is nothing you want any part of. I mean I don’t.”
Yeah, I can only imagine.
“It’s like for 11 bucks an hour, go play Russian roulette. Nah, I’d rather starve.”
Where are you musically these days?
“Nowhere.”
Nowhere?
“I don’t have a band. I don’t have any plans. I’ve done a lot of music and as much as I like it, every time I go out and do it … I did big band tour last year and it was fun, but it was like a happy ritual, like food and sex. I didn’t learn anything from it. I came back from it and had done, I don’t know, 35 shows and that was cool, but I don’t really feel emotionally any different than I did before I set out upon it. Where the talking shows is always an experience. They get harder the farther along the road I go because I can bring more to it. So, that becomes more and more challenging. Where the band shows, I look at people kind of in my position. Don’t take this the wrong way, but if you look at The Rolling Stones and Ozzy Osbourne — and I’m not on that level — but I’m kind of of that age and position where I might be better known for what I did 20 years ago musically and that puts me right in the same league as Ozzy Osbourne and Mick Jagger. Where you might not have heard many tracks from the whatever the name is of the new Rolling Stones album, but you can sing along to about 15 of their old songs whether you like them or not, you know them. Guess what? You think they’re going to play almost all of those tonight on stage? Yes. So, are they basically just doing a rerun of their youth as 50-somethings? Yes. Do I want any part of that? No. It’s not what Coltrane would have done. It’s not what Miles Davis would have done. And those are kind of my … those are people that kind of inform me as far as an artistic path as far as what one should or shouldn’t do. I like Ozzy, he’s a friend of mine. I really like the guy.”
I just saw him two nights ago.
“There ya go. It was probably a good show and I’m not putting him … I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like Ozzy, especially after you meet him. He’s one of the nicer people I’ve met in my life. The family is great and they’ve been very, very nice to me over the years. I’d go see him tonight — right now! No problem. It’s just that, I’ve kind of gently debated this with him. I go, ‘You have to go out and sing ‘Paranoid’ every night.’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, but that’s what the people want. They like it when I do that.’ And that’s good enough for him. That’s an older school head. David Lee Roth once said, ‘My role at this point is more ceremonial.’ That’s kind of a Twainian way of saying it. I don’t want to do that. I did a tour like that a few years ago. Me and my bandmates went out and did all Black Flag songs with a Ramones encore, but the monies went to a charity. Every song we played — when you start the intro to ‘Six Pack,’ everyone goes, ‘Woooo!’ And I realize, I could do this. Ronnie James Dio tours and does a little Rainbow, a little Black Sabbath, a little Dio. I realize I could do that — I could take my band or I could take faceless, energetic, good-looking young people, teach them the songs and go out every summer and very successfully pull off a 25-song set with 10 Black Flag songs, 10 Rollins Band, two of these and two of those and there’d be a few people going, ‘Henry, you know that’s weak and sitting on your laurels.’ Everyone else would go, ‘Dude, that rocked!’ They’re not wrong or stupid for feeling that or saying that. It probably would be kinda fun to see that, but artistically, what did you do except just jerk yourself off and get paid for it. If you only get 25 laps around the track as a touring dude, why would you want to do that for a summer? I’d rather sit in a room and read. That’s where I am musically. If I’m not going to do something really new and super challenging where I feel kind of in the mailroom — like really I’m starting out — then I’d rather do something where I do feel that way.”
The creative outlet for you is through this as a monologue on spoken word or Teeing Off on the tv show … instead of putting in song form.
“I don’t mind that, as long as I’m doing new music. If I can find some motivated people and if I had an idea in my head for some new music or if I heard a sound that interested me, I’d probably clear out my schedule or find a clear time and then just go do that for 90 days nonstop. Right now, I just don’t have … nothing in my head is screaming at me to go do that. When and if, believe me, I’ll be on it like I’ve never been in a band before. I can’t wait. That’s just kind of how I do things. My tail wags furiously. When I sign on the line and say I’m gonna be there. I’m not doing you a favor by showing up. I want to be there. So, when I go on stage and say, ‘I’m really glad to be here tonight,’ trust me, I mean it. People think, ‘Oh yeah, whatever.’ No, no, no. I’m not bullshitting you, man.”
So, it’s not a giving up, you’re just waiting for the spark.
“Yeah. Keep being honest, basically. Lyrically — I write lyrics all the time. I’m always jotting down couplets or whatever cause that’s just how I do it. I’m always writing down on paper — I have multiple notebooks — and a laptop open and always putting this down, putting that down. Some people I know use their little digital recorder and they’re always kind of making verbal notes. I like to write things. And I do that all the time.”
Not to take anything away, at all, from Black Flag, but here it is 20 years later and you’ve done so many things — spoken word, writing, on TV, acting and everything — but still in all of these stories you read “Henry Rollins” with “Black Flag” following it or shortly before it. Are you surprised by that or what is your opinion of that?
“No. I know how the media works and they need something to tie it all together and maybe that’s it for them. I hardly think it’s the only thing I’ve ever done. The evidence would bear out that it’s not.”
Right, but it’s never “Singer/actor/writer.”
“Well, sometimes it is. Also, you write for a living. You’re sometimes given a two-page press release or ‘He’s the Black Flag guy, right?’ That’s kind of the frame of reference sometimes, and they’ve got to fill three inches of column and then they’ve got to fill three inches of column about someone else and they just kind of knock it out. Sometimes these guys just go for the ‘easy lay.’ They go, ‘Oh yeah, he’s the Black Flag guy’ and that was 10 words and 90 more to go. If you think about it that way, that’s fine. I did more shows with the Rollins Band and sold vastly more records with the Rollins Band and saw more countries and was in front of more people with the Rollins Band. Not putting down Black Flag — I’m just saying I didn’t just do that and then go retire and bask in the ever-fading glory. I kind of went, ‘That was one band. Did that. Now, I’m doing this band and I’m on to the next thing.’ The Rollins Band did very well.”
A high school teacher of mine once wrote some of your lyrics on the blackboard to kind of spark conversation and thought. They were from “Low Self Opinion.” The stanza, or whatever you’d call it, of “If you could see the you…”
“That I see when I see you … right.”
(NOTE TO THE CURIOUS: The entire lyric is “If you could see the you that I see when I see you, you’d see yourself so differently, believe me.”)
Do you ever look back on lyrics and go, ‘Damn, that was a good one’?
“No, I’m not looking at them, but I get a lot of mail, like every day. If I am to believe what these people say to me is true, then the lyrics of several of these songs and parts of the books have been very motivational for these people and I’m not trying to brag on that, I’m just saying this is what they say. I get this from everything from guys writing me from Bradley fighting vehicles to guys and gals writing me from prisons to teachers saying, ‘I use your stuff in my class.’ or ‘I use your books in my class and am bringing some of my students to your show next month.’ Or ‘Henry, I brought in some of your books to my college class and my professor wants to meet you.’ ‘I’m a recovering alcoholic and your books have meant a lot to me they were a big part of my recovery process.’ And I’ve gotten that kind of letter or that’s been said to me in person by everyone from people who have sold 25 million albums to some guy I’m never gonna meet again on an airplane. So, I guess I’ve had some impact, like I said, if the letters and the testimony are to be believed. Do I ever trip on it? Not really. I just kinda go, ‘Oh, OK. Well, cool.’ It is part of the thing in that hopefully what you do inspires, cause without a doubt I am inspired by other people. And there’s a lot of people I’ve met who say, ‘Man, I just want to thank you for writing that book, doing that thing or whatever it was.’ And it’s always nice to be able to say, ‘Man, thank you for that cause that really helped me.'”
Right. You know, thank you for that because I still remember it 15 years later.
“Well, thank you.”
Is that kind of the motivation for you doing shows and spoken word — or what do you hope the audience gets out of your show — music or spoken word?
“Well, hopefully, it’s riveting in a way. Hopefully, it’s compelling. With a talking show, I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘Look, my wife dragged me to this thing. She loves you. I’m a Bush Republican so for a lot of what you said my knuckles were turning white, but I see that you’re a good guy. We’d probably disagree on everything, but you’re really not part of the problem, and well, OK.’ And they’ll kind of grimly shake my hand. Or he says, ‘I don’t agree with your politics or whatever. You’re a liberal douchebag, but that travel story was hilarious and you always make me laugh and think.’ Well, fair enough. That’s hopefully what happens — that you walk out of there going, ‘That was cool. It made me think. I got off on that.’ That’s what I hope to inspire.”
I’ve taken more than enough of your time, but I just have one more for you.
“Sure.”
With all of these things you’ve done — all of the traveling and everything else — what’s still sitting on your to-do list at this point?
“Uh, nothing really. I mean, I don’t think I’m a director in waiting. I don’t paint or I don’t aspire to. I’m kind of in the present tense trying to fire on all cylinders, but there’s nothing I’m gearing up to do or wanting. I don’t want to climb K2 or something. There’s actually a short to-do list, but it’s countries I want to see. A lot of them — a good handful of them — I’ll be getting to next year.”
What are some of those?
“I want to do like those two weeks in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. I’ve never just been there. I’ve been in the area — Thailand — but I’ve never been to those three specific countries. And I’ll be in Australia, I might be there fairly early in the year with a period of time off afterwards. I’ll be able to go straight north and into those places. I want to go to Laos and go to the Plain of Jars and see that. I want to go to Phnom Penh. I want to go to the war museums and just go to these hot, sticky places. I’ll be in Europe — I’ll finish out my tour in February there. I think I might just stay and go to Moscow and do the Trans-Siberian Express or the Trans-Mongolian Express. I think the Trans-Manchurian ends you up in Beijing and I would go to Beijing and then to Shanghai and check that out. I’ve done the Trans-Siberian a few years ago, from Moscow to Vladivistok. It’s like seven days on a train. It’s pretty wild.”
I did the Moscow to Leningrad one once.
“Oh, nice.”
Years ago. It was an experience in itself. This was back in the late ’80s when it was still a communist country.
“Yeah, yeah. I only got to Russia by ’94 when it was like the wild, wild West mafia. I’ve been there five times and you know, a couple of winters ago I thought, ‘Trans-Siberian Express. I’m doing this.’ And I flew over there and I did.”
I’d love to go back. I haven’t been there since. It was a student exchange deal.
“Oh!”
I think it’d be interesting to go back.
“I think it would be very different than what you saw.”
It was kind of how you’d imagine. Very dark and no one talked on the street. That’s the one thing that stuck in my mind is that people wouldn’t talk to each other while walking down the street.
“They’re afraid. Their parents came up with, or some of these older folks came up with Stalin. Ryszard Kapucinsky, the great Polish journalist who just died, his book on Russia is called ‘Imperium.’ I recommend it with all confidence. He talks about trying to interview people in places like Siberia and Ukraine. He said he’d ask questions and people would look at him and walk away like, ‘I can’t talk to you. I will not give you an opinion on anything.’ He said, ‘Boy no one would even look at me.’ They were just beat down in that way.”
Yeah, I know someone from Romania who grew up under Chauchesku. She was saying that they wouldn’t talk at parties because they would get called in to the police station and they’d play a tape of the party. It was all family, but somebody was taping it. So they wouldn’t talk about anything unless they were out in the mountains.
“Yeah. There’s some great stories in the Kapucinsky book. One woman says to another woman, ‘The bread coming from the Romanians isn’t as good as it used to be.’ And the other says, ‘Oh, you’re talking shit about the state.’ And this old woman was in jail. One guy, a mover, he had to move a bust of Stalin up through in a window in a big house. A big bust of Stalin weighs several hundred pounds. It’s like moving a piano, he got a pulley and rope and is winching this massive statue up through the air. Somebody comes by and asks what he’s doing. ‘I’m winching up this thing of Comrade Stalin.’ ‘Yeah, but you have the rope around Stalin’s neck. You’re hanging him in effigy.’ ‘No, I’m moving the piece of granite.’ The guy did 10 years. I mention all of this only because I think America is going that way. I’ve been to Iran this year, I’ve been to Syria — I’m sure I’m on someone’s list. It has definitely made me wonder if this gets listened to, if my e-mails get read. I don’t exactly censor myself, but it is on my mind. I lead a fairly G/PG life. I just work — there’s nothing on my harddrive. There’s no little kids naked or anything. I do think about that. I didn’t think about it 10 years ago, but I do think about it.”
That’s why I asked earlier about it crossing your mind with the USO tours or going to Iraq and talking — I wonder if they’re watching me …
“Well, there’s no way you’re gonna get an Iranian visa and not be immediately whacked on to some list. I think that’s an immediate — a preset on the computer. I did get a pretty intense talking to at the airport when I got back from Syria. I was marched right down the hall, my little customs declaration thrown into a big, blue folder. And I had three guys going, ‘So, why’d you go there?’ I love this kind of thing. I like that kind of confrontation. They go, ‘You know it’s very hot there.’ I go, ‘Yes, I know. By noon it was really hot.’ They go, ‘No, not that way.’ And so, we kind of got into it. I’d say, ‘There’s my laptop; go through it. Here’s my suitcase.’ And they just kind of turned me loose. But, I did get the talking to.”
Out of my own curiosity — if you had to name the top five places to see, would you be able to narrow it down?
“As far as places I would suggest? You’ve gotta see the Pyramids, the Sphynx and sail on the Nile. That’s amazing. If you can stand it, you should rent a vehicle and drive across the Sinai, that’s pretty cool. Tokyo — Japan is very beautiful. To walk around Tokyo is an amazing city. Everyone should go … well, you should think about Africa; parts of Africa to see, meet someone from a Masai village. Or to go to an Arabian country — Iran or a Persian place where customs are vastly different than your own. Cairo is an amazing city. Paris is a beautiful city. Australia is amazing.”
I get the impression you try to stay off the tourist track, too.
“Yeah. Calcutta — I went all over eastern India years ago. India was wild. St. Petersburg, Russia is amazing. As far as something visually odd, the Pyramids and all of that. Hopefully, next year — I was in Jordan this year, but I didn’t have time to go to Petra. Anywhere where the Romans set up camp for a while, there’s gonna be some beautiful stuff. There’s parts of Lebanon that I didn’t get to see — again, the Romans left behind some interesting stuff. So, there’s a lot of places to go see.”
I think it’s like you said — the governments represent the country, and the tourist track represents the country. You see a lot when you don’t go on the tourist track.
“Absolutely. You meet the people. When I was in Lebanon, I spent an afternoon at Sammy the cab driver’s house. ‘Come over to my house and meet my wife.’ She made us Lebanese coffee — oh man, you’ll see through walls. We sat in the living room and watched a bad Bruce Willis film in subtitles. I was ‘I’m in Beirut, kicking it with Sammy the cab driver!’ It was so much fun.”
I saw Friday the 13th with Russian subtitles.
“Yeah, it gives you a different opinion on your own country. And it knocks out a lot of corny prejudices you see other people burdened by. Bill O’Reilly will give you a ‘Boycott France’ sticker for free if you write to him. I’ve been to France about 30 times and there’s nothing wrong I can find with France just in day-to-day walking around. So, I just encourage all people to get a passport and get out there.”
Alright, I’ve taken way more than enough of your time and I appreciate every moment of it.
“Well, thank you, sir.”
Thank you, very much, and I look forward to seeing you on the tour.
“Right on, I’ll see you down the road …”
Henry Rollins spoken word tour will stop at Amos’ Southend on Sept. 28. Tickets for the 16-and-over show are $20 in advance and $23 the day of the show.
This article appears in Sep 12-18, 2007.
