Comedy

Henry Rollins is a lot of things: he’s the legendary ex-frontman of hardcore punk bands Black Flag and the Rollins Band; he’s a publisher, a writer, an actor, a talkshow host, a counter-culture icon but not a stand-up comedian. ‘My spoken-word shows sometimes have comedy in them,’ he admits. ‘If I can find the inherent humour in something and get it across to help my point I will, but I’m no comic. I admire them very much but I could never do it. If I had to perform in a comedy club I would bomb; I would be trying too hard.’

Tattooed up, built like a Sherman tank and with a haircut straight out of the marine corps, he cuts an imposing, if tad menacing, figure. His fierce stage persona makes him someone you wouldn’t want to fuck with while he’s working. A fan once told me, ‘I saw him grab a guy that climbed up on stage. He grappled him to the floor and sat on him for the next two songs.’ Does he remember that? ‘Yeah, that did happen,’ he laughs. ‘It was at the Marquee. He wanted to stagedive but I thought I’d have some fun, so I sat on him a bit. I chatted to him afterwards; I think he thought it was cool.’
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Let that be a lesson to any would-be hecklers. So, when did he start talking into the microphone rather than singing or screaming down it? ‘It was in ’83,’ he recalls. ‘A promoter in LA put on shows where people would get up and do poetry and shit. One night he said, “Why don’t you get up there and have a go, you’ve got a big mouth, and we’re paying ten bucks a person.” I was really broke back then, so I just did it for the money. I told a story about something that had happened the day before. Our guitarist had gone to the store to buy some orange juice when some white-supremacist guy had chased him down in his car. He didn’t like the fact that local gangs of Samoans and Mexicans would hang out at our band practices. To me that was just a day in the life of Black Flag, but people seemed to want to hear more and kept asking me when I was going to do another.’

Since then, Rollins’ career path has been incredibly varied. He’s consistently refused to conform to the preconceptions people have of him, often flitting between very different worlds. One day he could be fronting a punk gig to a heaving crowd of sweaty, spitting grunge kids, the next he might be sat in a TV studio presenting his controversial and satirical talk show, and the day after he could be playing the bad guy on the set of some major Hollywood movie like ‘Bad Boys II’ or ‘Jack Frost’. And, when he’s not doing any of these he’s running his expanding publishing company 2.13.61. ‘Busy’ would be an understatement.

‘I don’t really do anything else,’ he says. ‘I don’t have a wife and kids or a drug habit to keep me on the couch. So I just get up every day really early, around 4am, and start grinding away at something. I usually keep going like that right the way through the weekends and holidays. As I creep towards 50 I just want to keep challenging myself.’

Rollins appears to have an incredibly strong work ethic and drive but also a total inability to just kick back. What does he do to chill out? ‘I don’t drink, smoke or go to clubs so I sleep and read. But I don’t really have a way to cool down; I have a lot of anxiety problems. I get wound up about things. It’s a problem and it’s getting worse with age. I’m most comfortable on stage. I have control of what I want to say. I know I’m telling the truth.’

But why does he get so anxious? ‘I don’t want to fail the audience. I don’t want to let them down. That’s a big deal for me. I don’t want some guy walking away from a gig saying, “Rip off”.’

I can’t imagine anyone doing that. Rollins often performs for up to two and half hours to totally absorbed and enthralled audiences who listen gripped by his alternative state of the nation addresses. The Bush presidency has given him more than enough ammunition to fire at the hawks on the right wing of US politics. ‘Some people in my country declared war on a country that didn’t do anything to them. I hate the fact that the few represent the many. Most Americans are very cool people.’

Rollins isn’t happy simply to accept the received wisdom provided by Fox News and the rest of the US media machine. In the last year, he’s visited Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan to find out for himself what’s going on. It’s his commitment to telling real stories that makes his shows more than simply political commentary. He’s voracious in his search for the truth and equally ardent in his desire to pass that on to anyone and everyone.

‘On New Year’s Day, 2007, I flew to Tehran and spent a week there,’ he says. ‘No one said “Death to America”. The women were beautiful, the food was great and everyone was friendly. No one would let me pay for anything and I had home cooking nearly every night I was there.’

He’s also spent a lot of time with the US troops. He’s completed seven USO tours not to mention countless hospital visits to speak with the wounded. This only serves to motivate an already hyper-motivated performer. ‘There’s nothing like hanging out with a bunch of 20-year-old guys with their legs blown off to keep that intensity up.’

Henry Rollins plays the Hammersmith Apollo on Jan 26.