Music • August 3, 2006

Teeing Off

Henry Rollins is punk’s tattooed professor. But with the Rollins Band, he’s all animal.

by Jeff Inman

There are two ways to look at Henry Rollins: as a punk intellectual, spouting everything from poetry to feedback-induced philosophy about pop culture and all its trappings even while he’s gamely subverting the system from within, or as a raging silverback gorilla with a microphone. Very little gray between the two.

When he’s on tour with the Rollins Band, for 23 hours a day, he’s a fringe Socrates in a black T-shirt and tattoo sleeves—articulate, funny and damned-near sagelike, the kind of guy both hipsters and outcasts would love to buddy up with if his neck weren’t so thick and intimidating. But get him onstage: Rollins is Cro-Magnon with angst.

Example: A show several years ago in Brazil. The players launch into the first bars of a typically crushing Rollins Band track. Rollins himself starts head-banging—severe head-banging. So intense, in fact, he slams his knee into his forehead. Knocks himself out. (The way Rollins has told it during spoken-word sets involves slow motion and blinding pain.) He comes to a few seconds later, his face covered in blood, wondering what the hell happened. The rest of the band is staring at him, stunned. The crowd is staring at him, stunned. He realizes it. Gets up. Gets his bearings. Goes primal. Flings blood on the band. Flings blood on the crowd. Finishes the show.

“Iggy Pop would have never walked off stage, and I wasn’t about to, either,” he says, now safely tucked in his California office. “I’m not going all the way down to Brazil and then walking of stage because I’ve got a cut. That’s not going to happen.” The cut resulted in several stitches.

Yet those kinds of stories are the reason people love Henry Rollins. Yeah, the guy is funny. His spoken-word gigs are like accidental stand-up. And his IFC TV series The Henry Rollins Show is a respectful geek fiefdom that highlights both Hank’s broad taste in pop culture and his blunt sensibilities (not to mention killer musical guests). And it’s always great to see him turn up on the big screen, “acting” like Henry Rollins in a Hollywood flick.

Ultimately, though, the reason the guy has outwitted and outlasted all the other punkers of his generation—hell, practically all punk rockers ever—is that he’s always been willing to put the music first, even before his own body. The man has his own myth: How he supposedly jumped onstage at a Black Flag concert, grabbed the mic and never let go. (In reality, he was invited by the band.) He scored a hit record (1994’s Weight). He even has his own designer label, 2:13:61, putting out albums by the artists he loves. He never has to walk onstage with his band again if he doesn’t want to, but he does. And it’s like watching dynamite explode.

“Music is the best of all of it,” he says. “The music never leaves you. It’s part of the electricity that runs through your body. Music makes all that other stuff worth it if it helps me get to the stage. My only regret is that I’m not better at music and the world loved me more so that I could be able to do it more.”

Loved or not, Rollins staunchly refuses to look back musically. He went wildly experimental after 1994’s hit single “Liar,” coming back three years later with the jazz-funk-metal fusion of Come In and Burn. After that he replaced his entire band and went straight aggro rawk. He’s never done, and never will do, a Best of Black Flag show. “If the Rollins Band went out and just played Black Flag songs there would be so many happy people—except the ones onstage,” he says.

And he’s never compromised his taste or views to get mainstream exposure. Even during his MTV salad days, when he was a staple on the network, it wasn’t because he’d compromised for TV. TV had finally accepted him.

“I just can’t go on autopilot,” he says. “There are certain bands that do that. Ozzy Osbourne has to play ‘Paranoid’ every night. And the Rolling Stones always have to do 10 of their hits. Can you imagine going to a Stones show and not seeing Mick Jagger doing ‘Brown Sugar’? And that’s been suggested to me as a career path, but I’m not going to do that. It doesn’t excite me to do that, to play the same songs, to make the same record over and over again. It won’t happen.”

In fact, the current As the World Burns tour with X is a test to see if there will ever be another Rollins Band disc at all—or at least a disc any time in the near future. “This is to see if we play well and see if we want to push ahead and record an album this winter,” Rollins says. And if not: “There’s always plenty to keep me busy. Other people have families. I don’t do much more than work.”

ROLLINS BAND
The Depot
400 W. South Temple
Friday, Aug. 4
9 p.m.
DepotSLC.com