Henry Rollins remembers when this used to be a good neighborhood. Photo by Ben Swinnerton.
Black Flag frontman turned globetrotting hilari-phizer Henry Rollins has been captivating audiences with stories of his travels for a quarter-century now. The onetime Henry Garfield first toured the country in his early 20s as the fourth and final singer of iconic punk outfit Black Flag, and has continued to write and perform music with various lineups of his Rollins Band. Through his company, 2.13.61, he has published more than a dozen volumes of his journals and travelogues. He turns up in movies occasionally, and he hosted an eclectic assortment of guests on his Independent Film Channel talk show from 2005 to 2007. He remains the host of Harmony in My Head, a weekly music program on Los Angeles’s Indie 103 FM that consists wholly of Rollins playing music he likes, regardless of genre or era. He’s published three volumes of his program notes from the show, under the series title Fanatic!
But for all the varied manifestations of his untreated workaholism, the 47-year-old Rollins’s greatest gift to the world is his spoken-word performances: candid, vulnerable, hilarious, stirring, angry. In recent years, he’s become a fixture of USO tours, entertaining American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan without tempering his criticism of the president one bit.
Rollins spoke to DCist from his Los Angeles office in mid-September, just prior to the start of the “Recountdown” tour that will bring him back to the Birchmere on Nov. 3 — the night before America elects its 44th president. NOTE: This interview was conducted two days prior to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and the ensuing fiscal tsunami that has radically altered the terrain of the presidential race, so please bear that in mind as you read Rollins’s remarks on the political landscape as it appeared a mere six weeks ago.
You’ve been doing spoken-word shows for 25 years now. When did it become clear to you this would become at least as big a part of your artistic life as music, poetry and prose?
When a lot of people started showing up. When I saw that it was something I could do that was of interest to people, and that would keep me on the road and keep me busy.
