Henry Rollins is possibly the purest Punk Rocker on two legs in that he never stops detonating, a description that was laid upon the original debut album from the Clash.
He is rollin’ his Good to See You spoken-word world tour through Australasia and this is his second Auckland date.
The amazing ability to talk for 150 minutes straight in a rapid patter, with multiple voices and sound effects like semi-automatic gunfire, hardly pausing for breath, is astounding.
It is only him on stage with no props whatsoever, just a microphone and a monitor speaker. Yet he holds our attention the entire time.
He starts by spending time over-praising this country which is what almost all visiting artists do from the stage. Americans especially so, as they seem to feel the need to apologise profusely for their country. They don’t need to.
After a bit of this he drops the kindness and launches into an all-too-accurate diatribe of what it is like to wait half a day in a customs queue being checked for food items. Finally getting to your hotel in the evening to find there is no food available until breakfast time.
All you need to cap that off is then for some idiot to ask and how do you like New Zealand?
Rollins first came to my attention when he was the lead voice on Black Flag’s Damaged album in 1981. It is amongst the small handful of greatest Punk albums ever made. Which also means the greatest Rock’n’roll albums. He had just taken over vocal duty from Dez Cadena, and he was competing with the great industrial noise merchant guitar fire from Greg Ginn.
I wanna live/ I wish I was dead. An advancement on the mantra of Hope I die before I get old.
He can speed-natter and still be perfectly clear and articulate. He was given Ritalin, which is basically a tailored amphetamine for children and street addicts, for his hyperactivity and anxiety as a child.
He is unsparing about his difficult childhood and upbringing, and the trauma that eventuated. It is a naked and open look and involves a lot of black humour. I am sure he is one of the many artists that has spent time with William Burroughs, one of the most important secret influences in Rock music over three decades.
There was an emotional connection made in that Rollins is just over two months older than me. The poster advertising this tour has him dressed in a doctor’s white coat with a stethoscope around his neck. That’s the sign, of course.
He got his start in Black Flag, when he was pulled from the audience once, and invited to sing. The band felt that raging energy. He was given an audition and 5 seconds later he was in.
In my drunken student days in the first flush of Punk, I used to grab the microphone repeatedly from the lead singer of Spelling Mistakes. Well, they let me, but I was never invited to audition.
1981 was his pivot year, when he joined Black Flag and was put on his life’s journey. From there he became a poet and an activist.
He fronted the Rollins Band with which he had a longer career than with the Flag.
Worked in movies alongside people like David Lynch (Lost Highway) and Al Pacino and Robert De Niro (Heat).
He’s a radio broadcaster, a television actor, a writer, a traveller bringing his art to over ninety countries by his reckoning now. Including places seldom visited outside the Western sphere of influence.
He is a self-confessed workaholic, so he leads a dozen lives in parallel. The only real vices he admits to is being a vinyl junkie (a hopeless case here) and a collector of music memorabilia.
Two and half hours barely touches on all that, which is why he talks so fast, he tells us.
Covid did change his life profoundly, as it did many other artists. Performers bang on about it repeatedly now until it is tiresome. Rollins brings the most insight I have heard about this time to the stage tonight.
He is finding himself in a fist fight with a stalker-cum-robber. They are both wearing their blue face masks. The absurdity of this situation is hilarious.
No social distancing, are we supposed to hold our breaths while punching?
He calls himself a dinosaur, or a Coelacanth Punk these days. He works out regularly, and so looks younger than his years, and with an irrepressible life spirit. He praises the standard of current young artists working today, which I fully agree with. Although he has no interest in reviving his musical career. I don’t want to become a juke box.
Henry Rollins is an inspiring Original Punk. He demonstrates the fact that he will burn out and never fade.
Rev Orange Peel
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