Joe Strummer. Joey Ramone. Sid Vicious. Lee Ving. They are all names resonating throughout punk rock history. All left their own mark on the musical world, for better or worse. But there’s one name that punk fans everywhere know and love: Henry Rollins.
On June 26, Rollins took the stage at Sokol Hall to regale a diverse audience of about 400 to 500 young and middle-aged punk fans with tales of his adventures, his life story and his politics.
A legend in the hardcore punk scene, Henry’s bio reads like a Dos Equis ad. You know, the ones featuring the “most interesting man in the world.” At 49, the middle-aged punk rocker has reinvented himself so many times he should have himself patented. He has visited places few Americans have heard of, and done things few would dare to do. On June 26, he brought his own brand of spoken word performance art to the Sokol.
I’ll admit, I didn’t have the slightest idea what to expect from Rollins’ spoken word shows. I’ve been a fan of his from the Black Flag and Rollins Band days, and I caught his excellent interview with Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America founder, Paul Reickoff, on his VH1 show. I knew he was doing something called “spoken word,” an art form distantly related to beat poetry and stand-up improv. So for me, the show was going to be a unique experience.
The stage at Sokol Hall is spartan, to say the least. It’s normally used by local punk and metal bands, so it has to be. Saturday night was no exception. Maroon curtains draped the back of the stage, white stage lights hung from the rafters above, and dead center was a microphone stand and two stage monitors.
That’s all. No chair, no props, not even a bottle of water in sight. This, I thought, is going to be good.
And I was right. At precisely 8 p.m. in the evening to thunderous applause and fists in the air, Rollins strode out on the stage, no introduction needed for this man, and began speaking. He didn’t let up for the next three hours. He simply stood and spoke, occasionally gesturing or shaking his fist to accentuate a point, without taking so much as a sip of water and barely pausing for breath.
A Rollins show isn’t something you attend, it’s something you experience. Nothing can prepare you for the rapid-fire verbal assault headed your way. Rollins spoke on such a wide variety of topics it would be nearly impossible to relate them all, and Rollins moved so quickly from one to the other, seemingly without end, that if you paused too long to think about any particular point, you missed the next three.
He began by relating an experience he had recently, a run-in with the California police, where he had been accused of harassing a woman in a bar he’d never actually visited in a town he’d never been to. In typical Rollins style, he refused to be intimidated, and since he was innocent and could prove it, he challenged the investigating officer to prove the allegations. This story set the tone for the evening, and became a recurring theme – that authority must be challenged, and abuses of power must be confronted directly and fearlessly.
He told a story of his visit to South Africa, where he did not meet Nelson Mandela, but had the chance to see the great man’s library, and punctuated the segment by reciting, in its entirety, the preamble to the Constitution of the new South African government.
On the same trip he visited Bhopal, India, on the 25th anniversary of the Union Carbide disaster, which killed 12,000 people and permanently poisoned an entire city. He describes the anguish of the women who spoke, and railed against the apathy and ignorance of the western societies that are largely responsible for it.
With raw, uncensored clarity he ranted about the injustice at Itawamba Agricultural High School in Mississippi, where the school board canceled the senior prom and laid the blame at the feet of one young lesbian teen who had the temerity to announce her intentions to bring her girlfriend. Surviving high school is hard enough, but “…(if) you’re 20 and gay,” he said, “you should be given an extra gold star and a free pizza.”
When he tells his story about acting on the second season of the HBO hit series “Sons of Anarchy” (he plays, ironically, a neo-Nazi thug), you want to writhe in pain as he describes what he put himself through during filming. The character got beaten up regularly, and was killed at the end of the season, but Rollins enjoyed the work because “neo-Nazis need to get their asses kicked.”
Though he’s nearly 50, Rollins is clearly young at heart, and this comes through in his show. There’s little he won’t try at least once, and this attitude stems from a philosophy that death should not be feared. When it’s your time to die, according to Rollins, death should be the only thing left you haven’t done.
As I said earlier, it’s nearly impossible to describe Henry Rollins’ spoken-word show. He was, throughout the evening, amusing, inspiring and occasionally infuriating. His rapid-fire delivery assaulted your brain and left you reeling, wondering where the next hit was coming from. Whether you agreed with him or not, one thing was true – what he said made you think. He challenged your expectations, and hearing about his adventures and stories made me think harder about my own life. The tagline for his current tour is “Mileage Without Knowledge Equals Bullshit,” again stemming from his philosophy that you’ve got to live something before you can talk intelligently about it. According to Rollins, if more Americans traveled and experienced other cultures, the world would be a better place.
I couldn’t agree more.
So there it is. I said at the beginning, describing a Rollins show is nearly impossible. What I’ve written here would have taken him about two minutes to say out of a three-hour show.
If you get the chance, go see this guy. He’ll be on tour until Thanksgiving, doing spoken-word almost every night until then. Check him out, and break out some old Black Flag albums to get in the mood. You won’t regret it.