ALBANY, N.Y. – We were clearly seeing a softer, gentler Henry Rollins.
If you grew up watching the ripped, tattooed, seemingly fearless Black Flag and Rollins Band frontman on stage and screen, you may have a somewhat different Henry Rollins emblazoned in your mind than the almost “nice” one who recently delighted the packed audience at the Hart Theater for two hours with his latest spoken word appearance. Like many of us, Rollins seems to have had a long couple of pandemic years. He’s emerged humble, grateful and understandably, a bit weary.
That was the pervasive thread running throughout Rollins’ narrative this time around. More gonzo journalist, actor and comedian than musician these days, his current Good to See You tour is a celebration of Rollins finally getting back to doing what he loves after endless cancellations, and then telling us all about it, as only he can. And after a similar two-year slog, the audience celebrated just being there with him.
So there was a palpable air of pent up excitement as Rollins—now with some 30 spoken word recordings and videos alone under his belt, spanning nearly 40 years—casually strolled onto the stage, grabbing the mic. Opening with some humorous commentary about a guy who spends his working days at The Egg sitting inside the freight elevator, waiting for someone to get in, Rollins was planting deep thematic seeds from the get-go. Truly a remarkable job, Rollins professed, which affords one innumerable amounts of time to be alone with one’s thoughts. That luxury, however, can be a curse for some, as shown by the adverse effects of alienation during the COVID pandemic.
All this recent isolation was clearly an issue for Rollins, who spent a good deal of time thereafter elaborating on the frustration of not being able to work during quarantine, compounded by a recent experience with a mentally ill stalker from Finland, who kept repeatedly breaking into Rollins’ home. Instead of immediately going ballistic as we might expect and rearranging the man’s dental work, Rollins shared his repeated attempts to help and forgive without pressing charges, doing his best to mitigate any over exuberance by the LAPD. Until inevitably, he just had to knock the dude out.
But the stalker story was also a look into the darkest parts of Rollins’ psyche. Through the details of the anecdote we see a Henry Rollins who is still struggling with PTSD after the 1991 murder of his best friend and roommate Joe Cole, and his own brush with death that same evening (Rollins managed to escape the deadly confrontation). When he mentions picking up Cole’s body parts from the front lawn now, more than 30 years later, it still seems painfully raw for Rollins.
He talks about sleeping fully dressed, always ready to run, inside his big L.A. home with its tall walls. His initial reaction to the intruder in his home is fear, not bravado. As much as he attempts to promote a love and understanding of one’s fellow man, Rollins also clearly wants to put as much distance as possible between him and many of his fellow humans, and admits it. He may enjoy experiencing the world, but it’s apparent that he then likes to retreat back to his compound, where he can safely lock out the worsening world.
But who can blame him? Even if you’re not getting robbed at gunpoint like Rollins, the flaming asshole ratio in the population, we’ll call it, seemingly grows by the day. And it’s not just in America, either; one of the people Rollins made a particular effort to single out was an Aussie he recently sat near on a plane, who reported Rollins to the authorities for reading a “suspicious” book. Rollins still vows vengeance for this absurd act of persecution, and we can only hope he dispenses it someday.
Even at his lighter moments, Rollins was downright charming—hardly the intimidating presence of his Black Flag days—especially with his humility and self-effacing humor. When recounting one story about a benefit held for a dying friend, we encounter a “meet and greet” situation at the event, in which Rollins rubs elbows with guests of honor Debbie Harry and Iggy Pop. (His impression of Iggy is pure comedy gold.) But instead of just coolly enjoying the moment with two fellow legends—whom Rollins can proudly stand alongside—he admits a giddy, child-like, fan-boy response to the meeting, literally scaring away a sheepish Iggy Pop. His professed admiration for others, as well as his own meekness in their presence, is hardly what you’d expect from an iconic frontman of his status, but it’s an endearing quality, to say the least.
It’s been a long and winding road for Henry Rollins, who burst onto the music scene after joining Black Flag in 1981 and never looked back, and he’s certainly done his best to suck the marrow out of each and every moment since. But he can’t be hardcore punk’s elder statesman forever. What’s perhaps most striking is the juxtaposition of Rollins’ continued hyper relevance today, and his ongoing realization and admission that he’s not getting any younger, as his hair keeps getting whiter. He’s teaching as well as confronting, in hopes of passing the torch.
Expressing his open and progressive views on modern gender identities—especially non-gendered pronouns, which he believes help remove the sexualization of young girls and must be respected—he ended the night with a simple hope: That governmental term limits are enacted. His hope is this will enable younger people, with fresh ideas, to take political power, eventually replacing aging Boomers, even those with the best of intentions. He admits he’s one of those silver-haired gents now, more akin to Joe Biden than AOC, and hopes the new generation of leaders will finally arrive at some of the solutions that his own generation has been unable, or unwilling, to employ.
It’s a new world, now, and Rollins—at age 61—is a new man.
###
