The World According To… Henry Rollins

Artrocker.TV sent correspondent Belle Piec to the Royal Festival Hall to witness the Black Flag frontman, hardcore legend and all-round hard bastard Henry Rollins, who was performing on his latest spoken word tour.

And as many of you already know, the man’s a genius at commenting on injustice, politics, and indeed little ole’ you and me. Here’s Belle describing some of the highlights…

ON POLITICS

Like many of us, Rollins cannot wait for Tony Blair to start rotting in jail. He also has a profound dislike for the senior General of Burma, Ton Schway. By some strange coincidence, Rollins shared a hotel with the man while staying in Burma. So, he walked up to the General and gave him the finger in his face.

Another politician Rollins has his sniper aimed at is Vladmir Putin – the Russian prime Minister is the ‘Butcher of Chechnya’ and anyone who disagrees can “kiss my ass.”

ON THE ENGLISH

Rollins states that only the English put the English down, but they do it pretty well. He has an English manager too, who presumably puts himself down quite a lot. He nonetheless has a great respect for the English “because of the war”. Although everybody from the north of England “sounds like they’ve got throat cancer.”

ON AMERICA

Unsurprisingly, Rollins is critical of right-wing lunatics. Pat Robinson is “a leading awful Christian psychopath” who quotes the Devil (how does one quote the Devil?), attempted to stop people donating to Haiti and blamed Hurricaine Katrina on the gay communities. Nice fella then.

He argues that America has demonised the intellect, joking that in the US, “real men don’t use syllables” (Gun! Fuck! Hell! Yeah! ) On the other hand, he does generally like America, and even spent Thanksgiving with none other than William Shatner.

ON HIMSELF

According to Rollins, the older he gets, the more pissed off he gets. He loves “hoppin’, boppin’ and poppin all over the world”, and wherever he goes, he usually greets people with the phrase “Hey! I’m Henry! What’s happening?”

Wherever Henry goes, he carries a 500GB hard drive with him, so he can play decent music to kids that haven’t heard it. A recent such expedition saw him playing Iggy Pop to children living in the mountains of Sri Lanka!.

Rollins’ recent activities include playing a neo nazi white supremacist on the TV show The Shield (and consequently getting sent tonnes of death mail threats by people who believe he IS his character). He also recently judged a televised ladyboy beauty contest. He was “flustered” by their beauty – but no, he is not gay.

ON PHILOSOPHY

Rollins was recently asked to give a graduation ceremony speech for the Californian students of Sonoma University. His pearls of wisdom included:

“Never relent, never lose your burning curiosity, never stop asking why. Complacency is not an option… rumble young person rumble!”

Tonight Rollins is more straight to the point:

“Stick it to the man every chance you get!”

PHOTO BY BELLE PIEC