Think back to when you first discovered punk rock. What were some of the names and bands that first entered your vocabulary and ear drums? The Dead Kennedys, Bad Brains, The Misfits… of course. The list goes on and on. Excluding Henry Rollins from that class would be a crime. Through his work in Black Flag and Rollins Band, he’s inspired an uncountable number of people, along with his writing, radio, and spoken word career.

Of late, Rollins has left the band life behind and hopped back on the spoken word path. I got a chance to catch one of his performances at Brooklyn’s Warsaw that went down late last month. It was a blistering, three-hour marathon of conversations, ranging from Pakistan to his one-off performance with The Ruts in ‘07. The topics were wide and Henry’s delivery, of course, was relentless. I mean, god damn, one sip of water after three hours of talking? What else would you expect?

I had a chance to talk with Rollins on the phone while he was in Athens, Georgia for a gig. We talked about his recent trip to Cape Town, South Africa, the two books he’s working on for ‘08, and his thoughts on the upcoming presidential election.

I know you’ve been traveling around a lot lately with the tour. One of the stories I saw on the website that I thought was really interesting was your experience in Cape Town, South Africa. Can you expand on everything you experienced?

Henry: It was mind-blowing. I’ve been to Africa seven times and of all the trips there that was the one that really moved me the most. Unless you just sit in the hotel all day, you end up seeing things that are very moving and extremely beautiful, very sad and sometimes scary. Life and death is so in your face there. It’s very real. In South Africa, what was interesting and different than Egypt or Morocco was the white/black dynamic. There’s a lot of white people, there’s a lot of black people. I wasn’t use to seeing so many white neighborhoods in Africa. The apartheid, which is in the past, is still a topic. You can’t not talk about it. What I saw was a lot of people dealing with the aftermath of it. Trying to get move on past it and get on to what the new chapter is going to be. That was the fascinating thing. The white and black people that I met were working together to move forward. To see these people really wanting to make tomorrow different. I ended up walking around in these townships, basically a government run zone. You see a whole lot of people living in a small space. Basically, the dorm room from hell. People having to make due in very close proximity to each other. 1,000 people, four toilets. Aids clinic, 150 patients a day, one doctor. They realize as long as they stick together and have a strong sense of community and teach their children right. If they let it slide then what? It was very hard to see some of the stuff but it was inspiring to see how they were dealing with it. I met some of the strongest people I’ve ever met like these doctors treating AIDS and HIV patients. It’s the most grueling work and they are saving lives. I don’t know what their off-time is like. This one woman who worked there, she’d been there for eleven years. Teenage, HIV- positive moms with their kids walk by you. ‘Wow, this is very real.’ We are not joking around. In America these days, we are given some wiggle room. It’s not really in your face like it is in South Africa. Walk into a room full of HIV-positive people waiting for treatment. It’s an amazing facility, it’s immaculate and people get tremendous care, but there’s a lot of them. That’s what I encountered. The audiences, primarily white people, [were] incredible audiences. I can’t wait to go back there. The show sold out really quickly. The promoter said we could do these shows tomorrow night and we’d sell them out again. We are looking at trying to get me back out there sooner or later. I’d love to put South Africa on my tour.

Read more of my interview with Henry Rollins after the jump.

Experiencing everything in Cape Town, and even around the world, how do you bring those experiences to your every day approach to life? How do you keep your balance?

Henry: A lot of that stuff informs me in a really good way. It’s made me very patient, very tolerant. Even when you’re looking at something small. You’ve seen other versions of the same thing in other countries. It gives you a bigger and better perspective when making decisions about things. In Africa, I saw all these kids and their clothes were immaculate. Their mothers wash these clothes with such fury. These kids are going to have clean clothes and that’s that. They aren’t going to look like bums. This isn’t some ghetto they are living in, this is their town and this is their life. That’s what they are trying to convey. You see this desire for dignity and respect. That’s what I bring from all of this. I was never really disrespectful to people. I was raised right. You are just very careful with someone else and what they are going through. If they fuck with you, then you stomp on them. Intellectually, you don’t hold back. I’m not saying be weak but I’m saying be very careful and aware.

You’ve done so much with your career. Do you feel it’s more of a challenge to work within that spoken word frame? Or do you feel even feel more vulnerable just up there then say, just playing in a band?

Henry: Sure. A band gives you a cushion. You queue the words up, snare drum and loud guitar covers it. The song is the song. You can mess it up and it’s rock and roll. We’re not making up music as we go along on stage. It’s not exploratory free jazz jam, which I have nothing against. You can sing your little song and make your little move and a lot of people know the difference. I’m sure a lot of bands go up there, ‘here’s your eighty minutes. Here’s the hits. Thank you goodnight.’ I can never do that. The talking show, if you stop talking for a second, everyone looks at you like, ‘ what, are you high?’ You’re the only thing on stage. There’s a lot of vulnerability. That doesn’t bug me, I’m happy letting it all hang out. There’s more opportunity for things to go wrong. You have to go out onstage very frontloaded. I know what I’m going to say. I’ve done my homework if research was needed. When I start talking, here it comes. I’m not up there just rambling. You didn’t pay money to see somebody talk about the weather. We are going somewhere.

You have a busy year planned for 2008. You recently announced your working on two books. What are you are planning on doing with Fanatic Vol. 3 and A Preferred Blur?

Henry: The Fanatic book is just the third installment of these crazy radio notes I make for my show. The damn thing is a hundred eighty thousand words. Way too much information about far too little. It’s all these bands I’m geeked out about. Discography information and all kinds of things like that. It’s a big book for ten bucks. A whole lot of paper for cheap and it’s a big labor of love for me. It’s for fans of the radio show. A Preferred Blur is travel stories from ’06 and ’07. It goes all around the world to Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Australia, Scandinavia, Europe, America, Canada, all these places. That one is finished and just needs to be edited. Trying to work on this stuff on tour can be pretty difficult. You’re sitting on a bus working on it or backstage. I’ve been working this way for over half of my life. This is what I prefer. I’d rather be here right now tonight doing a show then at home or in a nice hotel. I really like living on the road. I get a little disoriented off the road. I really don’t know what the motivation in that scene is. When I’m out, this is what I do. I’m that guy and I love that.

You’re working on three live and uncut specials this year. Are you going to be doing less of the TV show and more specials?

Henry: IFC wants to do specials this year. They’ve said ‘we love the TV show. Great guests, great ratings.’ Limitations of the show, they said, “you’re in a box. We like you out in the world. More Henry out there in the element. We get more [of a] response off that ‘Live In Israel’ thing than all of the other mail from the TV show combined.’ So they said ‘would you like to not do the TV show and do more of those documentaries?’ I would have preferred both but I’m happy with what I got. It was basically yes or no. They said ‘where do you want to go?’ I said, ‘let’s do one in South Africa.’ The next one will be in a few weeks in Northern Ireland, in Belfast. We are doing one in New Orleans. I don’t know when that shoots. I’m on this tour until about May 3rd. It ends in New Zealand. From New Zealand, I’m going to Vietnam and Cambodia, and hopefully Loas. That’ll get me back around Mid-May, back to America. Hopefully, in August I’m going to North Korea. Americans are apparently allowed in [from] August through October. We are working on seeing if I can get in. I’m curious, I want to go and see it. The tour is like a snake chasing it’s tail. One ends and there’s a pause and I go out and get new material. I’m working on new material [during] this tour. Interjecting, like at the end of the year I was in Pakistan, when Bhutto was assassinated. That was a hell of a thing to see. It’s finding itself from night to night.

How do you keep your mind fresh? How do you keep it up there?

Henry: I don’t do much else. I’m on tour, I am living for these gigs. I live in an obsessive kind of way. I’m living for tonight at 9 P.M. That’s my life. I’ve got nothing else going on. I want nothing. I make my own coffee and do my own show. The thing is getting me up on stage and then on to the next one. I live with these thoughts every day. It’s a very small room that I live in, in my head, on these tours. For me there is no other way to go up there and pound it for two and half, three hours and really nail it if you are worried about the girlfriend or my wife is mad at me or I’m high or my phone is ringing. I can’t even find this freaking phone half the time. You want to talk to me? Call Ward [Henry’s tour manager]. By day, I’m working on the book, doing e-mail interviews that aren’t on the press schedule, just kids that write me. Just a kid with his fanzine. I like that the kid can write me for his ‘Screaming Butt’ magazine or whatever. That takes a lot of time. That becomes my life out here.

What are you making of all this election coverage and how it’s panning out?

Henry: I think it’s going to be McCain versus somebody. As for the Democratic side, I really don’t know. One day it looks like Hilary and one day it looks like Obama. For myself, I’ve never been the biggest fan of hers. I think she’s brilliant and she’s smart and if she becomes the front-runner then I’m going to vote for her. I don’t hate John McCain. I bet you he’s not a bad guy. I’m not a fan of Republicans. I’ll vote for Rip Taylor before I vote Republican. I’ve just got to have a new game plan, a new conversation with Iraq and health care.  The need for twenty-four hour news. Twenty-four hour content. A guy like Chris Matthews makes money when he talks. I don’t mind the sport guys because they are talking about somebody’s shoes. When these guys start fusing it with their own opinion, like a guy like Bill O’Reilly, who is real egomaniac. He thinks that if you don’t appear on his show you have no shot of being president. His ego knows no bounds. Same with Sean Hannity. You can’t get through their private security to show them what New Jersey is all about. I think those guys have way too much say. I think it’s a problem that you need a lot of money to run. The guy with a lot of money wins. Republicans always have a lot of money because they are in the corporate backed election, sticking with mega business. Exxon throwing millions of dollars so they can keep doing something because they’ll make it back on Tuesday. That’s my beef with it.

–

Find out what Henry is up to at his website.