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.
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Tags: Henry Rollins, Interview, interview by Matthew
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