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Come In and Burn...

An Unofficial Henry Rollins and Rollins Band Site... HG Magazine - May/June '97... "What's the matter with Henry?"



by Mark Dapin



Thrash rock icon Henry Rollins works out alone, stays home alone, keeps women at bay. White-hot rage is his shield against love and loss - but what is it, exactly, he's so anry about?



Venice Beach, LA, December 1991: Punk rock giant Henry Rollins and his best friend and flatmate, Joe Cole, are returning from the supermarket carrying



groceries. As they approach the porch of their home, two gunmen step out of the darkness.



"One was on Joe, one was on me," says Rollins. "the guy who was on me did all the talking. He said, This a holdup. We both barely could speak. You see these guns and you think if you talk too loud, they could go off." The gunmen search their bodies for weapons and take the money from their pockets. Cole is told to get on the ground, face down. Rollins is thinking: "This is bad. It should just be a mugging. This has gone on for 30 seconds too long."



Rollins is forced onto his knees, then told to stand and walk into his house. "I knew we were going to get executed," he says. "In this neighborhood, youre found with a few pillows over your head. They bury the gun in the pillows and nobody hears it."



He opens the floor, his mind racing, puts down the groceries, puts up his hands. He says, "OK fellas, look, lets unplug the phone. Ive got $3000 in cash from this speaking date I did. Let me get it for you. There it is. Theres my stereo. Ill wrap it up for you. Go get your buddy to bring his car. Well load it in the car. I have to live in this neighborhood. Im not going to call them cops."



The gunmen laugh at the terrified tough guy, make him hump their booty to the low-rider, and drive off into the night. Rollins and Cole embrace, roar hysterically, slap each other on the back, slam dance around their empty living room - alive.



That is what Henry Rollins wishes had happened that night just over five years ago. In real life, Rollins did not have time to offer anybody $3000 and a stereo. As the first gunman marched him inside, the second gunman shot Joe Cole, point blank, in the head. The other fired once at Rollins back, missed and fled.



Rollins ran from the scene to call the LAPD and was picked up as a suspect himself. Handcuffed and thrown into a police car, he was driven back to his own address. His home was surrounded by yellow tape.



He asked after Cole. A cop said "Your friends dead," and went back to writing on a clipboard.



Rollins spent the night in the cells. His girlfriend came to visit, and the police asked her if Rollins and Cole were gay lovers. She said she and Rollins were having a relationship. They asked if Rollins could be bisexual. Then they decided Rollins was a drug addict and demanded to know the name of his supplier.



Rollins is famously drug free. He does not drink or smoke cigarettes. He asked, "Did you find any drugs in my place?" ("and they turned the place upside down," he says now, "and stole all my good pens, too") The cops admitted theyd found nothing. Rollins said, "Does that kind of help you at all?"



Finally, the police believed his story.



The case remains open. The gunmen were never caught. Rollins keeps a jar of bloody dirt scraped from the spot where Joe Cole died.



Henry Rollins is college-boy handsome, marine handsome, comic-strip handsome, almost caricature handsome. He is perfectly muscled, like a Marvel superhero. His neck is as thick as my calves. We work out at Bayswater Fitness in Kings Cross. Rollins has a stripped-down and ripped economy of movement. He looks only where he has to. He walks towards the weights as if he has no peripheral vision.



"I usually work out in the power cage," he says, "because it's self-spotting." Self-spotting equipment allows him to lift weights alone. Since Cole's death, Rollins does everything alone.



Rollins bends his knees and hurls barbells curls into the air, almost bouncing the weight off the flat plates of muscle that armour his chest.



Still panting for breath after my warm-up, I gingerly press 40kg on the triceps-pull down machine. Rollins raises the load to 100kg, the highest the machine will go. I could not move 100kg with my triceps if the reward was world peace and a six-movie contract. Rollins shrugs off a set of 100kg reps then returns the peg to the 40kg mark for me. I quit lifting weights.



Rollins crashed the US punk scene in 1981, when he leaped onstage with cult hardcore rockers Black flag., grabbed the mic from the singer and loosed a burst of typically blazing anger over the groups furious thrash. The band soon asked him to replace the singer he had blown offstage. Joe Cole was a Black Flag roadie.



Thirteen years ago, Rollins was very angry indeed. He was angry about the abuse he suffered at the hands of his stepbrother, the abuse he bore from his mothers boyfriends, the unbending discipline he was forced to comply with by his estranged father. He was angry about everything that angers young men.



Black Flag was an inspiration to many post-Pistols punk bands. They built their own PA, developed their own circuit, slogged around the US on tours that lasted five months at a time, establishing a national following through sheer hard work. Since they disbanded in 1986, Rollins has fronted the Rollins Band, which plays all year round, across five continents. When they are not touring, Rollins takes a spoken- word show on the road. During the down time, he makes movies. He was in The Chase with Charlie Sheen, Johnny Mnemonic with Keanu Reeves, Heat with Al Pacino. He has a small part in David Lynch's Lost Highway. He also has his own publishing company and has published 11 books of his own, spanning poetry, journalism and stream - of - consciousness diary stuff, as well as others by writers including Joe Cole.



"Basically, I dont have a life, " he says on the promo video for the new Rollins Band album, Come In and Burn. "I dont have any drug addictions to slow me down. I dont have any dependency on alcohol and I dont have a girlfriend or wife. The only thing that interests me is work."



Since Cole's death, Rollins has preached, "Dont attach." His attitude has led to Those Gay Rumours, but Rollins talks about women all the time. He says he's not good for women. If he has a girlfriend, he has to timetable her into his few vacant slots, offer her the hours between nine and 12 two weeks from their first date. He does not stay in one place for long. Rollins says women tell him, "I like you, but you're never there. And even when you are there, youre not there."



He says he does not want somebody elses life "glomped" onto his own. He is not willing to take the midnight telephone call that begins, "Hi, I just needed to talk." So talk to someone else, says Rollins. "Whats the name after Rollins in your phone book? Try them. Im not the one you call when youve got a problem. I sure as hell wont call you when Ive got a problem. When Ive got a problem, I handle it."



He says that has been in two long relationships in the past three years. "They didnt work out. Oh well. And then theres all the two-month relationships, the six-week relationships, the one-month relationships, the one-hour relationships . Ive been out with all kinds of women - kickboxers, paralegals, strippers, students, models, actresses, women in bands "



Has he been out with anyone famous? "Yeah, Ive been out with some famous people."



Who?



"I cant tell you."



I dont tell him about the famous people Ive been out with, either.



Rollins was "a disciplinary problem" in school. "I was hyperactive, starting fights. They put me on drugs. Id get thrown out of schools and not even know why. Id find out later that Id attacked students. Some days my voice would be really hoarse and I wouldnt know why. It was because Id been yelling at the top of my voice in class. I would do things to other kids - very violent things, like mutilating them. I blinded a kid in kindergarten, stabbed one kid in the ass with a pencil because he beat me to a touchdown. I remember watching the blood spread through his pants and him giving me the strangest look. I was a piece of shit."



At 12 years old, he was send to a navel prep school, where the disruptive rich kids were made to learn discipline. "These teachers will slap your fucking teeth out of your head, " says Rollins.



The staff were all old soldiers. "I had a general for a chemistry teacher." He discovered weightlifting at 15. "They sent me to this school jacked on Ritalin, an anti-hyper drug, he says. "You dont eat, you dont talk. For the first year and a half, I did not even know where the cafeteria was." When he picked up the weights, he threw away the pills. "I put on 10 pounds of muscle in half a year.," he ways. "Id do the whole workout and then Id do it again. When youre 15 and lifting weights, you can lift weights all night. Id eat 2 meals for lunch.



"My dad called me the locust. He would load up all this food for me and sit and watch me eat 3 hamburgers."



He adds. "He gave me a lot of boxing lessons."



Was he a boxer? " I dont know. I dont know much about him."



Rollins has said he despised his father and mother, who divorced when he was young. Now, he says, " Theyre not bad people. I dont hate them.



"I see my mom every year and a half. We talk every 6 months or so. She calls me. I like her OK. I dont know her that well. Were like friends who were roommates a long time ago. She doesnt call me son and I call her by her first name. We dont do that mother-son thing. I dont know what thats about. And I dont know what the father-son things about, either."



He has not seen his father for 8 years. "I hear about him." He says. "he does a lot of expert witness testimony in rates cases - water, power, electric. The court asks: OK, if the water scale is down past a certain level, will rates go up a certain amount? And they bring him in to go,0 Heres me sliding scale.



"Hes a PhD in economics. He wrote a book called, I think, Water Utility Rates. A block buster."



Does Rollins have any plans toblock busterh it?



"Yeah!"



Rock and roll is a young mans sport, says Rollins, aged 36, "especially the way I play it - really physically." Onstage, he jumps around roaring like an athlete in agony. He strikes rock stars poses, martial arts poses, body building poses and he yells.



He burns and bleeds and invites the audience to attack him. His lyrics are angry, adolescent, dark and adolescent. The rarely spoken truth is that they are not much good.



The Rollins Band songs tend to be one-sided, obvious and curiously adolescent. They lack the depth of understanding, the easy wit, of the man himself. Rollins recognizes he is not writing poetry. He has said, "Writing is therapy for me. Im not an artist, not a creative person. Im not a talented writer. Im not a good writer."



If Rollins body of work is not exactly art, his body is. Beautifully sculpted, a masterpiece of perfect symmetry, Rollins is compelling to look at. He is also compelling to listen to, when he is not playing with the band. Not even Rollins greatest admirer would claim the man can sing. Rollins records sell because his anger strikes a chord, but what - apart from the death of Joe Cole - is he supposed to be angry about there days? Its hard to say.



Between the work out at Bayswater Fitnessand a photo session with the Sydney press, Rollins has lost his centre.His body language is all pulled punches. His eyes are on fire. He tosses his T-shirt onto a chair, turns his back on his road manager with a furious finality. He looks like he could kill. His publicity people rush to sort everything out: "Was he OK when he was with you? When did he get into this mood?" The road manager leans over and whispers the terrible truth. "Henry cut himself shaving."



If Rollins is reluctant to give other people emotional support, he will cross the world to help them out with their work. He produced the album Ill at Ease for Adelaide band The Mark of Cain. His remuneration was the cost of his flight, his accommodation, gym fees and $30 a day for food. Mark of Cain singer John Scott says, "He seemed very relaxed. Onstage, thats a performance. Offstage, I would doubt that now he could be like he was at 18. You can only be that angry all the time [when youre ] younger. As you get older, you mellow. You become a little bit more easy-going. You cant be this totally fucking intense guy who everybody doesnt want to talk to - although Im sure he can be like that.



"Rollins was a reinvention of himself, anyway. He didnt like what he was when he was younger - he was a skinny bugger - so he pumped iron and became this thing that was threatening. At the same time, hes still a guy with a very sharp sense of humor and a sharp eye for detail. Youd like to be his friend and yet you find there is a certain point where he wont go. We did ask him out a couple of times and he kept saying, no, Ive got lots of shit to do, and we got the impression he was really, really busy. "Wed lent him a ghetto blaster to listen to all our mixes on. When I went to his hotel room, I pressed the botton to take out the cassette and the little door broke off. I was trying to put it back on and couldnt. He grabbed it, went clunk-clunk-clunk, and it was on. I said, Fuck, you know how to do that. (in italics) he said, Well, you know, Ive had a lot of time to get to know this - and he stopped himself. What he was saying was, "Ive been bored shitless in this hotel room with nothing to do so of course I know everything about this ghetto blaster." Scott says he struck them as being like Arthur Fonzarelli in the Christmas episode of Happy Days where the Fonz says he doesnt want to be around for the Cunninghams Christmas because he goes to relatives who have a big tree and lots of food. "then they find out that on Christmas Eve Fonzies sitting in his little mechanics shop eating cold tinned food."



In the Black Flag years, Rollins had his body tattooed, everything from the famous "search and destroy" motif across his back to the Black Flag on his biceps. "Tattooing is defining yourself," he says. "Its trying to figure out how your feet fill your shoes." On one forearm, snakes coil around a sword beneath the words "death trip". " Life to me is a death trip." Explains Rollins. He thinks about his mortality a lot. "Youre doing a life sentence with death waiting for you. [The tattoo] is a reminder."



Above that tattoo is a deaths head. "I guess its something thats on my mind a lot, " he says. "Its so heavy to me that someone dies. They get almost legendary to me. Its a very inspiring thing its also very humbling." On the opposite arm is a skull in a hood. "Same thing again," he says. I quit counting tattoos.



Rollins does not feel the need to fight. "I feel the need to be able to get home. If youre going to talk shit to me, wind me up - man, save it. If you say, Im gonna kill you, only one of us is getting out of this door, Im gonna do my best to be the one who gets home." He calls his credo "survival".



That night in December 1991, Rollins did get home, but perhaps he did not quite survive.



"Ive got no close friends," he says "the guys in the band I like them, but I dont really know them." He says he likes and respects his manager but, "We never have those conversations like, When I was six years old " Ninety per cent of the telephone numbers stored in his computer are business related, he says. Not even any of the contacts he calls "non - combatants" call him up to ask him out on a Saturday night - they know he will not make that journey. "People just give up on me, " he says.



Rollins journey is a journey inside himself, and the landscape there is as bleak and threatening as any he could hope for. Rollins wants to be tested, to prove himself man enough. He strives for self - containment, overpowering strength, total independence, freedom.



His freedom is a freedom is a freedom from emotional attachment, from love. He has to fight off his friends, his colleagues, his women, all the people who value Henry Rollins as a person, not simply a working machine.



But, for him, the fight against attachment is a fight worth winning, because Henry Rollins knows what every anxious lover suspects. That if you trust somebody, if you value somebody, if you care about somebody enough to need them, then - always and inevitably - they will die first. (in italics)



