HENRY ROLLINS

HENRY ROLLINS; Shock & Awe

I don't' kick dogs or kick old pensioners. I shoot my mouth off, I raise money, I try to better the environment I'm in. I'm into constructive anger.
—Henry Rollins

I first saw Henry Rollins in the summer of 1991 at the inaugural Lollapalooza festival, just outside the singer's hometown of Washington, D.C. It was the golden age of alternative rock, back when "alternative" actually meant something, and Lollapalooza was modern rock's equivalent of an evangelical road show. The artists on that year's tour—Jane's Addiction, Ice-T, Living Colour, Nine Inch Nails and the like—crowded together to watch as Rollins hit the stage with his uber-tight punk-metal band. Clad only in shorts, with close-cropped hair, not an ounce of fat on his weightlifter's body, muscles bursting from tattooed arms, veins popping in his tree trunk of a neck, body contorting to the strains of the music and perspiration piping from every pore-the physical spectacle of Rollins himself was jaw-dropping.

These days, you'll still find the 43-year-old artist cutting records and touring with the Rollins Band. But more and more, he's focused his energies on edgy, smart, intense and very funny spoken-word performances—stories, really, that Rollins picks up along the long, strange and seemingly endless road.

The unique elixir that is Henry Rollins is made up of equal parts storyteller, comedian and punk. But half the appeal is that same physicality that so wowed the royalty of alternative rock back in the early nineties. When Rollins "spews" (his word for his spoken-word diatribes), he assumes the same position as he does when he's singing. He leans forward and rocks back and forth on his boots, as if he might explode at any minute. "I come off as someone who makes his own crystal-meth in his bathtub," he jokes in his latest DVD release. His body is still buff and tight, but these days the shirt stays on. His hair is still cropped, but now there's a spider web of silver creeping across his skull. His buggy eyes are still intense, but a hint of wrinkles pervades.

As a self-proclaimed pissed-off, extremely opinionated guy who's made a career out of anger—initially as the long-haired vocalist for the seminal punk-metal outfit Black Flag in the mid eighties and later as publisher, critic and spoken-word artist—Rollins' greatest talent (he's not much of a singer) has always involved focusing that anger. "I thrive on confrontation," he said by phone last week from his office in L.A. "I don't' kick dogs or kick old pensioners. You piss me off, I do a tour and give the money to some agency. I shoot my mouth off, I raise money, I try to better the environment I'm in. I'm into constructive anger. I mean, I'm not gonna join the Aryan Brotherhood."

When I caught up with the intense and highly caffeinated Rollins, he had just returned from a long trek through Siberia on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Most folks try that in the summer when temperatures are semi tolerable, but Rollins went in mid winter. "I wanted it to be brutal," he said of the sub-zero ordeal. "One of the reasons I go far and wide is that you don't come home without a story unless you're comatose. I go to these places because I'm hugely curious about everything."

That insatiable curiosity in evident in Rollins' resume, which reads like a textbook workaholic's. He performs more than 100 spoken-word shows a year, including four recent USO tours that took him to places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait and Honduras. He hosts his own weekly radio show in L.A. He recently began hosting a series for the Independent Film Channel called Henry's Film Corner, in which he takes a subversive look at films and the movie industry. The Rollins Band releases a new CD every year or two. He regularly lands cameo film appearances. All the while, his own 2.13.61 imprint, which gives voice to alternative authors, pumps out books, spoken-word CDs and DVDs at an alarming pace.

The latest DVD is Shock & Awe, filmed during last year's Shock & Awe…My Ass tour. Aside from the inevitable battering of George Bush, he riffs on subjects as diverse as masturbation (he's gotten really good at it), living in L.A. (he hates it, but can't leave), confronting a burglar (it was the weirdest conversation he ever had), telemarketers (he feels sorry for them, but if they call too early in the morning they're going to get the full Rollins treatment) and his USO tours (more serious than funny). The most hilarious segment is the story of his participation in William Shatner's weird recording project last year. Shatner, who according to Rollins has the energy of a 15-year-old, is as eccentric and amusing as Rollins himself. His take on Shatner's idiosyncrasies is pure gold.

Much of the material, while funny, can be damned brutal. Witness Rollins' tale of meeting Ike Turner, who is both rock-and-roll icon and wife beater. Rollins pulls no punches. He is not in the least hesitant to insult his heroes. You'll laugh, but you'll wince at the same time.

Not surprisingly, Rollins is a culture junkie, in much the same way as Quentin Tarantino (who also gets skewered in Shock & Awe). His work is peppered with music and film references. And like Tarantino, he comes off as a bit of a geek, especially when he's in the middle of a self-deprecating rant about the wasteland of his romantic life (as mentioned, he's gotten very good at masturbating).

In his 43 years of fast living (I mean this in a literal sense, not a chemical one—Rollins doesn't drink or do drugs stronger than caffeine), Rollins has been many things: newspaper boy, manure shoveler, pet store worker, ice cream scooper, skateboard shop guy, singer, writer and actor. But none has felt as natural as the spoken-word path he's now on.

"Of all the things I've ever done, this is the one that feels like, this is mine," he said. "It's the one thing I think I could be doing in 20 years and draw just fine. The wet dream would be George Carlin…to do what he's doing at that age, and they're still lining up to go see him."