After years as a punk-rock singer, Henry Rollins says he wasn't even nervous when he began doing spoken word in front of fans used to hearing him scream out his songs.
"It's just basically an extension of hanging out with your buddies, telling stories, which was always a thing held in high value among my friends," Rollins says. "Can you tell the story? Can you do all the voices? Can you make someone laugh? If you're in a band, you spend quite a lot of time in a vehicle smashed up against somebody, so you become quite the raconteur."
For fans, however, it was jarring at first to hear Rollins speak, because as a rocker in Black Flag and later the Rollins Band, he was a man of a few words on stage. "If I am on stage with a band, I don't want to talk. I just want to play a bunch of music really intensely and get into that," he says.
Rollins' move to spoken-word performances was a slow process leading up to the more-than-two-hour monologues he can now deliver. "I've been doing these shows for 21 years, and when I started, the shows were a lot shorter," Rollins says. "You were given only a 10- or 15-minute slot, and then after a while, you get your own show, and then it turns into something else over the years."
Rollins' current spoken-word tour is Shock and Awe My Ass. "It being an election year and us being in Iraq, I defiantly felt I needed to say something. I watch a lot of news. I watch Fox, CNN, MSNBC and BBC World News," he says.
Over the years, Rollins has become the muscle-bound, tattooed renaissance man of American punk: making music, writing books, doing spoken-word performances, and appearing in movies and on TV. Yet a couple of years ago, this constant forward-thinker revisited his past in Black Flag, performing old songs for a tour supporting the defense efforts of the West Memphis Three, a trio of teenage boys Rollins says have been unfairly charged with murder.
"I would not be able to do that for myself. If you give the money away, it's fair, but for me, I wouldn't do it. I would not personally be able to justify taking money and going and doing a tour of Black Flag songs. That would feel like I was bilking someone out of money and taking advantage of the past," Rollins explains. "I didn't write all those songs. That is all the magic of [Greg] Ginn and [Chuck] Dukowski. That smells a little south of cool to me, though it sure was fun doing it. But as a benefit thing, I felt OK about it."
However, asked about his one-time peers in the Dead Kennedys, who not only whore the past on regular tours but do so without bandleader Jello Biafra, Rollins turns surprisingly diplomatic. "I don't have feelings about it. Too bad Jello is not there with them. To see the DKs with Jello was a really cool band. But if that is what they are doing, then that is what they are doing. I know Jello isn't happy about it and I feel bad for his dismay. Whenever I see Jello, that is the topic of conversation."
Rollins has been more successful at leaving the past behind. But in many ways, his lifestyle hasn't changed much since the days he spent working out, writing, drinking coffee and touring in vans. "I still have workout gear on the road. I still tour all of the time. I've averaged 106 shows plus each year for 24 years, now," he says. "It is done a bit differently in that I live in a tour bus, not in a van. But I am still on the stage for all the same reasons."