How did you get into Henry Rollins?

[Hello Henry]

It's been a little quiet here of late. Here's something to get the conversation going again.

I'm curious to know how and when you all got into Henry Rollins? With him doing so many different things (music, writing, talking, acting, tv, radio) for such a long time, it's always interesting to hear how and when people became fans.

I've been a fan since about 1994. I was familiar with Rollins prior to that but just thought he was a crazy tattooed macho psychopath (perhaps my first impression was not too far from the mark?!). It was the Liar video that first caught my attention (still feels shameful to become interested in a band through a darn video! and no, it was not the red wonderpants that caught my attention in particular!). It was quite unlike anything I'd seen or heard before and was completely different to all the other music coming out at the time. I became really curious about the person behind it. Whenever the name Henry Rollins appeared on tv, radio or a magazine, I paid attention.

Not long after I happened to see some footage of 'Talking from the Box' and I was pretty much hooked from then on in. After enduring cock rock years earlier and watching band after band from the "alternative" scene be affected by drugs and self destruction, I really dug Rollins attitude, intellect, clean lifestyle, and of course, the music. I waited months on end for Rollins videos and books to arrive in the mail from America. There was no internet back then, you had to order stuff on import the old fashioned way!

The guys at school laughed at me when they learned I liked the Rollins Band, apparently girls weren't allowed to like that kind of music. The town I grew up in was still guns and roses obsessed and the only place for girls in their world of rock n roll is on their knees, not as a serious music fan. Anyway, I've been a sucker for all the music, books and spoken word stuff ever since and Rollins remains one of the few artists from that time that I continue to have as much interest and enthusiasm for now as I did back then.

[Zander]

I think it was 1995 or so... a guy that I REALLLLY liked a lot had mentioned a few times that he liked Rollins Band. He forced me to watch "Johnny Mneumonic" (which is funny because I get a kick out of that movie now..) and he forced me to listen to "Weight" everytime I got into his car (another thing I hated and now love)...

That December as I was reading our weeking entertainment newspaper I saw an ad for one of our local clubs that read "An Evening with Henry Rollins". Figuring that this would be my way into this guys pant--- er--- heart, I got two tickets. We both thought it was a Rollins Band show.

We get there... him in his steel-toed boots pumped to mosh and me prepared to die a scary death at the hands of insane moshing men... we walked into the club and saw....... tables. There were tables set up all over the club!! Where would the mosh pit be!?!?!? We had no idea what was going on.. so we grabbed a table and waited for them to clear the room.

Next thing we know... Henry Rollins walks out on stage. ALONE... no band, no nothing... just him and a bottle of water and some loose pages.

By the time we left out of there... I was a devoted fan to his Spoken Word. I have not missed a show since no matter how broke or what is going on in my life... I never miss a show. I started reading his books and seeking out movies eventually. Becoming a fan of his music came MUCH LATER... and being a fan of Black Flag came even later than that...

So... I came to Henry Rollins by trying to impress a guy!!! ;)

[Rob Hansen]

Sometime in 5th or 6th grade (1999?) I really got into punk and hardcore. All my life and to this day, I have always tried to find new bands and expand my musical tastes. At first I was listening to bands like Pennywise and Rancid, but I kept looking for more music to listen to. My brother had a copy of The Decline of Western Civilization, and I watched it one day. It was then that I started digging through old 80s hardcore. While I wasn't specifically a big Black Flag fan, I did enjoy them, especially the later years with Henry.

I am a big comic nerd, and the Batman Beyond series featured a villain named Mad Stan (BLOW IT ALL UP!) voiced by Henry. I recognized his voice, and I thought that was really cool. In 2001 I bought Nice, and I started to love Rollins Band. I picked up Weight and The End of Silence next. Around that time I heard some spoken word stuff, and I was becoming a huge fan. I collected as many books and albums as I could from and involving Henry, including William Shatner's album Has Been (which I love).

In high school, punk wasn't as constant in the music that I listened to. My tastes were much more eclectic, I was listening to mostly classic rock, but also folk, jazz, funk, blues, progressive, industrial, anything. A lot of the bands or artists that I would check out were the ones that Henry would talk about in his books (it was Henry directly that got me into jazz). I also started reading a lot more, and Henry's books also had an impact on the books I would read.

After high school, I started working at Target, and two of the guys I worked with were both into punk. Working with them brought me back to my old days, and at the same time, I was growing tired of a lot of classic rock. I saw my friends from high school less, and hung out primarily with those two guys. From then and up to now, I have been mainly listening to all forms of punk music from early protopunk to current post-punk. Throughout all of this, Black Flag is definitely one of my favorites.

I have read all of Henry's books (except the Fanatic! series), I've listened to all of his spoken word albums, and I have WWHRD? stickers all over the place (thanks Mitch Clem). While I don't quite live by everything that Henry Rollins says, I am very persuaded by him and his writing. Hearing about him going to different countries all the time makes me want to do the same. I started writing a lot in the last few years, and I think it has a lot to do with all of the Rollins books I've read.

tl;dr

Middle school punk research.

[Soraya UP]

I'm kind of a new fan... I got started with Henry when I saw one of his spoken word performances, Live at Luna Park, about two years ago. I saw it on DVD, and didn't think a lot about it. I saw it with a couple of US friends that introduced me to him, that thing was hilarious. Two months later I saw "Shock and Awe" and it was awesome as well... After one of the biggest depressions in my life, I don't know how I got a glimpse of sanity, and started watching everything I could lay my hands on that had Henry Rollins printed on it, because it gave me strength and anger to go on. I don't have the WWHRD stickers, but I keep his spoken word performances in my ipod at all times, I listen to his music, which I digg somehow when I'm really angry, I religiously download the HIMH radio shows, listen to them, and read the attached track lists, listen to the music he plays, and as you can see I keep track of every single Rollins site I can reach through the internet. I'm a South American Fan.
I youtube him all the time, I try and read whatever he recommends, and man, I wish I could travel all over the world as much as he does ALL THE TIME.
Besides that, I think he has an amazing ass, and he is really really hot. He's like wine, he gets better with age in every sense.
I'm an enthusiast of listening to everything he has to say, I really admire him because of his strength and altruism. He's the first guy I've ever called myself a fan of. And I think being a fan is ridiculous for the most part, but for Henry, what the hell. I try to follow every single word he utters through the amazing internet.
Interesting, well read, well spoken, well built, smarter and with more integrity than 90% of the people I know. The guy is just awesome.

[The Curtism]

I really got into Rollins about 20 years ago. Post Black Flag and at the beginning of the Rollins Band. I remember the first time I heard him sing was on We Are 138 on the Evilive album. Glen Danzig introduces him as Henry from Black Flag. I rember reading a review of one of his shows in Melody Maker and seeing him on TV singing with Bodycount. From that moment on I was hooked. Lifetime and End of Silience are huge albums.

[Indi]

(posted elsewhere and edited for clarification)
I spent a great many years admiring Henry Rollins from afar and being compared to him (at least his speaking show persona) by anyone who really gets to know me and has time to sit down and rap. I put off delving too deep as I have a serious problem...when I do something, I do it all the way. When I'm interested in something, I absorb everything I can until the information is all smashed into my brain and processed. With the shear amount of material by and about Mr. Rollins available, I waited until I had the time and money to take him on.

Thus, since spring 2008, I've bought every book by him available and read them all, every CD (music and spoken word) and listened to them all and every DVD (talking shows and IFC show) available on netflix was watched. I've scoured the internet and read every free, available interview that he's done since Black Flag and watched every clip on youtube (barring repetitive or things I had already seen). I've perused flikr, photobucket, yahoo groups and Picassa for all the available pictures of the man. I've read the books he talks about reading or makes reference to in his own work (Wolfe, Hemingway, Miller, Dostoevsky, Klein, Rashid) I've scanned the fan sites for new and interesting insights and interviews and materials. I listen to Harmony in My Head (now just Henry on KCRW) with Wikipidia wide open for me to research some of the music he plays (though a great deal of the Jazz he plays is already in my collection).

Basically, I've dedicated the last year of "free-time" to Henry Rollins. I don't sycophantically agree with his opinions and everything he says or does but he continues to inspire me to be more and do more. I hope this community continues as I think a core similarity amongst Rollins' fans has to be active and engaged minds because there's no way you can be a lazy thinker or willfully ignorant and even begin to grasp who he is, where he's coming from and where he may be headed. I honestly believe that those engaged minds can have a great deal to say about more than just the topic of Dear Henry himself.

[yorick]

Hold on...I'm still trying to recover from the poster that said they were in 5th or 6th grade in 1999.

I've been a fan since shortly after the Revolutionary War - Henry was deep into musket rock in those days and looked super hot in those button down breeches. Fanatics in those days would line up along the streets, the men joyously firing their weapons into the air, while the women stuffed themselves into tight corsets and fanned themselves faint. I knew I was hooked the moment I saw him rant on stage as the opening act for Thomas Paine.

[Hello Henry]

yorick said:

I knew I was hooked the moment I saw him rant on stage as the opening act for Thomas Paine.

ohhh you were at that show too!! ;)

[Rob Hansen]

yorick said:

Hold on...I'm still trying to recover from the poster that said they were in 5th or 6th grade in 1999.

Ha ha take your time grandma. That hip ain't as reliable as it was back when you saw Rollins at Fort Ticonderoga in '77. What's wrong with being a Rollins fan at 21? Is it a special club, or do I need to be in the AARP?

/old jokes

[guntattoogirl]

My husband was always a fan, but I really didn't get into Henry that big until the IFC show and seeing his spoken word. Now my husband says he is burned out on hearing about Henry and that I ruined it for him. He said this about the same time I got that 3 hour dvd of Provoked from Australia. :-)

[yorick]

Rob Hansen said:

What's wrong with being a Rollins fan at 21? Is it a special club, or do I need to be in the AARP?

/old jokes

Nothing wrong with it, kiddo. Just didn't appreciate being slapped in the face with my rapidly declining mortality, is all.

Now excuse me. My pet dinosaur is hungry, and I need to find some Smiths fans to feed it.

[Chris Barnes]

Holy cow. It's pretty obvious that I'm the senior citizen here. I discovered Hank when there was no other format but vinyl and cassette tape. It was a rainy day in Pasadena CA in 1987. I walked into Poobah Records for my bi-weekly browsing. One of the new releases displayed was "Hot Animal Machine". I had heard a bit about Rollins in Black Flag and that he was depressed, angry dude in a dark mood, a guy with misanthropic tendencies. It sounded maybe like I could relate. And I did, in a huge way. “Black and White”, “Hot Animal 1” and “Hot Animal 2” (among others) spoke right to me. There were other aliens around like me.

I wrote Henry and told him how much I liked the record and how it captured all the dark stuff I was feeling. It shocked the hell out of me when he wrote me back. I still have the postcard somewhere, I should scan it. “Chris, thanks for the kind words. If you liked this one, the next will make it seem like fucking mother’s milk. Thanks, Henry”. I then ordered one of his books. In the letter, I asked him to choose his favorite. He sent me “Polio Flesh” with the words. “Chris, Thanks for letting me choose…. Henry”. That was cool. You write a hero and a hero writes back. How often does that happen in life?? I’m still amazed that he answers my occasional emails. Hank is all class. “Polio Flesh” was raw. I mean R-A-W. Rollins did not hold back, or if he did, I’m afraid of what he was *really* thinking. It seemed like there was no filter – from brain to hand to pen to paper. I ordered his other stuff. “A Short Walk On A Long Pier” on cassette. Then “Big Ugly Mouth” which I recorded on cassette and drove around and listened to constantly when I lived up in Santa Barbara. The super duper heavy vinyl of “Sweatbox”, then the classic “Henrietta Rollins and the Wifebeating Childhaters” EP. Then “Life Time”. That was a huge record. I used to play songs from that all the time when I DJ’d at the college radio station (KUCSB I think it was). To this day, music doesn’t get heavier or more intense than “Gun In Mouth Blues”, although the second side of BF’s “My War” comes close.

The Rollins Band came to Isla Vista, the college town where I lived, in 1988. The ghetto by the sea. The band was playing at a coffee shop called Bersodi’s. There was maybe 15 people there and Hank could give a shit. I’ve never seen anyone play music like that before. It possessed him. He writhed and contorted, screamed and shook… all on a stage the size of a postage stamp. I could tell Andrew Weiss wasn’t as into it as the other guys. Guess I was right because he didn’t last long after that.

Anyway, I’ve been with Hank the whole ride, I still very much look up to him as an inspiration, as totally gay as that sounds. Hank is cut from a different cloth from most folks. We throw around the “true original” thing a lot when we refer to folks in the media, but he truly is a true original, very much on his own program. He’s all about integrity, credibility and cutting through the BS. I really admire that.

Thanks to the Hello Henry Gal for the discussion board and the cool posts she consistently makes on her blog. If you folks have some spare change in your PayPal account, make sure to show here how much you appreciate her efforts and buy her a cup o' joe.

[Soraya UP]

Ooh, ooh, ooh!!!!
How much I envy you!!!! You've been able to see him, talk to him and read his books.... that's way more than I can ever have down here.. I merely have a grasp of the things that go on the internets... I've been trying to find the short walk on a long pier for months... I've asked people to mule me a copy down here, but I've failed miserably! His books, I've seen cool and expensive collections in ebay, and I find myself drooling at them, unable to get them... I haven't seen him once, only in the screen, and it pains me!
I admire him a whole lot. Admire the guts he's had to let all of him out in his words, the lack of BS, the systematic integrity with no excuses for anything, he's a hero. Thanks to Hello Henry for this post... this brings us all closer! haha...