Henry Rollins

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Even before he was a musician and poet, Henry Rollins was a force of nature. His vision was one of profound pessimism on the condition of humanity. Just as disgusted on a personal level as on a social level, Rollins used his voice (and a maniacal accompaniment) to vent his frustration. His albums were disturbed storms from which no one escaped, least of all himself (the preferred object of his tirades). The brutal introspection of his songs and cleansing effect that he proposed was most rare in the history of rock. His ruminations (which quickly became just speaking, as if singing were a distraction) expressed the same pain found in the solos of Jimi Hendrix and in the monologues of Jim Morrison. Natural disaster, primordial force of nature, barometer of his generation, and artist greater than his own ego, Henry Rollins was one of the men who transformed rock music into a means of expressing the rage of an entire generation, having continued a tradition which began with the band Who.

In 1986, Black Flag disbanded and Henry Rollins was able to devote himself to poetry (written and recited).

Rollins was born in 1961 and raised in Washington by a dysfunctional family. Traumatized by a lonely adolescence, afflicted by complex sexual issues, he listened to skate-punk with his friend Ian McKaye but this store clerk would later find his true vocation at a Bad Brains concert in the summer of 1979. He moved to Los Angeles in 1981 after a brief but successful audition with Black Flag, but remained in the shadows of the group (not befriending any of them), accumulating sufficient psychotic tensions.

Hot Animal Machine (Texas Hotel, 1987) was the album that revealed his full artistic and moral stature; an album packed with delirious compositions, songs with animalistic tones and hallucinations somewhere between that of Iggy Stooge and Captain Beefheart.

The music (written in collaboration with guitarist Chris Haskett) was a rowdy, wild, shaggy type of rock and roll, propelled by an inexhaustible rhythm section as well as lively guitar (a little hard-core, a little reggae, a little funk) by Haskett. Black And White, with drum beating at breakneck speed and guitar screeching furiously, was an attempt at the rock and roll style of Led Zeppelin. Hot Animal Machine 1, with a storm of syncopated, staccato heavy-metal, was one of the most unrestrained exhibitions a rock musician could conceive of - irrational anger and concentrated beastly instincts.

These terrifying sounds, overflowing with deranged rhetoric, were never ending; they were always at the service of a cause: the triumph of the theatricality of character, especially that of an extremely violent paranoia. It was in these tracks that Rollins was able to freely vent. Followed Around was a slow, sinister blues, which brings to mind the ritualistic quality of Nick Cave, the psychotic circling of Wild Man Fisher, and the composure of Tom Waits. The more obsessive track, There's A Man Outside, was conducted in a frenetic voodoo-billy rhythm while Rollins goes wild like a werewolf. These tracks were the masterpieces of the album, and are among the masterpieces of modern punk-rock. Patti Smith and Iggy Stooge, two of the greatest "ham actors" of rock, taught Rollins how to create structured harmonics to serve as effective means of transmitting the emotions of the lyrics, for example in Lost And Found (a boogie-reggae rhythm ballad). Less original musically but just as genius and catastrophic in performance came the Southern boogie of Crazy Lover. It was the shadow of Janis Joplin that hung over his "blues" (at least in spirit), in the way that he recited lyrics using all of his physical and emotional resources, tearing his heart from his chest to produce the most devastating effect.

Recorded during the same session, the EP titled Drive By Shooting (accredited to Henrietta Collins & The Wifebeating Childhaters) was a minor work in contrast to the impressive drama of the previous album. The title-track was a strange novelty which took the form of "surf" style music and was dedicated to the gang wars in Los Angeles. The Rollins Band was the natural continuation of the complex sound that borrowed the pretentiousness of rap, the violence of heavy-metal, and the frenzy of hard-core. With Haskett on guitar and the rhythm section from Gone (Andrew Weiss on bass and Sim Cain on drums), the Rollins Band created their first album, Life Time (Texas Hotel, 1988), a strong framework. Rollins' recording was always roaring, hoarse, and awkward. It attacked without ceasing, while the instrumental raids were contained and ordered. The pandemonium of Hot Animal Machine was replaced by a more complex and experimental harmonic structure that often used a jazz bass, psychedelic drum, out-of-tune guitar, and changes in tempo.

The slow rhythms ended in a balance of sub-minimalist majesty and depression in Gun In Mouth Blues (the dramatic apex of his career, his The End), to give emphasis to what he said and how he said it. In Burned Beyond Recognition, his psychotic, perverted, demonic voice emitted course screams into the horrific atmosphere a' la Black Sabbath. It was this type of litany of errors purified by rhythms and slashing a' la Jimi Hendrix that created Lonely. The highly musical What Am I Doing Here used the intensity of a prolonged wail as an existential digression. In each case, the music of Rollins Band was measured by how effective it was as a counterpoint for the verbal and vocal adventures of Rollins. The voice of Rollins became the backbone and reason for being of the band's music. (It was not by chance then that Turned Out ends up as a rap, albeit with all the complications that Rollins and his group bring to it.)If You're Alive; This was one of the most potent tracks in Rollins' career. 1,000 Times Blind, was a perfect example of his verbose style. Wreck-age included some charged heavy-metal.

The interior of the songs on this album traced a picture of an infernal hell in his tormented, poetic universe which focused on alienation and disintegration of personality of which modern man is the victim.

The raw material of his soliloquy was clarified on the mini-album Hard Volume (1989) with a visceral blues in What Have I Got and with brutal rock and roll in Hard; tracks that, as usual, emanate rage and energy with some to spare. Once again, Rollins steals the show with a series of key performances, "noise" like that in I Feel Like This (a supersonic thrash) and Turned Inside Out (a slow grunge-industrial), not to mention the superhuman orgasm of Love.

Rollins, Haskett, Weiss and Cain were now friends (perhaps more now than when they were with Black Flag) and produced with ease their crude, shaggy, irritable sound, crowded with unresolved breaks and insane imbalances, loose harmonic nodes and dull, abandoned beats; a sound that was equivalent to barbed wire and pus. As though solid hard-rock were blown up by dynamite came Planet Joe. Their style was fundamentally polycentric, which hid the historic continuity with classic rock and its roots. The "voice" was not the only star of their sound adventure. No matter makes up the soul of the group, this album presented a massive, united front and a fragmented internal structure as opposed to a composite structure.

Do It was a testimony to the heat of the group when performing live, but added little to their repertoire. In Wartime with bassist Weiss on the EP Fast Food For Thought (Chrysalis), Rollins reached his maximum harmonic intensity, utilizing all the resources of the recording studio and dedicated the album to political themes.

If the first 2 albums (musically speaking) by Rollins were centered on the theme of urban alienation, End Of Silence (Imago, 1992) was centered on the theme of urban violence (a few months prior a friend of Rollins was killed by a gangster right in front of his eyes). The result was devastating; it was the cry of a man increasingly lonely who tried to deal with his pain by lashing out all the more, however conscious that no one was listening.

Rollins' accompaniment was now the perfect example of a power-trio (and a mix of Experience by Hendrix and Metallica). Command of dynamics, technique, and improv allowed the guitarist and rhythm section to invent imaginative and creative accompaniments. This was, primarily, why the tracks were longer (at least 5 of them were over 7 minutes). Rollins' singing was increasingly controversial: his exhibitions sometimes inspired the music, sometimes they chocked it. Be that as it may, Rollins invented a new genre: the "vocal-driven power-rock", in the sense that the music was not guided by guitar improvs but by the singing - everything else improvised according to that. The structure of the tracks were complicated and sophisticated, to the point that one can no longer speak of them as "tracks" but rather as fluid streams of sound. In Grip, the quartet attempted to casually alternate between explosive crescendos, heavy-metal rhythms, blues-rock riffs, pseudo-jazz passages, and acid-rock improvs. The main function of the musicians was to support this delicate structure and Haskett had the most relevant role on guitar as he continually remade Page and Hendrix (in particular, in the epic solo in Tearing, one of the most heavy and "metallic" moments of the album). The guitar of Hendrix (the anarchical glissandos and martial rhythms) was well suited for Rollins Band as Almost Real demonstrated. Haskett was now an exemplary guitarist and began to compete with the vocalist. The construction of the atmosphere of these long sound-vocal ruminations was as casual as it was convoluted: Obscene used a series of primitive tribal sounds, and ended with a pandemonium of groaning and dissonance. The emphasis was greater in What Do You Do, one of the more obsessive lullabies that made one think of King Crimson converted to heavy-metal. This grunge style was much less brutal than Hot Animal Machine. In the maniacal search for expressivity, Rollins sacrificed pure energy in favor of a neutral rock and "free-form", similar to sound tracks that must follow the action, rejecting a specific identity and configured as a succession of musical moments, utilizing varied techniques. Once again however, it was the "blues" which took the lead in Low Self Opinion, enhanced by the guitar and drum like early Led Zeppelin, and in Blues Jam, conducted with a very slow rhythm, dotted with psychedelic figures on guitar, rhythms of deafening blows by the bass and drum, and shouted with all the strength Rollins could muster. The third gem of the album, Just Like You, rose up from the hallucinogenic states of psychedelia with Freudian swooning in the chaos of free sounds, interrupted occasionally by large explosions of martial, emphatic, and syncopated hard-rock, and savage screams of: "Rage!". Not even Jim Morrison attempted so much as this.

In 1993, Weiss left the group and was replaced by the legendary Melvin Gibbs, already with Joe Bowie and Ronald Shannon Jackson.

Weight (Imago, 1993) normalized the full-bodied sound of the quartet, so much so that Liar scaled the charts. The epicenter of the album included the soul-rock of the 70's in Fool and the seismic funk-rock of Shine, filled with captivating rhythms, solid riffs, and vibrant solos. Rollins' withdraw no longer heavily influenced the music, which seemed to increasingly enjoy its own vitality. The verbose limits of rap were heard in both Disconnect and Divine Object Of Hatred, such that the singing struggled and dragged behind the music. The practice of moral self-flagellation ("I'm so tired of looking inside myself" murmured in the more subdued song Tired), the practice of imitating Greek prophets, had found a role in the area of mechanical sounds and was quite compelling. The new hero of the group was Haskett, who didn't miss a beat, moving between heavy-metal in Icon and Hendrix-style guitar in Step Back. The biggest limitation with this type of music was the total lack of humor.

Haskett also recorded a solo album, Language (213CD, 1995), an atmospheric album marked by a truly poetic guitar technique.

From upwards of 11 books and 8 "spoken" albums, Rollins can boast of a literariness with which Dylan could not compete.

Completely illiterate in music however, Rollins authored only the lyrics and riffs, rarely a melody, confirming that the true musical genius of Black Flag was Greg Ginn.

Fronting a taut quintet that features Melvin Gibbs on bass, Rollins has the time of his life on Come In And Burn (Dreamworks, 1997). He can pretty much sing anything and the band will turn it into a song. But the album is another psychoanalysis of the leader, and this time it is not him, it is the listener, who is entitled to get tired of it. On My Way To The Cage is as accessible as his music has ever been, while During a City and The End of Something boast the most powerful scores.

The books and spoken-work records (often taken from the books) keep coming (not to mention his new career as an actor), notably the double-disc Everything (Thirsty Ear, 1996) with Rashied Ali on drums and Charles Gayle on sax that introduced Rollins to the jazz community.

Rollins' first musical album in a while, Get Some Go Again (Dreamworks, 2000), is a big disappointment. The new Rollins Band (a completely revised line-up) is a pathetic imitation of the original one. Get Some Go Again, Monster and the 15-minute sermon L.A. Money Train merely replay stereotypes of arena-rock and indulge in the most reused riffs in rock music. The good news is that Rollins' ego is not dominant as it used to be, but now it almost sounds like it was that very sprawling, uncontrollable ego to account for the music. At best, the album is a tribute to Rollin's hard-rock idols of the 1970s. At worst, it is a forgettable gesture by an aging punk afflicted with precocious dementia.

Rock icons often follow this path to decadence: the less they have to say, the more albums they release. After embracing hard-rock on Get Some Go Again, Rollings gets serious about it on Nice (Sanctuary, 2001). He surrounds himself with guitarist Jim Wilson, bassist Marcus Blake and drummer Jim Mackenroth, that could as well be Thin Lizzy or Nazareth in disguise. One Shot, What's the Matter Man and Gone Inside the Zero sound as retro` as a punk can sound. The band even mimicks Black Sabbath in Going Out Strange. They briefly flirt with funk-metal in Up For It and I Want So Much More (bringing in organ, horns and female backup singers) and take a break with some midtempo rhythm and blues numbers (Hello, Let That Devil Out, Hangin Around). The album is rounded up by the live staple Your Number Is One and the oddly intriguing We Walk Alone (slide guitar and tribal drums).

Yellow Blues (Sanctuary, 2001) is a collection of leftovers from Get Some Go Again and it is not any worse than the official album (not a compliment to the official album). Yellow Blues, Summer Nights, Frozen Man, 100 Miles are interchangeable with the best songs on Get Some Go Again. A couple of psychodramas (the ten-minute Hold On and Hell's Lounge Band Unwinds) and a couple of chaotic, dissonant interludes (Don't Let This Be, Coma) almost make it more interesting than the official album.

A Clockwork Orange Stage (Sanctuary, 2001) is a live 2000 performance.

Jason Mackenroth died in 2016.