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The Importance Of Being Henry
Press junkets have got to suck. Even for someone who makes a living talking, three full days of back to back commitments gabbering with journalists will take it out of you. Doubly so if you are jetlagged. We meet Rollins at the crack of the second day, in the lobby of a Sydney hotel. Outside, it is glorious. A brisk autumn morning, brilliant with sunshine. Rollins for most of the day, will be inside.
He is smallish. He is unerringly polite. His hair is gray. His eyes are brown, though they meet ours rarely. He is wearing a faded military green t-shirt, with two pens clipped at the neck, to the inside. Still, Rollins is on message. He is extremely considered in his answers. This is his job and he takes it very seriously. You wouldn’t describe his demeanour as warm, especially. There is horrible musak floating over the lobby. He looks fit and healthy, if not a little short on sleep.
It is the antithesis of punk rock.
Hi Henry. How are you?
I’m fine thankyou. I’m a little jetlagged. I was in Europe. I came from Barcelona, via Singapore, so I was on European time. I was getting used to that, so it’ll take me a couple of days. It’s hard for me, it’s hard when I get to a place and it’s later.
We’ll go easy.
On no, you don’t have to do that. I travel a lot, I’m used to feeling under slept almost all the time. I just deal with it.
How does it affect the way you think about things?
It’s like being a functioning alcoholic. I know people who drink so they can drive. Or people who are like, without pot, you know, they need some pot. Without a certain amount of stress and you know, that thing, I don’t know what to do with myself.
Do you take holidays, ever?
No. Well around Christmas time last year I went to Pakistan, which you can’t really term as a holiday, cause there’s really no pleasant things to see. Whenever I have time, I’ll go a place like that. It’s more like a high caloric burn, where you learn a thing or two. Last time off I had I went to Syria, Iran, Paskistan. As soon as I get done with this, I’m going to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. I’ll be real busy, I’ve got things I want to see every day I’m there.
Relaxation or vacation for me, down time, or a way to disconnect, I just hang out by myself.
You were saying you don’t really know what to do with yourself (in quieter times). Do you know what’s driving you to keep working like you do – you’re obviously someone who’s happy that way.
I’ve thought a lot about it, why I work at the pace I do. I’ve really got nothing else going on. Most things bore me. I’m kind of in the end zone of my life, just kind of waiting for it to end. So I just do stuff, otherwise sometimes I have to push life along – like taking a riding crop to its hindquarter, because it doesn’t move fast enough for me.
It’s why I travel to the places I do. As soon as George W. Bush says, “that’s an evil place”, I book a ticket and I go. So I can come back and go, “oh, they were great! Fuck you. Fuck you and you’re stupid hatred.” I get no real joy out of this stuff. I do it because just really honestly I’ve got nothing else going on whatsoever.
Yeah. Other than you know, a radio show, a television show, performing…
Oh oh. They’re tasks. They’re all fun. No, it’s good! I feel lucky to have the work. Of all the stuff I do, the funnest is the radio show, you know. It’s low impact. I don’t have to be seen by anybody. You can play great music. I enjoy that. You can brag on your show, “hey, I got a great radio show!” But I didn’t write that Duke Ellington song. So I can say I got a great radio show because I got a great record collection. Because I can buy good records, there’s no skill involved.
I like being onstage, I enjoy that. It’s just very difficult to go out there with all you’ve got is what you’ve got with you.
How does the preparation for your show work?
I go out there very prepared. No audience deserves to see you get it together in front of them. If that works for you, there’s going to be a night it doesn’t work for you. And that’s really not fair on the audience. It’s the time they’ve invested. They’ve given you their evening. They trusted you with their Thursday night, and you have to deliver. He took three hours of my life! Fuck that guy. And that’s why you have to deliver, so I’m very prepared. I’m frontloaded. Like a catapult loaded, waiting to shoot it out through the diameter of a straw. I recount and tell stories. Things are very eventful right now where I come from.
In America every once in a while, they whip out the sacred talking points: Dick Cheney didn’t go to Vietnam, five deferrals with other priorities. Kenneth Starr had an itchy scalp. Pat Buchanan didn’t go – another right-wing douchebag – he has arthritis in the knee. And everyone’s, “what a coward! Awful man.” But you knew that. You knew these men were intellectual and moral cowards. The fact they didn’t go is probably one reason why more people weren’t killed in that war. Because these guys get you killed. And you see what they do in office, you see what they do to other people. So you imagine them in a really stressful situation. So I come on stage with stuff like that. Take an idea and skew it another way. I try and burn tissue on stage. I keeps me honest. That’s the concept. It’s an attempt to stay honest.
How do feel about which way the Democratic nomination might go?
Barack and Hillary? I think it’ll be Obama. Clinton is not going to go gently. And should. One of them should just go, “let stop fighting, and let’s go get McCain.” Because McCain is going to be the next President. I’ve been saying that since 2006 and I want to be wrong. I’ll be behind whoever it is that goes up against him.
You don’t think there’s so much bad feeling towards Bush, enough to get rid of the Republican party?
I think if you fill the population with enough fear, people do stupid things. And when the going gets tough, the average get conservative. That’s the story of John McCain. So all the Bush Administration have to do before they leave is to get going in Iran. They’ve been spoiling for that fight a long time. Because Iran is the key to a much bigger thing. The next big picture is the Caspian oil reserves, the Caspian sea and all the countries around it. How do you get to Turkmenistan? Though Iran. What do you get out of being in Iran? A warm water port. So it’s why we’re trying to get through southern Afghanistan to get the pipeline through. Even the Clinton Administration couldn’t do it, they couldn’t buy off the Taliban. So that’s where it’s going, everyone’s vying for position. If they can get a thing going in Iran, I think they want to bomb Theran. So come September if you can get a war going, you can say, “you think this 47 year old guy called Barack Obama can save you? You want a military guy, you want a Republican. We’re tough on terror and we got the only guy to get you through.”
What have you found are the things that change the most as you get older?
[Long pause.] Everything past 40 for me, I’m 47, has been a kind of humbling experience. And it has stripped me of my cynicism. That’s what’s happened to me, the more I go round and round, the more I see that cynicism is a way of dummying up and really not seeing things. You know, “he has a mullet, he’s the mullet guy. Fuck that guy.” All lawyers are bastards, all cops suck. It’s an intellectual laziness and I can’t afford that. That’s been for me, having the courage to taking the time, taking the time to really see stuff for what it is, or for what I think it is. Or let it be what it is, and be okay with it. Or not be okay with it, but let it be what it is, and not project what I think it should be on it. Which is how you lose the girl, in the relationship. Kind of project what you want her to be, all over until finally she goes, “you know what? I’m out of here.” And if you’re stupid enough to keep wondering why.
Have you softened your stance on how much you rag on Bono, as you’ve gotten older?
Well I like Bono’s humanitarian efforts, because when some people go, “oh, he doesn’t mean it. He’s just doing a photo op,” I disagree. I think he’s very sincere. I just think the music, you know, knowing what I know about music… Bands make so much fun of U2. Ask any band on the bandstand, say U2 and the band starts laughing. Because the drummer can’t play. Bass player plods along. The guitar player, if he didn’t have Brian Eno, he wouldn’t have a guitar sound. It’s basically a Brian Eno guitar sound played by guy who’s got one trick. That’s why there’s no leads, because the guys got nothing in there. And lyrically, I mean, whatever. You like God, you go ahead with that. That melts your butter you go for it. To me those records are for people who’ve lost the will to fight.
Oh dear.
What?
Changing your mind would be a long conversation. But yes, tell me more.
Well, I think what Bono does to relieve third world debt and to press leaders to give up for money for AIDS, like he went to George W Bush and said (taps knee in demanding gesture) and he fronted up. All that stuff that Bono does it very sincere and very beneficial. I just don’t like the music.
Anger really fuels a lot of creativity. Do you wonder that if you ever wanted to really make peace with that, that you might not be creative anymore?
I’m not a creative person. I’m reactive.
You really don’t think you’re creative?
Poke me and I’ll react. I don’t sit there and go, “I’m going to create a landscape of sound and image.” I don’t have that, though I admire people who do. Like a guy who looks at a blank easel and goes, “check this out, I’m Frida Kahlo. BAM!” I don’t have that. I don’t where it comes from. I think I’m just a kind of bi-product of that and I’ve learned to ink out a racket out of just being pissed off. It’s not that I try and find things to be angry about – I try and find things to learn about. But it’s been my anger that has been a directive force for me.
In a very productive way.
But I’m not a creative person. I’ve been around them, but I can’t pick up a guitar and play. I can’t play any instrument.
Maybe you’re being a bit harsh?
I think it’s something very important to retain a high level of harshness.
Harshness at all times.
One should be hard on oneself. I should be hard on myself. But you do what you like. But that’s how I should be.
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