Rollins’ love for music came from record shopping every weekend with his mother. Nice seats, good playback, and just listen to some rare records with a brief introduction about each one.”

In the future I’d like to host live listening gatherings. “To be able to give something to the audience, that itself is the gift. It’s never lost its attraction for me,” says Rollins, who announced his retirement from music in the mid-2000s. I really like being in the UK, Germany, and Scandinavia, but I’m glad to be anywhere on tour. “With any tour, I try to get as many shows in as many places, with the least nights off as possible. Set to perform over 50 dates across Europe alone, he maintains his reputation as a workaholic. There are some parts that rotate in and out throughout the tour, and material that pertains to the exact location – such as something that perhaps happened to me there many years ago.” “The shows outside the USA are slightly different as there’s not nearly the same amount of American-orientated material. The pandemic delayed this tour by a year but otherwise he has toured consistently, with new material to fit the country he’s in and the events of the time. Nevertheless, Rollins has a lot to say about the problems, and audiences have been enthralled by his insights during spoken word tours since the 1980s. “Racism, homophobia and misogyny enrage me and in the USA these problems seem to get worse and I don’t know what to do about it.” They just don’t seem to be getting better,” he says ahead of his UK dates that begin in Liverpool on 25 March.

Often connecting songs with monologues, Rollins now performs through a different medium – spoken word. He may be older and wiser but he is still just as frustrated – and just as intense. Sporting just a pair of black shorts on stage, and with his intimidating physique, Rollins would rasp out his poetic lyrics, taking Black Flag’s once jovial, humorous content to a heightened new intensity. That led him torelocate to California to front the already notorious underground band Black Flag. He found an outlet for his frustrations early in adolescence, in the late 1970s, in the emerging American hardcore punk scene. To be in that, it’s such a rarefied moment, I feel so fortunate to be there.”ĭespite the credit Rollins gives to everyone involved, the only person on the stage during his massive current European tour will be him.īorn in Washington DC in 1961, Rollins was an angry young man mad at the world. “Lots of people, logistics, effort and planning go into a single two- hour show. “The stage is the truest place I’ve ever been,” says Henry Rollins.

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