Music	Henry Rollins by M. Faust

“It’s nothing I’d ever go to if I saw that listed,” admits Henry Rollins about the phrase “spoken word performance.” “I’d think, wow, how boring, must be like a poetry thing.”

Rest assured if you’ve never been to one that there is nothing remotely boring about a Henry Rollins spoken word performance. The former Black Flag singer (and ongoing leader of The Rollins Band) actor, poet, world traveler, movie reviewer (his IFC show “Henry’s Film Corner” will morph into a more wide-ranging variety show when it returns in January), publisher (books and music), DJ (he does a weekly show in Los Angeles), and …

Uh, I’m sorry, I lost track of what I was talking about at the beginning of that list.

Henry Rollins

Oh, right. Henry Rollins brings his “25 Years of Bullshit” tour to the Town Ballroom on Tuesday (Oct. 25) at 7pm. The self-deprecating title should be taken with a note of irony, as Rollins has a passion for cutting through bullshit, whether it be political, emotional, or whatever other form.

A typical performance consists of three-plus hours of Rollins ranting. He does so at various volumes, in various moods, and with varying degrees of humor. Mostly you can expect a pretty funny three hours. But you can also expect to have your view of the world enlarged: those prone to appearance-based stereotypes might be surprised to find that this big, muscular guy, bedecked in tattoos and a simple black t-shirt, is pretty smart.

Rollins spoke with us by phone last week from Florida, where he had a rare day off.

AV: Last time you were here, you spoke for more than three hours before stopping to take a drink of water. How do you manage to do that?

Rollins: It’s terror, it’s fear of failure. Being on stage so many years, I have some weird phobias. I tie my shoelaces a few times before I go on stage. It’s some OCD thing—I’m afraid of them coming unlaced on stage. I’m afraid of not getting enough sleep for fear I will fall asleep during a show. And I’m afraid that if I go down for the bottle of water on the floor, when I come up with the bottle in my hand the audience all will have left.

Has that ever happened?

No, but, it’s just weird, I’ll see the water and sometimes though I’m thirsty I’ll just keep going.

You’re also very well spoken—you never seem to say “uuum” or “aaah” or any of that stuff people use to fill in the gaps.

I really know what I want to say, even though I’m not going by a script or anything, I’m very focused. That’s probably another reason I don’t go for the water, I just have my eyes on the target. I rarely have used ‘uums’ and ‘uhhuhs.’ But I’m very aware of people speaking; I listen carefully to people on the news, and people in high authority positions do that a lot, especially ‘um’ and ‘uh.’ It’s weird.

The British can be the worst about it—they’ll use little words and phrases rather than grunts, but it’s still just an empty sound.

You’ll see it in the journalism, in music writing, it’s almost like they get paid by the word. They also do it when they speak—Tony Blair does that. George W. Bush’s speaking—it fascinates me what he does with words. Where he pauses in a sentence, what he says, how he says it—he’s crazy. Some of the stuff he says is just amazing—just look at all those Bush quote sites on the Internet. He does strange things with the English language. I mean, it’s a pretty simple language.

The strange thing is that it seems to endear him to some people—“Hey, this guy talks as dumb as I do!”

There’s something way more tricky afoot when he speaks. Mark Crispin Miller, the NYU professor [and veteran media analyst] says Bush is disconnected to the material, to his topic, and fairly unconcerned about a lot of stuff. I’ve been having fun with Kanye West’s quote that the president doesn’t care about black people. I don’t believe that’s true, I don’t believe the president’s a racist, but I believe he doesn’t care about poor people. Not in a malicious way, like, “Screw poor people, let’s go get ‘em!” But they’re not in his area of responsibility, they’re not in his area of awareness. They don’t have stores, they don’t have massive amounts of stock, they’re just not part of what he considers moving and shaping the world as we know it. And therefore he’s really not aware of what it’s going to take to solve the poverty problem, nor is he interested..

I think that his administration suffers from that, and I think that’s the reason why he says what he said. Dennis Miller once said, ‘Clinton is a chess guy, George W. Bush is a checkers guy. And I like the checkers guy.’ When you’re dealing with a hostile enemy, I like a chess guy, personally.

The easiest way to describe your spoken word tours to people is to say it’s like stand-up comedy, though not really.

Yeah, stand-up comedy, which I respect, is more laugh laugh laugh, where some of the material I tell takes a longer time to spread itself out and there’s not always a laugh every eight seconds. Some of it’s not funny at all. I do a lot of USO work, which includes hospital visits, and there’s not a great deal of humor in amputations. I talk about that too, because it happened, I was there and I saw it, so I articulate it in a certain way, but those stories aren’t necessarily funny at all. So where a stand-up comedian might back off of that material cause it’s not going to go down at the laugh factory, that’s where I just go right in.

Are there areas where you might repress going for a laugh because it’s not appropriate to the topic?

I don’t do stuff just for the laugh. I do tend to find humor in most everything, usually most everything that happens to me, the good and the bad. But this whole topic of Iraq and soldiers, especially when they get killed or injured… you gotta be very careful because you want to be very respectful. Because there really isn’t anything funny about what happens to these guys. But if something happens to me, on the other hand, oh yeah, most of the time it’s funny. So since most of the stuff is me going through these places and doing this stuff, more often than not there’s humor to be found. At least that’s my experience.

You’ve done six tours for the USO. Do they give you guidelines as to areas they’d like you to stay clear of?

They turn you loose. They just rely on you feeling-out what needs to be done, and you do it. Most of the time you do what’s called a handshake tour, where you meet and greet, you hang out and shake hands, you do photos, and meet a whole bunch of people, and they’re great. Political topics never come up, really.

I think it’s a tactical blunder for American forces to be in Iraq, that’s just my opinion. All the books I’ve read, the people I’ve heard talk, tell me we should have never left Afghanistan. There’s nothing I’ve found that gives me the OK to say, ‘Yep, good idea to be in Iraq!’ But that’s the last thing I’m going to say in Iraq. It’s not that any of these guys get to go home if I say that it’s a bad idea, so I’m not going to say anything that would in any way be deleterious to morale. I’d be very careful about doing that because now you’re messing with someone’s opportunity to get home safely.

So all they hear from me is, ‘You’re the man!’ They’ll ask questions, like a couple of years ago I kept hearing, ‘How come the Dixie Chicks hate us?’ and I’ll go, ‘They don’t hate you, they’re just aggravated that you’re not home. It’s their right to be angry, they like you, they’re just mad at the war.’ So I’ll answer those questions in an effort to keep morale up. But I’ll never go, ‘Man, leaving you here is bogus.’ We can have that argument when they’re back in Minneapolis.

Are you conscious of resisting efforts to pigeonhole you into certain political stances?

You get that—“Oh, you and your friend Barbra Streisand.” I’m not a Hollywood liberal guy, I’m not a celebrity, I’m an angry American. And if you try and devalue that, you’re really gonna regret it, cause I’m not some tree-hugging guy. I’ll kick your ass. I’m pissed! I’m not Jessica Lange, I’m not a nice guy, I’m a mad man.

So I don’t know what that makes me. Primarily I’m an American. I love America, love what it could be. I love the paperwork—love all that separation of church and state and all that stuff. And I see that rapidly dwindling with this administration.

When you read that most states want to really bolster their use of electronic voting—if you’ve ever done any research into how that can be manipulated, read Greg Pulaski’s book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy—and there’ll be a lot of older people, people who are not technically adept, who will be intimidated by an electronic voting system. And I don’t think you’re allowed to have anyone in the booth with you to talk you through it, lest they tamper. Some would say this is a way to be more efficient, others would say this is a way to disenfranchise a lot of people who probably, maybe, could vote Democrat. So there’s a lot going on in this country.

Separation of church and state is a big deal to me. I don’t like the idea of abortion, in that it’s scary for the woman, it’s poor planning on the part of the two people having the sex. I’m fully in support of women having the right to do what she needs to do. I just wish they could have planned better, cause it’s heartbreaking and it’s scary and it’s sad and all that. And so I just hate hearing these Christian guys taking it upon themselves to go to the president and the administration and try to enforce this stuff. Like pal, if you don’t like abortions, don’t have one. Church in this parking lot, hospital over there in that parking lot.

Did you have a religious upbringing as a child?

No. I look at it not with contempt but as something I can live without, and definitely I’m the wrong guy to inflict it upon. I’m not into Satan, any of that. I just feel, it’s your thing, don’t try to make it my thing. They try, they really try, they’ll tell you, look at the paperwork, the [founders of our country], there’s God everywhere! That does not matter to me—that’s just the way people were talking back then. And any classroom you can bring a Bible into is no longer science class. I hate to tell you. For all those intelligent design people, sorry, just go do it on Sunday or build your own school, charge tuition, make it a private school and teach anything you want. There’s a lot about democracy you might not like—there’s parts of it I don’t like. But I sure like it better than communism.

Last question: How many black t-shirts do you go through in a year?

None, actually. I keep using them year after year. Those good stretch shirts from the Gap for $8 on sale. The ones you see me wearing on this tour, they’re the same ones I was wearing on the last tour. I’m cheap, especially when it comes to clothes.