LUCIDMEDIA

HENRY ROLLINS: HE’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD TRAVELLER

Written by Rachel Rain Packota Friday, 05 March 2010 15:01

Henry Rollins may have slowed down the pace of his musical career, but that doesn’t mean that he’s been at a standstill. A constant traveler, Rollins continues to accelerate between destinations, both literal and figurative.

Lucid Media Magazine: You have been many things in your career, but the one constant through it all has been your role as a traveller. How has spending the bulk of your adult life on tour affected your identity, or the way you view yourself in the world?

Henry Rollins: Well, that’s exactly it, ‘How I view myself in the world’. The world is my neighbourhood. Not all of it, of course. I know where I like to eat in Tokyo, and I have my favourite neighbourhood to stay when I’m in Melbourne. And these are things you earn by doing the miles and doing the time. ‘Pride’ isn’t a word I like to use, but I’m pretty stoked that I have earned that for myself. My worldview is world-sized. I like when I go to the airport because it means I get back to the world.

LMM: How do you find that energy and passion to want to keep doing things, and to want to find new interests, and to talk about them, and share them, and explore them?

HR: It’s a simple answer – I’m mad. I’m a mad person, and I’m pissed off. And my anger doesn’t make me hurt anybody. It doesn’t make me punch a dog or something. It makes me go do a fundraiser for this, or go to that country because my president says ‘Be afraid of certain countries’… I went places he’ll never go because I’m curious, he’s not, and he wants to be afraid of everything just like Dick Cheney did. But I can’t live that way, life’s too short. That’s what I’ve been doing: It’s my anger and my curiosity that had pushed me forward.

LMM: You’ve been to the Middle East, and you’re become an outspoken critic of Sharia Law. Would you explain a bit about your feelings on it?

HR: I got a lot of it very up close and personal in Riyahd, Saudi Arabia a few weeks ago when I hung out with a girl who spoke nearly fluent English. She was great, and I had a lot of questions about Sharia Law, and she answered them. And it seems to me that it’s crazy, and really anti-human. I mean, the boys can’t meet the girls, the girls can’t meet the boys, and everything seems illegal. It’s just so anti-life to me…

This girl I met, she met her husband at the altar on her wedding day. You don’t need to treat people that way. Now she’s in her twenties, already been married once, had a kid and the husband took her kid away. She’s trying to get out of there, go to London or New York or something. As for the boys, they go to a Shisha house with they have those big hookahs, the big water pipes, and smoke the tobacco. Why do you guys do this? ‘There’s nothing else to do, man!’ You watch the soccer game – or the football – you smoke your pipe, and you go home. You’re not going to the bar, you’re not meeting the girls, and you’re not going out dancing.

LMM: Is there much in the way of popular arts in that region?

HR: Not that I saw. But there are lots of shopping opportunities, though.

For more about Henry Rollins and his Frequent Flyer Tour, check out the printed version of Lucid Media, found on the racks and shelves of your local bookstores.