Henry Rollins

At 63 years old, Henry Rollins has this physical status:

Henry Lawrence Garfield (born February 13, 1961), also known as Henry Rollins, is an American singer, guitarist, singer, comedian, host, and protester.

Rollins, a KCRW columnist, was a regular columnist for Rolling Stone Australia from 1981 to 1986, and was a regular columnist for Los Angeles Weekly.

Following the band's breakup, he founded the Rollins Band, which toured with a number of lineups from 1987 to 2005 (and then again in 2006). Rollins has hosted numerous radio programs, including Harmony in My Head 101 and Television shows such as The Henry Rollins Show, 120 Minutes, and Jackass.

He appeared in the second season of Sons of Anarchy as Zaheer, and has appeared in many films.

He has lobbied for a variety of political causes in the United States, including LGBT rights, World Hunger Relief, the West Memphis Three Kings, and an end to all combat.

Early life

Rollins was born Henry Lawrence Garfield in Washington, D.C., on February 13, 1961, the youngest child of Iris and Paul Garfield. His mother is of Irish descent. His father was of Jewish descent. Henach Luban, the Rollins' paternal grandfather, migrated to the United States from Rzekne, Latvia (then part of the Russian Empire) and changed his name to Henry. Rollins was three years old when his parents divorced and he was raised by his mother in Glover Park, Washington. Rollins was sexually assaulted as a child and adolescent, and he suffered from anxiety and low self-confidence as a child and a teenager. He had been diagnosed with hyperactivity in fourth grade and needed Ritalin for several years to focus during school.

Rollins attended The Bullis School and then an all-male preparatory school in Potomac, Maryland. According to Rollins, the school helped him to develop a strong work ethic and a sense of discipline. He began writing at Bullis. After high school, he attended American University in Washington for a semester but then dropped out in December 1979. He began working minimum-wage, including a job as a courier for kidney samples at the National Institutes of Health. "I had not seen my father before the age of 18, or if he is still alive, I have no idea."

Personal life

Rollins has stated that he does not have religious or spiritual convictions, although he does not consider himself an atheist. He has mostly avoided recreational drugs throughout his life, but he did try alcohol, marijuana, and LSD during his youth and early 20s.

Rollins is childless by choice, and he says he hasn't been in a committed relationship since his twenties. He regards himself as a solitary individual and has few personal connections outside of work. Ian MacKaye, one of his closest personal friends, has been close to him since they met as children. He also has a strong association with actor William Shatner, which started after he appeared on Shatner's album Has Been.

In an interview with Jason Tanamor of Zoiks, he discusses the difference between the two cultures. "Perhaps wishful thinking," the singer said when asked about a long-running rumors of Rollins being homosexual. You'd know if I were gay if I were gay.'

Rollins and his best friend Joe Cole were robbed and shot by robbers outside their shared home in Venice Beach, California, in December 1991. Cole was shot in the chest but Rollins survived. The murder case is still unsolved. Rollins revealed that he kept a plastic container filled with Cole's blood in an interview in April 1992 Los Angeles Times: "I dug up all the earth where his head fell—he was shot in the head—and now I'm in the house—and Cole's in the house. Every day, I say good morning to him. I also had his phone number, so I had a direct line to him. So that's all good.

Rollins was asked about rumors that Cole's brain was stored in his house in a 2001 interview with Howard Stern. Cole was killed, he said he had only soil from the area where he was killed. During the interview, Rick Rubin speculated that the reason they were targeted may have been because they were murdered because, days before the incident, they had requested to hear the newly released album The End of Silence and parked his Rolls-Royce outside their house without carrying a cell phone. Rollins was concerned that this would cause a lot of drama due to the suggestion that there was money in the house despite the neighborhood's notoriety. Even in his journal the night of Rubin's visit, he wrote that his house "is going to get pop."

Cole's tale has been included in his spoken word performances by Rollins.

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Music career

He and his friend Ian MacKaye, who was initially into bands like Van Halen and Ted Nugent Rollins, soon became interested in punk rock.

Rollins appeared as a roadie for Washington, D.C. bands, including Teen Idles from 1979 to 1980. Rollins begged the Teen Idles to let him sing as the band's singer Nathan Strejcek failed to turn up for practice sessions. Rollins' popularity is spreading around Washington, D.C.; Bad Brains singer H.R. Rollins will occasionally appear on stage to perform with him. The Extorts, a Washington punk band, lost frontman Lyle Preslar to Minor Injury in 1980. Rollins joined the other members of the band and established State of Alert (S.O.A.) He was the company's frontman and vocalist, as well as its frontman and singer. He contributed to the band's five songs and wrote several more. S.O.A. No Policy, their sole EP, was released on MacKaye's Dischord Records in 1981.

Ivor Hanson replaced drummer Simon Jacobsen in April 1981. Hanson's father, a top admiral in the United States Navy, and his family shared living quarters with the US Vice President in the Naval Observatory at the time. The band continued their sessions there but Secret Service agents would have to let them in.

S.O.A. After a total of a dozen concerts and one EP, the band was disbanded. Rollins had enjoyed being the band's frontman and had a reputation for fighting in shows. "I was like nineteen and a young man all full of steam and hated to get into the dust-ups," he later said. Rollins had already been the assistant manager of the Georgetown Häagen-Dazs ice cream store by this time; his consistent work had helped finance the S.O.A. EP.

In 1980, a friend gave Rollins and MacKaye a copy of Black Flag's Nervous Breakdown EP. When Black Flag toured the East Coast in December 1980, Rollins soon became a fan of the band, swapping letters with bassist Chuck Dukowski and later urging the band to remain in his parents' house. Rollins attended as many of their concerts as he could when Black Flag returned to the East Coast in 1981. Dez Cadena, Black Flag's vocalist, permitted Rollins to perform "Clocked In," a song Rollins had requested that the band use despite the fact that he had to travel back to Washington, D.C., to begin working at an impromptu show in a New York bar.

Cadena, the unknown, wanted to change to guitar, and the band was looking for a new vocalist. The band was wowed by Rollins' singing and stage demeanor, and the band asked him to be their permanent vocalist the next day. Despite some reservations, he accepted, in part due to MacKaye's support. Rollins' high energy and vivacious personality complemented the band's look; but, as a result of his selection as singer, Black Flag founder Greg Ginn was becoming more and more interested in developing beyond simple, three-chord punk.

Rollins retired from his job at Häagen-Dazs in 1981 and moved to Los Angeles. Rollins had the Black Flag emblem tattooed on his left biceps and also on the back of his neck, and he's used the surname Rollins as a child in Los Angeles. On July 25, 1981, Rollins appeared at Cuckoo's Nest in Costa Mesa, California, where he appeared for his first show with Black Flag. Rollins was in a different Los Angeles neighborhood; the police soon discovered that he was a member of Black Flag and was being harassed as a result. "It's really scared me," Rollins later said. I was shocked that an adult would do that. "My little eyes were open big time."

Rollins will walk about the stage wearing only in a pair of black shorts, grinding his teeth; before the performance, he would squeeze a pool ball. His stage presence wowed many critics; after a 1982 exhibition in Anacortes, Washington, Sub Pop critic Calvin Johnson wrote: "Henry was spectacular." It was all real, the most vivid mental experiences I had ever seen, pacing back and forth, wheling, and growingling.

Rollins' stage persona was gradually alienating him from the rest of the Black Flag by 1983. Rollins assaulted a member of the audience who insulted Ginn; Ginn later scolded Rollins, calling him a "macho asshole." A court dispute with Unicorn Records pushed Black Flags even higher until 1984, and Ginn was slowing the band's pace down so that they could remain fresh. Dez Cadena had left the group in August 1983; a stalemate between Dukowski and Ginn that had caused Dukowski to drop before Ginn fired Dukowski outright. Rollins wailing and screaming throughout many of the songs; the band's members grew their hair to confuse the band's hardcore punk audience, which was also confused by the band's hardcore punk audience in 1984.

Many of Black Flag's original followers, who expressed their displeasure with the Rollins by punching him in the chest, stabbing him with pens, or scratching him with their nails, among other things, were alienated by the Black Flag's change in musical style and appearance. He retaliated, dragging audience members on stage and attacking them. Rollins screamed a fan in the face who had a constant thirst for his microphone during a Black Flag show. Rollins became increasingly alienated from the audience; "If they spit at me, they aren't hurting me." When I push out and smear the flesh of another person, it's falling so far short of what I really want to do to them." Rollins had launched a weight-lifting scheme, and by their 1984 tours, he had become exceptionally well-built; journalist Michael Azerrad later wrote that "his strong physique was a metaphor for the impregnable emotional shield he was constructing around himself." Since being told "no, the exercise was just basically a way to push yourself," Rollins has since remarked.

Rollins had already performed as a solo spoken word artist before Black Flag was disbanded in August 1986. In 1987, he released two solo albums, Hot Animal Machine, a collaboration with guitarist Chris Haskett, and Drive by Shooting; also named "Henrietta Collins and the Wifebeating Childhaters"; Rollins' second spoken word collection, Big Ugly Mouth, was released in the same year. Andrew Weiss and Sim Cain, both former participants of Ginn's side-project Gone, were among the new group Rollins Band, as well as Haskett, Rollins. The band toured relentlessly, and their 1987 debut album, Life Time, was shortly followed by outtakes and live collection Do It. The band continued to tour throughout 1988, but Hard Volume, a 1989 Rollins Band record, was released. Turned On, and another spoken word publication, Live at McCabe's, were two of the original live albums.

In 1991, the Rollins Band signed a distribution contract with Imago Records and performed at the Lollapalooza festival; both increased the band's visibility and at the Lollapalooza Festival. Rollins and his closest friend Joe Cole were accosted by two armed robbers outside Rollins' house in December 1991. Cole was shot in the head by a bullet, Rollins recovered without injury, but police charged him in the homicide and jailed him for ten hours. Although Cole's death was chronicled in his book Now Watch Him Die, Rollins continued to produce new music; the spoken-word album Human Butt debuted on his own record label in 1992, 2.13.61. The Rollins Band released The End of Silence, Rollins' first charting album.

The Boxed Life, Rollins' spoken-word double album, was released in the following year. The Rollins Band began on the End of Silence tour, and bassist Weiss was fired toward the end, and Melvin Gibbs replaced him with funk and jazz bassist Melvin Gibbs. 1994 was Rollins' "breakout year," according to critic Steve Huey. The Rollins Band appeared at Woodstock 94 and Weight, which debuted on Billboard's Top 40. Rollins released Get in the Van: A double-disc set of him reading from his Black Flag tour diary of the same name; as a result, he received the Grammy for Best Spoken Word Recording. Rollins was named "Man of the Year" by the American men's magazine Details in 1994 and became a contributing columnist to the magazine. Rollins made several appearances on American music channels MTV and VH1 around this time, and made his Hollywood debut in 1994 as a police officer in The Chase.

Imago Records, the Rollins Band's record label, declared itself bankrupt in 1995. Rollins began focusing on his spoken word work. In 1996, he released Everything, a recording of a chapter of his book Eye Scream with free jazz accompaniment. He appeared in many films, including Heat, Johnny Mnemonic, and Lost Highway. The Rollins Band signed to Dreamworks Records in 1997 and shortly released Come In and Burn, but it did not receive as much critical attention as their previous work. Rollins continued to publish spoken-word book readings after releasing Black Coffee Blues in the same year. Rollins launched Think Tank, his first collection of non-book-related spoken word in five years in 1998.

Rollins believed that the friendship with his backing band had run its course by 1998, and that the line-up had been broken. He had formed Mother Superior, a Los Angeles hard rock band, and had welcomed them to form a new version of the Rollins Band. Get Some Go Back Again, the band's first album, was released two years ago. The Rollins Band released several more albums, including 2001's Nice and 2003's Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three. The band went inactive after 2003, when Rollins concentrated on radio and television production. Rollins said he "would never do music again," a sentiment he repeated in 2011 when talking to Trebuchet magazine. Rollins confessed to snuggling music for good, but he's forced to say that I miss it every day." I'm just curious what I could do with it that is different."

"For me, music was a time and a place," Rollins said in 2016. I've never liked being in a band. It was in me and it needed to come out, like a 25-year exorcism. I awakened one day and discovered that I didn't have any more songs. I had nothing to contribute to the style, and I was done with band rehearsals and traveling in groups."

Rollins is a guest star on Damian Cowell's 2017 album Get Yer Dag On!

Rollins has influenced a variety of styles throughout the years as a vocalist. He appeared on Washington, D.C.'s hardcore scene for what journalist Michael Azerrad described as a "compelling, raspy howl." Rollins "spat out the lyrics like a bellicose auctioneer" in the state of Alert. Since joining Black Flag in 1981, he adopted a similar look. Black Flag did, however, start to incorporate a swing beat into their style by their album Damaged. Rollins later dropped their State of Alert "bark" and adopted the band's swing. "What I was doing kind of matched the tone of the song," Rollins later explained. The music was intense, and I was as tense as you needed."

Rollins' two-incarnations of the Rollins Band combined spoken word with his signature vocal style in songs like "Liar" (the song opens with a one-minute spoken diatribe by Rollins), barked his way into songs ("such as "Tearing" and "Starve"), and employed the loud-quiet effect. Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone calls Rollins a "creeching hate machine" and his "hallmark" is "the sheets-of-sound assault."

According to critic Geoffrey Welchman, his Rollins Band lyrics concentrated "mainly on issues relating to personal integrity."

Rollins released Completion, an acoustic album by Charles Manson in the 1980s. The record was supposed to be published by SST Records, but it was cancelled due to death risks when dealing with Manson. Only five test presses of Completion were pressed, two of which are in Rollins' possession.

Rollins produced The Mark of Cain's third full-length album In 1995, they released Ill at Ease, an Australian hard rock band.

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