Why is your favorite running mag (the running mag that makes Runner’s World look like a pamphlet from Dollar General) featuring an interview with punk icon Henry Rollins? Two reasons. Firstly, we wanted to talk him into becoming an ultra-athlete and joining the team (imagine Henry goddamn Rollins crossing the finish line at UTMB—that would be sick). Secondly, Henry is one of the venerable gods of punk, and we wanted him to light a fire under you guys to go out and start that club, publish that zine, knit those toe-socks (don’t bother, it’s impossible), and do a bunch of cool stuff without waiting around for someone to tell you it’s okay to proceed. Mainly, though, we wanted to convert him into an ultrarunner, but it turns out he already did a stint as an ultra-athlete when he fronted Black Flag.
At this stage, Henry doesn’t need a big introduction, but for that one guy who only just got electricity, Henry Rollins is the American writer, singer, actor, and public speaker who hasn’t stopped moving and making things since he learned how to walk. POSSESSED gave him a buzz.
Note: the [laughter] asides are just me laughing. Mr Rollins is drier than a Ritz cracker on the Sahara.
Portrait: Atiba Jefferson
‘Me and the drummer would run four to six miles a night after band practice, getting ready for Black Flag tours. We trained like beasts. It was the only way to withstand the music because the drummer and the singer, we’re like train engines, huffin’ and puffin’.’
I just watched you and the Hard-Ons in the ‘Let There Be Rock’ video to gird myself for this interview.
Oh, man. That was a hundred years ago.
Have you seen the new Hard-Ons documentary?
No, I haven’t seen it.
Me neither. But you’re probably in it, right?
I have no idea. There are so many documentaries that get made now, and I'm not saying they're all the same, but every venue is now making a documentary, and every drum tech is making a documentary.
[laughter]
And I'm not putting down drum techs or venues, but the point I’m making is I get asked to be in all of them. And whether it’s something like the Butthole Surfers or, ‘Hey, we had that club in Alabama you played one time and your shoe broke? We’re doing a documentary and you’ve got to be in it!’
[laughter]
But Jason, don’t you have a documentary coming out this year?
Me? Yeah, yeah, I do. It’s about the time I met Henry Rollins.
Sounds great!
[laughter]
You said you read our Scott Jurek interview, right?
Yeah, I read the one with him and the one with his wife.
So, with your background in pushing yourself, mental discipline, etcetera, would you consider doing an ultramarathon?
Oh, my knees left the building when Reagan was president.
Oh, no. Really?
Yeah, I can’t run. When I’m at the gym, I have to use the elliptical treadmill.
For cardio?
Yeah. Like, my knees would fill with fluid in about ten paces if I ran. When I was a young guy with dark hair, me and the drummer would run four to six miles a night after band practice, getting ready for Black Flag tours. We trained like beasts. It was the only way to withstand the music because the drummer and the singer, we’re like train engines, huffin’ and puffin’. So, we would come crawling out of band practice in nothing but wet socks, shoes, and gym shorts, and then we would drive up the hill to the beach and run. And we would do that for weeks—that’s how we would get ready to tour.
Would you run on tour as well?
No, because with the shows and the way we were living with the irregular food and the bad sleep, you know, you do two sets in Houston with no breathable air at a hundred-and-five-degrees Fahrenheit and then drive to St. Louis, you’re just trying to get sleep anywhere. So, running would have been a luxury. But at a certain point, I tore cartilage in my left knee, and that started the problems with running. The last time I ran was on a treadmill in probably 2006.
That’s such a bummer. I was gonna try and talk you into becoming an ultrarunner so I could brag about it to everyone.
No, my knees would just fill up with fluid. But the most interesting part of that guy’s interview—and the whole thing was good—was when he talked about the difficulties of hitting that zone of the run.
The so-called ‘pain cave’.
Yeah, it’s incredible. You know, to a normal civilian like me, that kind of mileage is just not humanly possible. And the thing that's fascinating is that it’s not even the physical aspect that makes or breaks the runner at that level—it’s that it’s all in your head. And when he talked about, you know, those spaces he would find himself in and the ways to deal with that, that, to me, separates the Olympian from some guy huffing and puffing around the block.
You know what else is interesting about ultra-runners is that they do these 100-mile, 200-mile races and they end up hallucinating. Like full tilt, seeing imaginary shit in the woods. There’s one runner, Courtney Dauwalter, who famously ran past a leopard chilling in a hammock. It’s insane.
Wow. I can't explain to you how much I admire all that, because, you know, when I did music, it was the most intense caloric expenditure. Like, being in Black Flag, those songs were built to kill you. And me and the drummer, we’d be four songs in and we'd look at each other and just shake our heads like, ‘We’re not going to make this,’ you know? There's still another 50 minutes to go.
[laughter]
Yeah, I’ve seen the videos. Being the frontman of Black Flag definitely qualifies as an ultra-sport. It must’ve been fun, though.
Well, it was kind of terrifying and excruciating. And all through Black Flag and the Rollins band, I pushed myself physically to my limits where I would—as they say—leave it on stage. And then backstage, I would find a bit of carpet or some floor that wasn’t too gross, and I would lie down and pass out. There’s a photo in one of my books of me sprawled on the ground: Summer ‘84, San Diego, California. I’m out. And I would literally pass out after the show for, I don’t know, like eight to twelve minutes. Then I’d wake up with this amazing pool of sweat around me.
‘I pushed myself physically to my limits... And then backstage, I would find a bit of carpet or some floor that wasn’t too gross, and I would lie down and pass out... I would literally pass out after the show for, I don’t know, like eight to twelve minutes. Then I’d wake up with this amazing pool of sweat around me.’
Damn.
I’m just saying, you know, as far as physicality in those days, me and the drummer, we were deeply invested in our fitness because you need stamina to get through the day.
What was your nutrition strategy on tour?
Well, in the Black Flag days, me and the guitar player were vegetarians, so we’d try to keep that going.
Are you still vegetarian?
No, no. But I don’t eat a lot of meat. I mean, I get a lot of my protein from spinach, egg white powder, and, you know, I just do, like, a protein vegetable powder or beet powder shake in the morning. So, that'll just be kind of the morning hydration: get something in the tank and go. I try and eat one and a half meals a day.
Wait, what? One and a half meals?
Yeah. And when I'm on tour, it’s one meal.
No way. So, what is the one meal? Lunch?
Well, in the morning, as I said, it’s a scoop of either plant-based protein or egg white and a scoop of AG1—Athletic Green Superfood Powder—which I really, really like. And a scoop of beet powder. And, you know, I slug that down with a bunch of water. So, I’m just hydrated and got some vitamins going, a little bit of protein. And I start my day.
Do you ever freak out and eat chocolate and candy and licorice and stuff?
I love all that stuff, but not all that often. I mean, if I could, I’d live on pizza.
Back to ultrarunning: I feel like when Black Flag wrapped up, you could’ve just gone straight to Leadville and run the hundred mile.
I would say that what we were doing in those days, in some abstract way or adjacent way, lent itself to endurance sport and endurance training, for sure. And then, with the Rollins Band, it was the same thing, but the venues were bigger. It was me and the drummer looking at each other going, ‘Oh, tonight we’re dead.’ And because we’re playing really hard music—like, that was some really physical music we did, especially up to 1992; it got a little more cerebral going forward, but, you know, ‘87 to ‘92 was like heavyweight slug matches. It’s the singer and the drummer killing themselves.
Right.
That was my reality from, like, ‘81 to whenever I stopped doing music... 2002 or 2003. And that kind of intensity, like, it’s not enjoyable, it’s just what you do. For me, it was it was a gladiator sport. The music is trying to kill me, and I'm trying to keep it from killing me. Every night is like round one, ding, ding. You just have to go out there.
I have a big question I want to ask you, because this is the Punk Issue...
Sure.
What is punk, and does it still exist?
Does it exist? Well, I think if you ask one hundred people who like punk rock music, you might get one hundred answers.
Right, right.
I come from Washington, D.C., and our punk rock strain was about doing things yourself.
DIY.
Yeah. You want to make a record? Well, shut up and make a record. On what record label, though? Just make a record label. Like, don’t ask, ‘Hey, do you want my record?’ Just make a record company. Find a recording studio. You know, get your friends to cut out some letters and make a picture sleeve. And there's nothing unique about this—it was done from the doo-wop days of the '50s all the way through to punk rock. But, you know, you want to make a fanzine? Okay, just do it, and a week later there’s five copies of Flaming Butt fanzine.
[laughter]
No one read it, but you did it. And that DIY ethos is about not waiting for permission—just be the permission, you know? Like, it’s YOU, man! ‘We don’t like your record. We’re not putting it out.’ That’s all I need to hear. Thank you. Thank you for the rejection. I'm never going to be back, and now watch me make one record after another. I'm going to figure this out—because if Warner Brothers can figure it out, I can figure it out. We fiercely went at that DIY thing. Also, punk rock, for me, is about being honest. Like, Joe Strummer—he calls it out in his lyrics; they don’t like what you’re saying? Well, hey—screw ‘em. As John Lennon used to say, ‘Say what you mean and mean what you say, and put a beat behind it.’ And that’s my version of punk rock: speaking truth to power.
‘I was with my best friend, Ian MacKaye, and I said, “Are we are we still allowed to listen to Led Zeppelin?” And, you know, Ian is far more practical than I am. He said, “There's no rule book—it's punk rock!”’
The spirit of punk is interesting because I think most people, when they think of punk, think of a moment in musical history, and that’s it.
Yeah, I think punk rock [for some] falls into a cultural occurrence that started in the ‘70s. And some people would say it was a reaction to the 30-minute drum solos at Pink Floyd concerts or, you know, when Led Zeppelin plays ‘Moby Dick’ for an hour and a half—which I would definitely go see, by the way, but—
Oh, same, dude.
Although when I was young and quite reactionary, I stopped listening to all my pre-punk records until one time I was with my best friend, Ian MacKaye, and I said, ‘Are we still allowed to listen to Led Zeppelin?’ And, you know, Ian is far more practical than I am. He said, ‘There's no rule book—it's punk rock!’ And I go, ‘Well, they have long hair.’ He's like, ‘Henry, they wrote “Whole Lotta Love”.’
[laughter]
When was this?
Oh, I was like seventeen. But anyway, punk rock was like, ‘Finally, real rock and roll is alive again. We’re pissed off and we’re young and we’re intense.’ And there was a minute there where I was like, ‘I'm getting rid of the old because it’s all punk rock now. We're turning our back on Aerosmith and Van Halen and all of those bands that we kind of grew up with.’
When did the DIY idea dawn on you?
Well, we started seeing bands like The Cramps and The Ramones, and then 999 would come over from England, and The Clash came to Washington, D.C., and it blew our minds. And then we started looking around and we learned that there was a band in D.C. called The Bad Brains, like an all-Black punk rock band. It was my Summer of ’79, and they blew our minds. We never recovered from that. So, we’d see these bands playing in clubs with cheap gear, and we realized that good music could come from it, and it’s that possibility that engendered the DIY ethos in me and my friends. Like, it’s possible to shut up and make a record and make another one and another one—and start a record company. That’s how Dischord started. And on the Black Flag side of things, they had a record label called SST, and Chuck [Dukowski] and Greg [Ginn] of Black Flag owned it, and they made Black Flag records, and records for other people.
At age 64, are you still punk?
I would have to say yes because it’s the ideology that has stayed with me: anti-racist, anti-fascist, anti-homophobia, anti-discrimination, and you know, equality, fairness, decency, all of that. To me, that’s punk rock. And I don’t think that’s bad. If I had a kid, I'd say be honest, you know? Find a slow kid in school and become friends with them because people make fun of them. And when people start making fun of him, you know, stick up for him, man, you’ll be a hero, you’ll lead.
Excellent advice. All right, I have a final question.
Okay.
If you could travel 200 years into the future, enter a bookstore, and find a biography about your life... What would you hope the title would be?
That’s a good question...
It’s a tough one.
Well, it is a tough one because it’s kind of like, What would you like written on your gravestone? But then it’s not really that hard because I don't think I'm especially good at anything I do.
Oh, come on.
Well, no one’s hiring me to sing.
Yeah, but you’re Henry Rollins—there’s gonna be books written about you after you’re gone.
‘Oh, we do love his dulcet tones.’
[laughter]
But it’s more... It’s not even what I said or what I yelled—it's how I yelled it. Like, ‘Wow, that guy really means it. Jeez. What a maniac.’
That could be the title! That Guy Really Means It. Jeez. What a Maniac: The Henry Rollins Story.
Maybe that's it!
Thanks for chatting with me, Henry.
Thank you. Bye.
