Punk Revolution! by John Malkin

Author:John Malkin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2023-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

Henry Rollins signs autographs for US soldiers in Iraq (2004). Photo: Specialist Jan Critchfield (112nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment)

JAN CRITCHFIELD: I have a few snapshots of Henry Rollins signing autographs for soldiers. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the shot of him signing a shotgun shell, but that’s what he was doing when I walked in the room. I sometimes wonder whose door that shotgun shell was used to breach during a no-knock home raid. Or maybe it was smuggled back unused? Who knows?

I interviewed him and wrote a crappy story about him being on the USO tour, but the editors went with a different story written by another soldier. I had heard of Rollins prior to meeting him, but I only knew him from the films Lost Highway (1997) and Johnny Mnemonic (1995). Not his music. I read a little about him and Black Flag before interviewing him, and the thing that kept going through my head was, “Why is this guy here?” It seemed so strange that a guy with an anti-establishment reputation felt the need to honor the boys fighting Bush’s vanity war.

By that time in my deployment, I was pretty thoroughly convinced that what we were doing in Iraq was deeply wrong. So, I was a little disheartened to see a guy like Rollins, or what I thought he represented, on a USO tour. That seemed like a square peg/round hole combo.

Years later, maybe 2008, after listening to some of Rollins’ spoken word and hearing him brag about wandering around in some Pakistani city by himself despite being warned of danger, I kind of wondered if it was just war tourism. The motivation for touring Iraq he gave during my interview was to support the soldiers whether he agreed with the war or not. Fair enough, I guess. He certainly had fans there that punk music apparently hadn’t saved from being duped into army service.

I also recently read an interview in the book More Fun in the New World by John Doe where Rollins said national politics was never something he cared to engage with. Local politics were more important. Which might explain why I’ve never heard him described as anti-war or seen him say word one about ending occupations and state-sponsored murder. In the absence of outspoken opposition, à la Rage Against the Machine for instance, it’s hard to know where he stands exactly.

JM: I was surprised to discover Henry Rollins’s 2011 book Occupants, a sort of photojournalistic book with prose about traveling to war zones and other intense places like Antarctica, Sudan, and Haiti after the earthquake, where he handed out soccer balls and bottles of water to children. He seems to have hoped that bringing stories back to the US about political injustice and environmental degradation might inspire positive change and diminish US militarism. I wish he’d plugged some of that into his lyrics over the years.

JAN CRITCHFIELD: I definitely don’t think Rollins is supportive of people like Bush and Reagan. I think he’s probably an anti-imperialist.

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