Combat Rock

Even the dogs in the street know that Henry Rollins can talk. The elder statesman of US hardcore's forthcoming European spoken word tour, which stops off in Vicar St. on January 29, marks his 25th year as a motormouth-for-hire. He has also completed seven USO tours of duty in the past two years, performing for American troops in Afghanistan, Qatar, and Kyrgystan in late 2003; Iraq and Kuwait in May, 2004; Honduras in August, 2004; Afghanistan in December, 2004, the South Pacific in June 2005, and in Egypt last August.

“It’s been interesting,” Rollins says. “It’s been good, but difficult, ’cos you see a lot of really intense things. The hospital visits have been the most difficult. You’re standing over a guy who’s in bed, he’s half of your age and both his legs are gone, and part of his face is gone. And then you meet the mom, and she’s doing her best to hang in there. It’s just really tough to see up close what this war is putting real people through. It’s as crappy as you wanna get. As awful an afternoon as you can imagine, well, there it is. “And ’cos I’m older than all of these people, I can’t help but look at them and remember my 20s with all my limbs and everything working, and you look at these guys, and for the rest of their lives they’re in diapers, they’re gonna be hooked up to machines. A woman who’s married this guy and now she’s married to a baby-man who drools, who lives in the foetal position. I mean it’s war. It’s what an IED does to someone. “And so all this that strips you of any of the macho posturing you might want to affect, as many of us Americans are wont to do when we come barreling out of a Rambo film. This promptly removes that from you forever.”
One wonders how, after an afternoon like that, Henry can do a spoken word show largely based around observational humour?
“Well, you have to bounce back in order to really do justice to the information. You kinda have to put some bounce back into your step. And so, usually when I do the hospital visits in DC, I have a show that night or the next night and I talk about it, and it is kind of a bummer, but believe it or not, there are humourous aspects, not exactly a gallows humour, but some of the stories are so surreal, and some of these guys are very happy to tell you about how they got the injury.
“The people I met on the last visit a couple of weeks ago were all TBI, traumatic brain injury, so a lot of their brain matter was missing, sometimes most of the skull was missing, making the head very deformed. And they were unable to speak really, because they were going through brain surgery. But those who are missing arms and legs are quite lucid ’cos they’re just on generic pain medication, whatever you give someone when an arm is torn from their body. And they’ll tell you this insane story about how they watched the limb fly over some telephone lines, or how the guy walked over and picked up his own limb. You can’t help but, not exactly laugh, but at least have a moment sitting in a room with this guy where you say, ‘Oh, what the fuck?!! And he goes, ‘I know man, it’s crazy!’ And so I try and bring that to the stage.”
Has Henry read Tim O’ Brien’s book of Vietnam stories The Things They Carried?
“No, I’ll find it today though. I tend to find books like that interesting, considering what I’m learning.”
His stories are full of exactly that kind of black comic horror and surrealism.
“I think it’s a coping mechanism. In hospitals I’ve found doctors to be, not amoral, but they cannot invest in your dying body, because they’re not going to do you any good and they’re not going to do the next guy any good. And so when they can no longer do anything for you, they literally just kind of throw their gloves in the trashcan and walk right out of the room. If all things are expended trying to bring you back to life and you are truly the doornail, next. ’Cos they can’t sit around and have a breakdown.
“I was just at this hospital, and I was talking to all these marines who’d gotten new faces and a fake eye and bridgework, amazing scars, it all looks like you’re in one of those nuclear explosion movies. And one of ’em said, ‘Yeah, I was in a Humvee, y’know, we went over a pressure plate and the thing blew up, all my friends got smoked, I’m the only one who lived.’ And that’s how he said it: ‘All my friends got smoked.’ And he wasn’t being tough about it, he just was so matter of fact, and that was the verb he used, and I was like, ‘Okay, if that’s how you talk about it…’
“I think it’s just a way that these guys have to deal with something that will probably screw them up later on. No doubt they’re gonna come home and there’s gonna be some rough days for some of these guys as they try and readjust. That’s the thing I’m gonna be dealing with a lot next year, maybe doing some fundraising for some of these men who are coming home.”
This subject was addressed rather forcefully last year on an episode of the Henry Rollins Show that featured an interview with Iraq war veterans First Lieutenant Paul Rieckhoff and Sgt Jason Lemieux. Of all the interviews with remarkable men and women Rollins has conducted on the show – Oliver Stone, Werner Herzog, Christopher Walkin, Marilyn Manson, Gore Vidal, Arianna Huffington, Samuel L Jackson – this was probably the most memorable. Key the words Iraq War Veterans Henry Rollins Show into the YouTube search engine and you’ll be privy to insights into the occupation of Iraq that will never be broadcast on mainstream US news channels.
“Yeah, good guys,” says Rollins, “and not atypical, their stories.
You should have seen the hate mail I got from that interview. Unbelievable. ‘Get out of America, I hate you, I’m gonna do everything I can to stop your show from getting another season, you’re a treasonist.’ Sincere hatred. For me it was the most substantive of all the stuff we’ve done. I mean, it’s an honour to interview Gore Vidal or Werner Herzog sure, but having these guys come in, especially Paul, who is a bit of a talking head, he’s on TV about three days a week, and as you can see, he’s one of those guys who’ll get up from the barstool and have a word with you, and he has no fear and he is quick, and that’s why he’s never on Fox, cos if Bill O’Reilly calls him something, he’ll come over there. He’s a door with a head on it, this big dude, and he knows his stuff.
“But these are brave guys, did the right thing and got their buddies back and are having a tough time dealing with things, I think Jason more than Paul. I think Paul did one tour, I don’t think he had to endure what Jason did. You see Jason in the interview doing his best to protect me, and therefore you, the viewer, from the horror that he saw. You see him trying to blunt everything: ‘Well, I saw some things that no one should see…’ He’s basically closing the door and going, ‘You go to bed pumpkin, daddy will take care of the dragon.’
“What he didn’t describe was probably some experience where human body matter was sprayed all over him as his friends died screaming for god and their mothers. And that’s what these guys come back with. And then their wives go, ‘Honey, the roof is leaking.’ And they’re like, ‘Aw, I don’t give a fuck about you and your fuckin’ roof.’ They’re having a problem, and the Veterans Affairs either has its hands tied or does not have the funds to help, and then we got worry. It’s not that the VA hates the troops, not at all, it’s just that they’ve got only so much money, ’cos this President is not interested in finishing what he started.”
Lieutenant Rieckhoff boiled it down to essentials when he said sometimes it’s just a matter of having a beer with an army buddy who’s going through a divorce as a result of what he’s experienced.
“Sometimes some of the funding is needed just for a room with some fluorescent lights, some folding chairs, a coffee percolator and some ashtrays, like an AA meeting, just so ten guys can sit in a room and go, ‘Okay, we’re not alone. I’ve got these horror stories: you tell one, I’ll tell one. Oh, I’m not the only guy in Ohio flailing my arms, seeing eyeballs in my soup. He’s seeing them too. Okay.’ You can’t go home to your wife and say, ‘Remember that time…’ She’s like, ‘Honey, I don’t know what to say.’ Like, the kids are gonna understand? Your new boss is gonna understand?
“So when you consider the scale – what was the number Rieckoff quoted? – 1.3 million people going through this war thing, and we’re never leaving Iraq, that’s the news, Nostradamus has spoken: we’re never leaving Iraq. And the locals are never gonna stop saying, ‘Get out.’ So all these pressure-plated IEDs, EFPs and other acronyms that are gonna keep tearing arms off people, this will not stop. And other countries will keep dumping their freedom fighters into Iraq as long as there’s an American troop presence. And so, what America has to budget itself for is a multi billion dollar long-term care machine, and I want to be part of that here in America, ’cos it’s going to be a very needed thing. We’re working on a benefit we’ll be doing for the IAVA (Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America), Paul’s outfit, next year up in San Francisco, so it’s an interesting time to be a conscientious American.”

Henry Rollins brings his spoken word show to Vicar Street on January 29.