.

Photo – Heidi May

.

HENRY ROLLINS
‘Good To See You Tour’
@ Thebarton Thetre, Adelaide,
8th June 2023
(Live Review)

Review by Colin Reid

.

.

It is midweek on a cold and wet Adelaide winter’s night but the chance to witness the spectacle that is a Henry Rollins spoken word performance brings a full house of punters, full of expectation, to The Thebbie.  Everything that Henry does is hardcore. He is a legitimate punk rock icon, writer, actor, public speaker, global traveller and activist. All of which has been done to the extreme. All the surplus wordage is cut from Henry, there isn’t room for any extraneous shit in his stage show or in his life. He is the walking, breathing, talking (or mostly shouting) embodiment of both the active and the action verb. 110% hardcore.

Thebbie is such a great venue, surely Adelaide’s finest, it is great to see it filled to the brim with a sea of black clad punters a lot of whom with Black Flag t-shirts on show to establish their credentials.  Pre-performance beers are had as we catch up with mates whilst remember past glories of all past gigs listing on the ceiling of the downstairs bar. The curtain call is given and in a rush we all clear out and into the theatre. No one wants to miss a second of Henry.

He charges out onto that stage, grabs the microphone and he is away. There is no warm up act, no intermission taken, barely a pause for breath, not even a slip of water to lubricate the throat for the next two and a half hours. No rest for Henry and no respite for the audience. The uninitiated, those first timers to a Rollins spoken word show, could be forgiven for wondering how they might get through the brutal onslaught.  You can’t attend a Rollins’ evening without being in awe of Henry, how does he do this night after night with such power and intensity?

No prisoners are taken by the ferocity of his storytelling.  The brutal honesty of his subject matter and the vulnerability within himself that he exposes is both shocking and admirable. However, before we get into those subjects he starts from a safe place. He has been to Australia over 40 times and he loves it here.  It may sound like blowing smoke up your ass but from Henry you know that it is true, that he really means it. He personalises his previous Adelaide experiences and details spending 10 days in the city when working on a ‘Mark of Cain’ album which draws woops of approval from sections of the crowd.

.

.

He is a genius storyteller although perhaps storyteller isn’t the right term or a least enough of a description of what he does.  At various points an angry forceful and bitter diatribe, a self-depreciating humourist, a motivational speaker able to acknowledge his failings and to seek to make himself available to make the world something better than it otherwise would have been.

There is dark humour about his mother’s cremation and about the distribution of her ashes. There is no love lost or wasted on her memory.  I won’t spoil the show but beware if you ever find yourself in Nashville, Tennessee and end up buying a second-hand Mazda 6 under no circumstances should you make a cuppa from the tea bag you’ll in the glove box!

There are shocking statements about his childhood. Shared custody bouncing between his terrifyingly misogynistic and racist father and his alcoholic mother and her series of loser boyfriends.  Emotional neglect, parental alcoholism and most disturbingly the physical and sexual abuse from the boyfriends.  His vocal delivery forcefully veering between anger and comedy, he offers his hand towards the audience and tries to re-assure us that he is okay, that things are alright when clearly, they aren’t. It has left a mark on him to this day.

There are some minor diversions in the evening’s narrative such as the impact of COVID on his life and his travelling, which has been a major part of his urgent and eventful existence since the days of Black Flag. Or the red dunce cap brigade in their made in China ‘Make America Great Again’ caps. Or about the prospect of death being not far around the corner now that he is in his 60s; will he or Joe Biden make it to the end of the year, who goes first? Or the fact that no matter what President America has or what they do it doesn’t effect meaningful change “we had a cool President (Obama) not so long ago, I liked him but NOTHING CHANGED”.

Sitting over the top of these mini topics, there are really only 2 or 3 main stories for the whole two and a half hours! Despite the breakneck speed of his delivery style, each of these are filled with such detail and never lose their direction as their themes intertwine throughout the evening.

.

.

My takeaway from his stories was that is okay to be angry but that the anger must be directed at the right targets; to punch up and never down. To understand that some people can’t be changed. Even if you play them enough early punk records. To understand that everyone has come from somewhere and is a product of their experience. Moreover, that it is oh so important to leave the world a better place than you first found it.

Despite all the dark humour, the self-depreciation, the bravado, the passion and the intensity I was left with a sense of unease.  He spoke about having trained himself to sleep with his shoes on and to sleep on top of the bed rather than in it. He jokes about hotel cleaners entering his room after he has left and never being sure if he was really there at all. Strip away the jokes and you realise that those are the traits of the hyper vigilant survivor of abuse and trauma. Those that need to be ready to fight or flee at a moment’s notice.

His last story was that of a Finnish fan with a previously undiagnosed mental health condition. This guy heard voices in his head speaking to him about Henry, some of it good and a lot of it bad. Despite the travel bans in the COVID years the fan managed to get himself half way across the world on a torturous route to LA where he stalked Henry before committing a home invasion.  Whilst it wasn’t mentioned, this must have bought back issues for Henry relating to the robbery murder of his friend Joe Cole in 1991 and Henry’s miraculous escape from the same gunmen.  The Finnish fan story is hugely entertaining but I can’t help wondering if Henry’s need to tour so much, to have these intense spoken word performances, is mostly about the need to process his PTSD amongst a room of fans? A safe place amongst 800 or so stranglers who are on his side and with whom he can confide, without the need to physically interact, the strangeness of his life and thereby help him cope. I’m not sure. I’d strongly encourage you to go along to one of his dates and make your own mind up, there isn’t really anything like a night in Henry’s company and we should all do it every now and then.

Oh I should also mention that he loves Iggy Pop and I mean he really, really, really loves Iggy Pop! Buy a ticket, see the show and have a listen to the Iggy impression “its kindalike, ya know” pretty good.

.

.

Follow HENRY ROLLINS
Website – Instagram – Facebook – Twitter

.

.

AMNPLIFY – DB