The Tivoli, Brisbane
Wednesday September 14, 2016 :
Returning to Australia after over four years, the master of the spoken word tour, Henry Rollins opened his first of two nights in Brisbane to a packed out Tivoli crowd. It is very difficult not to just regurgitate the entire performance, there are so many reasons you need to experience a Rollins performance.
Upon the arrival of both the man and his palpable aura on stage, Rollins took his first breath and launched into 2 hours and 18 minutes of intense storytelling and a general insight into who Henry Rollins is. He bonded with the crowd immediately by explaining “two thirds of you are probably in a band, I have your album, I love it.”
For the rest of the show, Henry does not take one drop of water, he never repeats himself and the first resemblance of an ‘um’ came one hour and thirty four minutes in. His energy and enthusiasm are contagious and it feels as though time has disappeared.
Rollins is certainly a wordsmith, he has a love for the English language. Word of the day: ‘Vicissitudes’. Look it up… There was one word he’d heard since being in Australia that he admitted to having to look up – ‘Plebiscite’. Summing it up perfectly, Rollins believes it is “below the psyche of Australians” to even entertain the idea and he states the obvious in saying it should be a non-issue, no one should decide who can get married.
A personal favourite chapter of the performance was about whether or not the world should harden up a bit; whether people have become ‘soft’ and too easily offended. Initially it was a series of questions from a journalist in South Africa that got Rollins fired up enough to discuss this in his show. Somewhat surprisingly, Henry believes that ‘hardening up’ is the last thing we need. That showing that you’ve had enough of the bullshit going on in the world does not mean you’ve gone soft and can’t handle it, it simply means you’ve had the courage to say enough is enough. Rollins quotes RHCP bassist Flea’s opinion as well: “count me in as one of the pussy generation“. He states quite emphatically that “humans are the underbelly of everything” and that to harden up to what is happening in the world is counter-intuitive and devolutionary.
Renowned for being an intense, balls-and-all wildchild, there are a couple of things about Henry that show he has a softer side, though I doubt ‘Rollins’ and ‘soft’ have been combined in the same sentence too many times. If you ask his age, he is 55 and a half. I don’t know why, but I love it when adults keep the half. It’s not childish but it is child-like.
Then there is the story of how even though Rollins is “desperately hetero” he “had a boyfriend for about thirty five minutes“, a hilarious story of his friendship with drag queen Rupaul.
His next story is a recount of his trip to Antarctica, to sleep on the Antarctic floor with the penguins. Apparently no one tells you about the smell, the smell of millions of penguins covered in their own excrement, hardly the National Geographic special he’d hoped for. And then one of the best lines of the evening: “the sound, the sound of those penguins is relentless, like the first 4 Black Sabbath albums being played at the same time.”
Rollins tells anecdotes about David Bowie (“The Bow”) and how David Bowie thought he was an “interesting person” and had read most of the reviews and interviews about him. He concedes they weren’t friends as such but there was very clearly a mutual respect and admiration between the artists.
The most entertaining stories are of The Ramones, including that time he rehydrated at an overpacked Ramones show by standing in front of Dee Dee and drinking the river of sweat pouring from him. He admits that Joey Ramone was the “nicest”. Henry considers that he “is not in the same Pantheon” as musicians like these. These stories were told through slightly more ‘liquid’ eyes than before and dare I say, I heard a quiver in the voice of Henry Rollins as he relives the time spent with Johnny Ramone in his final days.
If you have any self-doubt, A Night With Henry Rollins will certainly help. If you’ve ever wanted to do something in your life, “book it in Monday”. If you’re not sure how to go about something, “the fear of failure will drive you”.
The performance from Henry is extremely entertaining, he’s an extremely intelligent and hilarious man. It does have a theme though that becomes more apparent towards the end. The almost subliminal message throughout is that life is to be lived completely, with reckless abandonment – “Do the thing, you’ll get the hatemail anyway“.
Reviewer : Jeremy Edwards
Photographer : Chris Ward
[nggallery id = 592]