by Shelley Blundell -
Daily Kent Stater Photos by Amy Mitten
February 17, 2005
There’s nothing like visions of
war-torn soldiers and Ramones falling off the planet to inspire the
inner romantic in all of us.
Appearing before a little more than
200 people at Thursday’s Lounge in Akron, Henry Rollins turned an
otherwise dreary Valentine’s Day into a darkly funny and deeply
thoughtful evening.
With a tirade that wound its way
from one eclectic thought pattern to the next, Rollins spoke on
politics, his love of employment and why he likes to stay
perpetually pissed.
“I like to get pissed off because it
gets me up and going — I don’t ever want to get less pissed off than
I am now,” Rollins said.
Rollins spoke at length about both
his childhood and his adult life, fondly reminiscing over the
moments that shaped him into the person he is today. One of those
moments, Rollins said, was his first Ramones concert.
“I had been waiting all my life to
hear music from guys who sounded like me — to hear people talking
about killing and destroying — and then punk rock came out,” Rollins
said.
Rollins spoke of the crush of people
in the arena, the impending feeling of doom as other concertgoers
pressed harder against one another and how all that slipped away as
the Ramones took the stage.
“There were no barricades — I was so
close I could have touched Johnny (Ramone) on the shoulder,” Rollins
said.
And as the Ramones shaped Rollins,
so their music shaped an entire generation.
“They make a lot of music seem
completely inessential — they are a beacon in the dark sea of Good
Charlottes,” Rollins said.
Rollins has done many things in his
44 years of life but nothing, he said, has been more traumatic or
eye-opening than his work with the United Service Organizations.
“I’ve been over to Afghanistan and
Iraq and to the Walter Reed army hospital to visit the wounded,”
Rollins said.
“It’s like a Pandora’s Box — you
don’t know what you’re going to get till you get in there.”
Rollins spoke of his visits with the
badly wounded soldiers at the hospital and of the mothers by their
sides, doing their best to be brave for the sakes of their sons and
daughters.
“I can’t imagine the pain of a
mother who has raised this fine son or daughter . . . and who has to
watch them come home with their legs blown off,” Rollins said.
“To me, it’s just not worth it.
Should Iraqis be free? Absolutely. Is it worth Americans going over
there and getting so much as a hangnail to make it possible? No
fucking way.”
And, Rollins said, all Americans
have a civic responsibility to pay attention to what goes on in the
United States every day.
“If all is not well in your country,
then all is not well in your life — you want to be in this country?
Then you have to take some responsibility,” Rollins said.
And being responsible is what
Rollins is all about — performing solo and with various bands in
benefit concerts such as “Wed Rock” (an annual benefit concert held
to raise money for the Freedom to Marry group) and his latest tours
with the USO, Rollins says what he feels, no matter the situation.
“Thomas Jefferson gave me the green
light,” Rollins said. “My bottom line is ‘let’s go.’ You can bitch
and complain all you like and I’ll say ‘I don’t care, let’s go!’”
And through it all, Rollins
struggles to become a better person.
“It’s uphill — you know why? Because
I’m a madman,” Rollins said.
And despite his manic tendencies and
now-graying hair, Rollins still knows how to inspire and enrage an
audience, no matter what he has to say to do it.
Contact general assignment
reporter Shelley Blundell at
sblundel@kent.edu.
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