HENRY ROLLINS Says His Charity Work Is Motivated By Anger

Pat Douglas of the Great Falls Tribune recently conducted an interview with punk rock icon Henry Rollins. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

On his current spoken-word tour "25 years of B.S.":

"I do a lot of USO work, so I fly all over the world to be with the troops, so you get a lot of stories from that. I recently went across Russia on the Trans Siberian Express. It was a hell of a ride. It was like a week long. I lived alone in a tiny metal box with nothing but lunar landscape for a view, punctuated by the occasional tree or small town.

"It's a fascinating ride. You literally go damn near 6,000 miles on a train. It's pretty intense."

On how he got started doing spoken-word tours:

"I started mouthing off at a very early age, and living in Washington, D.C., ... amongst my friends, there was always a great value placed on being able to imitate any of your friends, any shopkeeper, homeless person, or anyone from TV, movies or whatever. Also, there's a great value on being funny and telling funny stories amongst you and your friends.

"I would go to these shows to watch and (this promoter) would say 'why don't you get up there next time? We're paying 10 bucks a head.' It's like 'oh, man, 10 dollars. OK. I could use some money.' And so I went up there and told this quick story and everyone went 'do another.' And so I started doing more shows with that promoter, opening for some of his poets and after a few shows, those poets were opening for me, which they didn't really like. . . One thing led to another and by '85, I did a coast-to-coast tour. Basically talking in front of 12 to 50 people a night and it just went from there. Now, it's this multi-country, yearly thing I do in everywhere from Israel, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, all across Europe, America, Canada."

On his motivations for helping people:

"Anger, basically. When I see something I disagree with or something that makes me mad and I see one side getting beaten by the big bully, I go 'well, let's give the other guy some help.' You feel some kind of civic responsibility. Like all the people who gave money to people displaced by Katrina. You're mad at what happened to these people and you wanna help, so you get up off your (butt) and you do something about it and that's what I've done.

"But it's anger more than goodwill that inspires me. Goodwill comes with the contribution of time and money or whatever, but it's the anger that gets me off the couch."

Read the entire interview at www.greatfallstribune.com.