Henry Rollins: The Column! Justice, Texas Style

By Henry Rollins Thu., Mar. 8 2012 at 3:30 AM

[Look for your weekly fix from the one and only Henry Rollins right here on West Coast Sound every Thursday, and come back tomorrow for the awesomely annotated playlist for his Saturday KCRW broadcast.]

I was just in Texas for a show. Since 1981 I've done a lot of shows in Texas.

Whenever I am there, many memories of previous shows and visits come back to me. It is one hell of a place.

Back in the early 1980s, on one of my first visits to the great state, I learned a lesson that has stuck with me all these years later: Texas is a hotbed of insanely good bands and musicians.

Back then, I didn't know that Texas was the birthplace of Lightnin' Hopkins, Ornette Coleman and Roy Orbison, to name but a diverse few. In those days, I could have told you that ZZ Top was from there and that's about it. My first up-close dose was the Big Boys, the Dicks and the Butthole Surfers. They were all original and quite great onstage. If a band can't play well live, its records are no longer all that interesting to me. These bands could play.

We're talking about Austin, Texas, though. This is a relatively unique section of this state, which became part of America in 1845. (Not all of the other 27 states were exactly jumping for joy about this; Abraham Lincoln wasn't, either.)

The rest of Texas is wide open, extremely beautiful and contains millions of people. Many of them have some intense ideas about how things should go. It was from some of these people that I learned some of my early lessons in Americana 101.

One event that says a lot happened to me in 1982, I believe. Black Flag had just finished a show in Houston at the Lawndale Art Annex. That was always a tough show. Oven-hot inside, the air never seemed to contain enough oxygen, and getting through the set was always a grim proposition.

We had finished the show in front of 300 people (or less) and I was walking alone across the venue. I heard a voice behind me. "Fag." I kept walking. I heard the voice again. "Fag." There was no heat behind this utterance, just a monosyllable, flatly stated. I turned and saw a guy about my age, perhaps a little older, following me. It was almost an absurdist episode. I asked him, almost politely, "Did you call me a fag?" He said matter-of-factly, "Yeah."

Tags:

Henry Rollins, Roky Erickson, Texas

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Andi Sheely-Chirco

Word. See you at a Roky show Henry...

Kennedykits

How would you have done things differently if the guy who called you "fag" did the same thing today?

Jennie Vasquez

I was wondering the same thing. Henry has an arsenal of words he would use that would cause just as much damage as a physical altercation so I wonder if he would still react the same.

Jennie Vasquez

What the heck, judging by the description of the 2 Texas cops, I guess everything is bigger in Texas. I'm not sure I've ever read an article mentioning Texas that did not include at least one of the following: cowboys, bugs as big as birds, a reference to the movie The Giant, or George Strait.

The life of Roky Erickson is a sad story in that many of his chapters in life have been filled with coping with mental illness and the stigma associated with it. On a positive note, it is also a story of redemption and a story that is still being written. I use the word redemption for lack of a better term because mental illness is not a sin or a crime that someone needs to redeem themselves from. The fact that he is alive, functioning, and still using his creative talents is a great testament as to what proper treatment, medications, and support from loved ones can do in helping someone with any kind of an illness live a full life. In our society we put such an emphasis on being the wealthiest, the most attractive, the most powerful in our careers. In reality, real success is dealing with our own personal demons the best we can and yes, we all have our own demons and functioning to the best of our abilities. Everything else really doesn't matter.