Henry Rollins’ crucial creative period living in Leeds
Although best known for fronting hardcore punk outfit Black Flag in the 1980s, Henry Rollins has enjoyed an illustrious career in the years that followed his stint in the band. He has released music with various collaborators, in addition to acting, writing, hosting a radio show, and performing spoken word. Rollins was Black Flag’s longest-running frontman, yet he began alienating fans and fellow band members with his erratic and often violent on-stage behaviour. Many fans became disillusioned by the band’s change in sound, often taking to the stage to physically attack Rollins, punching and scratching him. In a diary entry, the frontman wrote: “When they spit at me, when they grab at me, they aren’t hurting me. When I push out and mangle the flesh of another, it’s falling so short of what I really want to do to them.”
Although Rollins’ Black Flag pushed the band in new directions, tensions between the members and a relentless touring schedule led to their disbandment in 1986, playing their final show in June. With Rollins no longer tied to a musical project, he “had to decide whether to stop or try to keep making music”. So he moved to England for two weeks, joining his old friend Chris Haskett in Leeds, more specifically, 52 Harold Mount in the popular student area of Hyde Park. Situated just a few minutes walk from LS6’s legendary Brudenell Social Club, Rollins undoubtedly enjoyed a few pints and live shows at the venue during his stint in the north.
In the sleeve of his album Hot Animal Machine, Rollins explained how the album resulted from his time spent in Leeds, which inspired him to continue making music. He wrote: “I called [Haskett] and told him that my schedule was suddenly extremely open. Without missing a beat, Chris went right to work and assembled a band: Bernie Wandell on bass and Mick Green on drums.”
Rollins added: “It was a strange time in my life. I had grown used to being in a band, going on tour and being handed a schedule telling me where I was going all the time. I couldn’t see ever making another record. Chris would have none of it. There was no doubt in his mind that things were going to go great, and he really picked me up.”
The new band started working on music whilst also playing covers of songs such as ‘Ghost Rider’ by Suicide. “Perhaps it was a grand combination of a new association, excitement and a good dose of fear of failure, but whatever it was, we wrote like men possessed and came up with a lot of songs in a short time.”
They headed to Off Beat Studios in nearby Kirkstall and recorded “seventeen tracks in a few days” before “flying back to America in a jet-lagged daze with the quarter-inch tapes under my arm.” According to Rollins, “The master multi-tracks of these songs no longer exist as I could not afford the tape and had to rent it from the studio. Days later, it was no doubt taped over.”
Although Rollins once described Leeds as a city “slapped in the face with a coat of grey poison”, the two weeks he spent there was a transformative period. He explained: “I was so confused and depressed after Black Flag broke up that I didn’t know which end was up. Fortunately, Chris did, and we ended up with this cool record.”
A few months later, Haskett was back in America, and he and Rollins began working with Sim Cain and Andrew Weiss: “The result was the Rollins Band, hundreds of shows and many, many miles under the wheels.”
