Accessory to manslaughter and the hangover from hell: Henry Rollins’ first LSD trip
Rocketing down the streets of Los Angeles, a young Henry Rollins watches his knuckles whiten on the dashboard as his reality melts away around him. The Black Flag frontman, high on an ungodly amount of LSD, turns to the driver in horror as she aims the car at passing pedestrians, screaming, “You pussies in Black Flag always talk about the end of the world and destruction, the destruction starts now: we’re gonna kill all these fuckin’ people!”
Hours prior, Rollins had entered the rehearsal space for the West Coast punk titans Black Flag, where his bandmate had recommended he try acid, “‘Cause you’re a real asshole”. Eager to please, the innocent young punk called a friend who gladly supplied the frontman with as much LSD as he could ever ask for, under the small stipulation that she could watch the drama unfold.
After half an hour had passed since the tab dissolved in Rollins’ tongue, the intense young man felt no different. Not wishing to disappoint her punk hero, his friend eagerly suggests another hit, and then another, and then another. Even for a seasoned psychedelic junkie, four hits of acid – bought from a leper in Studio City, according to the woman – is enough to send you to space, as the naive Rollins was about to find out.
Clambering into the unnamed woman’s AMC Gremlin, the Black Flag singer began to feel the effects. A whole new world had been uncovered, a wondrous psychedelic landscape in which anything seemed possible. Obvious to the spirit awakening of Rollins beside her, the woman was feeling a lot less harmonious. Stomping her foot on the accelerator and aiming for a crowd of pedestrians, Rollins’ wonder quickly turned to abject fear. Begging and pleading with his accomplice to slow down and spare the lives of these innocent bystanders, his friend reluctantly moves her foot away from the accelerator, responding to the frontman’s cries with an eye roll.
However, the intensity and horror of the trip had not yet ended. Once again, plunging her foot on the gas pedal, she confronted Rollins with, “Tell me right now why I should not drive this car off a cliff and kill us both?”. Trying to justify your own existence is never a particularly straightforward task, but it is made much harder by the influence of four hits of LSD. Desperately searching his mind for anything that might appease this maniac he had gotten in the car with, Rollins finally blurted out, “I have to finish the vocals on the next Black Flag album”.
This response seemed to appease the demands of the homicidal driver, who promptly slows the car down and heads for home. Now finding himself in the bedroom of the woman, while she ties off her arm ready to inject heroin, Rollins makes the executive decision to escape. Leaping out of the, thankfully first storey, bedroom window, the punk icon begins the epic voyage back to the comfort and relative safety of his bandmates.
Upon bursting through the door, drenched in sweat with no recollection of his journey back from the house of his accomplice, Black Flag gaze in amazement at their frontman. The bandmate who had suggested Rollins embark upon this spiritual quest asks how it went, “It was incredible,” Rollins responds, “but I think I’m still an asshole.”
