Henry Rollins: “I wouldn’t go back on stage with a band for anything”
Former Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins has clarified his past comments that he has no intention of returning to music. During a new interview, he said: “I wouldn’t go back on stage with a band for anything”. Rollins has generally been inactive in music since 2003, focusing on a career in radio and television instead.
Speaking in a new Q&A interview with fans in The Guardian, Rollins maintained his stance on being in a band, which he outlined in 2016: “For me, music was a time and a place. I never really enjoyed being in a band. It was in me and it needed to come out, like a 25-year exorcism. One day, I woke up, and I didn’t have any more lyrics. I just had nothing to contribute to the form, and I was done with band practice and travelling in groups.”
When a fan asked Rollins what made him step back from making music being a “music obsessive”, Rollins said in the new interview: “I stopped processing ideas in terms of lyrics. One day, I woke up and thought: ‘I’m done’. My manager flipped out, but I’ve never looked back. I didn’t want to become a human jukebox playing old songs, so I filled the space the band took with films and TV and now my shows, my radio show and writing. At this point, I wouldn’t go back on stage with a band for anything.”
Elsewhere, another fan labelled Rollins’ 2018 collaboration on the Christmas song ‘Jingle Bells’ with William Shatner as “fantastic”. Wondering if there are any more musical collaborations coming in the future, the former Black Flag man reiterated the above comment, saying that he’s generally “hung up my shield and sword”.
He said: “Bill called and said: ‘Henry, I really want you to be on this song with me’. I said: ‘Bill, for you, anything’. We’d done a song before. He’s just fun to work with. It was the same with the Flaming Lips in 2009. They’re people I know, but, generally, I’ve hung up my shield and sword.”
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