Henry Rollins explains why ‘Raw Power’ is a Vietnam War album: “I kind of dig that”
Henry Rollins has met the king of rock and roll a few times. Now, I know what you’re thinking—unless the Black Flag frontman spent an uncomfortable amount of his early childhood stationed at the gates of Graceland or, worse, in Vegas, that must be a lie. Au contraire. The whitest, straightest man ever to appear on RuPaul’s Drag Race, the king of rock and roll is (somehow) very much alive and well. He was born James Osterberg in Muskegon, Michigan, but you may know him better as Iggy Pop.
While Rollins and Pop are undoubtedly kindred spirits, there is still a whole lot separating them. They’re both driven by that volcanic, barely controllable punk spirit, yet Rollins finds a way of bending it to his will with sheer force of intensity and discipline. Iggy, on the other hand, just surrenders to the chaos. Snorting, screwing, shooting and snarling anything that comes his way, the only care in the world being how many minds he can blow on stage that night.
They also both have very different relationships with punk’s conscious side. Calling Henry Rollins ‘politically motivated’ is like calling Sabrina Carpenter a ‘bit flirty’. You’re not wrong, but think bigger. Rollins has been political to the point of hectoring for four decades now, and he is not stopping or even easing up any time soon. Surely, this is the complete opposite of Iggy’s wild, untamed hedonism. Why come up with pithily pointed screeds about voter reform when you could holler about being your dog over apocalyptic guitar riffs after all?
Well, if you ask Rollins, that’s selling Pop’s music a little short. Not all political music has to be a Million Dead style soliloquy referencing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. In an interview with Yahoo, Rollins elaborated on this further. He said, “Overtly political music… [is] not usually something that grooves to me. It’s like a lecture with a backbeat, so if it’s too political, while I might respect it and dig it, I can’t play it all that often because it just feels like marching orders to me.”
Rollins knows that the context music is made in often charges it with more political fire than a thousand Bakunin quotes ever could. After all, Hendrix’s cover of ‘All Along The Watchtower’ was the unofficial sound of the Vietnam War without being an explicitly political song. Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Alright’ became the anthem for the Black Lives Matter movement despite being inspired by the hardship Lamar saw in South Africa. Thus, Rollins puts forth a compelling argument for an entire Stooges album being, in its own way, deeply political.
He explained, “To me, a great Vietnam War album is Raw Power because the lyrics are talking about napalm, firefight, ‘Search and Destroy’ — that’s all Vietnam era, and when you do some researching, you see how close to the Vietnam War every Stooges member was. To me, it’s political in a way that’s not necessarily wearing it on a posterboard or jumping into your face. I kind of dig that.”
So do we, Hank. There’s a good reason why Iggy Pop is still as important as ever when other punks that do half the crazy stuff he did get deservedly tarred with the shock-rock brush and forgotten about. It’s because while the stories are amazing, the music is always better. Whether it’s Raw Power, The Idiot or Post-Pop Depression, it’s always raw, vital and most of all, relevant. Long live the king.
