The performer Henry Rollins said no one will ever beat: “One of the most brilliant I have ever seen”
No one goes to a rock and roll concert to hear the same thing they’ve heard on the record. Some bands might make a living out of pulling off insane feats that should only be limited to the studio, but the best rock acts tend to be at war with each other and with the audience whenever they storm onto any platform. And while Henry Rollins never took any prisoners whenever he performed, he found out the hard way that there are some people that no one can hope to touch on the live stage.
But giving it one’s all is exactly the mentality that Rollins was brought up with. The entire ethos of punk was about creating that chaotic energy and levelling it back at the audience as fast as possible, and even when he toned things down to a slower tempo with Black Flag, you could still hear the intensity of his voice whenever he sang songs like ‘The Swinging Man’. That was Black Sabbath by way of Minor Threat, but Rollins never saw his craft as strictly making heavy music.
It was about having a certain passion whenever he went onstage, and that came from watching everyone from Ozzy Osbourne to Jim Morrison to understand what being an entertainer was about. However, whereas ‘The Prince of Darkness’ had a little bit of regard for everyone else’s well-being when he was playing, Iggy Pop was looking to leave every single audience stunned whenever he played with The Stooges.
Pop may have had the intellect of four different rock stars at once, but he knew that no one was going to listen to him if he didn’t go for the throat, so why not go all out? From mutilating himself in front of the audience to shoving his bandmates across the stage, Pop is as close to Taz from Looney Tunes as any human can possibly get, and while he served as an inspiration for Rollins, the Black Flag knew to stay the hell out of his way.
Because if there’s one thing everyone should know about Pop, it’s not to provoke him. Anyone can try to give it their all, but after Rollins trained for months on end in an attempt to outdo Pop, The Stooges frontman pulled out all the stops when they were on the same bill opening for The Cure, from climbing up on amplifiers to cutting himself open to kicking out all the lights to having a handful of kids destroy the stage.
Rollins already had played within an inch of his life, but after seeing the virtual warzone left onstage, he had to admit defeat, saying, “He gets to the last song. He’s alone onstage. Sweaty, blood, [and] built like a brick shithouse. He grabs the guitar player’s guitar which is still on which is feeding back. It was one of the most brilliant things I have ever seen. He walks by me, sweating and bleeding from the corner of his mouth, and goes ‘HAHAHA’, and you realise you’re never going to beat the master.”
And to this day, Pop hasn’t let go of that reckless spirit. He knows that rock and rollers don’t want to hear something standard, so if they’ve listened to the same thing a million times, it’s better to leave them with a show they’re going to remember, whether that involves smashed stage lights, sceaming vocals, or some of the most savage sonic assaults anyone had ever heard since the psychedelic age.
Rollins never claimed to be one of the best performers to ever walk the Earth, but that’s probably because that title has already been taken. Freddie Mercury might have a greater stage presence, and The Beatles may have had more classic songs, but Pop will forever be one of the first people who got their point across with pure muscle whenever he played.
