LOS ANGELES (TNA) – Henry Rollins is in a talkative mood, and that’s a good thing, because he’ll be doing a lot of talking for the next few months.

Rollins is getting ready to start a nationwide spoken tour that he is calling “Provoked: An Evening Of Quintessentially American Opinion Editorializing And Storytelling,” that begins September 14 in Flagstaff, Arizona.

It’s not easy speaking off the cuff to an audience for an entire show, but that’s basically what Rollins does for a living. To a point.

Henry Rollins continues to provoke.

“There’s no rehearsal,” Rollins said. “If I gave you an hour to speak, I’m not going to let you go away for an hour to rehearse the hour. That said, I do prepare. For instance, when I go to a country, I’ll get some back story about the history of the place. I do some studying, but I don’t alter the information.

“Other times, I’ll research statistics. If I’m talking about why abstinence-only sex education doesn’t work, I’ll have statistics from the Centers for Disease Control. However, I don’t talk in front of a mirror practicing the show.”

Rollins doesn’t mind rehearsing, per se. If he’s going on tour with a band, he realizes the need for the musicians to get tight, but feels comfortable enough speaking extemporaneously that he can let things flow.

“I do have a set list of what I’ll talk about, but I don’t work out the segues,” he said, comparing his spoken word shows to jazz, rather than the punk rock which introduced him to the world.

“It’s completely jazz. It’s like Coltrane’s 55-minute version of ‘Afro Blue’ from the ‘Live In Japan’ album. He’s improvising all over the place, but there’s a spot where he plays something that tells the band where it’s going to end.”

Rollins says the improvisational approach to his spoken word shows keeps things fresh for himself and the audience.

“During my last spoken word tour, I discussed my trip across Russia on the Trans-Siberian Express,” Rollins said. “One audience might hear about the isolation I felt riding in basically a metal box for eight days straight without talking with anyone who spoke my language. Other audiences heard about how I dared to eat the food that some angry woman offered me on the train and how I vomited with great force.

“People who might see one show might say to someone else who saw another one, ‘Did he talk about the puke?’ ‘No, he talked about the isolation.’ But, in both cases, the show was about being on a train.”

This tour, Rollins may or may not talk about puke, but he will definitely talk about his experiences on the USO tours where he entertains the troops.

He admits that while he’s happy to talk politics while in the U.S., he leaves his opinions at home when he’s talking to the troops.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to flex your positions when you’re what the troops refer to as ‘in country.’ I don’t think they’re fighting the same war that we’re talking about back here.

“Plus, do you really need to remind a guy in Baghdad about war?”

Rollins says the decision to avoid talking politics with the troops isn’t due to a lack of desire on his part. He simply feels that laughter is a better gift from home.

“For instance, the story about puking in Russia is a good one,” Rollins said, adding that the response he gets from the soldiers is gratifying.

“You get thanked a lot. They don’t care who you are, they fly soap opera stars there!” Rollins said. “They don’t know who you are, but it’s more interesting than what’s in their hooch. It’s something besides playing videogames or watching DVDs.”

Rollins has enjoyed the experience and has even made friends with some soldiers.

“I get letters from soldiers, and their appetite for books is huge. They’ll ask me to recommend 10 books. One guy e-mailed me that he ordered all the books I suggested from Amazon and they had just arrived and he was excited to read them all.”

Besides the USO trips and the upcoming tour, Rollins is rolling on with another gig, “The Henry Rollins Show,” which airs Friday nights on the Independent Film Channel.

The show allows him the chance to interview celebrities like Penelope Cruz, Samuel L. Jackson and Steven Tyler, and gives the celebrities a chance to talk about things besides their latest project.

“It’s not about plugging products, although I will mention their latest projects a couple of times to keep the publicists happy. I like ‘hitting them where they ain’t,’ to use a baseball term, making them be spontaneous.”

That means when Cruz appeared on the show, Rollins asked her about her Spanish films with Pedro Almodovar, not her relationship with Tom Cruise, and he asked Tyler about the difficulties of renewing his relationship with kids after not being there for so many years.

The most surprised celebrity was Samuel L. Jackson, who was shocked that Rollins knew he had been an usher at Martin Luther King, Jr.’s funeral.

“He was shocked and speechless that I knew those things about him, and that I wanted to talk about equal rights,” Rollins said.

All this work makes Rollins busy, but despite his talkativeness, you won’t hear him complain.

“Being in too much work is a blessing,” he said.

Wireless Flash News Service contributed to this report. 

 

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