Henry Rollins

It's been a while since we saw you last. Well, I try to not come to Australia too often because I don't want you to get tired of me. We performer types need to be careful. Also, I cannot come to your town and do a repeat: in order for me to justify a tour I need three-to-five working hours of all-new working material, and since so much of my material comes from travel, that's how I've got to get it. I gotta go out into the world and bring it back to you, like a retriever bringing the dead pheasant to his master's feet for your inspection and approval.  

So the shows are that structured? They've always seemed very free-flowing... As free-flowing as maybe you've seen me perform, and it looked like I was just kind of out there, pulling it from the air, that is not how I do it. A whole lot of preparation goes into that "Oh, hey, this just happened" kind of attitude. In fact I go out fairly pre-loaded with everything I want to say in the order I want to say it. I know the ideas I am going to bongo beat on for an amount of time.

Any particular rhythms for this tour? A lot of the information on this particular tour, at least in America, has a lot to do with freedoms of speech: bits of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address and different American documents, which I have committed to memory. And there is a whole lot of my normal storytelling from all over the world, as well. But all of these tours are all the same in that it is memorisation, a definite flow that I have determined works well together, that brings you back around to the front, and hopefully lets you off two hours later enjoying the ride in disbelief that you sat still for that long.

Presumably for much of your audience, even back home, that'd be their first exposure to the US Constitution. Yeah. I carry a copy in my backpack. To read all 27 amendments would probably take you about half an hour: all of the amendments are a paragraph in length, some are a single line. So it's not a lot. I got this stuff under my cap, because so many Republicans in America talk about how Obama has lit the Constitution on fire. And years ago I started taking an interest in the Constitution when Democrats started saying the Bush administration was lighting the Constitution on fire. I think that is kind of what you do; you accuse the other side of not paying attention to the Constitution.

Much like the Tea Partiers are doing at the moment? You know, I think if you could find the first ten of them they'd be nothing like the people who have run in and are calling themselves Tea Partiers seven months later. I bet you that the first 500 Tea Partiers were not holding signs with swastikas on them, or pictures of Barack Obama with a bone going through his nose. They were people who said, "My government is not listening to me. Where did my job go? What's going on with my paycheck? What are my tax dollars doing exactly?" And all of these are legitimate queries that people, Democrat or Republican, could have. What you see at these Tea Parties now is people who are freaking out because they've got a non-white president. And I am sorry to paint in such a broad brush, but it's racism by and large.

It's that blunt? They are infuriated that a black man is reshaping America. I saw the dancing around it, and I think that is [the US] not wanting to believe that we have that many damn racists in our country, but unfortunately we do, and I am ashamed. I love my country and I'd love to think we've knocked the damn gills off our neck and kicked off our primordial twitching tail, but we apparently have not. Are these people a sizable chunk of America? No: they are a small, very angry, very vocal, lunatic fringe – and they inspire other people to act out on their fear and ignorance and their uncertainty.

Do you feel you have a duty to inform as well as entertain? Absolutely. In America I absolutely feel the need to inform, and that puts me in a position of coming off as being very strident. But to take this lying down, to take this hypocrisy and this hatred and brutality lying down in my America, I will not. And during the Bush administration with his fake war in Iraq, you're damn right I was vocal protesting against it. And I am very vocal in my protest against Barack Obama keeping Guantanamo Bay open and keeping the American military presence, not only in Iraq, but upping the troop force in Afghanistan. He and I are in great disagreement about that.

Is there any blowback? Yeah, there is the occasional death threat via email.

Seriously? Uh-huh. Rarely signed, but I get them. And I am not the one advocating violence; I am the one advocating healthcare and everyone getting a shot at having a life. I'm the one preaching less rifles and more schoolbooks. I don't lose any sleep over it. Because they're maybe a good shot, but you know what? I'm a good shot too. Andrew P Street