Henry Rollins
State Theatre
Sydney, Australia
28 June 2023
Spoken word performances prove to be a powerful platform for artists to speak on various social issues through their own identities, especially when it encompasses stand-up comedy, introspective accounts of experiences and self-deprecating stories about the respective protagonist’s own shortcomings, especially when it comes to a renaissance man like Henry Rollins who has since the mid-1980s consistently honed how he channels his alchemy in captivating audiences for a whole evening by himself.
While I usually make a point of checking in with the chief whenever the opportunity presents itself during travels, it has been over seven years since I had the chance to indulge in Rollins’ unwavering anger fuelled, idiosyncratic, earnest and engaging chatter.
The fact that the man keeps himself busy all year round with a relentless schedule of work that over the decades has branched out into a myriad of media realms paired a sheer insatiable and infectious curiosity and the fact that he uses every opportunity to explore the less travelled regions of this earthround as a solitary traveller, make his spoken word performances never not a meaningful event.
The tour motto, i.e. “Good To See You”, could have not been chosen more appropriately as it proved to be applicable both ways for the artist and this night’s audience, whose frenetic welcome only seemed to charge Henry’s dynamo even further.
The initiated would appreciate how Rollins’ experiences and stages of his career have made him not merely an artful storyteller but a more compassionate man with a wide horizon whose wit cuts both ways.
Having seen him incarnate solo over the decades, it was gratifying to see how he cleverly spins his matter-of-factly yarns and arranges his anecdotes and often insightfully vulnerable musings on the need to be in a manner that not merely connects overarching themes but conveys so much more than mere attitude and opinion in between the lines, thereby making even the most entrenched of his middle-aged audiences susceptible to embracing the notion that painting with a broad brush might be convenient but does little more than perpetrate stereotypes.
Summa summarum, experiencing Henry Rollins and the energizing buzz in the wake of his seamlessly intertwined narratives in the wild is always a night well spent that not merely makes for what feels an intimate experience despite a backdrop of a crowd of 2,000 but feels like a welcome impulse to live life more eventfully and become a better version of oneself.
