-
I go, like, "Why are you driving so fast?
There's all these people up there crossing the street."
She goes, like, "You pussies in Black Flag always talk about
"the end of the world and destruction!
"The destruction starts now!
We're gonna kill all these fucking people!"
[laughter]
[electronic music]
♪
- [laughing, rattling]
♪
- [growling]
- [heavy breathing]
- Welcome to "This Is Not Happening."
I'm your host, Ari Shaffir,
and tonight the topic is psychedelia.
Please give it up
for Mr. Henry Rollins, everybody.
- Like a lot of you you live in Southern California,
in Los Angeles, as do I, and for a few of you,
this is not your native city of your birth.
That's my story, and many, many years ago,
I arrived here in 1981 in the summer,
and I graduated from a military prep school
in Potomac, Maryland, on the east coast
with a--an awful education, 'cause I resisted education.
I just--I couldn't get it.
High on Ritalin for most of the time,
so I was tightly controlled,
yet a-a psycho underneath.
And so I graduated from high school,
and I stopped taking the Ritalin, and my body said,
"Okay, the arrow's been drawn back,
and now it's time to let it fly."
And so I went in through a series of minimum wage jobs
thinking, "Well, that's going to be my life.
"I'm gonna live in a Bruce Springsteen lyric
for the rest of my life."
♪ He's working--
You know, just-- it's gonna be tough.
My feet are gonna hurt and I'm gonna get
really acquainted with Top Ramen noodles.
And right around that time I found out about a band
called Black Flag from Los Angeles,
and they were as angry and as crazy as I was.
I'd hear their music and, like, "Finally!
That's--that's what I'm talking about,"
and they came back to the east coast, and they saw me,
and they said, "You're pretty crazy,"
and I said, "You have no idea,"
because I'm very polite,
and that throws people off.
I say, "Yes, ma'am, yes, sir."
"Are you in the military?" "No, sir."
"Are you a cop?" "Never."
"Then why are you so polite?"
"Ritalin, and, uh, a lot of schooling, actually."
I'm unnervingly polite,
but I'm also capably violent.
[laughter and applause]
So when you do it with a smile someone almost thanks you.
Uh, and so they said, "Hey, you want to audition
to be the singer in this band?"
I was like... [hyperventilating]
"Yeah, yes."
Everything said-- my DNA screamed "yes."
And so I made it, and so I jumped in this van
and I came out to southern California
and I am now running with a group of men
who are older than I am by about five or six years,
and they are the wise elders of Black Flag.
I am--I am the grasshopper.
I am the stepchild, and I learned
to keep my mouth shut, and my eyes and ears open
'cause they knew way more than I did,
and so there's one particular guy in the band
who I was in awe of immediately.
I am in awe of him to this day.
He was an intellectual terrorist.
He's the first truly cerebral person I ever met in my life.
He's not a tough guy.
He does not fight.
He doesn't do any of that.
It's his mind that terrifies you,
and he would have this book.
He'd be always writing in this small book.
He'd say, "Hey, Henry, come here."
Like, "Yes?"
And I'd sit on the floor and look up,
and he'd read out of his book.
[as bandmate] "One day
"we'll give everyone knives and guns
"and let them kill each other off,
"and the people who remain
will be the true rulers of mankind."
[pops mouth]
And you're like, "Really?
How about we just go to band practice?"
But he was so persuasive.
He wore shirts with no sleeves,
so he had the biceps going,
and he had this scuba knife, and he would plunge it
into a can of pineapple...
and he was able to open it just with his...
Like, how does anyone do that?
Like, he's, like, the alpha
and he would stab the pineapple and come out,
and he'd just hand you the blade.
"Pineapple?" You're like...
Thank you.
And he was always really intense,
and one day he looked at me and said,
"Come on, let's go." I'm like...
And so big dog takes little dog, and we're walking--
we were living down in Redondo Beach,
and so we're walking and walking and walking
towards the sea, and we make a left
into some huge supermarket,
and we go right to the meat section
and he grabs a steak
in its cellophane and Styrofoam.
Tears it open.
Rips the meat in half.
Just hands me half of it.
And he plunges part of it into his mouth and he's eating it.
I'm like... And I start eating it too.
The entire supermarket is just silent
looking at these two men... [grunting]
And like, and I'm such a good boy.
I was raised honest.
I worked for a living.
"Well, golly, don't we have to pay for this?"
And, like, alpha males don't pay.
Like, we're on the Serengeti of the South Bay.
We just take meat.
We are punk rock hyenas.
We do not pay.
And if this meat stood still long enough to be eaten,
we deserve to have it.
And so we walk out and everyone's like,
"Yeah, that's okay. Have a great day."
We're like...
"We'll be back later."
And we walked all the way back to SST Records
where we were living and our hands covered in gristle,
and I ate the whole damn thing.
I was that hungry.
And we would go to gigs, and my life was changing
with these, like, these adults who were incredibly intense.
We would go to shows, check out other bands,
and I'm a young guy, I'm looking at all these beautiful girls.
I'm like, "Whoa, there's a really beautiful girl."
[as bandmate] "Go up and talk to her."
Ah, you know, I don't have a line.
I don't know what to say.
"Tell her about death."
[laughing] What?
"Walk up to her and say, 'Hey, my flower child,'
"'before the streets become rivers of blood,
"'let's get down.
Now.'"
You really want me to say that?
"Yeah, go ahead."
And so I took everything this guy said really seriously.
"Come here." Yeah?
"Love is the monster."
Okay, thank you.
Like... [chuckles]
It was like being in a band
with Colonel Kurtz from "Apocalypse Now."
And so everything he said, I hung on every word.
And to this day,
I'm still in awe of this guy, 'cause he hasn't changed.
I mean, his mind is terrifying,
and he's a really nice guy,
but his mind is dangerous!
And so one day
we're at SST Records and he said,
"You know, you should do LSD."
I'm like...
And I am not a drug type.
I'm one of those where I would probably
have a very bad reaction to any stimulant.
I mean, it wouldn't go well.
And so I said, "Well, golly, why should I take LSD?"
"'Cause you're a real asshole...
[laughter]
And it would help."
And since he said it, well, by golly,
I better get some drugs.
And so I go at everything
with kind of a boy scout samurai zeal.
"Well, I better get on the phone
and get into some LSD acquisition."
And so there's one
utterly psychotic, brainiac woman
I knew who did drugs
and I had her phone number, so I called her.
"Uh, excuse me, this is--
"this is Henry Rollins from Black Flag,
"and I'm calling you today.
"I need to acquire some LSD
"and I don't have any money, really,
"so I can only afford a couple of ounces, so--
"so if you could find a dealer
"or some kind of vendor in the South Bay area
"who could maybe trade for a Minutemen cassette
"or a release by the Meat Puppets,
it would--that I can vend pretty easily."
She said, "Oh, I've got LSD.
"I've got LSD I bought from a leper in Studio City.
It's some great shit!"
Well, fantastic.
I need to buy whatever it comes in.
She goes, "Oh, no, no, no charge.
"I'll bring it over right now,
but the only rule is I get to watch."
And I said, "Well, fantastic.
It'll be a date."
And so within 45 minutes of this guy saying,
"Take some acid because you're an asshole.
It'll help," the car pulls up.
She had, like, a Gremlin or something.
Just something that just says, like,
"I'm crazy. This is my car."
And she comes in, I think, with her boots up to her knees.
She just looked like an outtake from "Josie and the Pussycats,"
and she pulls out a small, plastic bag
with small squares of paper.
She said, "Here's a tab of acid."
Well, fantastic. What do I do with it?
So she says, "Put it on your tongue and let it melt."
I go, "Well, paper doesn't melt,
"and at 98.6 degrees, it's--
a carbon-based product, certainly, but--"
She said, "Just hush.
Don't swallow it, and just let it melt on your tongue."
And so after a minute it goes away.
So we wait like 20 minutes, and I'm waiting--
I'm waiting to be on acid.
And she says, "Well, how do you feel?"
I'm like, "Uh, I'm fine, thank you.
How are you?"
And she said, "No, no.
Do you feel high?"
I'm like, "I don't--
"I'm unable to answer that question
"'cause I really don't understand
what I'm supposed to be feeling."
She goes, "Okay, take another."
I'm like, "Well, fine."
Thank you--I thanked her for her generosity.
I took another one.
I know how to let it melt... [hums]
And it melts, and-- and so she said, "And?"
and we've been sitting there for, like,
you know, 30 minutes or so.
I said, "I don't know.
"Feeling okay.
"I feel a little warm,
"but I think that's just the temperature.
"I'm sweating a little.
"A little sweat on my upper lip,
"but otherwise, I don't know.
"Am I high on acid now?
"'Cause I think I'm still an asshole.
So I don't know."
And she says, "Well, take a third one."
And meanwhile, just-- in all transparent--
she's taking them with me,
so we are going one-for-one, two-for-two, three-for-three,
and so now we've waited a long time.
She said, "Does anything seem strange?"
I'm like, "Nope, just spending the afternoon here with you,
"eating bits of paper.
Are you--are you sure this is good stuff?"
Trying to speak in her patois.
And she goes, "No, no, no, I've used this stuff before.
"I saw through walls and Jesus touched me,"
and so she was like, "Let's do another."
Fantastic!
And I figure I'm so young and intense
the acid can't get to me.
That's why.
I'm acid-proof.
And so we both have four hits of acid
circulating through our system, and she says,
"Okay, I'm bored, let's go."
So we get in her car
and we start driving west towards Santa Monica,
and she said, "Are you hungry?"
and I'm, like, always hungry.
I said, "Yeah, I'm always hungry,
"but I don't have any money.
I have, you know, like, three bucks."
And she said, "Don't worry, I got this."
She said, um, "We're gonna eat some hamburgers."
And so we are at an intersection waiting to go into a parking lot
to get the fast food, and I look out the window of her car
and there's a motorcycle parked
right next to me at the red light,
but its wheels are still spinning.
I'm like, "Wow."
I said, "The wheels of that motorcycle are still spinning."
She's like, "Oh, here we go!"
[laughter, applause]
And then she said,
"Acid 101, look at your hand."
"Wow!
I could do this for the rest of my life."
She goes, "Oh, you're high."
And so we pull into the parking lot,
she goes, "Let's go in and get some food."
I'm like, "People, food-- I can...
[gasps, squeals]
And she said, "No, no, no.
Sit, sit, sit, sit. What do you want?"
"A hamburger... [slurring gibberish]
And so she comes back, like, days, eons later,
with this food, and she hands me a hamburger,
like, there... [imitates bang]
and I open up the foil and I look down at it,
and I start eating--I just start smashing it into my face,
and then I pull it down, I just look at it doing nothing.
She goes, "What are you doing over there?"
I said, "I'm eating an infant's head.
I'm eating an infant's head."
She goes, "Wow!
This is great."
And so we finish the meal or something,
and then she says, "Let's go to the beach,
'cause you'll like seeing water."
I'm like, "I'll talk to the water."
And we're driving, and now everything is happening.
You're living next to your own mind.
It's--it's incredible.
And you're like, "Wow, am I breathing?"
I mean, you--it's really a different experience
for a guy who's never done anything more than
three or four Michelobs and promptly vomited.
And so there's those long parking lots
along the shore, a little bit north of Santa Monica
as you get towards Malibu,
and it's a Tuesday, Wednesday.
It's mid-week. The weather is nice,
so it's not weekend traffic,
but there are some people in the parking lot,
and so she starts driving through the parking lots
going north up the coast,
and she starts driving really fast.
I go, like, "Why are you driving so fast?
There's all these people up there crossing the street."
She goes, like, "You pussies in Black Flag
"always talk about the end of the world and destruction!
"The destruction starts now!
We're gonna kill all these fucking people!"
[laughter, applause]
And when she floors it,
you see everyone look up
as they hear an engine screaming in fury
as like a cheap car is being floored
and the engine's like, "I can't really do this...
[squealing]
And you see people start moving differently.
"I'm walki-- I'm running for my life!"
And you see people grabbing kids and picnic items and running.
She's like, "They're just like ants."
I'm like, "This is-- really isn't happening.
"The sky is talking to the sea,
"and the sand is screaming at me,
"and the first Jimi Hendrix album does
"sound really good right now,
"and if I pretend I'm Casper the Ghost,
"I can float out of the car and land as a blue ball,
"and roll all the way back
"to the hovel by the sea where I live.
Please, don't kill these people!"
And she slows down and looks at me like,
"God, you're so lightweight."
Like, "All right, for you
I will kill everyone I can."
And so I'm like, "Okay, okay,
so let's--how about we just drive?"
I'm trying to be sane now rocketing on four hits of acid.
And so we now are driving up in the canyon somewhere,
and it's very, very nice, and we're driving up and up and up,
and then we start driving down
and the speed goes faster and fas--and I go like,
"Shouldn't you be driving a little slower?"
She goes, "No, it's just like a video game."
[mimics engine roaring]
I'm like, "Whoa, oh, this is really dangerous!"
She looks at me, she said, "Tell me right now
"why I should not drive this car
off a cliff and kill us both."
And I'm like, "You know, that is a pretty amazing idea
"because the car will float and we'll live in a different life,
"and we'll call each other as eagles in the sky
"from our vision quest-- No!
No, I don't want to die!"
She goes, "Give me one good reason."
And I'm going through my LSD-poisoned mind
trying to come up with a sane reason
for her not to send the car flying
Thelma and Louise-esque off the--some cliff,
and finally, I come up with it.
"I have to finish the vocals
"on the next Black Flag album, and if I don't finish it,
the rest of the band will be really mad."
[mimics engine slowing]
She goes, "Yeah, I like those songs.
"Okay, okay.
You can live."
And so we come down and I honestly
do not really know where we are at this point.
She just, like, "We'll go to a Zen garden
and we can look at flowers."
I'm like, "Fantastic, flowers."
And so in about an hour and a half, I went from,
"I'm in Black Flag and I hang out with this guy
"who wants the end of the world,
and I'm a--really an intense guy."
and this, like, 90-pound woman
just, like, tried to kill people.
I'm like, "Oh, please, don't kill people!"
Like, you're in Black Flag.
"Yes, but I don't want anyone to die."
And so she's the heavyweight,
and she totally showed me out
for the fairly rational human I am most of the time
where vehicular manslaughter is really not my thing.
And so we go to some garden and look at flowers,
and the flower's, like, "Hey, Henry, how are you?"
They are talking right back,
and it was a wonderful afternoon.
Then we go back to her home.
She lives with her parents, and so, like,
"We're gonna walk by my mom and dad.
Just don't say anything."
I'm like, "But that's impolite."
You have say, "Hello, I'm Henry."
And she goes, "No, your eyes look really crazy--don't worry."
'Cause she's--she's good at taking drugs.
She can maintain.
I'm all over the place.
And so we walk into her house,
and there her two incredibly straight parents.
"Uh, is this your friend?"
I'm like, "Uh--"
And so she puts me in her room and closes the door.
She says, "Sit against the door."
I'm like, "Okay," and I'm sitting against the door.
And I said, "Why am I sitting against the door?"
She said, "To block it if my parents come in.
I'm gonna shoot some heroin to take the edge off."
You're going to do what?
So she ties off and she starts heating up a spoon of heroin.
I'm like, "What, am I in an episode of, like,
the "Serpico" sitcom?"
I mean, like, you're doing heroin, like, wow!
And so she does heroin. I'm like,
"I don't want to look. I don't want to look."
And she goes, "You want some?"
I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no.
No, no, I don't want any heroin,"
and I did something I've never done ever since.
I opened up the window of her room
and just jumped out.
[laughter]
Not even thinking, like, what's below.
Thankfully, ground floor.
I went... the ground was right there.
I mean, the window's here but I kind of went, "Aah!"
Like, 'cause I don't want to be
in a room with heroin
'cause I'm too high on acid to deal with it.
And the most amazing part of this incredible day,
was I got from somewhere in Santa Monica near UCLA,
all the way back to Redondo Beach.
Two public bus rides, at least
with no memory whatsoever
how I got back there.
And I come staggering in to SST
like, I don't know, like 12 hours later
and I come in, I'm like... [groans]
And there's, uh, there's the guy in the band.
[as bandmate] "Hey, how was it?"
I'm like...
"It was incredible!
But I think I'm still an asshole!"
Thanks.
[cheers, applause]
[electronic music]
♪