Henry Rollins Curses “Friendly Australians” Who Nearly Blew His Cover In North Korea

Ask Henry Rollins any question at all and you count on one thing: his answer will never be boring. When asked where we find him at this particular point in time, the musician, actor, world traveller, spoken word artist, television and radio host replies, "I'm in Los Angeles. I'm in my office. It's Sunday evening at 17:22 hours."

Muhammad Ali passed two days before our chat and Rollins admits the late boxer/activist has been on his mind "all weekend". "He was my favourite American - my favourite living American - just 'cause he was the bravest person I never met. I mean, forget the boxing - that's all just, you know, great; but what he said and the fact that he stood up to a very racially harsh America with no hesitation, and with great articulation and bravery that I hope I never have to be called upon to have. You can't thank him enough and it's amazing no one put a bullet through that guy 'cause, you know, he would've been in line." Rollins puts Ali in the same league as the late Martin Luther King ("he was like that, but bolder"): "he didn't come on with the niceties of Dr King; he was way more pugilistic, if you will. And the fact that, you know, [J Edgar] Hoover didn't get him assassinated? I mean, he is a miracle.  

"You can't thank him enough and it's amazing no one put a bullet through that guy 'cause, you know, he would've been in line."

"And sadly, I don't think America got as much from him as they could have. We should have listened more. I would like to think I got it, but I would like if more of my fellow Americans really got a lesson from him. Like, for instance, my father - who is 90 and I haven't seen him for, like, 30 years. But my father never spoke his name. After he became Muhammad Ali? No. And I remember as a little boy on the public bus coming home from school, in the back of the bus there's two white men arguing and I just heard someone murmur the words 'Muhammad Ali' and then, really loudly, a guy said, 'You mean Clay? You mean Clay?' And the guy yelling 'Clay!' was PISSED OFF! And I was, like, you know, 11 or whatever and I'm like, 'Wow, a fight's about to start and they're fighting over Muhammad Ali!' 'Cause I was a young person when he became Muhammad Ali, I kind of know him as Muhammad Ali, but when he changed his name and said no to Vietnam and, 'No Viet Cong ever called me nigger,' which is a quote of his, guys like my father - you offended my dad down to his DNA. And so there's people that he made lifelong enemies of, like, my dad - I don't know the guy, really, but I'm sure if he's still alive, you say, 'Muhammad Ali' and he'd say, 'Good riddance'. He's what my dad would tell you is part of a problem in America."

When he's not touring, Rollins loves to travel, which he refers to as "achievable magic" in one of his must-read LA Weekly columns. "It's interesting, you know," he ponders. "If you wanna be a world traveller and be an American, you have to carry the mantle of decades of very iffy foreign policy. Like, when you're in Iran, you're an American; you're partially responsible for Operation Ajax... you know, getting [Mohammad] Mosaddegh deposed - the Prime Minister of Iran. They see you as, 'Oh, yeah! You're related to people who are not so cool'. And it's a tricky, nuanced performance being an American in Middle Eastern countries, in any Islamic country, no matter who your president is. And I've done that through three administrations now."

"They were like, '[Puts on a pretty impressive Aussie accent] Hey, Henry! How ya garn?' And my tour guide, who was feigning bad English, he went from 'Uh, Henry, hello,' to, 'Why do those people know you?'."

Technology enables Rollins to file articles from remote destinations the world over and he marvels, "From the edge of the Antarctic Peninsula I made my deadline at the LA Weekly!" It was emailing images and writing from China that proved "the trickiest", he enlightens. "I had to sit outside a frozen yogurt store that left their internet on and hide from the road, 'cause if the Chinese police see some weird tattooed Westerner sitting at 4am with a laptop, there's no way they're not coming over to say, 'Hey man, what are you doing?' And I can't say, 'Waiting to be first in line for yogurt'. And so I had to find a way to basically bounce the images back to my office and from the office to London."

Rollins is especially "careful" when travelling through Central Asia having been "watched almost every day" during a trip to Burma "last year or year before last". "When I was in North Korea, any time I left my hotel room I was being checked out," Rollins tells. "I was being evaluated, absolutely. You just have to keep your story straight, because I can't be a movie actor, rockstar, or whatever I am in North Korea. I was brought in there; my visa said 'business man'. And my tour guide immediately said, 'Whaddaya do for a living?' And I said, 'Um, I'm a book editor,' which is true, I edit my own books. 'And what kind of books do you edit?'

"'Really boring ones,' which is a fair assessment of my written work," he teases. "But an hour later, he asked me again. I'm like, 'Oh, I see, you're a detective; you're looking for my story to change'. And being kind of prepared for that, and having spent some time in Iran where the same thing happened, I was ready." Even though Rollins was "grilled", he "smelled it a mile away". "And I kept my story straight," he continues. "But one of the only things that screwed me up, in North Korea, was Australians. Thanks a lot! Because there was an Australian tour group there, so they were like, '[Puts on a pretty impressive Aussie accent] Hey, Henry! How ya garn?' And my tour guide, who was feigning bad English, he went from 'Uh, Henry, hello,' to, 'Why do those people know you?'

"And I was like, 'Wow!' And when we were walking up to the Joint Security Area - that blue room where the north and south meet - I went up to one Australian and I said, 'Look, here's my problem: I've got these guys breathing down my neck, you guys are being friendly Australians who know who I am, can you please have a word with your fellow Australians and just pretend you don't know me for the rest of this trip and I'll see you in Sydney, or wherever you live?' And they're like, 'Yeah, no problem'. And I basically walked next to a guy, with my back to my tour guide, and pretended I wasn't talking to him. And he said, 'Yeah, I got it,' and I just kind of walked away from him like I wasn't talking to him in the first place. And he talked to his people and they all calmed down. It was, you know, tense; it made me nervous."

After acknowledging 2016 has been "a rough year for people that a lot of people admire all over the world dying", Rollins revisits Ali. "When a guy like that goes, you know, you had stock in him, you invested in what he was and so part of you goes away too. And it just shows you that you have humanity; that someone you don't know can have an effect. And it's inspiring! It makes you maybe wanna be that for someone else."