As we had been blown away by the incredibly entertaining show Henry Rollins put on a little less than a year ago at Wacken, we were of course ready to jump at an opportunity to see him again. Sure, we were planning on seeing him at Wacken again this year as he had been invited back, but why stick to one show now that he was also visiting Roskilde with his one-man show of awesomeness?
Rollins had three shows lined up for the Roskilde festival, and the one that fit our schedule the best was his 13:00 o’clock show at the Pavilion stage on the Saturday. Even with so many shows lined up, the Pavilion tent was rather well-filled as we entered shortly before the show would begin, but still managed to find a very satisfactory spot not too far away from the stage.

”I don’t want to dwell on the past, I’ve kicked the past’s ass! Now I want to kick the future in the ass!”
- Henry Rollins (multi-talent)

Shortly after this, the man himself entered, and it didn’t take him long to start talking.
His story began with an old Roskilde anecdote to hook people on – he was talking about the aftermath of the accident in 2000. Here people from the festival had apparently approached his band and asked whether they were still up for playing, or if they felt like cancelling like so many of the other artists had done. Rollins and his band-mates had answered that they were up for it, and that cancelling would only be like putting salt in the wound of the fans. Later however, they were apparently approached by Pet Shop Boys’ tour-manager who scolded them for their decision to play instead of staying in their bus, crying their eyes out like his band was doing. Personally, I think I’m with Rollins on this decision.
Later, he would talk about an unnamed female artist who he was a big fan of, but she had/has a large drug abuse problem, so he always tried to help her whenever he could, and this ended up in the point that drugs of all sorts are bad for you (it sounds more dry written down like this than it actually was at the show), and that you should look at your body like a car, a car that you are stuck with for life so since you can’t get a new one, you’d better pay good attention to the one you’ve got and keep it in tip-top shape!

Even though these things made much sense, it wasn’t all serious though; as usual Rollins also packed a good arsenal of laughing material in his bag, like his retelling of how he had to use a local bus on his trip to Cuba after he got separated from his tourist-group, and how he and the bus-driver tried to communicate with short words as no one of them understood the other. “baseball?” “yes!” “music?” “yes!” and so it continued until the destination, by which time Rollins had made a new best friend, a friend he could absolutely not talk to!
All of his more or less winding stories were in the end tied together with the moral that we should all stay angry (not at each other, but at people and constitutions that try to limit our freedom) and challenge the world around us, go places we haven’t been and explore other cultures we don’t know. Because you never know, maybe just around the corner is your new best bus-driving buddy!

While this all played out, the Roskilde crowd, the mixed bunch of people that they are, where sweating away in the hot tent, but that didn’t stop them from listening engaged to the stories of Rollins and laughing loudly at several points, where such an answer fit in of course.
Also I had a good time again in his company, and I found his performance if I can call it that, to be as flawless as the last time I saw him, but I will still rank the Wacken show higher than this as the stories at that time were more targeted at my interest and my type of audience.
Still, I was thoroughly entertained, and I walked out looking very much forward to re-seeing him at Wacken, to hear what stories he might bring with him there.