James Parker (1) (1968–)

A very readable book. It's not an exhaustive biography - but it's a great quick sketch of Henry Rollins. Supported by some interviews, you get the pre-Rollins Henry as well as the post-Flag... A majority of the book is spent on the transformation from Henry the Fan to Rollins the HARD!... The last section contemplates the criticism of Rollins for working the system, taking money from the Man and what that might mean in the context of post-punk sellout.

In contemplation of future Rollins - the book was written in 1998 James Parker says:
CUT TO: the year 2003, Henry Rollins in thick-rimmed black spectacles and a loose khaki suit, hosting a cutting-edge TV show that includes live music, heated debate, and intergender arm-wrestling.
Parker was off by about three years. The Henry Rollins Show ran for two seasons on the Independent Film Chanel from 2006-2007.… (mehr)

I suppose I owe congratulations to James Parker for writing a book that I could barely put down. However, the congratulations are due far less for the execution than for taking on the subject matter. Writing an engaging book about rocker-writer-monologist Henry Rollins is pretty easy, because Rollins himself has the can’t-look-away magnetism that is the elusive ingredient of fame.

Rollins’ ineffable crowd pull has become clear to those, like myself, who have kept an eye on Rollins since his time with L.A. punkers Black Flag. Rollins should have ended up like nearly every other marginal music maker, spiraling further into obscurity as fads changed and fans grew up. Instead, the crowds grew, the tickets sold out.

I recall being shocked in the early 1990’s, when I discovered that one of Rollins’ “spoken word” shows was sold out. Here was a guy who seemed to get no press, whom no one I knew talked about, an indy musician, and yet he was selling out a gig where he stood onstage talking and joking for an hour or so. At that moment I realized that my continual interest in reading Rollins—reading the books, watching the crummy films he was in, etc.—was not just a matter of nostalgia for my high school punk rock phase.

James Parker was not that shrewd, then, in spotting a subject that would sell copies of even an unauthorized biography like this one. Though Rollins prolifically records the details of his life, his writing is famously solipsistic and claustrophobic—more focused on immediate feelings than on context and objectivity. Parker needed only to structure Rollins’ life into a coherent narrative, fill in some missing details, and he would have a book that would keep fans riveted to the page.

It is precisely this minimal approach that Parker takes, apparently by necessity. Parker was shunned by Rollins and his post-Flag inner circle. The narrative of the book seems to have been pieced together through correspondences with four or five of Rollins’ former acquaintances, researching articles and interviews, and, of course, researching Rollins’ own written accounts.

Parker’s most talkative interviewees, it seems, were Black Flag roadies and workers at the record label SST during its glory years. The inevitable result is that the book is most detailed about Rollins’ years on the road with Black Flag. Rollins does not graduate from Black Flag until page 205 of the 261-page book! We learn about the van breakdowns, the vicious crowds, and the troubles of an abjectly impoverished band (all of the touring party, it seems, received $5 per day and wore whatever thrift store clothing Greg Ginn’s dad could scrounge.) The extra details give the reader perspective, but readers of such Rollins books as Pissing in the Gene Pool and, especially, Get in the Van, will feel that Parker does not dig very far below familiar details.

What does it mean to charge that Parker does not dig deep enough? Consider this characteristic passage from page 24:

Nathan Stracjek: ‘Ian told me that he offered Henry the job of singing [for the Teen Idles], but Henry wouldn’t do it because his girlfriend didn’t like him hanging around with him so much.’ Girlfriend or not, Garfield [i.e. Rollins] nevertheless became the unofficial fifth member of the group, hanging out at practice, carrying gear, lending support.

This short passage is the first and last time that the reader is “introduced” to this influential girlfriend. Parker says no more about her, nor does he explore the glaring contrast between Henry’s militant skinhead demeanor at the time, and the apparent power that this woman had over him.

In fact, the near absence of women from Turned On is perhaps most revealing of Parker’s shallow treatment of his subject. Women appear again and again in Rollins’ books, as unnamed but powerful players in his emotional life. He pines after them, then hates himself for the power that that gives them. Rollins’ mother, of all people, appears in Turned On as little more than a crash-pad provider on the Flag tour. We learn of Rollins affair with Flag bassist Kira Roessler only in a passing reference to his and her agreement to set aside differences when Kira joined the band.

These sorts of omissions reveal that Parker is less a biographer than a compiler of a detailed chronology. Another example is the revelation that Rollins frequently used LSD during the Flag tours of the early-to-mid eighties. What drew him to it? Why does he not talk about his heavy use of it in the books? What can we learn about the striking contrast between Rollins the publicly straight-edge, health-obsessed road warrior, and Rollins the private daily user of powerful hallucinogenics? Parker leaves so many unanswered—even unacknowledged—questions, that he has practically created an outline for a real Rollins biography.

Actually, Turned On would have been more palatable if it had been written as a detailed chronology. Instead, Parker further mars the work by including longish stretches of purple rock journalist prose. It is the kind of stuff that fans wade through in magazines to get to the interview; padding for too-short articles, perhaps written to make the authors feel like they are doing something with that English degree. An example:

The music tipped and swirled into a violent centrifuge, and Rollins, right in the eye of it, would take a ride out, ranting about going blind on the trail that never ends, screaming ‘BROTHER! BROTHER!’ as if to the shadow self that beckoned him, the vision at the end of the fire-path. (p. 206)

Someone’s been reading his Kerouac again. “Take a ride out?” “The end of the fire-path?” Vague word painting like this may be somewhat evocative, but in the context of a weakly detailed book, it merely adds to the sense that there is little real understanding behind Parker’s words.

Turned On will reward those who have been bitten by the Rollins bug, but whet their appetite for the biography that it should have been. Those who are looking for a good rock biography—not particularly for a Rollins biography—had best look elsewhere.… (mehr)