Henry Rollins, Who Is Not a Comedian, Discusses His New Stand-up Special

Despite self-consciously avoiding the comedy tag in the past, Rollins isn’t a stranger to it. He’s long used humor in his spoken word shows, but usually to lighten a mood that can otherwise get very heavy. “The way I register information quite often the funny parts occur to me,” he says. “However I’ve never wanted to call it comedy because I talk about stuff like when you’re in South Sudan, pulling dead soldiers out of the soil—not funny!—so I need the room to talk about that stuff without some guy yelling at me ‘hey you’re not making me laugh every seven seconds, what are you doing in this club.’ So I would never dare call myself a comedian.”

Here’s how it came together. A few years ago Rollins’ agent told him Showtime was interested in filming one of his spoken word sets to air on the premium network. A network executive had seen Rollins do a set at a festival, one that was shorter than his typical spoken word show, and wanted to basically put what they had seen straight on the air. So they shot two performances that were both a little bit over an hour, and as typical with stand-up specials, edited the two together into the best possible hour-long. And today, six months later, Comedy Dynamics has released it for wider consumption.

Still, he staunchly avoids calling himself a comedian. Part of it is respect for true professionals and the years of hard work it takes to master stand-up, but part of it is his own anxiety over that kind of performance. “I’m around comedians,” he explains. “I see that kind of pressure. I wouldn’t want it for all the money in the world. Like if you put me in a comedy club and said go, I wouldn’t know what to do. I’d have to hope that my ‘thing,’ whatever that is, would get me through.”

Keep Talking, Pal might not be true stand-up, per se, but it’s obvious that Rollins could have succeeded if he had pursued a career in comedy. His timing might not be that of a world-class comic—if you’ve heard Rollins talk before, you know that his words flow out in torrents, which is good for story-telling (and interviews) but not always optimal for landing a punchline—but between his strong presence and his impatience for society’s bullshit, he’s got the “speaking truth to power” part down pat.

Rollins might self-consciously avoid the “comedian” tag, but he isn’t entirely modest about his comedic instincts. “This is going to sound really lame,” he says, “but it comes naturally to me. I’m not saying I’m a natural comic, but comedic beats, that’s a lot of time how I see life. So I’m not trying to be funny but it ends up going there pretty often, and more often the older I get. And that very well could be—and you’ll see when you turn 60—you start to let go of some things. Where you’re not necessarily as self-absorbed or precious about things. Once your hair goes and everything hurts, you’re like, okay, screw it. And so you can loosen up a little. I think that has been part of my particular aging process, where if I see a bad review of something of mine when I was 20 I’d need to come over there and straighten you out, now, honestly, I laugh my ass off.”

Keep Talking, Pal is available on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play and elsewhere.

Garrett Martin edits Paste’s games and comedy sections. He also writes about music, travel, food, theme parks and more. He’s on Twitter at @grmartin.