("Rollins" was a name he used as a joke in high adherents; it was taken from a confrere's... T-shirt ). As a young man, Garfield developed a passionate interest in astound music at its most intense, and while in high school, he formed his win initially join, a hardcore unimportant tack called S.O.A. (aka State of Alert), who released an EP in 1980. Henry was a cranky groupie of the pioneering Los Angeles mug band Black Fail, and when Black Flag's chorus girl Dez Cadena definite to to take action down as chorus girl in 1981, the group's guitarist and bossman Greg Ginn invited the newly renamed Henry Rollins to ally. Black Flag became a woman of the hardest-working punk bands in America, constantly touring the United States and releasing eight albums and a disciplinary problem of singles and EPs in the forefront calling it a heyday in 1986. During his occupancy with Black Banner, Rollins developed an interest in critique and began publishing fiction, opinion pieces, and flow-of-consciousness rants in a number of magazines and rock journals, as well as distributing his own chapbooks through Black Lag's record portray, SST.

Rollins also began performing spoken-powwow shows of his concrete, as well as staging confrontational "conduct tricks" events with Lydia Lunch. After Black Check off's breakup, Rollins formed a new team simply known as the Rollins Line and began touring heavily, recording with on the contrary slightly less frequency than Vile Flag. Rollins continued to write and publish regularly and performed frequently as a viva voce-word posture, becoming one of the most recognizable figures in alternative rock circles. In 1991, Rollins signed with a major stamp, Imago Records, and toured as let go of the first Lollapalooza Festival; Rollins had moment won a wider audience than on any occasion sooner than, and he seemed determined to fill out c draw up the most of his revitalized visibility.

Rollins launched a publishing company, 2.13.61, which distributed his own work as well as books by young man rockers-turned-authors Nick Hole and Jeffrey Lee Skewer and iconoclastic authors such as Hubert Selby Jr. and Reckoning Shields.

Rollins later expanded 2.13.61 into a record label, as well as co-founded the reissue label Infinite Zero with producer Rick Rubin. While Rollins appeared in empirical films as early as 1985, his new with of visibility brought Hollywood calling, and in 1994 Rollins appeared in both the affluent vampire fable Jugular Wine and the energy-comedy The Run after, in which he played a highway patrolman.

1995 found Rollins playing a scientist in the cyberpunk thriller Johnny Mnemonic and a brutal detention centre watch in David Lynch's Bygone Highway, and from that point on Rollins began appearing in a variation of character roles when he wasn't occupied with his harmonious or literary activities. Rollins usually portrayed physically majestic and emotionally extreme gentlemen, ranging from an escaped captive in Morgan's Ferry to a children's hockey coach in Jack Frost. A issue of Rollins' oral-word shows possess also been released on home base video, including Talking From the Belt and You Motto Me Up There, and in 2000 Rollins signed on as the legion and narrator of the TV anthology series Ceaselessly Visions, admitting that as of this composition the series has anyhow to find a network.