Rollins would later join the Los Angeles based punk band Black Flag in late 1981. He had known some of the members through exchanging letters, as well as letting the band crash at his parents home while on a tour of the east coast in 1980. Rollins ended up joining them on stage for a performance of their song “Clocked In”, at a gig in New York. The band, in a transitionary lineup, were so impressed that they asked him to join. He quit his job at Häagen-Dazs and moved to Los Angeles, where he would front the band until 1985, recording six studio albums and touring around the United States and Europe with a number of other legendary punk rock acts.
After leaving Black Flag in 1985 due to boiling over personal tension between him and guitarist Gregg Ginn, Rollins began working on solo material. He released Hot Animal Machine in 1987 as Henry Rollins, an 11 track studio album consisting of both original songs and covers. In the same year, he released the 7-track EP, Drive by Shooting, under the band name Henrietta Collins & The Wife-Beating Child-Haters. These projects became Rollins Band, which gained a lot media attention from MTV and other popular broadcast programs. The band released 5 official albums from their original run of 1987-1997. They gained notoriety in 1994 for the music video of their single “Liar” off of The End of Silence, which was a massive hit on MTV. The band would appear at the Woodstock 1994 Festival, and Rollins would go on to guest host multiple shows on the MTV network throughout the 90’s. After breaking up in 1997, the band would make a brief return from 1999-2003, with a new lineup consisting of the band Mother Superior, and then later in 2006, where he would reunite with the original 1990’s lineup. The band officially dissolved in 2007 and Rollins retired from making music on his own.
Additionally, Henry Rollins began self-releasing literary works in 1984, under the publishing company, 2.13.61, named after his birthday. Rollins has stated he didn’t put much thought into the name of the publishing outfit because at the time he thought he would really only ever release one book. Aside from his own work, Rollins has published the works of Exene Cervenka, Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, Michael Gira, and Jefferey Lee Pierce, among many other alternative music artists. On his own, Rollins has released 42 different books of memoirs, photography work, published diaries, poetry, and alternative music history.
Rollins has also worked consistently as an actor since the mid-1980’s, most notably starring alongside Keanu Reeve’s in the 1995 sci-fi thriller, Johnny Mnemonic, as well as his role in the 1998 film Jack Frost, and cameo’s in Jackass: The Movie and David Lynch’s Lost Highway, among many other roles. On television, Rollins voiced the character of Zaheer in The Legend of Kora, appeared as A.J. Weston in Sons of Anarchy and had his own talk show on IFC titled, The Henry Rollins Show, which lasted for 2 seasons.
I don’t feel like writing this bio section anymore, go look at the guy's Wikipedia page if you really need to know more.
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