Henry Rollins on Elmore Leonard
And narrating 3:10 to Yuma audiobook.
By: Henry Cabot Beck 09/01/2007
Henry Rollins, the former frontman for the 1980s punk band Black Flag, now hosts a half-hour talk series on the Independent Film Channel. Not long ago, he provided narration for an audiobook featuring three short stories, including "3:10 to Yuma," by Elmore Leonard. Yet the well-read Rollins admits he had never read any works by Leonard before that project.
"I know people who really like him, they wait for the books, like my buddy David Lee Roth [lead singer for Van Halen]. He was the first one to extol the virtues of Elmore Leonard to me more than 10 years ago," Rollins says.
"So they came to me, and I dug what I read, it was really fun. It was almost like Western noir, and I dug it. And I read interviews and stuff preparing myself, and Leonard just said back then, 'this is what they're writing, pulp stuff, and it's what they're buying and I'm a writer and I write for a living.' I loved his very working-class ethic about it. 'I'm a writer, I show up, I write, I go home'—he had no illusions. 'Don't call me an artist, I work for a living.'
"He has real talent, and that makes it easy to like the guy. Kind of gruff but underlying all of that, there's a guy who could really write. And he's still at it. It'd be wonderful to still be engaged at that age."
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