The last book review I wrote while residing in Oregon appears in the Sunday, June 12, 2011, edition of The Oregonian. Appropriately, the novel considered, Once upon a River, is set in Michigan, where I’ll be living for the foreseeable future. Author Bonnie Jo Campbell resides in Kalamazoo, where I attended college, but that’s not where I’ll be. I’m going back to where it all began for me: where I grew up, where I went to school (except for those undergraduate years), where I met my wife, where my parents and sister live. I’ll continue to remark on writing and related subjects here, but I’ve also started a separate site – Detroit48221 – to document my return to Detroit.
Posts Tagged ‘Michigan’
Michigan & Me
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Bonnie Jo Campbell, Detroit, Kalamazoo, Michigan, Once upon a River, Oregon, The Oregonian on June 12, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Henry Rollins, Heavyweight
Posted in Fighters & Writers, tagged A Dull Roar, Black Flag, Boxing, Detroit Free Press, Fighters & Writers, George Foreman, Heavyweight champion, Henry Rollins, Iggy Pop, Michigan, Muhammad Ali, Rollins Band, Ron Asheton, Rumble in the Jungle, the Stooges on May 4, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Henry Rollins in an interview with a newspaper in my old hometown gave a glimpse of the reason why I included an essay about him in my book Fighters & Writers.
While in Michigan for an Iggy and the Stooges show in honor of late band member Ron Asheton, Rollins in April told the Detroit Free Press of his decision not to use drugs or alcohol:
I’ve always been very ambitious, just trying to get somewhere, and I’ve always been a live performer, making my name onstage. It was never going to be record sales with a guy like me. It’s going to be proving it every night…. Every night is the big one; every single night. So why would you go into a heavyweight boxing match drunk and expect to win?
In a piece called “Rollins on the Road,” I note that the former Black Flag and Rollins Band frontman “maintained a fighter’s physique” into middle age and that he likened his preparation for touring to a boxer’s training regimen. I also mention that Rollins compares himself to the Muhammad Ali of 1974’s Rumble in the Jungle in his book A Dull Roar, where he writes: “The show is George Foreman. I am Ali. I am going to take a beating but I will prevail.” In another essay in Fighters & Writers I point out that Ali similarly attributed his success to never smoking or drinking.
Then again, Rollins in the same Free Press interview also calls Iggy Pop “the heavyweight champion of rock” despite Pop’s rather different approach to living.
