(Credits: Far Out / Henry Rollins / Netflix)
Mon 9 February 2026 14:08, UK
As proven by neck veins popping out of his neck that you could slice a baguette with, Henry Rollins is a pretty intense guy. That’s something we can all agree on.
However, nobody is as heavy and intense as the psychotic Charles Manson. While it goes without saying that the pair channelled their intensity in distinctly opposite directions, it turns out that, during the 1980s, the pair were one-time pen pals. And we’ve got some of their communications to explore below.
The Black Flag singer was first connected with Charles Manson – the diminutive man who died in prison while serving life for his involvement and orchestration of a spate of murders that sent such fearsome shockwaves through Hollywood that they effectively ended the counterculture movement – after Manson had written and recorded an album.
Music is a fixture in the whole Manson story, with much of the court case centring around supposed recording sessions shortly before the slayings commenced. However, few people expected him to make music once more while incarcerated. Yet, in the ‘80s, that’s exactly what Manson did. Alas, surely it would be deemed too controversial to gain any sort of coverage?
This is where Rollins enters the proceedings. “His attorney sent SST Records – I’m not an owner, I just work there, SST and Touch & Go and every other indie label – a copy of a C90 and a C60 of Manson playing at Vacaville [Prison],” the singer would later explain.
“All the labels passed. SST didn’t. Greg Ginn and Chuck Dukowski said yes to the project. There was no one there to edit it, everyone’s busy. And I said, ‘I’ll do it’. I put on the tapes and listened. It’s good,” Rollins conceded. Now, he went from a duty-bound editor to an interested party.
(Credits: Far Out / State of California, San Quentin Prison / CIA)
But here’s where the story differs depending on your source. Rollins suggested in The Guardian, “He wrote me a letter out of the blue once, and he said, ‘I saw you on MTV, and I thought you were pretty cool’”.
“At the time I was very young and having him write me letters made me feel intense and heavy,” he said. “I’d always know I’d have a letter in my PO Box from him because the woman behind the counter at the post office would give you this awful look. His letters would always have swastikas on them so they were easy to spot.”
However, in other quotes from Rollins, the singer suggests a slightly different turn of events occurred. I suppose things can go a little haywire when the world’s most notorious cult leader is sending troubling letters, in fairness.
By contrast, The Manson Blog quotes Rollins as saying, “I write Charles Manson a very Boy Scoutish letter, ‘I read Helter Skelter in ninth grade so I’m aware of your career,’ I said, ‘I’m your editor and I’ve been working on edits. I’m going to fade in and fade out. I have a 35 minute record. I think it’s good’.”
Rollins continues to shed light on the weird companionship, “I had this correspondence with him that lasted from ‘84 to ‘87. And like I have letters, photographs, maps, drawings, things he’d make me out of yarn. Crazy stuff. But the record got as far as the six test pressings.” Ultimately, it was canned.
The Black Flag singer suggested that the climate surrounding the release was becoming untenable. “Word of the record came out, the LA Times got a hold of it,” he explained. “We started getting the most incredible death threats. Like, ‘Here’s your address and I will cut your head off if you put this record out.’ And, ‘I know you practice here. You live here and you walk this way to practice’. I’m like wow, this is real.”
(Credits: Far Out / MUBI)
By and large, Rollins remained rather unperturbed. “I wanted to put the record out. I said screw these guys – let’s do it. Greg and Chuck cancelled it.” Now, he had a different problem on his hands. The Black Flag singer would divulge that the notoriously unhinged Manson would, naturally, not take the dropping of his record very well.
Given what we know about the role music allegedly played in placing him in prison in the first place, informing Manson of the cancellation was not an enviable position for Rollins to find himself in. Put it this way, they didn’t remain ‘pen pals’ for long.
As Rollins explained, “Manson took it all out on me, like ‘I knew you’d rip me off!’ He called me a bunch of names. I tried to explain the cult politicism of SST Records and our stated station in LA. I tried and he’s like ‘No, you ripped me off. The Beach Boys ripped me off. All you guys…’ – All kinds of language.”
A small note of reconciliation might have followed, but the fracture brought an end to their communications. “I’m like, ‘Charlie, it’s not me. I’m on the label but I’m not the label.’ You can’t explain something like that to a guy like that,” Rollins continues, “The last letter I ever got from him he said okay, we’re cool. And then I never heard from him again.”
While the record is floating around in the ether of the internet, it remains underpinned by he same murky ethics that saw it canned in the first place. Yet, it also fascinatingly dovetails into the lore surrounding Manson and his odd place in pop culture.