Henry Rollins will publish a new autobiographical memoir next year.
Bait Dog Boy is described by publishers Random House as “a searing memoir of a broken childhood and the hope of escaping it” and as “a coming-of-age story with the teeth and truth of a great punk anthem.”
A synopsis of the book reads: “What happens when a child grows up in an almost total vacuum of love? That was the reality for Henry Rollins, pioneering punk frontman of the seminal groups Black Flag and Rollins Band, who came of age in an environment seemingly determined to break him.
“For the first time, Rollins tells the story he spent most of his life trying to avoid, taking us through his childhood and adolescence – from a volatile Washington, D.C., childhood spent shuffling between indifferent parents, to his encounters with a seemingly endless parade of abusive adults, to his eventual meeting with Ian MacKaye, and their ultimate discovery of punk rock, which would become a lifeline. Rollins tells what it was like to live a life colored by the experience of constantly absorbing pain, like a bait dog.
“It’s an unforgettable tale of what it means to not quite fit in anywhere, except on stage: A memoir as dynamic and singular as its subject.”
“I have no desire to be a survivor,” says Rollins writes. “I’d rather accept, absorb, adapt, fight and break that which seeks to break me—to be that which remains.”
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The book will be published on March 2, 2027 by Random House, and can be pre-ordered here.
Rollins has previously written about his experiences in the music industry and beyond in memoirs such as Get In The Van, Smile You’re Travelling, and Black Coffee Blues.