It just makes sense Henry Rollins, the famously intense and happily solitary former lead singer of the pioneering hardcore punk band Black Flag and, later, the somewhat less hardcore Rollins Band, would make his home in a bunker-like lair cleaved to a precipitous slope, with no immediate neighbors, in L.A.’s quiet and rustic, though still quite convenient Nichols Canyon.
Once described in Entertainment Weekly as “Punk-rock icon. Spoken Word poet. Actor. Author. DJ.”, and by TV Guide as a “Renaissance Man,” Rollins, now 60, nowadays hosts a weekly radio show on KCRW, runs a record label and publishing company, is a regular columnist for LA Weekly, and performs around the world as a spoken word artist. Along the way he’s had mostly small parts in dozens of films and television programs, including “Johnny Mnemonic,” “Con Man,” and most recently, the animated series “Masters of the Universe: Revelation.”
The multihyphenate musician, writer, performer and businessman landed in Nichols Canyon, between Hollywood and the Sunset Strip, back in 1999 when he picked up a small bungalow for $740,000. He sold the bungalow a decade later for almost $1.1 million but didn’t have far to schlep his books, instruments and ephemera, which by his own account includes the dirt on which the head of his best friend, Joe Cole, lay after he was shot to death in front of their shared Venice home in 1991. That’s because he’d concurrently spent $2.2 million to acquire a new much more private lair just a mile up the canyon that now, a dozen years later, he’s profitably put up for sale at almost $3.9 million.
Jointly listed with Jane Schore of Coldwell Banker Realty and Victoria Silver of Compass, the 4,348-square-foot home is billed as a “private gated celebrity compound” with three bedrooms and four full and two half baths.
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Image Credit: Redfin Imposing iron gates swing open to a narrow, bamboo-lined drive that ascends to what promo materials aptly describe as a “roomy concrete motor court.” Somewhat dour and, to be honest, not much to look at, the house was built in the early 1990s against a towering poured-concrete retaining wall.
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Image Credit: Redfin Also fabricated of steel, the front door opens to a massive, 60-foot-long living and dining space that showcases steel-trimmed textured-concrete walls and exposed steel support beams.
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Image Credit: Redfin A wet bar includes a floating concrete bar top, and a long bank of glass sliders lead to a slender covered terrace with leafy cross-canyon view.
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Image Credit: Redfin The dining area doubles as a library with floor-to-ceiling shelving, while the kitchen is a sleek and up to date with a built-in banquette for informal dining. The nearby powder room is completely, and uniquely lined in dark cork.
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Image Credit: Redfin The downstairs area includes a family room, also partly sheathed in sound-absorbing cork, and two spacious en-suite guest bedrooms, one with a recording booth fashioned from a spacious walk-in closet. All of the lower-level rooms have huge windows with leafy views and polished concrete floors.
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Image Credit: Redfin The uppermost floor offers much flexibility in terms of use. Floor plans show it would be a snap to add one or two and possibly even three bedrooms, though the penthouse-like space is currently configured as a sprawling, multiroom master suite with a fireplace, two bathrooms, and a fitted walk-in closet, plus several more smaller closets.
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Image Credit: Redfin The penthouse-like main suite also includes a concrete-walled gym and not just one but two sitting rooms.
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Image Credit: Redfin Several rooms have heavy-duty steel doors that open to a sun-splashed terrace with canyon-framed views, while a nearly secret exterior staircase nipped behind the master bathroom climbs to a trellis-covered gravel patio notched into the precipitous slope behind the house.
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Image Credit: Redfin -
Image Credit: Redfin