At 46, Henry Rollins' raging starving artist gives way to world citizen

When talking with Henry Rollins, anything is fair game, and you better be ready to keep up.

The former Black Flag frontman has made a living out of continually reinventing himself. He's overcome a challenging childhood, was a driving force for one of hard-core punk rock's seminal bands and later evolved into a prolific spoken-word artist and author while simultaneously starting the Rollins Band. He has recently added hosting "The Henry Rollins Show" on IFC, the Independent Film Channel, to an already long résumé and doesn't show any signs of slowing down any time soon.

In the span of a very quick 26-minute phone call, we managed to cover some extensive cultural real estate in a blitzkrieg discussion about his recent trip to Iran, U.S. media coverage of the Iraq war, youth worship and how much his worldview has changed since his days in Black Flag. The conversation got really interesting when Rollins proposed a few prophetic ideas about combining executions with Super Bowl half-time shows and Tiger Woods' birthday.

Q: So how was your recent trip to Iran?

A: Well, I had gone to Iraq with the USO and that was very ... (hesitates) ... interesting, then I took a trip on my own to Iran just to look around and that was a really good time. It's a lot more peaceful in Iran than in Iraq in the present time. I met a lot of interesting people, and I was able to walk around the city without feeling like I was in any kind of danger. That was really cool. I went because all I hear in the U.S. media about Iran is that they're going to kill us all, and our lives are all in grave danger. And that may be true, but I'd like to think there is more than one story out there. So that's why I went.

Q: Were there any misconceptions challenged by what you saw or heard during you trip?

A: I think the Bush administration really wants a war with Iran or something that ends ultimately with us against them and with America's safety at stake. And the media seems to be going along with that.

It very well may be true that Iran has a plan for us all to die. I'm not a fan of [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president], but I know that usually the government is one way and the people are another and the last time Bush said a country — Iraq — was a threat, it turned out not to be true. Now when he says another country with oil that is right next to Iraq is a grave danger, I just can't go along with that so willingly, so easily. So that's why I went to check it out.

I went just as a tourist on the street. I have no great intelligence or in-depth knowledge of a classified nature. But I saw a bunch of people with their kids, and I met a lot of people who like America very much but are also scared of America and its president. And I hope I get a chance to go back there.

Q: Is it really as hard as Americans seem to make it when it comes to understanding another culture or what is really going on in the Middle East?

A: It doesn't have to be. It's how much an administration or a president or the media wants to allow you to know. They can give you full disclosure. You can get a film crew into Iran. There's a lot that can be told if the media and the current administration chooses to let the country do so. That's all it really takes. You can get a film crew into almost any country, and if you can get a film crew into North Korea you can get into anywhere else.

Q: During one of your show's commentaries you spoke very passionately about the democratic power of the Internet. Do you think most people use it in more of a positive or negative way?

A: There's good and bad with the Internet. Part of the good is that you can get to certain places that you might not be able to access. Someone who might not like to pull down a big moldy book off a library shelf won't be turned away from educating themselves when they're just a point and click away from the information and learn a thing or two in the comfort of their own bedroom. The accessibility is the good part.

The downside is that it allows you to be a voyeur, or possibly, a liar. If you're a 41-year-old man being a 15-year-old boy trolling for teenage girls to meet at shopping malls, then it's a whole other nightmare. With any kind of freedom comes responsibility. It allows people to not investigate that much and to draw conclusions at only a cursory glance. There are [online] polls like, "Should Paris Hilton go to jail?" Why do you want to waste your time online with that? There's tons of junk food for your mind on the Internet. You can sit there for three or 10 or 20 hours a day getting in online arguments with other people who also choose to waste their time. You really have to pick and choose.

Q: How important is music today when it comes to activism?

A: There are a lot of benefits happening. A lot more musicians are weighing in on the war in Iraq. And a lot times they're quickly dismissed by the right-wing media who say, "Oh, he's just a guy with a guitar, what can he think?" The same thing happens to people in Hollywood. If Barbra Streisand has an opinion, all of a sudden she's an idiot and you need not listen. These are people who get in front of microphones anyway and this is America and this is a democracy. Barbra Streisand is very happy to get in front of 30,000 people to talk about her beautiful voice, but when you throw something like the Iraq war on the table, priorities change no matter who you are.

Q: In some of your spoken word you take the self-effacing perspective and show an ability to laugh about getting old. Any thoughts on the youth worship in our culture?

A: There's nothing much I can do about being 46 (laughs). I'm not trying to be 22. But what I think happened was that a long time ago the clothing marketers were trying to figure out who was buying their stuff and asked themselves, "Who's the audience?" And I think they figured out the demographic that has the most liquid cash, the person who says, "I'm going to buy something I don't need at the mall this weekend." That's the person you want if you're selling bluejeans. Because, let's face it: You don't need bluejeans because you're already wearing something to the store when you buy them. You already have clothes. So you don't really need another new pair of bluejeans.

And it's not usually the parents buying; it's the kids who have an allowance or a part-time job but are still living at home, Generation X, Y, Z, or whatever they're calling it these days. And once the marketers figured that out, that's who they aimed all the marketing at. And if you walk down the streets of New York and look at all the ads, it's all boys and girls who weigh about 90 pounds in clothes. There's nothing being marketed to me. At least with spam, I get ads for mortgage loans and Cialis. ...

I just remember 10 years ago not seeing it so much. ...

Q: So you think the marketers have refined the intensity toward that demographic?

A: Absolutely! You're not going to sell my mom an iPod — and I like my iPod very much. But go to any middle-class neighborhood where there's a high school and say there's 800 kids. How many of them do you think have cellphones? Probably about 500. And how many of them really need cellphones if they live six blocks from home? What is the substance of their conversation? They're texting each other from their classrooms. It's not like they need the cellphone because they lost their leg and need help.

Q: With Black Flag you went to extremes to express your dissatisfaction with what the culture back then was feeding you. Do you get any kind of sense that the youth culture today is using music to express the same sort of feelings you did with Black Flag?

A: When I was in that band we were at odds with contemporary culture. We had religious groups protesting the shows and sometimes the city legislature would come down to do a press op and tell the Channel Seven News why this person was bravely closing down the show for the good of the city. And then the news guy would have the club owner say, "Oh, I'm the mucky muck in Wherever, Ohio, and I'm closing this show down." He'd then point to us and our gear and that would mean for us to get the hell out. That kind of thing would happen up to a day a week.

And so now I see what I was doing back then — and getting a great amount of grief for it — on a T-shirt that you can buy at an extraordinarily high price being consumed by 15,000 people a night at the Megadome. So times do change. What does change is when the major industries smell a buck on the same thing that was once wrong and make it OK. And that is the bottom line. Anything in this culture that stands still long enough eventually becomes OK if a person can derive an income from it. Eventually pay-per-view public execution will happen and it will be half-time entertainment. We'll take the next Timothy McVeigh and (broadcast) his execution during the Super Bowl or an inauguration or some other major event or maybe Tiger Woods' birthday — some other kinds of National Day of Concern or Importance.

Q: What's the biggest change in how you viewed the world back then to how you view the world now?

A: I see it as a smaller place now because I've been across more of it. As a young person not getting fed all the time I was concerned with the next meal, the next show, meeting a girl if I could — the basic young man's concerns in a starving, hard-working music band. Now as an older guy who's sailed the seas, I kind of look around at everything in a perspective of places being seven to 30 hours away from me. I view it as I can get to Calcutta in 30 hours.

All the travel and study of other cultures has made the world much smaller and my role in it much smaller as well, which has given rise to a feeling of civic responsibility, an idea of doing something for someone other than yourself. That never would have really occurred to me when I was broke or to a young person who is missing meals. When I was young it was "me, me, me" and as an older person it's become "us, us, us."