Playboy.com: Has anyone ever told you you'd make a great commentator for the XFL?
Henry Rollins: Quite honestly I don't know how interested I'd be in watching a bunch of guys grab each others' butts and chase after a ball all night.
PB: So, it might not be your thing?
HR: No, I never cared much about sports.
PB: Does it feel different turning 40?
HR: No, I'm too busy. I've definitely had some reflections on being more adult and being...not 22, but that's been happening to me since I was 37. Like a lot of guys, you rate yourself on how you rate with women. It's a very Darwinian, natural thing. I know I do.
Let me put it this way: I check out Vanity Fair, and they always have the flat-chested, pouting model that everyone desires. To me, she looks like somebody's kid sister. She's cute. I don't care about cute. I like beautiful. Girls cannot be beautiful. Girls can be cute, but women are beautiful. It's just a different thing, so it makes me wonder about guys my age who go to the titty bar and hit on the 23-year-old stripper. What are you thinking? What's interesting? I'm not saying they are boring people, but I don't have anything to say to a girl that age past answering a question about a book I wrote or something. I wish them well, but I don't want to wake up next to one of them.
That's the kind of thing I'm finding in all the different areas in which I conduct myself. From the way I treat people, to the way I relate to people to the way I think I'm being perceived. It has all changed since I've gotten older. Simple things like when people call me "sir," not because they recognize me but because I have a lot of gray hair. In the last few years I've learned a lot. If you open yourself up to the lesson, there's a lot you can learn.
PB: What was the best age for you?
HR: There are years that stick out, but it's not really my age that made them great, it's just what was happening. I really liked 1980, because I was living in my hometown and there were all these guys like Ian MacKaye making really great music. The punk scene wasn't that big yet, and you knew everybody at every gig. There was a real kindred spirit vibe. It was just a great time to be in music. It's still great but in a different way, so I look back on those days very fondly. I look at all those old photos of all of us jumping up and down being a bunch of jackasses. It was all so new that you knew you were breaking ground and you were on to something. Now, everything's cool, but I've done everything a million times. It's like, "I'm in the studio again." Everything's "again." Nothing's new anymore.
PB: Your new spoken-word record A Rollins in the Wry contains the first two nights of the nine weeks you did last year in LA's Luna Park. You must have a lot of leftover tape.
