Henry Rollins interview

The guys at Dose.ca recently spoke with punk rock icon Henry Rollins. Here are a few highlights:

On whether he gets off on offending people:

"I'm anti-death penalty, pro-choice and, to some people, those might be fighting words right there. I'm for gay folks getting married — and someone wants to slug me just for saying that. But the point I'm making is that if that offends someone, then they can just kiss my ass, and please be offended — get really offended. Put me at the top of your hate list because I love being that — I love being your enemy on that."

On "The Henry Rollins Show", an indie program hosted by Rollins that was spun out of the D.I.Y. originator's monthly TV feature, "Henry's Film Corner", after broadcaster IFC recognized Rollins' potential and diverse opinions:

"When they said, 'We want to take off the leash and give you more,' I went, 'Noooo,' because this never happens to me. People usually say, 'We want Henry,' then I arrive and they go, 'Whoa, we didn't know it would be that much.' That's why I do most of my own stuff myself. … I have my own book company, I do all the DVDs, just so it is what I want — and you can take it or leave it, thank you very much.

"When it's other people's money, it's 'Oh, we didn't want it to be rated R, we wanted it PG, so people can see it.' People always want some watered-down thing they can sell. IFC wants you to do what you want and hopefully that works. And it does."

"My job is to not censor myself, and, thankfully, it's not like I need to watch what I say because I'm not abdicating that you take drugs, kill your kids, hemorrhage the middle-class and take their jobs away or start fake wars in Iraq."

On his other projects:

"I have a radio show in L.A. that I spend way too much time on because I love it; I have a book coming out that will be released whenever I drag myself through the three drafts of the 140,000-word manuscript; the TV show, I do a lot of writing for that, which takes a lot of time; I have a movie starting in May in Moscow that I have to train for; I have a large number of travel trips; I hope to do three more USO trips this year."

On his work with the USO that sees him visiting troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the fact he's strictly opposed to the wars happening there:

"I respect the job they [the troops] have to do — just not where they're being told to do it. My beef is not with war, it's with the Donald Rumsfelds and Dick Cheneys of the world — not with the generals, certainly not with infantry, the guys on the ground. I'm happy to be part of the USO."

Rollins recently announced plans for several ROLLINS BAND reissues throughout 2007. "The first two up will be 'Hot Animal Machine' and 'Life Time'," he said back in November. "Nothing will be different with 'Hot Animal Machine' but 'Life Time' will contain all the live tracks from the original CD release as well as all the studio tracks from the sessions. All these tracks on one CD will be a first. Later in the year we will put out the 'Hard Volume' album and the 'Turned On' album will be remastered and indexed with track numbers. There will probably be some other things from that era coming out as well. We'll keep you posted."