Henry Rollins: Regarding Henry

Iron-pumping rocker/poet/publisher/actor Henry Rollins takes us on a tour of his home (where only überbabes and employees may normally enter) and refuses to discuss the acting talent of Keanu Reeves.

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Right now, if he felt like it, Henry Rollins could beat the crap out of me. Possessing the strength and rage to pummel a stranger at will, Rollins emotes jockish brio that sucks all attention toward him as he greets me in the shallow foyer of his Hollywood home. His black hair bristles at military-style attention, his chest is as big as a supermarket and his biceps bulge as if they've been stuffed with peach cans. Serious tattoos emerge from the edges of his black gym shorts and matching T-shirt, and occupy the larger part of the available surface of skin.

As we enter what I assume will be the living room, an advance cassette of Helmet's noisy new CD is blasting with the sonic force of twin 747s revving on a runway. Rollins, best known as the incendiary leader of the thrashing Rollins Band, though performing on-screen as well--currently in a meaty role opposite Keanu Reeves in Johnny Mnemonic--kills the sound and slips into a story about a careless reporter from Miloch Maker.

"This asshole wrote that I am a recovering heroin addict," he says. "And that's a lie. I ran into him at the Paramount Theater a couple of weeks ago and confronted him. I said, 'Man. I should fuck you up.' He was definitely scared. He thought he was about to get hurt. He asked me if he should leave the country. But I controlled myself. I know full well that if I punched out a midget like him, he'd sue me."

I try to decide whether I think Rollins actually would hit a reporter. Hollywood is a town full of phony tough guys. "When you're pissed off, you can probably be a pretty intimidating guy," I say to him.

"Worse than intimidating," Rollins tells me, locking his gaze into mine.

"How much worse?"

"People go to hospitals," he says, slowly spacing each syllable to be sure I understand. "It has happened. The last time I got into a fight was two years ago in Germany. I knocked a guy's tooth out, broke his nose, put eight stitches in his eye and got arrested by the German cops. I just meant to back him up, but I busted him up."

I have to admit, Rollins definitely knows how to break the ice with a journalist.

Obsessed with work and working out, Henry Rollins lives in a house that is a hive of productivity. The room I'm in, where a bona fide living room ought to be, is his office. It's a big open room with a wooden desk, lots of computer equipment and a professional quality sound system. The rest of the floor (where someone else might have a dining room or a den) is given over to desk space for the employees of Rollins's video/publishing/record companies. Under the 2.13.61 imprimatur (the numbers are his birth date), Rollins has published around 16 books, including eight of his own.

Given that Rollins spends most of the year not here dealing with the business that passes for his "home life," but out touring with his band, I can't help wondering why on earth he decided to bum-rush the movie business. "For the money," he replies with the kind of bluntness that you won't hear from the industry's biggest whores. "But instead of using the paychecks to buy a Ferrari, I buy software and publish books. It's like taking Satan's dollars and turning them into little angels. It's punk rock. It's totally subversive."

In order to give an idea of where his head is at, Rollins tosses me a title that his company has published for Alan Vega, the long forgotten vocalist of the proto-punk band Suicide. As I thumb through the lavishly produced tome of drawings and song lyrics, Rollins explains, "Alan's an artist that I respect, so I gotta treat him like a million dollars. How many of these books will we sell? We'll be sitting on them forever. But you think his book will not get published? Fuck you. That's why I am after the dough. To me, this book is a blow to the empire. It's about kicking against the pricks."

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