You turn 50 this year. In 1990, you wrote “When She Turns 50,” which is similar in spirit to the Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty-Four.” How has your view of 50 changed since you wrote that song?
When we were first signed and exposed, we were relatively old. But now that you look at it, we weren’t old. You know, mid-30s is not old, but we were old by rock standards. Now you got people in rock trying to keep themselves looking young, and they look like fucking ghouls. I dyed my hair for a year when I first started going gray, then I said, “Fuck that.” It was just tempting because you start thinking people aren’t gonna dig your music anymore. Rock music is for kids, so maybe they won’t want an old gray-haired guy looking like Kenny Rogers. Then I realized that nobody gives a shit. If you do give a shit, fuck you.

The fourth installment of your literary magazine/collage book, Eat, recently came out. You’re obviously good at doing them.
I’m getting better, man. I’ve always done collages. I mean, you do collages when you’re in elementary school, your teacher would make you do all that shit. But I’ve just gotten better at making collages that look almost like a painting or a photograph, where you put different images from different photos together and it’s hard to tell that it’s not one photo, that it’s not one image. So I guess that has to do with contour of images and spacing and color and everything, and I’m getting better at that. In Guided by Voices, we would have happy accidents and we would have mistakes and we would have noise and we were able to get by with mistakes. We made so many of them that it became part of the personality of the band. Now I’m able to do that with my collages, like say I glue something on, an image that I don’t like, I’ll just tear it off and the tear mark is still on there. It doesn’t matter, it kinda looks cool like that. So it’s good that you kind of become an artist where mistakes are accepted. It makes it easy on you.

You’ve always had a reputation as being sort of a control freak. Do you think with age you’re becoming less concerned?
Yeah. I’m less concerned. I’m lazier. I’m older. And I’ve found that I’ve been lucky enough to meet and work with people who really have a good grasp of what I want. I can just say, “Do it, Todd,” and he’ll do it and it’s amazing. There’s only been a couple times where I said, “I don’t know about that.” What Todd sends me back, a lot of times, it just blows my mind away, it’s so much better than I expected. So it’s like Christmas and I’m afforded the luxury where it’s like listening to my songs almost for the first time. But you’re right in that I’m older, and I’m not so worried about how perfect it is anymore anyway. I kind of like the fact that when it comes back it’s slightly different than I thought it would be. I like that element. You mentioned that I’m known as a dictator, a tyrant, a control freak, whatever. Which is true, but I’m allowing Todd to come up with ideas. I kind of did that with Guided By Voices. I really said, “OK, here are the songs, let’s practice them, but give me some ideas, do what you wanna do.” And a lot of times people did, a lot of times people stepped up to the plate. Other times, people just came with nothing. People had the opportunity to come up with ideas. I think I was a control freak in the fact that I had to write all the songs. And that’s OK, isn’t it?

It’s your band.
It’s my vehicle. So if you want to write songs, come up with your own band. In the early days, I didn’t do that quite so much. I had some people, I let Toby (Tobin Sprout) have songs. Toby had good songs, and Doug (Gillard) had good songs. But if you notice on some of the earlier stuff, it would say, “R.Pollard, Mitchell, Fennell, Toohey.” But for the most part, I’d be making a song up in the room and Kevin Fennell’s tapping his fingers on my guitar or something and getting credit for it. There were a few people, I won’t mention any names, who came to me and complained like, “Man, we deserve songwriting credit because we came up with the bass and drums or guitar of whatever, and we deserve credit.” So what I did then was I said, “Fuck it, I’m gonna write all the fuckin’ songs.” There’ll be no hassle over who wrote the song anymore. I’m writing them all, there’s no “I wrote this, he wrote that.” Just get it straight, all songs will be written by me, so that’s what it will say on the record.

Similar with Nirvana. At first Cobain was giving the other two guys credit for everything and then—
He fucked himself.

—when he realized how much money came back to them and said, “This is the way it’s gonna be, take it or leave.”
Exactly, because you know he fucked himself. You want people to get paid and you want to share the wealth, but you don’t want to unnecessarily give up large portions of money to people who don’t deserve it. I could go on and on about that, too, man. Like not mentioning names, but I’ve been roped into shit, especially in the early days.

What else do you have coming up musically beyond the two Merge records?
Well, the Circus Devils’ record (Sgt. Disco) just came out. I heard that it’s getting shitty reviews. That’s funny.

That’s my favorite of the Circus Devils records, though.
Yeah, I think it’s good. Todd was kind of worried, he said, “You know, man, they say the same thing every review. Another bunch of half-baked shit by Robert Pollard.” I said, “Why don’t you get another lead singer, man?” [Laughs] Of all the people I know who’ve had time to spend with this Circus Devils record, Sgt. Disco, they fuckin’ love it, man. I think it was Spin that really ripped it, but this guy might have had 10 CDs that he had to review by the end of the month, and he’s not gonna spend much time on a 32-song Circus Devils CD with noises all over the place and crazy shit going on. After a certain point, you just can’t let it bother you when you put out as much shit as I do. The guy’s right!

Do you think you’ve become more reclusive since GBV ended?
I was kind of reclusive, anyway. Always have been. Even on the road, I’d hide, come out onstage, then party in the dressing room, and that’s it. You know, get the fuck outta there. It’s funny because they had this (show in Dayton) called Heedfest. This one guy told my wife, “I wish you wouldn’t have come here. Because with you around, Bob doesn’t hang out the way he used to.” That’s fuckin’ crazy, man. We just partied before the show, we played the show—which is the party and takes three hours—and after that, I’m fuckin’ spent. I go home. I’ve always done that.

When did you get married?
About 4 months ago.

What was that like?
We just saw the mayor of Clayton and she married us. Just a little 15-minute ceremony with no one there. I already did the big wedding thing, and my wife, she knows that. Sometimes I go, “If you really wanna have kids, I’ll get a reverse-vasectomy.” And it’s gonna suck because my vasectomy sucked. When I got a vasectomy, my nuts got swollen up to the size of like a football. Two footballs, two big purple fucking footballs. It put me on the couch for about three months, I had to take a leave of absence as a teacher. The doctor was freaking out because he thought I was gonna sue him, which I was thinking about. They were trying to think of a way to get it out of there, the blood and whatever else was in there. So he would make an incision underneath my right testicle and then he would get up in the chair and put his knees and all his might into my balls and try to squeeze shit out of them—I was fuckin screaming, man. The nurse was looking away and shit. That was the first squeezem and I had to go back for a second. “Back for a second squeezing” is a lyric (in the GBV song) in “Girl Named Captain.” So I had to go back and he had to do it again and it just wasn’t working, and finally I thought I’m gonna die. The first night, when they first got all big and shit, I was lying on the couch and at two o’clock in the morning, I couldn’t sleep, and All In The Family comes on and fuckin’ Meathead was getting a vasectomy. When I’d go downtown to the doctor, I’d get out of the car, and the only way I could walk was hunched over, duck-walking and holding my nuts. My wife at the time would walk way ahead of me brcause she was embarrassed. That went on for about three months, and I thought “I’m probably gonna die.” But eventually, [the swelling] went down and then the task was to see if I could cum again. And so the only way to do that was the obvious way and I could and everything was OK.

How old were you when that happened?
It was before anybody knew about Guided by Voices, so I must’ve been in my early 30s.

Did they ever figure out why that happened?
I think the guy hit an artery, man. The doctor said there’s no payment because he’s afraid I was gonna sue him. So once it was all OK and healed and everything, he sent me a big bill. And I said “Fuck you,” and they never pressed it. I asked him, too, after the vasectomy, “What can I do? What are the precautions?” He said, “You just gotta put a little ice on it and take I easy.” And I said, “Well, what can I do tonight? Can I drink?” And he goes, “Yeah, you can drink. It’s no problem, just don’t run or jump around or anything.” So I go to this guy’s house and we’re watching the football game and I’m drinking a beer and I’m with (friend) Gibby, who’s taking [Quaaludes] and we’re getting fucked up. We’re sitting there and all of a sudden, you can see my pants rising, and I’m going, “Aw, fuck, I’m dying.” So we gotta get in the car, Gibby’s driving and he’s on [Quaaludes] and I’m dying. So Gibby’s driving and I’ve got my left hand on the wheel and he’s got his right hand on the wheel, trying to drive, and a cop pulls up, and I go, “Fuck it, man. If he pulls us over, I’ll just show him my nuts, and he’ll escort us to the hospital.”

Did he pull you over?
No, but I said, “Don’t worry about it Gibby. If he pulls us over, he won’t be checking you for anything because I’m gonna show him my nuts.”

So you went to the hospital?
No man, I went home and just hit the couch, yelling and shit. At first they just started swelling, they weren’t purple or anything. So I was finally able to sleep a little but, but then the next day, I got up, and there it was. Fuckin’ looked like a box turtle.

Is it true the Monument Club (the name Pollard came up for a loose collection of longtime drinking buddies) no longer exists?
All the guys I used to hang out with, that’s over with. There was a falling-out with people vying to get backstage when we opened for Pearl Jam last year. I thought everybody could get backstage, and the people who didn’t got all pissed off. So there are six or seven members of the Monument Club who haven’t spoken to me since. You know who I’m hanging out with now? Guys who went to high school with my son. I’m hanging out with a bunch of people in their mid-20s, but I’m glad they do because I got somebody to drink with. I just think it’s funny; my wife is 27, and when we started dating (four years ago), there were some problems with the difference between our age, like, “Goddamn, man, you’re robbing the cradle.” I was actually looking for someone my age or at least closer to my age, but 45-year-old women don’t come to my shows.

Congratulations on becoming a grandfather.
Thanks, man. But I’m never gonna make mature music. I’m going to make albums, and it’s gonna sound like it did when I was a fucking teenager. My voice might change a little bit, but not the spirit. Because I really don’t know how to do anything else.

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