PLAYBOY: Let's get to the heart of the matter. Are you, Simon, an asshole?

COWELL: [Laughs] Well, I don't think I am. But based on public opinion, yeah, I am. If half the people think I'm an asshole, then I'm half an asshole.

PLAYBOY: What does the other half think?

COWELL: People say, "I like your honesty," or "I like the fact that you're not politically correct." To be truthful, I don't think I'm an asshole. To me, an asshole is someone who pretends to be nice in public but is a complete monster behind the scenes.

PLAYBOY: So you're no more of a monster in private than you are in public.

COWELL: Funny enough, I'm quite polite in real life. I don't tolerate rudeness to people like waiters or stewardesses.

PLAYBOY: You certainly don't seem polite on American Idol.

COWELL: Well, if I tape an 11-hour day, guess which 20 minutes end up on the air. Not the bits when I'm pleasant but the parts when I'm obnoxious.

PLAYBOY: When people see you in public, are they rude to you?

COWELL: Normally they want me to be rude to them. People come up to me and sing, and I say, "That was great. Thank you." And they're like, "Well, aren't you going to be rude to me?" No. "Well, can you be rude to me?" No! When I miss auditions, contestants get upset that I'm not there, because they expect me to be cruel to them -- it's some sort of badge of honor. That's how crazy everything is.

PLAYBOY: Maybe later we'll sing for you, and you can tell us what you think.

COWELL: You really want to do that? You don't really want to do that.

PLAYBOY: Why not?

COWELL: Because I've spent so much of my life sitting in talent meetings, thinking, What the hell am I going to say at the end of this? You know, about 15 years ago I was going to work with Eddie Murphy. He was interested in making a record, so I flew to the East Coast, to his huge house, and I was very intimidated. I thought it would be just the two of us and a hi-fi. But I ended up in a recording studio with about 20 nodders; a nodder is somebody who gets paid to agree with the person paying him. Eddie started to play some songs, which I hated, and I just didn't know what to say. Now I'd find it a lot easier. I would just say, "I hate it."

PLAYBOY: How's your voice? Can you sing a little bit?

COWELL: Absolutely not a note, no. I'm what's called flat.

PLAYBOY: But your mother has said you have a great voice.

COWELL: [Laughs] She was being sarcastic. I mean, she knows I can't sing.

PLAYBOY: Is sarcasm a family trait?

COWELL: If I'm comfortable with somebody, I'm happy being sarcastic and poking fun. It's a sign of affection.

PLAYBOY: Okay, so you can't sing, and you don't produce records.

COWELL: No.

PLAYBOY: You don't play an instrument or write songs. Yet you've made a fortune in the music business. What's your specific talent?

COWELL: That's a very good question, actually. My talent is for creating things the public will like. I'm an instigator. I come up with an idea, put it together and engineer the process creatively.

PLAYBOY: Most music executives do that. What sets you apart?

COWELL: An understanding of what a mass audience will enjoy. I get that. I would watch or listen to most of the things I create. I use my own taste as a benchmark.

PLAYBOY: Do you think other executives get caught up in chasing music that's cool or innovative?

COWELL: In TV, film and music there's a lot of snobbery, and I don't like it. If I don't like French food, that doesn't make me a lesser person.

PLAYBOY: So your taste is very mass-market.

COWELL: I think so, yes.

PLAYBOY: And that's not calculated. It's your natural taste.

COWELL: Yeah, it's my natural taste. I mean, look, I'm 47 years old. You can't pretend to like caviar if you hate the taste of it. It's the same with what you listen to and watch. But I'm lucky I have very broad taste.

PLAYBOY: Can you give us some examples?

COWELL: If you looked in my collection of DVDs, you'd see Jaws and Star Wars. In the book library you'd see John Grisham and Sidney Sheldon. And if you look in my fridge, it's like children's food -- chips, milk shakes, yogurt. I don't have sophisticated tastes. I have average tastes.

PLAYBOY: So this is your asset in looking for talent: You have average taste.

COWELL: I think so. I've never been a cultural snob. Like I said, if I went to a French restaurant -- which I probably never will again -- I would ask the chef to make a plate of chips. I look at those menus in utter horror. I find them appalling -- pigeon, the insides of animals, all that weird stuff. I can't stand it.

PLAYBOY: You don't like to try new things, do you?

COWELL: I'm a big fan of most things retro. I like watching Fantasy Island and The Jetsons, stuff like that. If I were to buy three albums, they would probably be by Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin and Tony Bennett. I work in a business in which you're supposed to create new things, but I have no problem saying I don't like much that is around me at the moment.

PLAYBOY: How much of the music on Idol do you like?

COWELL: Once a week I may enjoy one or two performances, at most. I'm not sitting there lapping it up like Paula Abdul. [laughs] I'm not saying, "God, aren't I lucky to be paid for listening to these wonderful singers?"

PLAYBOY: In your autobiography you say, "I'm always right." So we'll remind you of a few times you were wrong. You said Clay Aiken would have the longest career of any Idol performer.

COWELL: That was when I knew a little less about Clay. What we saw on the show and what we see today are two slightly different people. I thought he could have had a career as long as Barry Manilow's.

PLAYBOY: What changed since you said that?

COWELL: Oh, there's been so much stuff in the tabloids about him.

PLAYBOY: You mean rumors about his being gay?

COWELL: Look, if someone's gay, who cares? I couldn't care less. The fact is, tabloid coverage affects a large chunk of his fan base. When he was on the show, he was a very clean-cut guy, an underdog. That will always work for the middle-American audience. Now when you mention Clay, all that other stuff comes out, and that will affect his popularity.

PLAYBOY: You also said that Tamyra Gray was a star.

COWELL: I still think she is.

PLAYBOY: Not as of today, she isn't.

COWELL: She's got an amazing voice. She put out a record that wasn't good enough. But if Tamyra had been given songs as good as Kelly Clarkson's, she'd be selling a lot of records.

PLAYBOY: Who is your favorite American Idol singer?

COWELL: Well, I love Fantasia. And I love Tamyra. In terms of pure quality I love Kelly. I said a few unkind things about her after she refused to allow her songs to be sung on Idol, and I stand by that. But Kelly's really one of the top five singers in the world today. This girl is a young Aretha Franklin.

PLAYBOY: Judging from what you said on the show, it's surprising you haven't mentioned Carrie Underwood, who won season four. You told her, "Not only will you win this competition, but you will sell more records than any previous Idol winner."

COWELL: I was looking at Carrie purely from a marketing perspective. We needed a nice, cute, blonde middle-American country crossover artist that year, and we got it.

PLAYBOY: So while you judge the contestants, you think about which one can most help the show.

COWELL: Of course. If they're not successful on the back end, there's no point in doing the show. I'm looking for the person who will sell a lot of records, because then the show will have more validity the following year.

PLAYBOY: Does that mean sometimes the best singer doesn't win?

COWELL: I think the American audience has pretty much gotten it right every year. Tamyra was the one instance when I felt disappointed. I would like to have seen her compete with Kelly in the final. It would have been well matched, whereas Kelly versus Justin Guarini was just a ridiculous mismatch.

PLAYBOY: Did you see the movie they did, From Justin to Kelly?

COWELL: No, I couldn't bring myself to watch it. I was dead against it.

PLAYBOY: Do you think it was made just for money?

COWELL: Yeah, I mean, there was no other reason.

PLAYBOY: Have you been offered any film roles?

COWELL: I did a cameo in Scary Movie 3 and realized I can't act. The money was good. Normally I'm very confident; I'm in my environment, looking at everybody, going, "Ha ha, you don't know what you're doing." Then I was the one who didn't know what he was doing, and it was just mind-blowingly embarrassing. Any role I'm offered now, forget it. Not interested.

PLAYBOY: You think Clarkson is fantastic, but in your autobiography you say Bob Dylan is earnest and boring. To you, is Clarkson better than Dylan?

COWELL: Do I prefer Kelly Clarkson's music to Bob Dylan's? Yes. I've never bought a Dylan record. A singing poet? It just bores me to tears. And I've got to tell you, if I had 10 Dylans in the final of American Idol, we would not be getting 30 million viewers a week.

PLAYBOY: But is the show only about getting 30 million viewers? Isn't there a point when you think, It would be great to discover the next Dylan?

COWELL: I don't believe the Bob Dylans of this world would make American Idol a better show -- and that's no disrespect to Dylan. Good luck to you; you're very talented. Just not my thing.

PLAYBOY: If you went to a club tonight and saw the 21-year-old Dylan singing "Blowin' in the Wind," what would you do?

COWELL: I'd plug my ears and run in the other direction.

PLAYBOY: In 1995 Robson & Jerome, one of the first acts you signed, were a pair of actors who had sung the Righteous Brothers song "Unchained Melody" on a British TV series. You were just looking to cash in quickly on their fame.

COWELL: I knew thousands of people were trying to buy the record, so I put the record out. It was as simple as that. It made a lot of money, they made a lot of money, and we're still friends today. No, we didn't go into it with a 20-year plan.

PLAYBOY: Did you think the Undertaker was going to have a career as a singer when you signed him?

COWELL: Oh God, no. That was just my being a businessman. If you can sell 82,000 stadium seats, chances are you're going to sell a few hundred thousand records alongside that.

PLAYBOY: Lots of other executives would be embarrassed to sign a professional wrestler, the Teletubbies or TV actors. Why are you different?

COWELL: I'm interested only in making money, for myself and the people I work for. I mean, that's absolutely the only criterion I attach. That's it.

PLAYBOY: Your only interest is money?

COWELL: That's the only thing we think about: Will it make money? And not just for us -- for the artists as well. Let me tell you, artists are as interested in making money as we are. They're not donating their money to charity, trust me.

PLAYBOY: What do you do with all your money?

COWELL: Mainly buy houses. I have four. I love houses.

PLAYBOY: Are you extravagant? Is that T-shirt particularly expensive?

COWELL: No, it was probably $100. The jeans were probably $200. My extravagances in life are cars and houses. I take only one vacation a year.

PLAYBOY: Okay, we know a guy who's a murderer. And this murderer has a pretty decent singing voice....

COWELL: [Laughs] No!

PLAYBOY: But you thought about it for a second.

COWELL: No, I didn't! I was laughing at the question. No, I'm not interested in signing murderers. Other people sign murderers.

PLAYBOY: Who signs murderers?

COWELL: I think a lot of rap acts have murdered people.

PLAYBOY: What if a murderer could make you lots of money?

COWELL: Look, the truth is I don't need to do that.

PLAYBOY: Okay, today you're incredibly rich. But imagine this----

COWELL: You haven't forgotten about the murderer, have you? You're not going to let this one go.

PLAYBOY: It's 1994. You haven't had a hit record yet. You have the chance to sign a murderer with a nice voice. Do you sign him?

COWELL: Manslaughter I may consider. Murder I think I'd have to say no. [laughs]

PLAYBOY: What was your reputation in the mid-1990s, when you began having hits?

COWELL: People thought I was stupid for signing the music rights to the Power Rangers and the World Wrestling Federation. I was a laughingstock.

PLAYBOY: Did you mind that you were a laughingstock?

COWELL: Oh, I couldn't have cared less. I was learning the business. If I could put a Power Rangers record on the charts, I must have been good.

PLAYBOY: Let's talk about the history of Idol. You guys had a terrible time selling the show in the U.S., didn't you?

COWELL: We sold Pop Idol to the U.K. on one meeting, which is rare. The meeting lasted 20 or 30 minutes, and within two minutes we'd made the pitch and were told yes immediately. It was that easy. When the show was in production, we thought it was the right time to do the same thing in America. We flew to L.A. and had five or six meetings. I was expecting the same kind of reaction we'd had in the U.K.

PLAYBOY: "Simon, you're a genius!"

COWELL: Well, yes. It was a mistake to have those meetings before the U.K. ratings came in.

PLAYBOY: Even UPN passed on American Idol. What worse indignity is there?

COWELL: I thought the whole thing was quite amusing, to be honest with you. Because the meetings were so bad, I quite enjoyed the fact that everyone hated the idea so much. I was kind of laughing and sniggering and making the meetings last as long as possible before we'd actually get thrown out.

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