One of the great rock institutions of the past two decades – both for their music and their instrumental role in the rise of independent institution Drag City (their single ‘Hero Zero’ was the label’s first ever release) – Jennifer Herrema and Neil Hagerty’s Royal Trux split in 2001 when the pair ended their marriage.
Since then Hagerty has peddled the lighter, though no less experimental, side of the Trux spectrum through albums with the Howling Hex and solo records like Neil Hagerty Plays that Good Old Rock and Roll, while Herrema, who still practically defines ‘heroin chic’ (she was both addicted to the drug, and became a face for it, in the mid-nineties, when Steven Meisel photographed her for Calvin Klein) plays hard, trad rock metal better than almost anybody around with RTX.
Herrema’s also a writer and journalist, having interviewed John Lee Hooker and Keith Richards (and starting it with a question about ducks to boot) in the past. One of rock music’s most iconic and compelling figures, she recently released the third RTX album, JJ Got Live RaTX. With the band about to tour the UK with Primal Scream, we got in touch with Herrema to talk rock heroes, retro-fetishism and Live RaTX.
When I first heard about the new album [J.J. Got Live RaTX], and I saw the title, I did assume ‘oh right, live album’, but it’s not. It was just recorded live.
“Yes, it is confusing; it’s just not confusing to me, because I know what it means! [laughs] So I forgot about that. And also the pronunciation of RaTX. It’s just like when you say ‘xylophone’, it’s [pronounced as] a ‘z’, and it starts with an ‘x’. So I just assumed that everybody would figure out that it’s supposed to say ‘Ratz’. But, you know, using the ‘x’ in there because it provided an ‘r’, a ‘t’ and an ‘x’. Yeah, it’s kinda goofy, but it all made sense to me, so I was quite certain it would make sense to everybody else, but I just forgot that I would probably need to explain it.”
I do like the energy of the new record.
“Yeah, and that’s a product of us playing simultaneously, as opposed to just tracking in headphones. It provides a lot more energy when you’re all in the same room…”
You feed off each other…
“Yeah.”
Going back to the RaTX name for a moment. Was that a direct response to the whole Western Xterminator thing? [Western Exterminator is an L.A. pest removal company who objected to the use of the name.]
“It’s not any one thing in particular. With RaTX, we had the imagery of the Pied Piper and we had the different rats and stuff on the Western Xterminator album. And then, having to re-title that album, I titled it RaTX, because of the imagery and because it also had to do with extermination. And then, on this one… we got the live… it’s basically, all the rats that were depicted in the illustration on Western Xterminator, and they were going, you know, towards the ocean? We didn’t lead them out into the ocean to drown. We have them, they’re live. [laughs] No, it’s totally twisted in my head, I just have this picture, like, they didn’t get drowned in the ocean, all the rats. And then we’re also the rats, so we’re all like in a cage together, and we have to, like, I don’t know. It’s just a big painting in my head, it all makes sense… to me.”
Are any similarities with RATT intentional?
“The band RATT? No. I mean, we all love RATT. You gotta love RATT. There’s nothing intentional. I was gonna change the fucking name of the band to RaTX and everybody at Drag City [RTX’s label] were all, like ‘no, no, you can’t do that! You can’t do that!’ But I get so sick of saying ‘RTX’, I just want it to be called RaTX. Not RATT, but RaTX.
“And then all the imagery, the Pied Piper imagery and stuff, I just kinda go on a tangent and a path and I don’t know if anybody else in the band even knows what the fuck I’m doing. But RATT the band, we love RATT. RATT is in our subconscious, you know, from early teenage years, somewhere in there. So there’s gonna be an influence, but it’s definitely by no means the only thing up in the noggin, you know.”
Actually, listening to ‘Cheap Wine Time’, I started thinking of ‘Home Sweet Home’ by Mötley Crüe. You know when it kicks in?
“Yeah, yeah. Definitely songs like ‘Home Sweet Home’, all the ballads, like the fuckin’ power ballads? My first try at a power ballad in my own way was on Western Xterminator, and it was that song ‘Knightmare and Mane’. And then, on ‘Cheap Wine Time’, it was that but then the guitar has more of a Mick Taylor style to me. So it was kind of like a combination of the Crüe and the Stones. This is all in retrospect. When we were doing it, we were just doing stuff, and it would sound good, and we were like ‘yeah, that’s it’. But in retrospect you can listen and say yeah, this does have certain sensibilities that completely mesh with things that I love. So yeah, totally into the Crüe.”
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