Jennifer Herrema of RTX

If Patti Smith is the first lady of rock’n’roll then Jennifer Herrema is the genre’s nuke-toting secretary of state. For over a decade her uniquely decadent, sleaze-drenched vocal-style fronted the peerless Royal Trux, possibly one of the most wildly experimental rock outfits of all time. Since the demise of the Trux she has gone on to form the lean, mean RTX (imagine Faster Pussycat jamming Beefheart tunes inside a jet-engine and you are getting close to their chrome-plated sonic aesthetic). They have just released the excellent album JJ Got Live RaTX and are currently over here on tour with Primal Scream, so we figured we’d catch up with Herrema to talk Schwarzenegger, Guns’n’Roses and why rock drummers and salvia just don’t mix…

Dazed Digital: Do you think there is going to be a massive resurgence of overblown sleaze rock?
Jennifer Herrema: Probably not for another five years, and I’ll probably be bored of it by then, but yeah… it’ll come around. When grunge came along, everybody was like; ‘Okay, well this is the sound now,’ but those rock guys had some great fucking chops. We are bringing it back to that musicianship in RTX. I mean, we’re not a tribute band, but we are a band that pays tribute.

DD: Do you think rock’n’roll is in your blood?
JH: I don’t know. My dad was a rocker and I grew up on stadium rock and hardcore, but that’s like nature or nurture… I don’t think you can just fall into it, though. Everything happens for a reason. Past is definitely prologue.

DD: What do you make of Chinese Democracy?
JH: I first heard that record two years ago and it sounded so much better, now it sounds like shit, dude. Axl just got lost. I remember with Use Your Illusion, he was always talking about Elton John and pianos and shit, and y’know… I like a mixed bag too, but it’s all so fucking compartmentalised.

DD: How about American democracy, do you believe in the whole Obama thing?
JH: I’m kind of stoked that the president’s a black guy, but things move so slowly in politics – it will probably be a hundred years before there’s any palpable change. You’ve got to be careful too. I mean, I did the research and he shouldn’t have been allowed to run for President because he’s not an American citizen. You’ve got to be careful with that because… well, I live in California, and you know that motherfucker Schwarzenegger wants to be President! Things just move slowly…
I heard about that stuff over here with the BNP addresses being given out and all of them turning out to be cops and shit, well, that’s America… everyone all enmeshed.

DD: Is it fun to be over here with Primal Scream?
JH: Yeah. Those guys are animals live, and there’s always stuff going on, connections and ideas and such. Mani is totally crazy – he came backstage with his 12-year-old son and was like, ‘You have to drink down a pint with the band!’

DD: What’s your favourite Scream album?
JH: I don’t have any of the records.

DD: Do you still get pretty far out yourself?
JH: I still smoke weed and I’ll eat mushrooms but no acid, no ecstasy…

DD: I guess your brains can get pretty blown out after a while…
JH: (Laughs) Yeah…  all over… I mean, our drummer was smoking salvia and he went straight through the glass door of his shower. He couldn’t play on the album because he had to recover.

DD: Jesus… have you ever been to Burning Man?
JH: Nah, I couldn’t handle it…

DD: You totally could…
JH: Well, my sister and her husband go every year but… I could go for a day maybe, but not a week. It’s all that communal stuff – this camp and that camp and whatnot… and those guys are just beyond. They are like cyber crusty hippie motorheads right?

DD:It can be pretty far out, one year I was on acid and this old guy was dancing with this human skeleton in front of me – I figured he was maybe one of the Merry Pranksters…
JH: (Laughs) Really? Shit. Nah… I’m not going…

DD: Can you ever see yourself calming down and doing something more laid back? Thurston Moore did that acoustic album recently…
JH: (Laughs) What, when I’m Thusrton’s age? Devendra Banhart did a bad thing because he started making all these people act like idiots! Sonic Youth are fucking crazy dude, I get in trouble for talking shit but I don’t know why they are even still making records… y’know? Something about it just stinks… major labels, marketing, people all enmeshed… I don’t know. When Royal Trux were on Virgin we had a big bus and all that… and I didn’t really want it. I mean, for this tour, our guitarist is driving the van… he had to learn to drive on the wrong side of the road and shit.

DD: There’s a lot of industry strings pulled behind the scenes with a lot of bands – I guess what you see isn’t always what you get…
JH: Yeah… I saw this film about The Clash the other day, and they would get Mick Jones to disappear and not be at some gigs and whatnot – y’know, just to get the audience wondering. We would never do that. There’s no band identity crisis going on here.

JJ Got Live RaTX is out now on Drag City Records
Listen to the opening track from the album exclusively here...