Jennifer Herrema: my rules of cool

The Black Bananas singer, formerly of Royal Trux, has been keeping it real for 25 years. From starting a band at 16 to styling centrefolds for Playboy, she shares her experiences

Sheltering behind heavy fringe and sunglasses, Jennifer Herrema is hungover. Last night, she and a couple of friends went to London’s Soho Theatre to see comedian Adrienne Truscott, who delivers her act about rape culture, Asking For It, naked from the waist down. Even so, it was Herrema who managed to make a spectacle of herself. “This usher was like, ‘Madam, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,’” says Herrema, in her unmistakable drawl. “We were just laughing! It was absurd. This woman just hated me, I don’t know why.” And she cracks up and takes another glug of beer.

Jennifer Herrema is what, in rock’n’roll terms, you might call a lifer. Aged 16, she formed her first band, Royal Trux, with guitar-hero boyfriend Neil Hagerty. Over the next 14 years the pair got hooked on (and kicked) heroin, signed to (and left) Virgin Records and, in their home studio built with major-label money, made a string of demented and innovative rock’n’roll records including 1995’s Thank You and 1999’s Veterans Of Disorder.

Royal Trux split in 2001, whereupon Herrema formed a new band, the hard-rocking RTX, which in turn morphed into her current group Black Bananas. This month, Black Bananas release their second LP, Electric Brick Wall, a riot of scuzzed-up hair metal and digital-funk jams. A model for Calvin Klein in the 90s, today Herrema styles centrefolds for Playboy and co-runs the fashion label Feathered Fish, though, as with music, she’s never been a fashion insider. “I was never a model model,” she drawls. “I can only do myself.” But she does it expertly. How has Herrema kept her edge over the years? She lets the Guardian in on her secrets for staying rock’n’roll.

1 One person’s trash is another’s treasure

“When I first moved to California, I got arrested, had to do community service. Up at five, cleaning the riverbed, pulling out all this crazy shit. One day, one of the kids brought this black bag up to me, dripping, and it was full of black bananas. They hadn’t been squashed, just sat on the bottom of the riverbed forever. And that’s when I wrote the song Black Bananas [on RTX’s 2007 album Western Xterminator]. Found shit is the best shit. At the end of every day I’d have this stuff I found and be like, ‘I’m taking this home.’ That’s the way I make music, too. It’s collage: put one thing next to another, mould it into something personal.”

2 Pay homage but don’t be a pastiche

“That’s important. My music is certainly an homage to all the music I’ve been privy to hearing. I used to get a lot of shit because some of the influences that were maybe coming up stronger than others – like Rush, Mötley Crüe – were not cool, verboten. But recently people were telling me the Portishead chick is doing Black Sabbath, the chick from Dead Weather covered Pentagram the year after I covered Pentagram; everyone is suddenly doing metal shit. I was just like, ‘Oh, this shit was not cool, now it’s OK?’ Fuck all y’all!”

3 The look is important

“Royal Trux had been on a couple of music magazines when [photographer] Steven Meisel got in touch and asked to shoot me for Calvin Klein. Heroin chic was in and he was like, ‘You’re perfect, blah blah.’ The fashion thing was totally natural, it all came out of the music. But I’ve always been making things. I’ve always had people going, ‘Can you patch up my jeans?’ We have this label, Feathered Fish: it’s me, Dan [Koretzky] from Drag City and Pamela Love, the jewellery designer. We just had these Japanese artisans make these flip-flops woven out of old rags, found material, dyed weird colours – all handmade. I like random items, stuff that catches my eye. My new obsession is these Native American Disney-inspired rings, these vintage things from the 70s. They’re sort of weird. You’ve got, like, Mickey Mouse, but abstract and strange. They’re very rare because in, like, 1974 these Native American tribes got a cease-and-desist from Disney.”

4 Don’t get a manager, get a lawyer

“Everyone in LA wants a manager because they think it makes you official, but the minute you hear that, you know they’re fucked. When people say, ‘Speak to my manager’, it’s because they can’t speak for themselves. When we signed to Virgin, I wrote down, intuitively, what we wanted: total creative control, control over how the money’s spent, the ability to say no when we wanted to say no. Our lawyer, Richard, just laughed: like, ‘Who do you think you are, Whitney Houston?’ But he called the next day, they took it all! If we hadn’t had such an awesome contract, [Royal Trux albums] Thank You and Sweet Sixteen wouldn’t have existed the way they did at all. And we never would have gotten a quarter of a million dollars to walk away, you know? Lawyers are good, man.”

5 Find your inspiration on the streets

“The dude dancing in the video to our song Physical Emotions goes by the name of Flat Top. We met him doing street performance on Universal CityWalk in Hollywood. I’d just watched Paris Is Burning, a documentary on voguing, and thought I recognised him from the movie… He’s got this insane control. There’s a lot of funk on the new record. Along with hardcore and go-go, funk was the music I grew up with [in Washington DC]; it was right there in my backyard. I saw Funkadelic before Eddie Hazel died, and it was one of the most amazing shows I’ve ever seen.”

6 Don’t be too proud to play support

“We’ve toured with Primal Scream and it’s always fun, hanging out with Bobby and Mani. When we played with the Kills, Dan was like, ‘What the fuck is your problem?’ I’m like, ‘Dude, we play 20 minutes in front of a bunch of Kate Moss fans and get paid $20,000. Who cares?’ But it’s interesting, playing outside your own world. We always end up selling merch to people who came for Sleigh Bells. That shit is fun. You want to be that weird band who blows some kid’s mind.”

Black Bananas’ Electric Brick Wall is out on Monday on Drag City

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