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Royal Trux's supposed Exile obsession is a bit of a myth (and fulfilled for Hagerty back in his Pussy Galore days, when they covered the whole album.) Royal Trux weren't a problem for the industry because of their drug intake, so much as Hagerty's increasingly oblique take on his influences. When a record company has this idea that the band they're marketing is some kind of Stones fixated Kurt and Courtney roadshow, and then get delivered records that sound more like Yoko Ono covering Santana, they're screwed.
It's clear that Herrema was just as confused and frustrated as the record companies when it came to Hagerty's apparant inability to project the band via a straightforward set of reference points. He always said the 'wrong' things in interviews. When Herrema would mention Motley Crue (ironic cool), Hagerty would throw a conceptual spanner in the works by bringing up Taj Mahal.
The Kills provide the very audience described by Sarramkrop with a much more managable concept, where all the reference points are ever-present and, importantly, correct. It's interesting that since Hagerty left Royal Truxa and Herrema has taken charge of RTX, they too have become a much more straightforwardly marketable band.
Hagerty is often likened to Keith Richards for his image and drug intake, but in many ways he's closer to Brian Jones: a genuine musical talent that could never really understand the demands required of him to become a commercial success. Howling Hex is a little like Jones' ill-fated Jajouka project in this respect. I always think that above all else, Hagerty, like Jones, is a musical outsider far more than he is some-kind of life-style maverick.
I'm aware that I'm generalising massively here, by the way.
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