By Mike McGuirk

PRETTY MUCH EVERY record Neil Hagerty has put out, whether as Royal Trux or as Neil Michael Hagerty, has confounded me for weeks if not months. I always hate his records at first, and I feel juked out of 15 bucks because once again, the album doesn't sound enough like the Stones. This is what I want. I want the marriage of noise rock and the Stones that Pussy Galore perfected on the 1990 album Historia de la musica rock. Why? Because I am weak. Instead I get weird combinations of, like, Steely Dan, Nazareth, and the Godz.

Then, sometimes as much as a year later, I find myself listening to said record over and over, and I begin to understand what's going on. Hagerty is just way ahead of me, and I need time to catch up. There's some record I haven't heard that I need to get ahold of before this new one will make sense. The latest revelation has been this guy Keef Hartley, who played drums in all these British blues bands in the early '70s and then put out these funky boogie rock records as a solo artist and they sound like Sly Stone. But they also sound like RTX's 1997 full-length, Sweet Sixteen. I didn't know I liked funk-laden British blues jams until I listened to Neil Hagerty.

So Hagerty is coming to town, on tour because he "feels like touring," playing at the Hemlock Dec. 13. Since I worship Hagerty (who now lives in New Mexico), I have been very excited by the prospect, and a few weeks ago, for some reason, I pitched an interview with him to the music editor here at the Bay Guardian, who, for my sins, gave me a green light.

I figured since Hagerty is one of my biggest heroes ever it would be scary but fun to interview him. And since we obviously see eye to eye on how fucking awesome Joe Walsh is, we'd probably have a great conversation about James Gang, how much indie rock sucks, baseball, how cool I am for having almost all the Royal Trux singles ... and because of my own similar experiences, I would get Hagerty to open up about his past drug problems and his shining path to sobriety. Then we'd make out. It'd be awesome.

Well, I became a frightened rabbit about two days before the interview and never wrote any questions, leading to a stilted, awkward conversation punctuated by multiple uses of the word "wee-id" by Hagerty and many "Oh yeah, definitely. Totally, dude" 's on my part even though I wasn't listening to anything he said. Instead I was looking at the wheels of the tape recorder as they didn't move. Basically I spent the whole interview trying to decide whether or not the motionless reels meant that there was no recording going on. Because I am 32 years old and decidedly proficient with simple stereo equipment, there was a part of me that knew the motionless wheels meant no sound, but ... ahh ... I thought maybe it was working anyway. I decided not to do anything to rectify the situation. Why? I like to think it was because I am a nihilist.

I did get some confirmation on beliefs I had about Hagerty's music, however, so the interview wasn't a total bust. We talked about classic rock a bit and why his music seems so closely related to music of the 1970s. Hagerty's explanation was that he grew up listening to the radio and that's where his music came from – '70s FM radio. Even though he travels in an indie rock/punk-derived milieu, he has always identified more with music made by people who played to sold-out stadium crowds.

Twin strains

To shamelessly state the obvious, there's some kind of difference between music rooted in the radio rock of the '70s and the music derived from '70s punk and pre-punk. Not just stylistically but inherently. There's less art in the radio music, obviously, because it was made to be sold to the general public, with the clear purpose of eliciting some kind of response from the listener (in addition to emptying one's wallet). Mainstream rock music of the '70s was intended to be listened to during woods parties, while getting fucked up, or while losing your virginity. The pre-punk music of the MC5 and the Stooges had aims similar to those of their commercially viable peers, but they came from the outside and their music was for the fringes of the population. Then somewhere along the way it became more worthy to play music that appealed to the few rather than the majority. I guess this was the bottom line with punk rock.

I think the two strains of rock music are equally valid, but there is a mathematical certainty, a familiar feel of radio rock that doesn't exist in the same way in punk. Keith Richards talked a lot about how he never actually wrote songs – he just uncovered them from the collective rock 'n' roll unconscious. This is an interesting idea, and it goes a little way to explain why when I hear "Jailbreak" by Thin Lizzy or "Highway to Hell" by AC/DC, really, even though I have always known exactly what will happen next, it's never mattered. The pieces fit so perfectly that the effect of the verse breaking into the chorus is like a bomb going off. It's comforting, in a way. A lot of punk rock flies in the face of this idea, delivering unexpected changes and unfamiliar rhythms, yet the two forms are rooted in the same Chuck Diddley song, so there is usually something for the listener to grab onto.

Veterans of disorder

That's the thing about Hagerty's music: he plays a form of straight-up rock that comes from his exposure to the radio of the 1970s. Depending on what RTX record you listen to, you can hear any number of guitarists from the golden period of the '70s rising to the surface. But the element of punk that is also a major part of his music – the freeform weirdness of the early Godz records and the no wave scene he was around in the early and mid '80s – plants him somewhere between straight classic rock recreation and punk or indie rock experimentalism. This is why the stuff Royal Trux put out and Hagerty's last two solo records are among the best rock music produced in years: they are neither punk nor rock. He goes beyond both, especially with regards to classic rock.

Most music is fed directly to the listener like baby food, and when there is music that is actually challenging and good to boot, then, I think, that's something to be happy about. And this is music that aligns itself with the weirdest shit. There are always a ton of bands echoing the sounds of the early '70s Detroit underground (and who doesn't want to be as great as the Stooges were?), but the instance of a band sounding like Mitch Ryder's Detroit or early Bob Seger is almost unheard of. To do that is to relegate yourself to permanent bar-band status. Somehow Hagerty has beaten the stigma, because he pushes what he's doing into this other category I invented. Also he plays guitar like he's got six fingers.

Last January, Hagerty played at Bottom of the Hill. The first song of the set was "Rockslide," from his 2002 record, Neil Michael Hagerty Plays That Good Old Rock and Roll, a song with a decidedly chunky, "Slow Ride" type of riff. He stretched it out and soloed over the riff for a good five minutes, with his foot on the wah-wah pedal, pressing it down the whole time, giving his guitar this strangled, overloaded, supertrebly sound. I was like, "You can't do that! You can't play the wah-wah in that position the whole time! You're supposed to rock back and forth on it to get that liquidy sound!" He played that way the whole set, and each song was this stretched-out solo guitar exercise over the rhythm section. It was fucking great. Not everybody stayed till the end of the show – in fact, the place kind of emptied out, but that's just because people don't really want to hear rock music for some reason, unless it's something they have heard before and are comfortable with. Screw that – I want to be uncomfortable as often as possible.

Neil Hagerty plays Fri/13, 10 p.m., Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, S.F. $7. (510) 923-0923. Also Sat/14, 10 p.m., Ivy Room, 858 San Pablo, Albany. $6. (510) 524-9220.