Q+A: Jason Pettigrew on Writing a Book About Ministry's Third Album

Interview with an author and vinyl forager!

Jul 07, 2025

Jason Pettigrew joins us for today’s Q+A! He talks about his new 33 1/3 book, Ministry’s The Land of Rape and Honey (abbreviated as LORAH).

Tamara Palmer/Music Book Club: What's your personal story with LORAH? Did you listen to it at the time that it came out, and how does it sound to you now?

Jason Pettigrew: I was a big fan of Ministry’s polarizing pop debut With Sympathy. When Al Jourgensen decided to leave that experience in his psychic rearview mirror and accelerate toward new fascinating approaches, I was a true believer. Everything about LORAH was completely confrontational, from the music to the live show, the B-side and bonus CD-only tracks. It’s 37-years-old this year and the breadth of its influence is practically everywhere because a lot of the things they were doing back then are now considered public domain. It was ahead of its time technologically, as well as psychically. If you read the lyrics, it feels like Jourgensen and then-foil Paul Barker would’ve received cease-and-desist orders from the estate of Nostradamus.

Is LORAH your favorite Ministry album?

It’s definitely my fave Ministry album. I should say that depending on how I feel when I wake up each morning, LORAH is in a cage match with Eno’s Here Come The Warm Jets battling for the No. 1 designation of Jason’s Favorite Album In Life. I used to be a prog-rock nerd, but all my fave bands in the genre broke up or made their most putrefied records by 1979. I had been wishing for something that married vicious aggression with wild electronics. Killing Joke were the apocalypse horsemen at the time, but Jourgensen, Barker, Bill Rieflin (RIP) and Chris Connelly pretty much flipped all the furniture over in my Freudian house on LORAH.

Many years ago, Al Jourgensen gave me one of the more enjoyable interviews in my career. Is he one of your favorite people to interview?

Al is great with a quip and isn’t afraid to shoot from the hip. Two years ago, I saw Ministry at some outdoor venue in the woods of Scranton, Pennsylvania and he grumbled about how “there are more bears than toilets out here.” He’s also got strong opinions and we’ve gone toe-to-toe on things and they ended in stalemate. It should be known that he surrounds himself with similarly driven people because he’s looking for both sherpas and sparring partners. In the ‘80s, his ex-wife Patty was incredibly crucial to the business side while Al and Paul were making the records. Many people I interviewed for the book testified to that. But yes, he’s truly a hoot.

How was your appearance at Club Doom inside the Cruel World Festival? Was that one of the more creative ways that you have promoted your book?

I enjoyed myself immensely at Cruel World. They prohibit people from leaving fliers on the concert site (and rightfully so. Can you imagine being in the cleanup crew?), so I would walk up to people wearing Ministry shirts and say, “Hey, I like your shirt. I wrote a book about them,” and I’d give them a postcard with a QR code.

Two days before Cruel World, I had a great panel appearance at Stories bookstore in Echo Park, where I was joined by Mr. Barker and former Wax Trax associates Andy Wombwell and Judy Pokonosky. Later that evening, I went to the Masa bistro in Echo Park and co-owner Rob Rowe welcomed me like a long-lost cousin. He used to play in the Wax Trax band Wreck who once crashed at my Cleveland apartment in the early ‘90s. Then later on in my trip, I had a Lyft driver talking about Ministry and recalling how a photo of him dancing onstage at a Revolting Cocks gig in Chicago appeared in an issue of AltPress. When I told him it was an issue with the Cocteau Twins on the cover, he looked down at his passenger list, and figured out who I was. He bought a book from me before he dropped me off.

I made an appearance at Martin Atkins’ Post-Punk And Industrial Museum in Chicago. In the green room, he had all this promotional candy from Ferrera, who now make Baby Ruth and Butterfinger bars. He announces before I walk out that if anybody wants candy, let him know. I hear this and I start to put all these candy bars in my pockets so when I walk out, I start tossing them to people like I’m at a baseball game. Everyone laughed—I think they had a good time!

TL;DR Version: The promotional experience has been simultaneously tiring and heartwarming.

Are there any other music books from any era that you'd like to recommend to our readers?

I don’t care who the next generation of rock writers are: None of them will be as cool as Britain’s very own Nick Kent. Nobody will ever top his early chronicle, Apathy For The Devil: A Seventies Memoir. Yes, we all (maybe millennials and Gen Z not so much) adore Lester Bangs, but Kent was getting high with the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Led Zep; canoodling with Pretenders CEO Chrissie Hynde; playing on Eno’s Warm Jets LP; being invited to play in an early prototype of The Sex Pistols and later getting roughed up by minions of both the Pistols and Adam And The Ants; and legitimizing the importance and resonance of contemporary rock journalism. If he had written that book in 1990, I would’ve been crestfallen. I'd've given up writing entirely and began practicing how to say, “Do you want fries with that” in multiple languages.

Another period piece I love is John Lurie’s autobiography, The History Of Bones. He’s a national treasure and as leader of the legendary NYC unit The Lounge Lizards, his music means the world to me. Lurie is always the smartest guy in the room and a lot of people loathe him for that very reason. The original title for the book was going to be called What Do You Know About Music, You’re Not A Lawyer, which is something an attorney once told him in a boardroom. The book is filled with all kinds of ‘80s madness, including but not limited to decadence, creative arrhythmia, the frustration of leading a band and a lot of opiates.

I would also recommend 33 ⅓ books by DX Ferris (Slayer’s Reign In Blood), Annie Zaleski (Duran Duran’s Rio) and It Only Looks As If It Hurts: The Complete Lyrics (1976 - 1990) of Howard Devoto, the genius from The Buzzcocks, Magazine and Luxuria. He’s the reason why I don’t write poetry.