Jay Reatard died a couple of days ago, aged 29. I was holidaying down the south coast with no access to internet when I woke up in the morning to find several text messages from friends informing me of the news. I couldn’t believe it. Still can’t.

That morning I was moved to throw down a half-full cup of coffee on the kitchen floor of the holiday house. Shattered is the word for it.

I can’t remember being affected that badly by the death of a rock star. Why? Was it because I’d gotten to interview him a couple of times and therefore took this one more personally? Partly. But I think there’s more to it than that.

Jay Reatard was one of the most exciting things to blast out of the rock underground in years. With a unique stylistic vision, songwriting ability up the arse and attitude to burn, I believed he had the potential to shake up the pathetic quasi-mainstream. Yesterday a friend of mine, Rebecca, replied to an email I’d sent in February 2008, just before Jay’s first Australian tour. I’d written: “Hey You. Don’t be dumb and miss [Jay Reatard] at the Annandale next Thursday. That way you won’t have to tell fibs in 5 years time and say, ‘I was totally there, dude.’” Bec reckons this was proof of me being “always on the money”, but in this case I was clearly trying to imply the guy would be famous in five years, not pushing up daises in less than two.

In hindsight some may say he was an accident waiting to happen – he was never far from trouble, made enemies just as easy as friends, Twittered shit with the best of ‘em, seemed to thrive on being abrasive, obnoxious, drunk and aggro… Yet to me he seemed invincible. It’s not surprising the Memphis police were treating his death as suspicious – foul play somehow just seems more likely than alcohol or drugs killing him.

He leaves behind an incredible body of work – over 100 releases both solo and with bands like The Reatards, Lost Sounds, Angry Angles, Final Solutions, Nervous Patterns, and on and on… It’s more than most musicians could manage in three lifetimes.

His final album, the rather prophetically titled Watch Me Fall, was unfortunately not his best. I really hated it at first – sounded like someone had performed cosmetic sound surgery on him – but a month or so ago I was moved to revisit it. While the cleaned and gutted production still kinda irked me, I realised the tunes were still way better than most modern artists could write even after being struck by a bolt of divine inspiration. It left me feeling like he could easily come back with a third solo effort to blow us all away.

On Wednesday morning January 13th at 3:30am, Jimmy Lee Lindsey, Jr., aka Jay Reatard, was found dead in bed at his home in Memphis. The world instantly became a shittier place.

The following is an edited transcript of the first interview I did with Jay on February 13th 2008, which was printed in the current issue of UNBELIEVABLY Bad (#9). I remember how wary I was before I placed the call, having heard so much about what an arsehole he could be, but in the end we chatted for over an hour and he wasn’t the least bit rude. I interviewed him a couple more times after that, both in person and on the phone, and while he did seem like the kind of guy who was hard to get close to (for some reason I was always surprised whenever he mentioned his girlfriend), he was never an arsehole.

Oh, it’s such a shame.

I will miss you, Jay. Always your friend and humble fan, Danger Coolidge.

What is it with you and the Flying V?
Without trying to sound too cheesy the guitar itself embodies this whole idea I have about music. When they created that guitar they thought they were creating something from the future, this was the next wave; this was supposed to be so high-tech looking. And it really it just kind of looks dated. It just sums up the whole pseudo-futurism of the fifties for me, and that’s kind of what I’ve always tried to do when writing music, create something new but something that is instantly dated and classic. It’s faux cutting-edge or something, like, “Hey look at me I’m going to repackage the same fucking thing I’m just gonna try to make it look all fancy and new.” Most guitar players really hate them. I’m not a guitar player, I’m a jackoff of all trades, so I like ‘em. But people who would actually be in guitar mags would be like, “They’re so clumsy…” I don’t care; I own five of ‘em. I used to play Les Paul’s but those things were making my back hurt so bad. I think a Flying V weighs like seven pounds or six pounds or something; it’s really light.

And you can’t sit down with it either.
Yeah, who sits down to play electric guitar? If I’m sitting down then I’m usually playing an acoustic or I’m sitting in an office chair answering emails. When I play electric guitar, even if it’s in my house by myself, I just wanna stand up and run around.

How did you get the name Reatard? And why add the “a” in there?
People just started calling me that when I was a teenager. I’m an idiot. I’m not like an actual retard but I tended to do pretty stupid things when I was a kid. So people just started calling me that as a nickname and the typo came about because I wrote it on the first cassette that I made and it was typo. I stuck an ‘a’ in there and it just kinda stuck. I mean, I would prefer as a 27-year-old man to not be called a retard everywhere I go. But it’s like when something goes that far, you can’t just decide one day, “Hey, I’m Jay Einstein.” But I’m fine with it. It’s dumb and it’s immature and I think it helps balance everything out so that nobody can take it too seriously.

After so many bands and different things you had done before, why the decision to do Blood Visions (2006) and play everything yourself?
I keep going back and forth as to whether it was a conscious decision or it was because no one would play with me anymore. I think a bit of both. I think I had gotten to the point in my life where I was so frustrated with playing with other people that I kinda made myself into this monster. Through my frustration I created a monster that was unable to exist in a band situation. I think a lot of it was to do with frustration. I was sick of writing songs and hearing them played wrong. I just kinda had ideas in my head and when I’d show them to people I was in bands with it’d come out completely wrong. Other people would say, “Well everybody’s different, they’re just putting their spin on it.” But at that time I really just didn’t want that. I didn’t want someone else’s input. It’s really hard because most people have egos so they want to impose their ideas on top of yours, even if theirs is shitty. So I was just thinking, well, I can keep arguing with people or I could just try to play everything myself. And I was like, I’m just gonna be like the later-period Beatles; I’m just gonna make records, I’m not gonna tour anymore, I’m not gonna play live. But eventually I started figuring out that I wouldn’t sell any records if I didn’t play out. So after I made the record I got another band. But yeah, I don’t know if it was a conscious decision. I think [it was] subconscious and my actions just manifested what I wanted to do.

It’s really given your career a rocket boost, probably the biggest one since you first started as a 16-year-old. Ironically, that initial burst was from a recording where you played all the instruments yourself also. Is that a sign that other people will only let you down?
It’s kinda frustrating. It makes me go, I just spent twelve years putting up with other humans and the moment that I decided to only deal with myself is the moment people start to pay attention. And it makes me go, why didn’t I do this earlier? I mean when I walked away from all those bands I had the benefit of having been in ten or twelve bands over the years, and playing with forty or fifty different musicians gave me a lot of ideas and inspired me to do things I never would’ve thought of on my own. So I think it’s timed perfectly actually. I think I got to walk away from all those bands with something and I can do it better now.

Not many people have a discography as imposing as yours at the age of 27.
I guess a discography is all relative to how much of it is shit though. I definitely look back and think I should have been better. I should have had an editor or something. But I’ve always hated how commercial music was presented to you. Like every eighteen months, “Here’s twelve little shiny songs from your favourite act”. I think it’s cool when musicians show you their warts. Like, “Here’s some of my bad songs too.”

Born and raised in Memphis – how much did the city infect you?
I kinda feel like it gave me the benefit of creating in a vacuum. And being raised in a somewhat hostile urban environment developed who I was. I think it really comes out in the music. People are like, “Why are your songs so negative?” Well there’s not a whole lot to look at round here that’s great, y’know. It’s like when the sun is shining here it’s still raining shit. I love it, I like it, I thrive on it. I think for most people the charm of it would escape them a little bit. And I think the benefit is that it allows you for ten years to record hundreds of songs without anybody really giving a shit. A lot of people might say that’s really sad, “Ah you do all this stuff and nobody pays attention.” But I think from an artistic standpoint it’s really good to create when people aren’t paying attention. You’re gonna get a really unaffected version. If I lived in New York City it would be completely different. I would be worried about how I’m dressed or what gallery opening I’m supposed to be seen at. Whereas here it’s like, “Okay, what barbeque place am I gonna go get diarrhoea at? What shitty bar am I gonna go drink at? Okay, I got a bunch of time in between then so I’m gonna record a bunch of songs”. It’s my home and it always will be. People say, “What if you have enough money to move out of Memphis?” I’m like, “I do. I don’t wanna leave.” I’d definitely feel like a fish out of water, I just wouldn’t know how to be around people that are happy. I get to a city where the culture is so much more balanced and rounded and people seem so much more happy and I’m like, “These fucking people get on my nerves.”

So what about Graceland and Beale Street and that whole Memphis music wind-up?
The only effect Memphis music has had on me is to make me want to rebel against it. When people think of Memphis the first thing they think of is Elvis. It’s like being born and as a kid everyone around you is going, “Worship Jesus. Worship Jesus.” You either do it or you end up being Satanic. So I want to be the opposite of Elvis. I hate him. I really hate what the guy stands for and I really hate what the city has tried to turn him into. Y’know, and the blues, so many contemporary bands are still so based in blues. I like the Oblivians but in hindsight they were an amped-up white blues band. I kinda went through that phase too and then after a while I was like, this sucks. There is nothing worse than white blues. White rap is better than white blues. So I just wanted to go the opposite and that was what The Lost Sounds was. So yeah, the city had a big influence on me but not the one that most people would think.

The Oblivians were obviously an influence for you at one point. Eric Oblivian helped you out and stuff as well.
I feel like I owe Eric tons and I will thank him every chance I get. And I definitely still like the Oblivians; I still embrace that era of Memphis music. It might be more of a nostalgia trip for me than something I’ll actually sit around and listen to anymore. But yeah, I made my first two or three records by completely plagiarising the Oblivians so I definitely owe something to those guys.

How was it that you were seeing shows so young?
I just wasn’t the most normal kid. I didn’t have the average life of your normal teenager. I stopped going to school when I was fifteen. So I just stumbled upon the Oblivians opening for Rocket From The Crypt, bought the Riot LP and inside Eric had left his phone number down on an order sheet for his label [Goner] and so I just called him. I introduced myself and I think he thought it was a bit of a novelty, something funny ‘cos a kid was calling. So he started picking me up on weekends and bringing me to shows and through him I discovered this completely different world that I didn’t know existed.

Were people constantly patronising you, a cute kid that played garage?
Yeah, nobody takes a kid serious. Nobody takes a kid serious and yeah, I got so frustrated with that I started attacking audiences and that kinda became my MO for a while. It was like, “Well if you don’t take a 16-year-old with a guitar playing his songs seriously, let’s see how serious a 16-year-old hitting you over the head with a beer bottle is.”

Can you feel that after all the things you’ve done that you are now on the cusp of some bigger success right now?
Yeah, it’s exciting; I just don’t quite know what’s going on. I guess I’m going through an adjusting period in my life right now. Everything’s changed. It’s like the old rules are out the door. I’m not sure what to think of it. But hopefully I won’t have to work for a while. I think things will stay the same. I think the biggest challenge is that people just don’t understand you after a while. Y’know, you start getting away from your core audience who may understand your likes and dislikes and all of a sudden you are pretty alienated.

Has this forced you to start taking things more seriously? Not starting as many fights?
Yeah, I think at some point you have to go, okay, when I had nothing but a $400 guitar and a pair of jeans it was okay to go around being a little arsehole and starting shit and creating chaos and not really caring. But when your stock goes up a bit, if something bad happens, even if you were only remotely connected, I’m pretty sure people will come after you in court. If people know you have money, they’ll want it. So I have to be more careful about what I say and what I do because I guess things have changed a bit. I think things get exaggerated. Y’know, people can turn one little thing into something big. And yeah, sometimes I’ll black out on tour and do things I don’t remember but there’s nothing that wild about it. I think it’s pretty predictable. You give somebody fifty shots of vodka or something, they are going to do something fuckin’ dumb. It’s a pretty cruel joke, like giving a monkey a bottle of whisky or something just to see if he’ll get drunk and break something. I’d like to think I’ve grown up a lot. Occasionally I still slip back into that old mindset and cause some problems but it’s fewer and farther between now. I just play songs and try to do the best show I can do now.

So is it a case of people assaulting you at shows or the other way round?
That’s the weird thing, when I was a kid I had this reputation for snapping on the audience but it’s been years since I’ve done that and now it’s just like I keep running into problems with people that don’t get that that was 10 years ago. And they come to the show all amped-up and start throwing bottles at my face or throwing vodka in my eyeballs or knocking my guitar over, just things you wouldn’t normally do when you just go to see your average band down in a pub. And my reactions are greatly exaggerated too, like, I hit a kid over the head with a guitar in California and knocked him out and it was because for six hours him and his punk rock friends had been teasing me. They’re saying, “How ‘bout this? How ‘bout that?” And so finally I’m up onstage and they were kinda interrupting the show I’d had enough. But when message board geeks and media types get a hold of it it turns into, “Jay randomly smashes kid over the head with Flying V and then hits him six times more while he’s knocked out!” People put their own spin on it. But I don’t want a reputation for that, I’m sick of it, I’m almost 30. It just seems like something a kid would do. The audience themselves, they’re the ones who create any sort of violence now. It’s like, “Okay, you guys take care of that part, I’ll just give you a soundtrack, why don’t you just beat the shit out of each other.”

Some guy at Gonerfest threw vodka in your eyes and you hurt your hand punching him – is this the kind of backlash you have to be prepared for now?
I get threats like every day now it seems. I try not to think about a backlash, I just want to do what I want to do. It’s really strange y’know; people have these notions of what punk rock is. It’s like get a life. I didn’t even do that when I was 15-years-old. It’s really fucking hilarious to see a grown man complaining about someone selling-out in this day and age.

Were you ever an elitist music fan like that? Was there ever bands you were into that suddenly started to become more popular and you resented them and everyone who was into it?
Well yeah, when I was a teenager. And still to this day I can see the point of view to where popularity can take the piss out of the poison. But does that really apply in the real world? When you start to think beyond the music itself, there’s so much more to playing music, stuff I didn’t realise when I was just a fan. I was so upset when bands I loved made certain decisions or became more popular, but the older you get and the more you start to see the inner working of everything you start to see the full reality. You start off playing music because you want people to hear it. Who are you, or who am I to cut it off? How can you say, “Obviously my music is starting to reach this demographic, but I don’t like you kinda people so I’m not going to do anything else anymore.” I think sometimes that’s what people expect from you. That’s not even possible; you cannot stop people from buying your music or being interested in you. You can do really dumb shit to try and deter them but sometimes even then they latch onto that and that’s what they like about it. I’m fully expectant and ready for a backlash of some sort but I think it will actually be inspiring.

Do you feel you’ve had success on your own terms? You haven’t yet done anything creatively for backlashers to complain about.
I am continuing to record this stuff in a bedroom, just like before, it’s just the same. I just think people really want to feel like they own something. And those are really lonely, sad people. Some people latch onto something culturally and it’s an ego thing, the purist ego, they want to feel like they were the only ones who latched onto this thing and no one else has heard it and it’s their’s and their’s only. So as soon as someone they deem – from the position of a culture snob – they deem like, “This person is not worthy of liking what I like ‘cos I’m so much cooler than that person.” It’s like, “Well fuck you. Who are you to say that?” I would have never discovered music if people had treated me that way. I’d still be listening to Nirvana.

What, if anything, relaxes you and chills you out?
Um… nothing. Pills. No, um, TV. TV is the only thing that can make my brain go numb and stop thinking about music. But even if I’m watching the idiot box I’m still thinking about music. It’s really weird. Eating! Eating! Yeah, eating is the only thing that makes me stop freaking out all the time. Cooking is my meditative process. The hour of day I cook dinner I don’t think about anything.

Are you a good cook?
Yeah, I’m a great cook. I like cooking Thai food, Vietnamese food. I can cook like really killer southern American cuisine. I can cook shitty fatty southern food. If you came and stayed here for a month you’d weigh fifty pounds more when you left.

The cover art for Blood Visions – how did the concept for the photo come about?
I had been playing in The Lost Sounds since I was 18 and I was 24 when I took the photo for the album. That album to me represented the first record I had made as an adult on my own terms. I thought it was really strange. I had just spent my whole adulthood taking other people’s ideas into consideration and compromising myself. I felt it was the first record I’d made on my own as an adult. It was really exciting, I felt like a kid again so I wanted to look like a big ugly bloody baby on the cover. So I borrowed some underwear from a fat girl so they’d kind of look like a diaper and grabbed some raspberry syrup and snapped away. I used to work at this coffee shop and I just kinda walked in and said, “Hey, I’m just gonna take all this raspberry coffee syrup,” and they’re like, “No, you can’t do that,” and I was like, “I’ll bring some back if there’s any left.” So it was a really sticky mess and we shot it at this art school and the kids pulled a prank on me and I got locked outside. I’m like, “Is there a shower so I can get this sticky syrup off?” They’re like, “Yeah, just got out this door and keep going…” but then they locked the door so I was locked out in 30 degree weather covered in fake blood running around a college campus at midnight. It was awful. The stuff was freezing onto my body.

Signing to Matador – what was the deal, you release a bunch of 7-inchs and at the end they compile them into a CD?
Well I’d originally signed for the six singles and then there was a bit of a bidding war with some other labels and I guess about three weeks ago I signed for my next three full-length albums with Matador too. We were talking to a major label but I just didn’t really want to do it. It made me feel a bit uncomfortable. We were talking to the largest label in the world for seven months but it didn’t feel right. I don’t quite know why it didn’t feel right but I just tried to use my gut instinct and let’s just say the guys at Matador seemed to care more about the music I was making than a major label was going to. It felt like if I didn’t make a single mixed for the radio on the first album that they weren’t just going to abandon me and move onto the next dude. On one hand someone might say, “Yeah dude, why didn’t you go all the way?” But I’m like, do I really want a 65-year-old woman at Universal deciding my career. What does a 65-year-old woman know anything about what I’m doing? There is so much hierarchy at a major label and so you wonder if everything is going to turn out how I want it to turn out. But in the end, with a major label, it doesn’t matter who says what, it’s down to what the president thinks. She can veto anybodies decisions. I’m not comfortable with that. She can’t even get Lil’ Wayne to turn in his record. The best thing I got out of the experience was they gave me this satellite radio system and a 6-month subscription to satellite radio and I still haven’t listened to it more than once since the day I got it. What am I gonna go, sit around and listen to Howard Stern all day? I ended up just hooking up my TV and using it for the speakers. I don’t want to spend my time listening to Little Steven’s Underground Garage or something.

Little Steven [Van Sandt] is a big fan of yours, right?
Yeah, he hates me. He blamed me, said I ruined the Reigning Sound’s career with the recording of Too Much Guitar. I think he liked their more adult-contemporary garage-y soul, really clean. So when we made that record he just flipped out. He rang up In The Red and was saying, “I hope this is a demo. I hope this is a joke.” He was like, “This guy Jay put the first nail in the coffin for these guy’s career.” This is coming from a guy who had never heard of the Oblivians. He was championing the Reigning Sound yet he had no idea of Greg [Cartwright]’s musical history. The only relevant thing Little Steven has done in years has been his acting on The Sopranos. At least he took his fucking purple tie-dyed bandana from around his baldhead for a second.

The internet says Rick Rubin has been inquiring about working with you – know anything about that?
I had a call from Columbia Records and they set up a meeting but I was too hungover so I didn’t go. I don’t know how that would work anyway. He’d go hang out in Malibu doing some Buddhist chanting, walking around barefoot and patting his beard and come back and I’d have two albums done. I think he obviously has some cool ideas and has made some cool records. I don’t know, I have to question whether it was just the A&R guy trying to get me to meet with him; maybe he thought I’d be stoked on getting to meet Rick Rubin. I can’t say I was disappointed it didn’t work out. Obviously it wouldn’t have been something I would have done as far as working with him goes. I just wanted to meet the guy.

Is the new material going to be that far removed from the stuff on Blood Visions?
Definitely. I think so. That record, I wrote those songs in 2003 and 2004. A lot has changed since then, at least in my life. The stuff I’m writing now is a lot more like, I don’t know, it’s like an amped-up version of Queen or something like that. A lot poppier, yes, but not polished. Not like power pop like the Exploding Hearts. You’re not going to see me start wearing pink jeans.

An mp3 of Jay covering Nirvana’s “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle” can be downloaded from Jay’s website: www.jayreatard.com

Jay Reatard MySpace: www.myspace.com/jayreatard