Jay Reatard done in two minutes, if you had to watch him fuck
Words Alex Marshall
If you’ve heard any of Jay Reatard’s music, you can probably guess what the 28-year-old’s like in person. On record, his garage pop songs are brilliant, all sing-along choruses and noisy hooks, pretty much every one done within two minutes. Live, he’s even better. At a recent London show, he and two pick-up musicians knocked out 10 songs in 10 minutes, heads down, Flying Vs in hand, without even a pause to say hello.
It turns out he’s just as quick when he talks. Sitting in a north London pub, he gets through the 15 questions I intended to ask in four minutes, talking at speed, drumming his hands on the table obsessively until he’s handed a Bloody Mary to stir instead. In the 20 minutes our chat lasts, he gets through a ridiculous 72 questions. Assuming I talk for a quarter of our time, that’s 12 seconds an answer.
He’s got plenty of explanations for this. “I always feel like I’m racing against time, and losing,” he says at one point. Later: “I like to save time, I like to save other people’s.”
When talking about his childhood, he says his hyperactivity meant he had to wear a helmet and leash so his parents could stop him “freaking out, running around like a maniac and hitting [his] head”.
“I was always impatient and nothing could happen fast enough,” he explains.
All of which is interesting stuff, but it doesn’t make for the best interview. Thankfully, question 51 comes along, and he chooses to break a habit and ramble for a bit.
“My inspiration definitely comes from a dark place,” he says. “If I’m in a good state in my life, I’m pretty uncreative. But usually when something bad happens, there’s this explosion of creativity. You don’t want to feel terrible - you don’t want to wake up depressed - but that inspires you. So it becomes what you kinda do - create situations to bum yourself out. I don’t want to be enlightened anytime soon.”
Your music’s not depressed though, I say.
“I know, but I’m trying to get something positive out of it.”
I ask him for a few examples of bumming himself out, expecting him to talk about a recent gig in Toronto when he punched an audience member in the face. Instead, he gives a potted life history.
Reatard, real name Jay Lindsay, was born in 1980 in Tennessee. He grew up in a farming community until he was eight and moved to Memphis. There, he took the opportunity to become a delinquent: “I set fields on fire, a few cars, and I tried to do our house a couple of times. I was never interested in taking people’s things, just making them disappear.”
He only got arrested once, spending three nights in jail after lamping a guy, and started playing the guitar aged 13 when he found an acoustic in a closet. But he didn’t start writing songs until he discovered punk: “That was way later on,” he says, “when I was, like, 14.”
By 15, he’d befriended the local punk band, and they put out his first single. Reatard jacked in school, having already had to re-sit two years. He quickly put out two albums as The Reatards: Grown Up Fucked Up and Teenage Hate. Then, just as quickly, starting branching out from punk, forming a fistful of bands including - fatefully - The Lost Sounds with his then girlfriend. They lasted a few albums before splitting on the ferry from France to Britain. She made him finish the tour, then stole all his gear and locked him out of the house.
Reatard’s been dining out on that relationship disaster for the last couple of years and it’s the raw material behind his brilliant Blood Visions album. But today he’s facing the slight problem that everything’s going swimmingly for him. He’s just signed to Matador who are putting out six singles of his this year; he’s selling out venues; and people are literally handing him Bloody Marys each time he asks. So, what will he do for inspiration now?
“I’m letting the past catch up with me,” he says. “I’m thinking a lot about the terrible things I’ve done to people. Writing at the moment’s kinda like going to a priest.”
That was his response to question 71, and yet another quick, to-the-point answer. It gets me thinking. Does he ever slow down? I mean, has he ever even written a slow song?
“I record them all the time,” he laughs. “I just don’t let people hear them. It’s not a part of me I want to share. It’s not that I’m insecure; it’s like if someone doesn’t want to let you into their bedroom to watch them fuck their wife. It’s not that they’re insecure about their wife, or about fucking their wife, it’s just they don’t want you to be part of that. If you were going to see me fuck, I’d want it to go fast - be over with in two minutes flat.”
