Jesse Malin

Jesse Malin quite literally came of age onstage in the gritty clubs of New York City. At just 12 years old, he fronted Heart Attack—one of the earliest hardcore punk bands. After the band broke up in ‘84, Jesse went on to play in other groups, including Hope, and later co-founded D Generation, a glam-punk band that toured extensively through the '90s, opening for acts like Kiss, the Ramones, and Social Distortion.

In the early 2000s, Jesse launched a solo career, trading hardcore for a more singer-songwriter-driven approach. As a solo artist, he’s collaborated with a wide range of musicians, including Bruce Springsteen, Lucinda Williams, and Billie Joe Armstrong. A true musician’s musician, Jesse has long been a beloved figure in the rock community.

So when he suffered a rare spinal stroke in 2023 that left him temporarily paralyzed from the waist down, that community rallied around him. The result was Silver Patron Saints: The Songs of Jesse Malin—a 2024 tribute album featuring covers of his songs by friends and admirers. Jesse is also debuting a musical this fall called, Jesse Malin’s Silver Manhattan: A Musical Guide To Survival, at the Gramercy Theatre in New York.

On today’s episode, Bruce Headlam talks with Jesse Malin about his colorful upbringing in Queens, how he found the nerve to try out for a gig at CBGB’s at age 12, and what it was like during the formative years of New York’s hardcore scene. Jesse also shares how his “positive mental attitude” helped him through the toughest chapter of his life—recovering from the stroke that nearly ended his ability to walk.

You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Jesse Malin songs HERE.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Jesse Mallin quite literally came of age on stage in
the gritty clubs of New York City. At just twelve
years old, he fronted Heart Attack, one of the earliest
hardcore groups in the city. After they broke up in
eighty four, Jesse went on to play in other groups,
including Hope, and later co found a d Generation, a
glam punk band that toured extensively through the nineties, opening
for acts like Kiss, the Ramones and Social Distortion. In

(00:43):
the early two thousands, Jesse launched a solo career, trading
hardcore for a more singer songwriter driven approach. As a
solo artist, he's collaborated with a wide range of musicians,
including Bruce Springsteen, lusen To Williams, and Billy Joe Armstrong.
A true musician's musician, Jesse has long been a beloved
figure in the rock community, so when he suffered a

(01:03):
rare spinal stroke in twenty twenty three that left him
temporarily paralyzed from the waist down, that community rallied around him.
The result was Silver Patron Saints The Songs of Jesse Mallin,
a twenty twenty four tribute album featuring covers of his
songs by friends and admirers. Jesse's also debuting a musical
this fall, called Jesse Mallin Silver Manhattan, A Musical Guide

(01:24):
to Survival, at the Grammercy Theater in New York. On
today's episode, Bruce Hedlm talks with Jesse Mallin about his
colorful upbringing and Queen's, how he found the nerve to
try out for a gig at CBGB's at age twelve,
and what it was like during the formative years of
New York's hardcore scene. Jesse also shares how his positive
mental attitude helped him through the toughest chapter of his life,

(01:45):
recovering from the stroke that nearly ended his ability to walk.
This is broken record, real musicians, real conversations. Here's Bruce
Headlam with Jesse Mallin.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
I always assumed, because you're the mayor of East Village,
that you grow up downtown New York. But you didn't.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
Well, I'm not in politics. I don't know about the
mayor thing.

Speaker 4 (02:12):
Somebody once said that, But no, I grew up in
Queen's and I was born in Flushing, and yeah, the
city isn't that far away from Queens but when you know,
living in a suburban, middle class kind of you know,
place like that. It's not everybody goes there or gets
to go there to do. They stay sometimes and just
become part of Queen's. But I knew that there were

(02:32):
things in the city, and you could, you know, see
it in magazines and hear it on the radio, or
if you went to the circus at Mattis Square Garden.
You might drive down another street and see something crazy
and suddenly be like.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
Wow, what's going on over there?

Speaker 4 (02:43):
You know? Man in movies you got to see New York.
New York just different now. But yeah, Queen's was definitely
the early days.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
And what was it like? What was family life like?

Speaker 4 (02:53):
I grew up with my mom and my sister of
a sister younger. My father left pretty early on, and
my mom was a single mom who wanted to be
a singer, but they got divorced young. They had us young,
and she just did everything from waitressing to working in
Bloomingdale's at a makeup counter to you know, whatever she
could do to get by, and so it led for

(03:15):
some freedom. Sometimes we had babysitters and limes. She couldn't
afford babies that we were alone, and that was exciting.
I didn't think it was anything bad or dangerous. It
was fun to me. But my mom was very loving,
but she had a lot on her plate. She was
in her twenties, so I think sometimes she let me
do a lot of things that a kid my age
wouldn't be able to do or see, like go to
see One Floor of the Cuckoo's Nest with Jack Nicholson

(03:36):
when I'm eight for my birthday, because you know, where
other parents, she.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
Maybe felt bad, she wasn't able to give other things,
so she was loose.

Speaker 4 (03:43):
You know, here, here's a record, or here's magazines you want,
or you know, to break some of those rules. In
those days, films were such a big thing for me.
If I couldn't see a film, I'd read the Mad
magazine satire of it and pretend to somebody that I
saw the film. But they were windows into an adult life.
I really wanted to grow up fast. I was excited

(04:04):
by film and music and the teenagers. Queen's had a
day different thing than my neighborhood in Whitestone, where people
hung out in the streets, you know, even though it
was the seventies and it wasn't like.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
Do wop people in a tunnel.

Speaker 4 (04:17):
But there were like kids listening to like Leonard Skinner
and drinking forty ounce bottles in the park or a
school yard with a boombox, or you know, you'd hear
Cashmeer by led Zeppelin, and you know they were stoned
out like a Cheech and Chong movie. The bus that
went to school was a city bus, and it was
just boomboxes and smoke. And I got caught up in
you know, radio AM radio first, and me and my

(04:40):
cousin would judge any song if we heard on a radio,
we'd try to get a buck or fifty cents, I think,
and buy a single at Corvette's out there. And then
if we liked it, the way we judge it is
we could jump on the bed really fast and try
to hit the ceiling. That meant it was a good song.
And in the seventies, the fifties was a big nostalgia
so American graffiti. We got Chuck Berry Johnny be Good

(05:02):
and it was so rocket and Elton John came out
with Crocodile Rock, which had a fifties thing, and suddenly
I got Intelton John and that would be the first
artist that I really Some babysitter had Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,
and I just opened it up and I stared at
the illustrations for each song, and I read the lyrics

(05:24):
along with the record, and it was very adult, but
very It was something dark, but he were these beautiful
songs with this beautiful voice. And then there was some
kind of anger and something dirty and screwed up. And
I don't know what's going on to merrilman Roe or
what happened with this lesbian Alice or this, you know, like,

(05:44):
but I wanted to know, and I felt something, even
though I didn't know fully.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
Was that was that stuff a little scary to you
or just attractive to you?

Speaker 4 (05:52):
It was attractive scary a little In some of the photos,
you know, the drummer Nigel Olsen had long hair. He
looked like a woman. And then it was just it
said it was okay, you know. I mean, I liked
in Benny and the Jets because I'd be angry at
my father, angry at teachers, and it said, you know,
we'll fight our parents out in the street to prove
who's right and who's wrong. And it was like a

(06:12):
rallying cry and some of this I'd never heard a
live audience. The beginning of Benny and Jetsy, here a
crowd applause, and like you felt like it was a
concert entering your little room. And then Elton John came
out in the seventies that he was bisexual, and we
were living in a kind of racist, homophobic being. You know,
it's Archie Bunker's Queens. It's a lot of close minded

(06:34):
people that would say stuff about other races. You know,
we grew up talking that way. And my family, my
grandfather and you know, they were Jewish people. I wasn't
raised religious, but they understood discrimination and that kind of
persecution that people got. So we were hip to like
that we weren't going to say the N word or
look at anyone different than I was black, right, red,

(06:56):
you know, brown Like it was in that way that
was put into my head that to that people are
people and that there's no judgment. So when Elton John
kind of came out and said, oh, he's gay, he's by,
he's this, to me, I was like, well that's cool,
that's okay. If my guy is, he's great. Elton John like,
and here was this person that had to wear glasses,

(07:17):
and I had to wear glasses, and here's this guy
that wasn't like beautiful, looking like a Rod Stewart or
Robert Plant and took maybe the things and I didn't
realize at the time, but those weaknesses where you're you
don't feel you're the super Elvis hunk, and you do
all this other stuff to make yourself larger than life
and make you create your own image and your own

(07:38):
art and reality with your appearance. And that was mixed
with this beautiful voice and the fact that oh he's
bisexual and kids said, oh he's gay. He's like, well,
then that's okay. So it sent a lot of great
messages to somebody. Same thing with seeing the movie Dogged
Afternoon at a young age and you find out that
al Pacino's robbing the bank the character Sonny to pay
for his lover's you know, operation to have a you know,

(08:02):
sex change, and I'm in Queen's where everybody is so
anti gay, and yet it's al Pacino who just did
The Godfather and just did Cerpercos. It's the guy like
in Sanulai Fever when johns Fulda goes, oh, do you know, well,
they were a hero and they stuck with him. I
remember nobody yelled out home, oh well, walked out. Everybody stayed.
And it just the messages that it's okay to be different,

(08:25):
it's okay to be weird. And I was hyperactive kid.
I was getting thrown out of school. I was angry
at it. So I had to go to a therapist
or go talk to people in the school. So I thought,
I'm crazy or they treat me like great, well, then
maybe crazy's okay, and maybe the character one flow of
the Cucko's Nest is different than the rest of the
mold and the system and the mainstream. And I think

(08:46):
those were punk rock ideas that were being fed into me.
And then I got into Kiss. I was at that
age and they were from New York and it was like,
you know, all the action films, Billy Jack and Clint
East and everything and rock and roll thrown into one
and fire and at that point, the older kids they
didn't like it. The kids that like Sabbath and Zeppelin

(09:06):
and even the Grateful Dead.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
It was like Kiss sucks, Yeah, got beat up.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
It was the first album, that Kiss album, I guess Destroyer.
I remember people just carrying around at school with their books. Ye,
well so cool. I know you're not there. There's no
record play. It's just like they just carried it with
them everywhere they went.

Speaker 4 (09:23):
Yeah, it was twelve inches. It's it's you know, it's
a statement. But so that was you know, I was
loved the band. I was in the Kiss Army. I
would have did anything, played in the Talent Show first time,
spitting ketchup instead of blood, dressed as Steet Simmons. But
the thing about them, it was a band. It felt
like a gang. It felt like more than just a song.
It was like, I want to be part of this thing.
I want to raise my fist. I want to tell

(09:45):
my parents I'm not going to be like them and
work that job. I'm not going to turn into them.
We have another there's another chance, there's another road. And
we got beat up and made fun of by everybody
that you know, was like kiss suck that didn't like it.
So that was preparing me for punk rock because once
I got it to that, then you're really hated at
that time, even by you know, it wasn't like these

(10:05):
days where people like a lot of different things, like
to what you liked and if you were into punk.
They figured you killed your girlfriend like said Vicious or
a junkie or a fact like.

Speaker 3 (10:15):
Whatever it was.

Speaker 4 (10:15):
It wasn't didn't have that open minded this that a
festival might have right now at Coachella or somewhere where
you get.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
A little everything.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah, it's fine, but I.

Speaker 4 (10:24):
Respect like in the mods and rockers or punks and skins.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
Like I respected people.

Speaker 4 (10:29):
If you go to London, you go to some SKA
show now or something, and you see people that they're lifers,
like rockabilly, like they're in it and they'll fight and
that's their thing. Metal people are like that. They're they're
very into it. That dedication I respect. But I think
that you know, we all kind of probably like just
good music, all kinds of music. It's almost it's.

Speaker 3 (10:47):
Good, you know.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah, no you said tribes. Yeah, what was the first
punk song you heard?

Speaker 4 (10:52):
I probably heard blitz Creak Bop, but I didn't realize
what was going on. It came through on the radio
and I just knew it. But I was watching some
TV Choice Awards, some kind of awards show somehow, and
the sex Pistols came on and it heard about them
The New York and a few things. But it just
you know, just seeing it, seeing the little clip of

(11:14):
how Johnny Rotten played to the camera, and it was
way tougher than Kiss and way angrier. And it also
was like I could do this, I think, like, you know,
it just had a thing. It was like if Kiss
made me want to yell and scream, this made you
don't want to go to my room and throw everything
out and like just start again and break things up
in a way.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
Now, had you started playing any instruments by this point.

Speaker 4 (11:37):
Yeah, like around the Kiss time, I started to go
for some guitar lessons and of course, you know, they're
teaching you Stare Away the Heaven by Led Zeppelin, and
they're teaching you all this free bird and classic stuff.

Speaker 3 (11:47):
And it took a lot of work.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (11:48):
So once I you know, then got a Ramones record,
I realized, oh, they're from Queens. They wear the same
leather jackets as Phonsie, one of my TV heroes. They're
they're like a band, like the way the Beatles and
Kiss are like each person is like a character, and
they have these chants like Kiss had you know these
shouted out loud or rock and roll night, these big
anthems to chant certain parts with get the floor tom

(12:10):
and the snare. Well ramones had it in a different way.
They're yelling, hey ho, let's go a lobotomy. So I
started to learn those songs. And from learning those songs,
I was like, I can write. And we heard about
CBGB's and somebody said, you know, if you call this number,
you can come in and do an audition.

Speaker 3 (12:27):
I was like twelve, and I called.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
This amazes me. I still want to hear this story.

Speaker 4 (12:32):
I called from the school payphone, and you know, the
rule was you had to play original music. So you
put together a band with whoever, like, oh, you have
a basement and your father has a drum set, you
have the drummer, like, you know, we'd get whoever could contribute.
And I wrote some songs and we practiced in the
basement of somebody else because I lived in an apartment.
And we got dropped off on the Bowery on a

(12:52):
Monday night and we went in there.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
It was pretty scary.

Speaker 4 (12:55):
It was like March and we were all about twelve
or thirteen, and we got on that stage and it
was like the whole place smelled like you know, I
didn't know piss and alcohol and vomit. But that's what
I thought it was supposed to be. And I couldn't
believe this was the place where Blondie and Talking Heads
and everybody in Ramones had played. And we played our
set and I called a week later and they said

(13:18):
we failed, you know, the audition And I was into
the Dead Boys and the Ramones and the pistols, and
they said, yeah, you missed it. That stuff's over, man,
like you got to try something new like that's because
this is nineteen eighty. So I was like, well, all right,
what and they're like, you know, like rockabilly or or
a new romantic or I was like, wait a minute,
this is weird. But I found out in time that

(13:39):
you had to bring twenty people that drank. We didn't
bring anybody, But somehow, a week later I got a
call to play at Max's Kansas City. There was somebody
that saw us there and they booked us for that
July July fifteenth. It was I remember because it's Johnny
Thunder's birthday and we knew who he was, and he actually.

Speaker 3 (14:01):
Showed up at the gig.

Speaker 4 (14:02):
But we got to play a show at Max's and
little By little what they told me I had missed
this raw, mounky music that I was just getting into. Yeah,
it was changing. Blondie was starting to get more pomp
and disco. Ramons are putting on striped shirts and taking
off the leather and working with Phil Spector, and everybody
was trying to have a hit. And I walked a

(14:23):
little further down the street where I bought my leather
wristbands and records called Saint Mark's Place, and I walked further.
As I walked further down on the light posts, there
were signs that looked punky to other clubs that weren't
advertised in the Village Voice, and they said, you know,
come down to a seven seventh Street Avenue and bad brains, stimulators,
false prophets. And that led me to another place where

(14:46):
this music was still going on. And somehow, without cell
phones and without you know, even this being in the paper,
we used a like in spaceballs, used the schworts or whatever,
some collective unconscious thing. We found each other. Kids my
age and a little older from Jersey, Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens,
a lot all ended up on Avenue A because of music.

(15:09):
So in Queens you had a band like Crowd coming
on in Forest Hills, Queens. You had Reagan Youth and
the name says a lot right there. You know, the
undead lived in the city False Prophets on Avenue B
and we all just maybe fifty or sixty people were
part of this thing that would become hardcore. And I
didn't realize that this was kind of happening in different
cities where yeah, maybe that was over in the Ramones,

(15:31):
but somebody that saw the Ramones took it to another level.
And you had Black Flag in California, and you had
Dead Kennedy's in Northern California and down in DC, and
it wasn't ready to end. It was a new chapter
and Reagan was president, and it felt like we had
a lot of things to sing about it. It was faster,
We had our own way of dancing, and you had
one minute to say everything that you felt about the world.

(15:54):
So heart Attack was my band. That was the name.
We put out a single called God Is Dad when
I was fourteen, and that is pretty much I think
it's known as the first New York hardcore single. I'm
not saying it's the best wherever it goes for a
thousand and changed or a couple bucks. It's a rarity,
but we did that.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
You kept something right.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
I kept the test pressing somewhere.

Speaker 4 (16:16):
But that was a thing that came out and made
not want to be in school anymore. And from that
we played the rits with the Misfits. We started to
play with groups like Bad Brains, who were incredible. That
was a band that had jazz fusion chops for black
dudes from DC that took punk rock to a whole
other level. Being tight, precise, the whole performance was like

(16:38):
nothing I'd ever seen. And to know them, and we
had cheap gear Japanese guitars, and they had they were adults,
they were nineteen twenty, like you know, twenty one. They
had real equipment. They would lend us their equipment. And
they're talking about PMA positive mental latitude. It wasn't the
seventies destroy cut yourself like. It was like, yeah, we

(16:59):
can be crazy, have fun and not do drugs and
not put a needle Like drugs just never seemed exciting
to be put a needle in your arm, put some
shit in your nose. Guys, scratching got like that's to me.
I want to see like, you know, a strong guy
going crazy up there, or a strong gay like you know,
it wasn't we want to say all this stuff get
in your face, and we're a lot of us are sober, like.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
You know, we mean this when you were never tempted
down that other path because you're downtown New York and
in the early age.

Speaker 3 (17:28):
And it seems sexy.

Speaker 4 (17:29):
Someone told me, Heroin, I didn't like when I got
the flu because I couldn't go out and do what
I like to do. And someone said, Heroin, if you
you know when you get sick, it's like the flu
times ten, and you know, you'd look over and it
was some scratchy you know, and it just didn't look
fun to me.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
And you were exposed just enough to it to know that.

Speaker 4 (17:46):
Yeah, And there were some people saying, like, you know,
you don't need to do that. I didn't understand. We
dragged to an after hours club and suddenly like, what
are they doing it? There's no bands, this music sucks,
there's sand on the floor like a beach, and why
these people Hitle seven?

Speaker 3 (18:00):
Well, I know now, you know, it's like I just
thought they had a cold. I don't know the guys
snippe it. It was so naive, but.

Speaker 4 (18:06):
It was always about the music, and I think my
mom trusted that so I could go to junior high
school and I could go to A seven and one
seventy one or CEB's or max Is. In the beginning,
the parents tried to like pick us up here and there,
but the shows in those days depends on to go
onto one or two, so they gave up on that
and then I'd sneak out. But like she knew, like
my son has this dream, he believes in music. And

(18:27):
by the time, you know, still that year of my
first record, we went to Mexico City did a tour.
When I was fourteen, things started to open up.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
What was it like to be a fourteen year old
touring and seeing Mexico City, and you know.

Speaker 4 (18:40):
It was interesting. I had to figure out, like, you know,
something nobody wants to talk to me in school, little
girls ever gave me. I felt like the biggest loser
and suddenly go, oh, there's somebody interested in me, Like
this is weird.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
Or but to get to play.

Speaker 4 (18:51):
Every night and learn how to control, you know, in
Mexico we did like ten shows in a row at
a place called hips and tenta, and like you know,
had to like, wow, I'm playing so hard I cut
my nail off and I'm.

Speaker 3 (19:03):
Bleeding all over the SG guitar.

Speaker 4 (19:05):
We got a gaff that I got to learn how
to control my I got to learn how to be
able to sustain this and have a tight show and
make flyers for each show with glue and cutting things
out and just learning in those early days, how to
make it happen when there's no label, there's no manager,
Learning how to book your own shows, all those diy

(19:26):
as they call it, kind of eat those that has
really stuck with me throughout, even when I was a singer,
songwriter or whatever, all through my music career, that there's
ways that we can make this happen. So that was
a lessons. The drummer I had at the time was
in his twenties and he was from Mexico and he
lived in a chemore hotel on twenty third Street, this
welfare spot, but like you know, hung out with older people.

(19:48):
I was the youngest, and I just wanted to know
more about the world and I wanted to be better,
and I was taking in these records.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
You know, I was a kid too.

Speaker 4 (19:57):
I had a lot of rules, like you only listen
to stuff that had certain kind of guitar. And I
was when Sandinista came out at that time by the
Clash and they were playing all these different styles of music.
I broke it into pieces. I was like, give me
a dead ken. I rebought it four years later. I
was like, they're right. I was wrong, but I'm like,
they're playing disco, they're selling out, you know they're selling
I didn't go to Bonds when the Clash came. I

(20:18):
saw him at London calling, but like my favorite band,
suddenly they were hipper than I was blending the world,
bringing it all together. That hip hop was the music
of the streets and had a message and it was
a punk rock in its own way. But at the time,
at that age, I needed things in boxes. I needed
you know, this is hardcore. This is what we're doing.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
Well, it's identity at that edge, yeah, and your identities,
you know, that's how you differentiate yourself.

Speaker 4 (20:43):
And we were competitive to who was fastest, who was tightest,
who got the mash bit going the most, and you know,
got the action happening and the bad Brains asked heart
Attack to open for them at Irving Plaza, their first
big gig, and I was really surprised. We got a
song called God Is Dead. They were very religious Rastafarian,
yet we got this big show and they were so
good to us. And you know, to see these different

(21:05):
things develop and to watch that scene grow, like I said,
just organically. And if you went on tour, people put
you up on their floor. People you know, you booked
a whole tour on like a stolen credit card you
bought on forty second Street to some phone card, and
you were able to go across this country. And when
you got to San Francisco, the guy had the fanzine
in there, Maxim Rock and Roll, Timy Hanna, and he

(21:26):
put you up on his couch and turn you out,
let you make a mixtape of his record collection, or
and you'd meet another band. And it was just a thing.
And watching that and being part of that was exciting.
Until around eighty four it became a little too macho
for me, a little too metal, this hybrid kind of thing,
and it started to get extra violent. And it wasn't

(21:47):
guys and gals on the dance floor, and it wasn't
gay and straight in this and it was like became
this metal, macho thing, which was everything I was trying
to get away from in Queens. So I felt I
dropped out a broke up heart attack in eighty four
and last gig was at CBGB's fourth of July, and
it was the first Chromax gig. They were on the bill,
and I remember that was part of the new thing.

(22:09):
They were great, but it was going to become this other, heavier,
more metal type of thing, and that would go on
and get a lot bigger and now even bigger than
ever since then. But I started to want to write
songs like the songs where lyrics mattered, and I started
listening to things from my early early youth, like Jim

(22:29):
Crochey and Elton John and somehow I stumbled upon Bruce
Springsteen's Nebraska. And I'd never been a fan.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
I thought you would have been one of those fans
from the beginning. But it was Nebraska that day.

Speaker 4 (22:42):
It had long his other records had long songs. It
was in a deep voice. It was a lot of
instruments and sacks, and I didn't really know what he
was singing about. I wasn't from Jersey. I thought it
he was singing about it just yeah, all these things
that didn't fit in my box.

Speaker 3 (22:57):
He had a beard, you know, it was like, to
be honest, I mean, I love the guy. Now I
was a person at edits an art.

Speaker 4 (23:03):
But then I heard Nebraska and I said, whoa, this
guy is, this big rock star and this record is
just him And you know, I'd already had all this
punk rock political caring and social ideas about the world
and the underclass, and he's singing about this in such
a great way and it's haunting, and I couldn't get
enough of it. And so when Born in the USA

(23:24):
came out, I was a fan. And all my friends
on the scene were like, what's with this major label
rambo shit? And I was like, have you read the
lyric sheet? Like half these people end up in jail.
This is not And yeah, that mixed message to America
probably made them a lot of money that people thought
it was, you know, pickup trucks and you're in the USA.
But and then I realized this guy's deal. And then

(23:45):
I found another record that same time, at which I
called the punk rock Nebraska, which was Johnny Thunder's Hurt Me,
and it was an acoustic solo record in the early eighties,
and it was in my rehearsal studio. One of the
other bands had their records there in a turntable, and
it was just Johnny Thunders alone playing his songs and
a few covers Joey by Bob Dylan and Eva Destruction

(24:08):
Barry Maguire, and it had a great thing. Sometimes it
sounded like a whiny junkie screaming in a little closet,
but other times there was something. And I started busking
in the L train on fourteenth at First Avenue in
New York, just make some extra money, and I would
sing my own new songs and I would throw in
some oldies and then I'd try to make like Ramone
songs sound like fifty songs next to the Dion song.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
And I'd make like got seventy bucks.

Speaker 4 (24:31):
But that's when I started to realize that when an
acoustic guitar, I could write songs bring it down. And
I wanted to try something different.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
And you were always writing on electric At this point I.

Speaker 4 (24:41):
Had always been before yeah, and that I wanted to
present these songs. And then I'd go to some clubs.
There was a great club called Dance Materyria that booked
people that were coming up, and I saw the Pogues
and the Replacements, and I saw Billy Bragg, and here's
a guy. He's very punky, but it's him alone with
an electric and he's got these political love songs and
he's got his vulnerabilities out there. So between Billy Bragg,

(25:06):
the Replacements, who weren't scared to do a ballad, this
Johnny Thunders record, and then I started, you know, going
back to Elvis Costello and Graham Parker, and I was like, yeah,
I want to do these these kind of song things.
And my first gig I started a band called Hope,
and all my punk rock friends had acoustic guitar started
calling me, Jesse Cougar Mallencamp.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
We'll be back with more from Jesse Mallin and Bruce
Hadlam after the break.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
So he became a singer songwriter.

Speaker 4 (25:37):
And I did in a band called Hope, and I
tried to do everything that I would do in the
early two thousands, but I couldn't get that band off
the ground. I couldn't get us recorded outside of a demo.
We'd play with like the Meat Puppets and Sonic youth
and Radit red art from heart attack. I had a
connection into the noise art scene that was coming out
of some of the clubs here. So we would play

(25:59):
on bills with Live Skull and it red our sonic youth.
Swans and Hope did our time for a little bit,
but it was a weird time for me. My mom
got and I had to go back to Queens. Was
living in my rehearsal studio on Avenue B and I
had to take care of her and my sister, and
so I decided I could move my gear. If I

(26:19):
got a cheap used van, I could become a moving guy.
So I started moving bands and gear from like rehearsal
spots in Midtown down to clubs and coming back at
the end of the night. Sometimes I'd watched the show
and anything furniture and pianos and dead dogs and everybody
from Barbarus dreis in to you know, some junkie that's

(26:39):
getting thrown out the window.

Speaker 3 (26:40):
You know from there they're getting evicted.

Speaker 4 (26:42):
And we'd go everywhere. I met a lot of artists
doing that, and I had a rough five years between
my mom passing away eventually and I couldn't get this
band off the ground. So I ended up after my
mom passed, moving to green Point, Brooklyn with a few friends,
and I kept trying to do this earnest songwriter thing.
And I was living with this guy, Howie Pyro, who

(27:03):
had been in The Blessed and been in a band
called Freaks and done all these things. And I said,
this is just make a band for fun where you know,
I don't play guitar and I just jump around and
roll on the floor and take my shirt off and yell,
and we'll make like the band we wanted to see
when we were little kids, like that five headed thing,
like the Dolls or the Dead Boys, or you know,
Aerosmith were rolling stones like but a punky And so

(27:25):
we made Degeneration and it was just for for goof
And suddenly that connected because we just did it totally
for fun. Suddenly the shows are crowded. It's a band,
it's a gang. It's all people that knew each other
from the hardcore days. So it's like kind of some
people would say a glam band meets a hardcore band.
I don't really think of as as glam, but you know,
we thought we were doing something so different we had,

(27:48):
you know, brothel creepers or feet standing tall, tight pants
and messy hair and messy ms. Garon had crazy dreads
and hair extensions, and so people looked at that and
talked about that and they listen to the song. So
that became frustrating.

Speaker 2 (28:01):
You know.

Speaker 4 (28:01):
It was a good seven years and we made records
in major cities. We had a good time everywhere else
it was like us fighting with the crowd.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
So in that period where you had that band, Yeah,
you've got a tour to make money? Obviously, yes and no.

Speaker 4 (28:16):
Because we got a huge record deal and we had money,
we broke it up so we would not take it all.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
Whatever.

Speaker 4 (28:23):
We use some on the record, and then we gave
each other like a weekly or every two weeks so
we could stay in New York and become junkies and
stuff like a lot of people did. But we did
want a tour. But at that time New York, the nineties,
we were like the big band in the scene in downtown.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
We didn't like to go about fourteenth Street because it
wasn't easy for us. So we did tour.

Speaker 4 (28:44):
We went out with the Ramones, and you know, you
don't get paid a lot opening but we learned a lot,
and those guys were so generous to us. And I
became friends with Joey, who just loved music.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
Like his mo was.

Speaker 4 (28:56):
He wasn't about sex, drugs or money. It was like
he just listened to music. He was, you know, kind
of a real misfit and had a lot of health
things and it was a creature from a different type
of thing. So he just so passionate. He used to
on our tour bus. They were in a van, smart
saving money because they knew bus and we're in this
big record company supported bus and he didn't want to

(29:17):
be around his band.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
He'd be sitting in there with us.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
Oh interesting. I love the jump from van to bus.
It's all about transportation.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
It is funny. And you hate the van.

Speaker 4 (29:26):
You think, oh man, I could go my bunk now
and I can listen to music and I can you know,
be alone and sleep. But I feel like you're tighter
as a band connectively as people like you get along
better in the van, Like you listen to the same thing,
you get same kind of jokes. It's like summer camp,
you know. It's like there's a camaraderie that once you
get in the bus. Everybody's like a separate thing, and

(29:48):
at least that's what I've experienced. But yeah, we did tour,
and we toured. We did that band for seven years.
We were on EMI, they were on Sony. We kept
getting we got dropped, and then we got another record deal.
I thought, I'm gonna have to sell shoes on Saint
Mark's place or go back to moving furniture, but like
somebody said, no.

Speaker 3 (30:06):
You're gonna get another deal.

Speaker 4 (30:07):
And I'm like all the bands I knew they had
that one shot in the eighties to try to be
the next Guns and Roses whatever they ended up, right,
And now this is the ear is nineties, you know,
grunge and all that stuff is in. So we're trying
to be the reaction to that, Like we're not gonna
wear flannel and look like a farm or a gas
station attendant, Like we want to look like a band
and have this thing. And we had a thing whatever

(30:27):
the music is and whatever people feel about that, and
I like some of the songs. We had a thing
as people where it was it was real, so we
could be really intense or really down on each other,
but it was it was organic friendship, gang connection, to
music that worked on stage. And after about seven years
of doing that, and you know, we went to Europe

(30:48):
and toured with Green Day and you know, Ramones and
all kinds of bands and some of our heroes and stuff,
and then I just felt again like similar heart attack
that nobody could really they weren't caring again about the lyrics,
what we were singing about. They were just talking about
our outfits and shoes. And at that point the moshpit

(31:08):
came back again. We were be out with Offspring or
these bands, and the whole punk thing was the next
wave of that, the nineties, rancid, Green Day, Offspring type
of time. And so the whole show was about if
we can get them dancing all crazy, and they weren't
listening to songs. So I'm sitting in the van. We're
back in the van or on the bus, and I'm
listening to Neil Young again. I'm listening to Springsteen, and

(31:31):
now I'm listening to Cannon Crows and Will Go, and
there's these other things that are out there. Steve Earl
sudden I hear that and I'm like, wow, this has
rock and roll, but there's songs. And suddenly Lucinda Williams
and I called up Jerry Moone and I said, I'm
listening to this woman. Louten to Williams here, because he'd
always say jokes, what are you listening to? We call
every day, and I said, listen to Williams. He's on

(31:53):
a Steve Earld record.

Speaker 3 (31:54):
And he said, I know, huh. I was like, how
do you? I was on like a songwritere a paddle
with her at the bottom line, you know, and I
was like wow.

Speaker 4 (32:02):
And then years later I'd meet Lucinda Williams and I said, yeah, Joey.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
And she goes, oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:06):
He sent me a song.

Speaker 4 (32:08):
He had a song you want Me to Ride about
a train and he was passed away by them when
I met Lucinda. But I I just kind of was
looking again to break it down to go solo. And
I watched suddenly people were coming out with acoustic guitars
and approaching it. Maybe it was called old country now
or whatever, like there's all these different eras where rock

(32:28):
and country. Maybe it's the birds, and then in the
seventies in La it's with the Eagles and this or right,
you know, then you have rank and file in the
late you know, whatever, long riders and and to me,
it don't need those separate boxes. I was like, I
don't know, can I be a solo guy? That seemed
like very adult to me. I was scared, you know.
I was like, like being in a band.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
What kept you? I mean at this point, you're thirty, yeah,
early thirties. It's a tough life. Yeah, very hard life.
You're leading you know all these ups and downs? What
a lot of people did drop out? What kept you going?

Speaker 4 (33:03):
Just?

Speaker 3 (33:03):
I guess the love of music to drive.

Speaker 4 (33:06):
Always had a lot of drive and always excited about
the next thing that I was going to make and
having something that was there.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
If I woke up and I was like.

Speaker 4 (33:14):
Wow, I don't know if I want to go on
stage and hit myself at the microphone and scream, you know,
Frankie for degeneration tonight. I kind of want to play
this acoustic guitar and have some people hear these songs.
And I think there's a way to present this that
could not be just me sitting on a stool with
hush puppies, growing a mustache and be not that there's
anything wrong with that, but like that I can find

(33:36):
a way to be me and sing these New York
story kind of songs and still be the songwriter guy,
but come from where I come from, hardcore or whatever,
and I really want to do this. I have this idea,
and so somebody was nice enough to give me a
weekly residency at a club called Brownies on Avenue A
and go in there and I grabbed a piano player,

(33:57):
this guy, Joe McGuinty, and we rehearsed in you know,
a little rehearsal studio, and I take my acoustic songs
and then he play a little piano on them, and
suddenly it became like, wow, there's a song there, or
you know, and I was thinking about Tom Waits, and
I was thinking about Nick Cave, and I was thinking
about Nebraska Springsteen. But then it came out to be
something different and have a place to do this every

(34:18):
Wednesday night for a month or two. You know, one
gig is like ten rehearsals.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
So yeah, was there a time when you know, you
started writing songs in those voices? Were you sitting there
going this is a Tom Waite song? Ah, this is
this song? Was there a moment where he thought, wait
a second, it's my song now, wasn't so aware of it.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
You know.

Speaker 4 (34:38):
Usually you have some smart a musician, usually it's the drummer,
and you bring it a song and they say, oh yeah,
and they start singing the song that you read it
all from or whatever they think, or and everything comes
from something, you know. I think it's how you mix
it up in the pot. You could take, you know,
all these different ingredients and spit it out in your
own way. But I wasn't aware till I started to

(34:58):
read the reviews.

Speaker 3 (34:59):
You know.

Speaker 4 (35:00):
Then when I first solo record came out in England,
first it got some reviews that were more positive than
a lot of things I had experienced in a long time.
And let those people say, you explain.

Speaker 3 (35:10):
What it was, And I was like, oh really, all right,
you know they.

Speaker 4 (35:13):
Hear and it was nice.

Speaker 3 (35:14):
It was the first time though.

Speaker 4 (35:15):
We're like they got both sides of Queen's Boulevard, the Borrow,
like yes, I'm in a garf Ucal and Johnny thunders,
you know, like they got that that I was, you know,
a creature of both those worlds. That that and when
you read a review, they say you shouldn't read your press,
but when it they're getting what you were setting out
to do, which had never been the case with degeneration,
and you kind of feel like, wow, maybe I'm onto

(35:37):
something here. You know, people are connecting to this.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
Is it harder to grow up in music in New
York because in a lot of places it's not that
their standards are lower, but if you're the local band,
they're kind of happy for you. There's not too many
local bands, and they're supportive. You know. When I talk
to Seater Kenny about, you know, being in Portland, it's

(36:00):
like it's like everybody's lifting you up. New York's competitive, yeah,
and the and the even the critics are competitive, and
they're part of their competition is who can say the
pissiest thing about something?

Speaker 3 (36:15):
Yeah, New York.

Speaker 4 (36:15):
I mean, if you think about it, the bands there
hadn't been a big rock band. I mean and even
out of CBGB's Blondie I guess they broke, but there
hadn't been until I guess. Then came the Beastie Boys.
There were most there.

Speaker 3 (36:28):
It was like a curse.

Speaker 4 (36:29):
You know, Sonic Youth it's a rock band, a little different.
Beastie Boys are not really a rock band. But those
acts got big, but nothing it was always they wanted
to sign. The record companies wanted to sign something from Athens, Georgia.
At one point, they want to sign from Seattle or anywhere,
and the labels are here.

Speaker 3 (36:45):
In New York, so that they really don't want to
see you. They see you out and about.

Speaker 4 (36:49):
But I guess in the early two thousands, which was
when I was doing my solo stuff, that rock and
roll in New York got to really happen, and with Strokes, Yaas,
Enterpol all that, and even though maybe I wasn't, you know,
in those bands, it was nice to see that really
happened in a great way. And I remember friends of
mine being really jealous of the Stroke and talking crap,

(37:10):
and I was like, I know what that's like, because
I was like a band that people talk to you
because they're other musicians are you know, competitive, jealous, And
I was like so happy, And yeah, maybe they grew
up with similar records that I did the Strokes, you know,
but they had their own take on it. They spit
it out in their own way, and.

Speaker 3 (37:25):
It's nice to see.

Speaker 4 (37:26):
But yeah, it was definitely in our time, not a
place where the journalists wanted to write about what was
going on here and you know they're looking somewhere else,
and it's a competitive place and a place that'll break
your heart, Like like Hollywood. People go there to be famous,
and you know there's a big competition. There's a bit
you know, it's it's not what you think it's going

(37:46):
to be.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
I want to talk a lot about your Solar solo career,
but I kind of I want to do it through
this new album because I want to talk about the
people and the songs. But we probably should because we
haven't explained. Tell me about May fourth, twenty twenty three. Wow,
what was going on?

Speaker 4 (38:05):
Well, that had been a year that my bass player
and best friend, Howie pyr died, who was in degeneration,
and I had done a lot of fundraising to you know,
concerts and memorials even after he passed, but benefits in
the beginning. He had a liver transplant and he had
passed on that day. I was on tour in Germany
and Berlin. I say goodbye to him through the phone

(38:25):
or whatever. But it was a year later and we
wanted to celebrate him. Some of his friends, his family,
sister flew in and so I created a dinner at
six o'clock near my house, this Italian spot with some
of those friends and family, and we were gonna go
DJ and celebrate him. It sounds weird to celebrate someone's death,
but he was morbid and he would have liked any celebrations.

(38:45):
So I'm walking over that. I had rehearsed that day,
I had had a couple of meetings. I took a
little disco nap. I was ready and I just was
going out. I was gonna eat, and I brought some
cash with me because it's Italian restaurant. It's only cash,
no credit card. And it was twelve people, and I
threw the party, so I was gonna pay for the bill.
And I'm starting to walk there and I run into

(39:07):
Jonathan Tobin. He's a DJ, it's been around the world,
plays old great records, and he's a friend of Howie's.
And so I started to feel my hips and feel
weird walking the street. And I thought it was the
boots I was wearing, or I thought it was my back.
And as I ate the dinner, I tried to pretend
that this wasn't happening with these twelve people, and suddenly
I ended up in so much pain. But I kept
trying to fake it ended up on the floor. My

(39:29):
best friend Jimmy g from Murphy's Law, the singer hardcore singer,
was there and he said, come on, I'm gonna call
an ambulance.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
And I said, I'm gonna shake it off.

Speaker 4 (39:36):
I'm gonna shake it off, and I realized I couldn't.
And then I realized it was time to pay the bill,
and everybody's coming around me, like go over there. It
was like Rosemary's Baby. Everybody had a different phone out
like do this, try this. They're all over me, standing
over me, all these interesting looking people. But I paid
the bill with the cash to the waiter. I was like,
take take eightie all. And I was laying there and

(39:57):
then I tried to get up, and then I realized
that my legs were just ice and numb, and so
I said, call the ambulance and took me to one
hospital and next and took the the next day until
I got a room. And that's how it is with that.
And it took a while and then to figure out
what had happened. And it's a very rare thing. It's

(40:17):
a spinal stroke, and even an NYU here in New
York and Mount Sinai. They don't see that many of them,
and it left me pretty much paralyzed, you know, you
know from the spinal cord, the legs couldn't walk everything
below the waist and.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
So it's a stroke in your brain. It's like a
blood cloth.

Speaker 4 (40:37):
It's something, yeah, something a inforcation in the in the
spine where blood isn't getting to the area and it's
just the nerves disconnected. And so three months in the
hospital because they're figuring things out, and there's almost half
it was a rehab hospital still NYU, and they said,
you know, you'll never walk again, and you know never,
you know, doctors weren't very optimistic. So a lot of

(40:59):
friends of mine, a couple that have dealt with themselves
in alternative medicine. They've had cancer and they've tried other
ways to not just go with the mainstream medicine. And
one of them called like forty places about stem cells
and found a place that specialized in spinal cord injuries
and they were in Argentina and they gave stem cells

(41:20):
and they don't do it here at the FDA hadn't
approved this and it wasn't expensive, but it was going
to be six months in this other country, and I'm
already so shaken up now. I lived in a walk
up so I couldn't go back that day I left.
I never packed and I never moved out, but I
could never go back. So before I went to Argentina,
which I would say yes to, I'm in hospitals.

Speaker 3 (41:41):
Then I'm in.

Speaker 4 (41:42):
Hotels, you know. And luckily people raised some funds for
me through sweet relief in the music community. I was
able to stay in hotels because I had to cancel
six months of touring and all my stuff got put
in storage. People moved me out of that was a rental,
but I'd been there ten years and it was really haunting.
They never go back, and you know, so I didn't

(42:02):
have anywhere to live. So I said yes to Argentina
for six months and it wasn't a money and they
were really compassionate, intelligent, hard working people at this clinic,
and not everybody spoke English and that made it challenging.
But I got a lot out of it, and I
got stem cell treatments along with five days a week

(42:24):
of five hours a day of really intense, pt scary
stuff putting blindfolds onto you and get you up and
they want to get you up, and it did a lot.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
It was part of it keeping your legs moving so
the muscle doesn't atrophy.

Speaker 4 (42:38):
Yeah in some way, and learning how to use other
parts like the quads and the hips and you know,
so if somebody sees me now and I can get
up with a walker, I might have braces on below
my knees, but I'm using other muscles and I'm using
other things from doing it every day. And I was
just convinced that, you know, I want to beat this
somehow beat the odds. And you know when you see

(42:59):
an MRI and you see there's a disconnection in there.
And then there's other things that go with just not walking.
They go with your body that make it really hard
and not being able to tour, not being able to,
you know, really do other things like I would DJ
or was involved in some clubs. I had Downtown everything
even after COVID was tough enough and we're just rebuilding.
I thought that was the low. I know, I was like, man,

(43:20):
my friend died COVID, but you know, the love and
the support of the music community and my fans and
friends and family, it was it blew my mind and
I didn't want to. It was embarrassed I was. I
didn't want to ask. I never wanted to need and
be that person. I like to be the guy paying
the bill or the guy that puts on the benefit.
But it's a lesson to learn, you know how to receive.

(43:42):
So now we'll be two years in May, and you know,
when I got back, I could at least play the
guitar and sing. And some of that the pain and
the energy I had made it hard to I couldn't
write for a while.

Speaker 3 (43:52):
I didn't.

Speaker 4 (43:53):
You know, people say, just write songs, lay in bed,
but there's a lot more to it than Everything takes
a long time.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
Man, did you lose because with some strokes people lose mobility,
but not feeling necessarily. Did you lose both?

Speaker 4 (44:05):
I had no feeling earlier below my waist. Now I
have it my upper thighs. There's some feeling, and but
down below I don't like, you know, sound gross. I
could step on attack. I wouldn't know, or I could. Yeah,
I've I've burned my legs and stuff shaving under the sink,
you know, like in weird times, other things have happened.
I didn't even know, you know, so you got to

(44:26):
really watch your skin and yeah, all this fun rock
and roll stuff does.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
This do they think with stem cells, this will it'll
slowly come back or they.

Speaker 4 (44:36):
Believe that a lot in the folks in Argentina, and
you know, it's all new. Some people say, oh, it's
like the wild West or whatever, but it's it's it's
not harmful. It's my own stem cells. I had to
get my some cells removed from like a you know,
kind of like a love handle area and then put
back in. And the thing that appealed to me was
the combination with the physical therapy and stem cells that

(45:00):
really made me think that this is a good thing.
Because and so when I was getting some progress and
I was leaving there, I said to the main doctor,
is this this stuff that's happening. Is this because of
the therapy we did or the cells? And she said,
we don't know. That's why we do both. And I
thought it was you know, and they're not trying to
push this and sell you more stem cells and come

(45:21):
down here like they're trying, and they're figuring out. The
main doctor her father had studied this for thirty years plus,
and so I just went with it. Another option was
to stay in New York. I didn't have anywhere to
live at the time. My insurance wasn't covering physical therapy.
They weren't covering a new wheelchair. You know, a bunch
of things. Healthcare in America is tough. But I gotta

(45:43):
say Sweet Relief really got together with my manager and
my friends that all came through to put together where
people could donate and then eventually benefit concerts. And this album.
That was another thing. I mean, it was pretty great
just even like emotionally to hear these songs too, like
it was a boost of like wow, Okay, you know,

(46:05):
in the lowest points, I'd be really low in Argentina
and I.

Speaker 3 (46:09):
Didn't like the food and it's a very meat place.
I'm vegetarians.

Speaker 4 (46:12):
I just felt I can't walk, I'm away from my friends,
and so it's been a ride. But I've always preached
since the hardcore days PMA, you know, positive mental latitude,
and it was a real all right, you talk about BMA.
Now deal with this, see if you can. You know,
all right, you're so positive, okay, positive you are now.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
Well.

Speaker 2 (46:34):
Last break and we back with Jesse Mallen.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
The last few months have been sort of this incredible
outpouring of your music. You had the tribute album Silver
Patron Saints with a lot of friends, a lot of
admirers Springsteen and a lot of other people you played with.
You've got a new single out, and you had a
live album out last year too, Is that right?

Speaker 4 (47:00):
Yeah, right before this happened, I had a record Chasing
a Light, a live record in like a DVD film thing.

Speaker 3 (47:06):
Yeah, it's kind of something.

Speaker 4 (47:07):
We filmed a lot of it through in Lockdown, Pandemic
and stuff, and it went with the record that we
made at that time.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
So what's this been like? To see this kind of
outpouring of people and your music everywhere and great reviews
for this record.

Speaker 4 (47:24):
It's been really touching, really humbling. I always believed in
people and the power of people's energies and generosity. You know,
I'm an optimistic person in that way, but I know
there's a lot of bad stuff in this world, a
lot of bad people, but I've never seen it on
this level. And I'd never like to receive. I always
like to be the person since I'm like fifteen, putting

(47:44):
on benefits, and you know, the music community, it's not
just the artist. It's everybody involved, the fans, the people.
I think they're the most giving, caring people of any
kind of community. And it's been overwhelming but inspiring and
just a lot to take in, a lot to you know,
with what happened to me. Has been so hard and

(48:04):
each day is tough, but that had made it so
much bright And yeah, I guess there was funds that
were needed. And that's a real thing to hear these songs,
to hear the music and hear that, or just to
see the messages from people that they gave a lot
too as much, if not more.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
It's also one of those tribute albums that they're faithful
to the songs, all these versions, but they kind of
reintroduced the songs in a nice way.

Speaker 4 (48:34):
Yeah, you know, sometimes I'd listen to it. I mean
they came in slowly. I had nothing to do with it.
The record was put together, you know, these two folks
that one managed me, Diane Genteel years ago and my
new manager, Dave Basin, And I was just in my
recovery and I left the country to go to South America,
to Argentina, and I couldn't speak the language and speak Spanish.

(48:54):
I couldn't walk, and it was tricky to nurses. I'll
speaking Spanish. And then little by little these songs would
trickle in and they'd send me a song, you know,
on the have it on my iPhone and didn't have
a sound system, and I'd be in my room or whatever,
and I'd listen to it. It would just make such
a difference each time they came in, just to hear
how these artists that they took the time went in

(49:15):
the studio, gave so much of themselves, and then to
hear the songs, some of them were so much better
in my eyes than the original or I was like, wow,
I thought I was just fooling people with a crooked
hat and a leather jacket.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
There's a song in there, you know, like hey, youre wow.

Speaker 4 (49:29):
It actually is something you could sing back and hearing
someone else do it, and it was just wonderful to
hear all those different versions. And I felt like, to
me from someone that's been on compilations and tribute records,
I felt that the people, the artists went deep. They
weren't phoning it in like I could feel that they
thought about it. That's how it came across to me.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
I want to talk about the songs and the people
as a way of talking about the songs. Let's start
with the Springsteen, who you've played with before, who sang
on one or two of your albums. And then he
does a just great version of she Don't Love You
to Love Me Now. Yeah, it's just a it's got

(50:11):
a great, great sax solo. Tell me first about the
song and then his take on the song.

Speaker 4 (50:18):
We were going for it on my record New York
before the War, to have a song kind of like
Lee Dorsey, kind of New Orleans soul, Sam Cook kind
of song with stabs and uh, and we were approaching
that and and uh record the song and I don't
think on that album I captured maybe the right tempo
or it wasn't ready yet. Sometimes songs need a little
more time. But as we played it live, it kind

(50:41):
of grew into one of the songs in my set
that the crowds seem to connect with.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
The guitar sound on that on your version of it,
I mean, I.

Speaker 4 (50:49):
Like his, but it's it's got a great Oh cool. Well,
that's Derek Cruz, who plays guitar with me, who I
co wrote the song with. We were just jamming at
a studio called Tucasa down on Avenue B and you know,
he's just had this thing and in my mind and
and you know, someti as I free form and if
somebody's just hitting some chords, sometimes the whole thing will
come out. And that was one of the ones where

(51:09):
he's just banging these things and hitting those stabs, and
then the lyrics fell out and the no melody fell out.
But I felt like, you know, I wish that we
always could have re recorded it a little quicker, but
there it was, and live it became a song, and
I guess that was the one that everybody thought when
they're putting the record together.

Speaker 3 (51:27):
To get to Bruce and.

Speaker 4 (51:31):
Danny Clinch was really helpful, reaching out the photographer who
was a friend and a fan and just.

Speaker 3 (51:37):
The guy we've worked with.

Speaker 4 (51:39):
And you know, Bruce's always been supportive. I mean, he
was in touch with me a lot through this and
checked in a lot from the road and Europe and stuff.
So they they tracked it, actually I believe it was
my band tracked it while I was away, and then
they sent it to Jay Clemens, the sax player, and

(52:00):
he played on it, and then it got to Bruce's
studio and that he sang on it.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
You wouldn't know when you hear it.

Speaker 4 (52:05):
I think I felt like he really took the time
to get inside the song. But I never talked to
him about it or you know, was that right?

Speaker 3 (52:12):
It just all happened. They send me to song and there.

Speaker 4 (52:14):
It was, so I was like, wow, this is this
is cool, this is And I think he kind of
got the soul thing more than we did. But he's
the boss, you know, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
He's literally the boss in this case. I think what
I like. I like about both versions, but your version.
It's one of those songs where you kind of hear
the room, if that makes any sense, Like, and you
don't hear that so much on records anymore, no matter
how much reverb they put on them, you don't. You
don't feel like you're hearing the room.

Speaker 3 (52:40):
Yeah. I like that space.

Speaker 4 (52:41):
I mean, maybe it was something that harks back to
a song I did on my first album, Queen of
the Underworld, where there's those stabs and there's like a
room and there's not a lot on it. I don't know,
it's the sixties kind of approach to I think in
some way.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
Great version about you that Frank Turner does. Yeah, so
tell me first about the song.

Speaker 4 (53:01):
That song is something I wrote when I was in
Europe and some different experiences. One verse, I was staying
in a hotel where chet Baker fell out the window
and he had put me in that room and he
died and there's a plaque there and I was dealing
with some.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
And you still opened the windows.

Speaker 3 (53:18):
It was only a second floor. He must have been
having some powerful stuff.

Speaker 4 (53:22):
But it's a you know, a connection to somebody, and
it references a lot of travel. And I guess I
didn't want my second album to be about the road
and you know, all that stuff, because I was touring
a lot, because it's such cliche thing and I tried
to avoid that. But it becas a few songs about
the road, and that Frank Turner version was the first
song that I heard that when they said they're doing

(53:43):
this tribute record for me, and this is the thing.
That was the first song that came in and I
was fighting out of my mind. I was going to
this doctor's office to remove fat to use for stem cells,
and I was so frail and fragile, and I was
in the waiting room and it came in and somebody
forwarded to me and I was sitting and I had
to go to Chicago, and that was really hard. And
I listened to that and I thought Frank did such

(54:05):
a great job, Like beautiful, it's one of my favorites,
and he just stripped it down and just changed the melody.

Speaker 3 (54:12):
And I always been a fan of him.

Speaker 4 (54:14):
If you see him live, he's a great songwriter, but
he also he's a great performer.

Speaker 1 (54:19):
And Shane by Rocky O Reardon.

Speaker 3 (54:23):
Yeah, you're picking some good ones. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (54:26):
I'd met Rocky or Corch or cat so many different ways.
I pronounced her dable Calder. I met her we were
doing some benefit shows for Music and Memory. We do
this Clash tribute night that we did in London in
New York a few years in a row and the
money goes to Stromer Foundation and Music and Memory for Dementia.
And she came and sang Lovers Rock from London calling

(54:50):
the Clash song and we connected and I would go
see her play with other people locally, and she's bass players.
I'd seen her play in the pogues at Dance Atteria,
but it was so long ago and I was asked
to sing at Chee mc gowan's sixtieth birthday and he
was in a wheelchair and it was in Dublin, and
I went with Clem Burke and Glenn Mattlocke and some

(55:10):
folks and I sang some stuff Spider from the Popes.
We did some of the early stuff from Shane's first band,
and I met him again and courch Rocky was the
bass player in the house band, and the house band
had Shane sing, had Bono, Johnny Depp, Nick Cave, Bobby
Gillespie and Glenn Hazard. You know, it was just crazy,
and it was my experience when I wrote the song

(55:31):
about being there and feeling like it was my Forrest
Gump moment, like I'm on stage with all these people,
and it was like I felt like this New Yorker,
you know that, why am I here? I mean, I
love Shane and the Pogues. I wrote it about that,
and she had been there, and then I guess they
asked her to sing that song. And when I got
that version back, it must have made sense to her.
I would assume somewhere of the song because she did it,

(55:53):
but I'd love the version. I just love what she did,
and with the Irish accent, it just made the song
so much more real. I like it better than my
version two.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
Three of those, Three of those, okay, because it's one
of your best known songs. Brooklyn, Yeah with Dinosaur Jr.
Tell me about that.

Speaker 4 (56:13):
When I lived in green Point, Brooklyn after my mother died,
and I had the van service and I was a
moving guy. Me and my friend scrouched a lot of
money together to have a first floor of a three
level house or whatever, and I guess it would be
eighty seven or something like that, and there would be
some girl that lived upstairs and she was very nice
and knew some people we knew, and we were the

(56:34):
only city freaks in the neighborhood of green Point Polish
and Italian. And it'd be just crazy noise blasting this
guitar and it sounded like some I don't know what
it sounded like.

Speaker 3 (56:44):
It was so noisy, and it was Jay. He was
dating this girl. He was up there, but we never
talked that.

Speaker 4 (56:49):
I would hear him and hear him, and then years
later we'd meet in different places and talk about that,
and somehow that you know, we got a little friendly.
But he I Guess was contacted and agreed to do
the song, and we'd been a little bit in touch,
but not during that time with this accident for me,
and I just love the way they played. He changed
it up, took some verses out. The drumming is great.

(57:11):
I think the drum rolls and it just has a
sleazy swagger and very different version. So I was really
taken in. Of course, his guitar playing is really really cool. Yeah,
that was nice.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
And bleachers they do prisoners.

Speaker 3 (57:29):
Prisons are Paradise.

Speaker 4 (57:30):
Yeah, that was another one where I heard it. And
a month before this happened to me, I was in
a dressing room in Brooklyn at the Barclays and seeing
Bruce Springsteen and yeah, I'm just in this dressing room
and it was kind of a strange thing.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
He just usually have to show.

Speaker 4 (57:48):
Sometimes they'll you'll get a text Bruce wants to say hello,
and so we went back and I had missed him
at the garden.

Speaker 3 (57:54):
So if we're going to say hello.

Speaker 4 (57:55):
And I get back in the dressing room and nobody
really theres Bruce and this guy with crazy glasses on,
younger guy and then in comes Jan Winner, who coincidently
is in a wheelchair. I've never met Jan Winner, but
it was nice. And everyone's talking to Bruce about the show.
I started talking to Bruce about him meeting Sean McGowan
recently went to his house, like, we're just having some
music talk Bruce. You hang out with Bruce and you

(58:17):
you forget that it's him. He's just like becomes one
of your friends that you grew up with and geeking
out on music like he's that. It really feels that real.
And he's just down to earth like that. And there's
this other guy and he's talking about suicide with these
goofy glasses on. I'm like, what's this And he's really
nice and he's like and Jesse knows, and we're talking
about Alan Vega and we're talking to Bruce and then
we leave. Bruce says, you know what, guys, I gotta go.

(58:38):
He doesn't have one of these people to come in
and say, you know, Bruce for five minutes, he just
says it. He goes, right, okay, I'm out of here. Yeah,
there's no problem, you know, being really directed.

Speaker 3 (58:46):
It's nice.

Speaker 4 (58:47):
I walk out into the street, you know, down and
the guy that with the glasses says to me yeah,
you want you want to take a ride into the city,
you know, you need a ride. And I was like, nah,
you know, I'll go to I'm gonna go drink at
this bar or Smith Street Social or something. You know,
I'm in Brooklyn for once, you know.

Speaker 3 (59:01):
But I didn't realize who it was.

Speaker 4 (59:03):
And I guess we had met before in some clubs,
but it was Jack and.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
So it was some black Anton.

Speaker 4 (59:08):
Yeah, Jack Anton, And I was like, God, I should
have probably taken a ride with him in the gap.
Would have been a nice thing. He's got up studioed
electric lady with neighbors. He was nice. I didn't realize
who it was. Still after I'm like, oh, that's who
it was. But somehow, you know, down the line, someone
that knew someone a friend of a friend that bumped
into someone that manages him, and somewhere in the summer

(59:30):
and it came up and he was down to do.
I guess they sent him a handful of songs. He
picked prisoners, And when I heard it back, I was like, Wow,
this is like Johnny Cash suicide. It's like such a
cool like he's got his own spin, Like wow, this
is great. And then they asked you, what do you
think this record should be called? And that was the
only input I had. I don't sing on it, you know,

(59:50):
I wrote the songs, but you know, so I was like,
I don't know, and then that song came in and
I was like, Silver Patron Saints. It's in the verse
of Prisoners that.

Speaker 3 (59:58):
There's some title. Yeah, he did so good. I love
it when it's different.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
And then you know, there's some people from the good
old days like yeah, hardcore, yeah, Agnostic Front and Murphy's
Law and you know, doing well God is.

Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
Dead, Yeah, Agnostic Front did God His dad was like wow,
realty stigma.

Speaker 4 (01:00:16):
But the thing that also, besides the great versions and
how much people gave, is just to have a record
that for me has Agnostic Front and Bruce Springsteen on
it and Lucinda Williams and Murphy's Law, and it's like,
I was like, I guess I have pretty crazy life,
but it makes sense to me.

Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
The last time I saw you, you were playing with
Lucinda Williams and it was a City Winery show and
people know that she had a stroke and has come
back and she's had various problems, and it was after
that and I remember during our interview, she was telling
me how thrilled she was that you were working with

(01:00:57):
her and what a great songwriter you were. So how
is first of all, how do you guys originally meet?

Speaker 4 (01:01:03):
We met at the Blue Note at a Charlie Watts
gig in two thousand and four. Yeah, I think Ryan
adamspace Player might have been dating her Billy and I
don't know. We all went there and I just hit
it off. I'd been a fan, and we started, you know, talking,
and just we stayed in touch and became friends. If

(01:01:23):
we were in the same city, Chicago or La New York,
we would get together and hang out, and you know,
I have some really fun nights and great conversations. And
we found out we have the same birthday and in January,
and I just felt the real connection. And then I
realized she lived in New York and she played in
Queens where I'm from in the nineteen eighty She came

(01:01:43):
and lived in East Village and lived where I was
living now on Second Street and First Avenue at that time.
And we just stayed friends and that was it. And
then at one point we made a record, Sunset Kids,
with my second and last record, from Now and her
and her husband Tom Overbye produced the record and it
was great and we did a little writing together too,

(01:02:06):
and we had such a great experience making that record
was one of my favorite. It's we did some in
la where she was living, and some in New York.
They love New York or and her husband. So when
she had this stroke, I was so upset. It was
COVID and it was just everything was so bleak. But
she couldn't play guitar, and uh so, I don't know
if I offered or they asked, but I ended up

(01:02:26):
coming to Nashville several times and sat in the kitchen
and wrote songs with them, you know, and we wrote
a bunch and because she couldn't play guitar, play the guitar,
and it was just trying to help out. And you know,
know what would happen with these songs? They have many,
We went through many, and some of them ended up
on that record. And it was just, you know, a

(01:02:46):
great experience. And you're sitting in the kitchen table and
it's your friend and you're you know, bring out some carrits,
bring out some chips and dip or whatever, and then
here's a beer and then suddenly that voice.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
Pops out and you turn your head and it's listening there.

Speaker 4 (01:02:58):
It's like, wow, we're in the kitchen here, but it's
a good place to cook up a song. And so
I was helping her out with a stroke, so that
some of the songs made the album and one that
I sang with her on stage New yor Comeback and.

Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
Stuff like that. So yeah, have a few that I
wrote with her.

Speaker 4 (01:03:14):
So it was really wild when then I have a stroke,
you know, after just doing this helping somebody, and a
different kind of stroke. But yeah, it was It was
just another strange thing connected to this.

Speaker 1 (01:03:26):
You talk about sitting with a guitar writing songs with her.
Have songs not to say, songs ever come easily? Have
they always come for you? Has music always come if you?
If you sit down with a guitar and you know
something's going to come out at the other end.

Speaker 4 (01:03:39):
Well, the more you sit down, the more you'll get stuff.
I mean, there is writer's block. It's a real, real thing.
I was once on a songwriter panel in south By,
Southwest with a bunch of writers, and one was Pat
de Nunzio, the late Patnunzio, the Smith of Reens seeing
a lot of hits and funny guy.

Speaker 3 (01:03:54):
So somebody asked the question, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:03:55):
Hey, hey, Pat, you know what's what's the best cure
for writer's block? And he said, ass in chair. And
the thing is that if you sit down and you
you know you're gonna you might And I record a
lot of stuff that I do.

Speaker 3 (01:04:08):
It's nice.

Speaker 4 (01:04:08):
You think it's garbage, and guards you can listen back
a week later or a couple of days and there's
something in there. Every time you sit down. You might
not finish a song and write Bridge over Trouble Water
or whatever. But if you sit down you do it,
you're gonna get something. I mean, you know, and then
some days you're gonna hit some really good things. So
I think to stay active with it. And then another
thing I got was like the Joe Strummer thing, like

(01:04:29):
no input, no output. You know, you gotta constantly as
a writer. If I listen to my favorite records, I'm
desensitized to them. I love them unless I'm a little drunk,
a little buzzed, and I hear it in a different way.
But otherwise they don't want to hear new things. They
make me want to write when I see a new
film where I get like, when something's just coming at
me for the first time, it inspires me to kind

(01:04:50):
of do that. I used to carry little notebook. Now
sometimes I write on the phone. People think you're texting.
If I go to a film, I get ideas, just
got you gotta cut out the world. We're always being
inundated with with you know, emails and this and Instagram
and like that early part of the morning, to not
turn the phone on that late at night, you know,
like just to really get that quiet time, and also

(01:05:14):
to take things in and from all different things and
then be able to spit it out.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
It makes sense that I didn't know you were so
interested in film, but you've got very visual songs. You're
that kind of writer.

Speaker 3 (01:05:24):
Thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:05:25):
Yeah, you know a certain film a certain period of time.
But still it's like, you know, I just saw a movie,
the Last Showgirl. It was with Pamela Anderson, which I
know what that was gonna be like, and it was.

Speaker 3 (01:05:36):
It was really good.

Speaker 4 (01:05:37):
Yeah, it's a female version of the Wrestler in a way,
but made by one of the couple of grandchildren.

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
With that After you had your stroke, did the music
go for a while or were you were you sitting
there you spent I'm sure a lot of long, tedious
hours in hospitals.

Speaker 4 (01:05:53):
Were you thinking, yeah, well, every little thing you got
to do is taking so long, and everything is very scary,
and you know, this is all kinds of tests. And
but I did eventually get the guitar brought to the
hospital and see what it was like, and to see
what it was like to sing. And eventually when it
got me, trump me how to get out of the
bed and had to get my body in a wheelchair
was a big step. And then eventually the guitar was

(01:06:16):
sitting in the corner, and eventually the wheelchair rolled over
and I closed the hospital door. You know, as much
as I played lots of people all these years, when
I'm alone playing a guitar or writing a song, it's
a very private, you know, personal moment. And I didn't
know it was going to sound like. And I closed
the hospital door and I just started to sing. And
I think the first song I did was a Room thirteen,

(01:06:38):
which is one from Sunset Kids, and a song about
being isolated and having to reflect on your whole life.
But I don't know why, I just it's a key
that I thought would be nice, and I was like, oh,
this is here, and little by little I would play
and didn't have a lot of time, and eventually I
wheeled myself into We got me in a car, in

(01:06:58):
the back of a special cab or whatever, and I
got down to a rehearsal place where it didn't have stairs,
and they put a mic in front of me, and
the band was there and selling. Those guys were right
in front of me, and it was super emotional, but
it seemed to go really well, and I was just like, wow,
this is still here, you know. And it was hard
to sit and things hurt my shoulder getting over the

(01:07:18):
Like it was a lot of different because I'm a
very physical singer, at least the ones I always grew
up watching from the Bad Rains Tootus reading. It's like
it was your body and I'm nervous, so like I
moved my body a lot, but like it was a
different focus and it felt good.

Speaker 1 (01:07:34):
Well, keep writing now. It's been just wonderful talking to you.
Thank you so much for coming in. Yeah, thanks for
having us, great luck with everything.

Speaker 3 (01:07:40):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:07:44):
In the episode description, you'll find a link to a
playlist to some of our favorite Jesse Mallen tracks. Be
sure to check us out on YouTube at YouTube dot
com slash Broken Record Podcast to see all of our
video interviews, and be sure to follow us on Instagram
at the Broken Record Pod. You can follow us on
Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited
by Leah Rose, with marketing help from Eric Sandler and

(01:08:06):
Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tom Broken Record is
a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show
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(01:08:29):
like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review
us on your podcast. Apt are the Music's by Kenny Beats.
I'm justin Richmond.