Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Jesse Mallin quite literally came of age on stage in
Speaker 2: the gritty clubs of New York City. At just twelve
Speaker 2: years old, he fronted Heart Attack, one of the earliest
Speaker 2: hardcore groups in the city. After they broke up in
Speaker 2: eighty four, Jesse went on to play in other groups,
Speaker 2: including Hope, and later co found a d Generation, a
Speaker 2: glam punk band that toured extensively through the nineties, opening
Speaker 2: for acts like Kiss, the Ramones and Social Distortion. In
Speaker 2: the early two thousands, Jesse launched a solo career, trading
Speaker 2: hardcore for a more singer songwriter driven approach. As a
Speaker 2: solo artist, he's collaborated with a wide range of musicians,
Speaker 2: including Bruce Springsteen, lusen To Williams, and Billy Joe Armstrong.
Speaker 2: A true musician's musician, Jesse has long been a beloved
Speaker 2: figure in the rock community, so when he suffered a
Speaker 2: rare spinal stroke in twenty twenty three that left him
Speaker 2: temporarily paralyzed from the waist down, that community rallied around him.
Speaker 2: The result was Silver Patron Saints The Songs of Jesse Mallin,
Speaker 2: a twenty twenty four tribute album featuring covers of his
Speaker 2: songs by friends and admirers. Jesse's also debuting a musical
Speaker 2: this fall, called Jesse Mallin Silver Manhattan, A Musical Guide
Speaker 2: to Survival, at the Grammercy Theater in New York. On
Speaker 2: today's episode, Bruce Hedlm talks with Jesse Mallin about his
Speaker 2: colorful upbringing and Queen's, how he found the nerve to
Speaker 2: try out for a gig at CBGB's at age twelve,
Speaker 2: and what it was like during the formative years of
Speaker 2: New York's hardcore scene. Jesse also shares how his positive
Speaker 2: mental attitude helped him through the toughest chapter of his life,
Speaker 2: recovering from the stroke that nearly ended his ability to walk.
Speaker 2: This is broken record, real musicians, real conversations. Here's Bruce
Speaker 2: Headlam with Jesse Mallin.
Speaker 1: I always assumed, because you're the mayor of East Village,
Speaker 1: that you grow up downtown New York. But you didn't.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not in politics. I don't know about the
Speaker 3: mayor thing.
Speaker 4: Somebody once said that, But no, I grew up in
Speaker 4: Queen's and I was born in Flushing, and yeah, the
Speaker 4: city isn't that far away from Queens but when you know,
Speaker 4: living in a suburban, middle class kind of you know,
Speaker 4: place like that. It's not everybody goes there or gets
Speaker 4: to go there to do. They stay sometimes and just
Speaker 4: become part of Queen's. But I knew that there were
Speaker 4: things in the city, and you could, you know, see
Speaker 4: it in magazines and hear it on the radio, or
Speaker 4: if you went to the circus at Mattis Square Garden.
Speaker 4: You might drive down another street and see something crazy
Speaker 4: and suddenly be like.
Speaker 3: Wow, what's going on over there?
Speaker 4: You know? Man in movies you got to see New York.
Speaker 4: New York just different now. But yeah, Queen's was definitely
Speaker 4: the early days.
Speaker 1: And what was it like? What was family life like?
Speaker 4: I grew up with my mom and my sister of
Speaker 4: a sister younger. My father left pretty early on, and
Speaker 4: my mom was a single mom who wanted to be
Speaker 4: a singer, but they got divorced young. They had us young,
Speaker 4: and she just did everything from waitressing to working in
Speaker 4: Bloomingdale's at a makeup counter to you know, whatever she
Speaker 4: could do to get by, and so it led for
Speaker 4: some freedom. Sometimes we had babysitters and limes. She couldn't
Speaker 4: afford babies that we were alone, and that was exciting.
Speaker 4: I didn't think it was anything bad or dangerous. It
Speaker 4: was fun to me. But my mom was very loving,
Speaker 4: but she had a lot on her plate. She was
Speaker 4: in her twenties, so I think sometimes she let me
Speaker 4: do a lot of things that a kid my age
Speaker 4: wouldn't be able to do or see, like go to
Speaker 4: see One Floor of the Cuckoo's Nest with Jack Nicholson
Speaker 4: when I'm eight for my birthday, because you know, where
Speaker 4: other parents, she.
Speaker 3: Maybe felt bad, she wasn't able to give other things,
Speaker 3: so she was loose.
Speaker 4: You know, here, here's a record, or here's magazines you want,
Speaker 4: or you know, to break some of those rules. In
Speaker 4: those days, films were such a big thing for me.
Speaker 4: If I couldn't see a film, I'd read the Mad
Speaker 4: magazine satire of it and pretend to somebody that I
Speaker 4: saw the film. But they were windows into an adult life.
Speaker 4: I really wanted to grow up fast. I was excited
Speaker 4: by film and music and the teenagers. Queen's had a
Speaker 4: day different thing than my neighborhood in Whitestone, where people
Speaker 4: hung out in the streets, you know, even though it
Speaker 4: was the seventies and it wasn't like.
Speaker 3: Do wop people in a tunnel.
Speaker 4: But there were like kids listening to like Leonard Skinner
Speaker 4: and drinking forty ounce bottles in the park or a
Speaker 4: school yard with a boombox, or you know, you'd hear
Speaker 4: Cashmeer by led Zeppelin, and you know they were stoned
Speaker 4: out like a Cheech and Chong movie. The bus that
Speaker 4: went to school was a city bus, and it was
Speaker 4: just boomboxes and smoke. And I got caught up in
Speaker 4: you know, radio AM radio first, and me and my
Speaker 4: cousin would judge any song if we heard on a radio,
Speaker 4: we'd try to get a buck or fifty cents, I think,
Speaker 4: and buy a single at Corvette's out there. And then
Speaker 4: if we liked it, the way we judge it is
Speaker 4: we could jump on the bed really fast and try
Speaker 4: to hit the ceiling. That meant it was a good song.
Speaker 4: And in the seventies, the fifties was a big nostalgia
Speaker 4: so American graffiti. We got Chuck Berry Johnny be Good
Speaker 4: and it was so rocket and Elton John came out
Speaker 4: with Crocodile Rock, which had a fifties thing, and suddenly
Speaker 4: I got Intelton John and that would be the first
Speaker 4: artist that I really Some babysitter had Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,
Speaker 4: and I just opened it up and I stared at
Speaker 4: the illustrations for each song, and I read the lyrics
Speaker 4: along with the record, and it was very adult, but
Speaker 4: very It was something dark, but he were these beautiful
Speaker 4: songs with this beautiful voice. And then there was some
Speaker 4: kind of anger and something dirty and screwed up. And
Speaker 4: I don't know what's going on to merrilman Roe or
Speaker 4: what happened with this lesbian Alice or this, you know, like,
Speaker 4: but I wanted to know, and I felt something, even
Speaker 4: though I didn't know fully.
Speaker 1: Was that was that stuff a little scary to you
Speaker 1: or just attractive to you?
Speaker 4: It was attractive scary a little In some of the photos,
Speaker 4: you know, the drummer Nigel Olsen had long hair. He
Speaker 4: looked like a woman. And then it was just it
Speaker 4: said it was okay, you know. I mean, I liked
Speaker 4: in Benny and the Jets because I'd be angry at
Speaker 4: my father, angry at teachers, and it said, you know,
Speaker 4: we'll fight our parents out in the street to prove
Speaker 4: who's right and who's wrong. And it was like a
Speaker 4: rallying cry and some of this I'd never heard a
Speaker 4: live audience. The beginning of Benny and Jetsy, here a
Speaker 4: crowd applause, and like you felt like it was a
Speaker 4: concert entering your little room. And then Elton John came
Speaker 4: out in the seventies that he was bisexual, and we
Speaker 4: were living in a kind of racist, homophobic being. You know,
Speaker 4: it's Archie Bunker's Queens. It's a lot of close minded
Speaker 4: people that would say stuff about other races. You know,
Speaker 4: we grew up talking that way. And my family, my
Speaker 4: grandfather and you know, they were Jewish people. I wasn't
Speaker 4: raised religious, but they understood discrimination and that kind of
Speaker 4: persecution that people got. So we were hip to like
Speaker 4: that we weren't going to say the N word or
Speaker 4: look at anyone different than I was black, right, red,
Speaker 4: you know, brown Like it was in that way that
Speaker 4: was put into my head that to that people are
Speaker 4: people and that there's no judgment. So when Elton John
Speaker 4: kind of came out and said, oh, he's gay, he's by,
Speaker 4: he's this, to me, I was like, well that's cool,
Speaker 4: that's okay. If my guy is, he's great. Elton John like,
Speaker 4: and here was this person that had to wear glasses,
Speaker 4: and I had to wear glasses, and here's this guy
Speaker 4: that wasn't like beautiful, looking like a Rod Stewart or
Speaker 4: Robert Plant and took maybe the things and I didn't
Speaker 4: realize at the time, but those weaknesses where you're you
Speaker 4: don't feel you're the super Elvis hunk, and you do
Speaker 4: all this other stuff to make yourself larger than life
Speaker 4: and make you create your own image and your own
Speaker 4: art and reality with your appearance. And that was mixed
Speaker 4: with this beautiful voice and the fact that oh he's
Speaker 4: bisexual and kids said, oh he's gay. He's like, well,
Speaker 4: then that's okay. So it sent a lot of great
Speaker 4: messages to somebody. Same thing with seeing the movie Dogged
Speaker 4: Afternoon at a young age and you find out that
Speaker 4: al Pacino's robbing the bank the character Sonny to pay
Speaker 4: for his lover's you know, operation to have a you know,
Speaker 4: sex change, and I'm in Queen's where everybody is so
Speaker 4: anti gay, and yet it's al Pacino who just did
Speaker 4: The Godfather and just did Cerpercos. It's the guy like
Speaker 4: in Sanulai Fever when johns Fulda goes, oh, do you know, well,
Speaker 4: they were a hero and they stuck with him. I
Speaker 4: remember nobody yelled out home, oh well, walked out. Everybody stayed.
Speaker 4: And it just the messages that it's okay to be different,
Speaker 4: it's okay to be weird. And I was hyperactive kid.
Speaker 4: I was getting thrown out of school. I was angry
Speaker 4: at it. So I had to go to a therapist
Speaker 4: or go talk to people in the school. So I thought,
Speaker 4: I'm crazy or they treat me like great, well, then
Speaker 4: maybe crazy's okay, and maybe the character one flow of
Speaker 4: the Cucko's Nest is different than the rest of the
Speaker 4: mold and the system and the mainstream. And I think
Speaker 4: those were punk rock ideas that were being fed into me.
Speaker 4: And then I got into Kiss. I was at that
Speaker 4: age and they were from New York and it was like,
Speaker 4: you know, all the action films, Billy Jack and Clint
Speaker 4: East and everything and rock and roll thrown into one
Speaker 4: and fire and at that point, the older kids they
Speaker 4: didn't like it. The kids that like Sabbath and Zeppelin
Speaker 4: and even the Grateful Dead.
Speaker 3: It was like Kiss sucks, Yeah, got beat up.
Speaker 1: It was the first album, that Kiss album, I guess Destroyer.
Speaker 1: I remember people just carrying around at school with their books. Ye,
Speaker 1: well so cool. I know you're not there. There's no
Speaker 1: record play. It's just like they just carried it with
Speaker 1: them everywhere they went.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was twelve inches. It's it's you know, it's
Speaker 4: a statement. But so that was you know, I was
Speaker 4: loved the band. I was in the Kiss Army. I
Speaker 4: would have did anything, played in the Talent Show first time,
Speaker 4: spitting ketchup instead of blood, dressed as Steet Simmons. But
Speaker 4: the thing about them, it was a band. It felt
Speaker 4: like a gang. It felt like more than just a song.
Speaker 4: It was like, I want to be part of this thing.
Speaker 4: I want to raise my fist. I want to tell
Speaker 4: my parents I'm not going to be like them and
Speaker 4: work that job. I'm not going to turn into them.
Speaker 4: We have another there's another chance, there's another road. And
Speaker 4: we got beat up and made fun of by everybody
Speaker 4: that you know, was like kiss suck that didn't like it.
Speaker 4: So that was preparing me for punk rock because once
Speaker 4: I got it to that, then you're really hated at
Speaker 4: that time, even by you know, it wasn't like these
Speaker 4: days where people like a lot of different things, like
Speaker 4: to what you liked and if you were into punk.
Speaker 4: They figured you killed your girlfriend like said Vicious or
Speaker 4: a junkie or a fact like.
Speaker 3: Whatever it was.
Speaker 4: It wasn't didn't have that open minded this that a
Speaker 4: festival might have right now at Coachella or somewhere where
Speaker 4: you get.
Speaker 3: A little everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fine, but I.
Speaker 4: Respect like in the mods and rockers or punks and skins.
Speaker 3: Like I respected people.
Speaker 4: If you go to London, you go to some SKA
Speaker 4: show now or something, and you see people that they're lifers,
Speaker 4: like rockabilly, like they're in it and they'll fight and
Speaker 4: that's their thing. Metal people are like that. They're they're
Speaker 4: very into it. That dedication I respect. But I think
Speaker 4: that you know, we all kind of probably like just
Speaker 4: good music, all kinds of music. It's almost it's.
Speaker 3: Good, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no you said tribes. Yeah, what was the first
Speaker 1: punk song you heard?
Speaker 4: I probably heard blitz Creak Bop, but I didn't realize
Speaker 4: what was going on. It came through on the radio
Speaker 4: and I just knew it. But I was watching some
Speaker 4: TV Choice Awards, some kind of awards show somehow, and
Speaker 4: the sex Pistols came on and it heard about them
Speaker 4: The New York and a few things. But it just
Speaker 4: you know, just seeing it, seeing the little clip of
Speaker 4: how Johnny Rotten played to the camera, and it was
Speaker 4: way tougher than Kiss and way angrier. And it also
Speaker 4: was like I could do this, I think, like, you know,
Speaker 4: it just had a thing. It was like if Kiss
Speaker 4: made me want to yell and scream, this made you
Speaker 4: don't want to go to my room and throw everything
Speaker 4: out and like just start again and break things up
Speaker 4: in a way.
Speaker 1: Now, had you started playing any instruments by this point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like around the Kiss time, I started to go
Speaker 4: for some guitar lessons and of course, you know, they're
Speaker 4: teaching you Stare Away the Heaven by Led Zeppelin, and
Speaker 4: they're teaching you all this free bird and classic stuff.
Speaker 3: And it took a lot of work.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So once I you know, then got a Ramones record,
Speaker 4: I realized, oh, they're from Queens. They wear the same
Speaker 4: leather jackets as Phonsie, one of my TV heroes. They're
Speaker 4: they're like a band, like the way the Beatles and
Speaker 4: Kiss are like each person is like a character, and
Speaker 4: they have these chants like Kiss had you know these
Speaker 4: shouted out loud or rock and roll night, these big
Speaker 4: anthems to chant certain parts with get the floor tom
Speaker 4: and the snare. Well ramones had it in a different way.
Speaker 4: They're yelling, hey ho, let's go a lobotomy. So I
Speaker 4: started to learn those songs. And from learning those songs,
Speaker 4: I was like, I can write. And we heard about
Speaker 4: CBGB's and somebody said, you know, if you call this number,
Speaker 4: you can come in and do an audition.
Speaker 3: I was like twelve, and I called.
Speaker 1: This amazes me. I still want to hear this story.
Speaker 4: I called from the school payphone, and you know, the
Speaker 4: rule was you had to play original music. So you
Speaker 4: put together a band with whoever, like, oh, you have
Speaker 4: a basement and your father has a drum set, you
Speaker 4: have the drummer, like, you know, we'd get whoever could contribute.
Speaker 4: And I wrote some songs and we practiced in the
Speaker 4: basement of somebody else because I lived in an apartment.
Speaker 4: And we got dropped off on the Bowery on a
Speaker 4: Monday night and we went in there.
Speaker 3: It was pretty scary.
Speaker 4: It was like March and we were all about twelve
Speaker 4: or thirteen, and we got on that stage and it
Speaker 4: was like the whole place smelled like you know, I
Speaker 4: didn't know piss and alcohol and vomit. But that's what
Speaker 4: I thought it was supposed to be. And I couldn't
Speaker 4: believe this was the place where Blondie and Talking Heads
Speaker 4: and everybody in Ramones had played. And we played our
Speaker 4: set and I called a week later and they said
Speaker 4: we failed, you know, the audition And I was into
Speaker 4: the Dead Boys and the Ramones and the pistols, and
Speaker 4: they said, yeah, you missed it. That stuff's over, man,
Speaker 4: like you got to try something new like that's because
Speaker 4: this is nineteen eighty. So I was like, well, all right,
Speaker 4: what and they're like, you know, like rockabilly or or
Speaker 4: a new romantic or I was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 4: this is weird. But I found out in time that
Speaker 4: you had to bring twenty people that drank. We didn't
Speaker 4: bring anybody, But somehow, a week later I got a
Speaker 4: call to play at Max's Kansas City. There was somebody
Speaker 4: that saw us there and they booked us for that
Speaker 4: July July fifteenth. It was I remember because it's Johnny
Speaker 4: Thunder's birthday and we knew who he was, and he actually.
Speaker 3: Showed up at the gig.
Speaker 4: But we got to play a show at Max's and
Speaker 4: little By little what they told me I had missed
Speaker 4: this raw, mounky music that I was just getting into. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it was changing. Blondie was starting to get more pomp
Speaker 4: and disco. Ramons are putting on striped shirts and taking
Speaker 4: off the leather and working with Phil Spector, and everybody
Speaker 4: was trying to have a hit. And I walked a
Speaker 4: little further down the street where I bought my leather
Speaker 4: wristbands and records called Saint Mark's Place, and I walked further.
Speaker 4: As I walked further down on the light posts, there
Speaker 4: were signs that looked punky to other clubs that weren't
Speaker 4: advertised in the Village Voice, and they said, you know,
Speaker 4: come down to a seven seventh Street Avenue and bad brains, stimulators,
Speaker 4: false prophets. And that led me to another place where
Speaker 4: this music was still going on. And somehow, without cell
Speaker 4: phones and without you know, even this being in the paper,
Speaker 4: we used a like in spaceballs, used the schworts or whatever,
Speaker 4: some collective unconscious thing. We found each other. Kids my
Speaker 4: age and a little older from Jersey, Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens,
Speaker 4: a lot all ended up on Avenue A because of music.
Speaker 4: So in Queens you had a band like Crowd coming
Speaker 4: on in Forest Hills, Queens. You had Reagan Youth and
Speaker 4: the name says a lot right there. You know, the
Speaker 4: undead lived in the city False Prophets on Avenue B
Speaker 4: and we all just maybe fifty or sixty people were
Speaker 4: part of this thing that would become hardcore. And I
Speaker 4: didn't realize that this was kind of happening in different
Speaker 4: cities where yeah, maybe that was over in the Ramones,
Speaker 4: but somebody that saw the Ramones took it to another level.
Speaker 4: And you had Black Flag in California, and you had
Speaker 4: Dead Kennedy's in Northern California and down in DC, and
Speaker 4: it wasn't ready to end. It was a new chapter
Speaker 4: and Reagan was president, and it felt like we had
Speaker 4: a lot of things to sing about it. It was faster,
Speaker 4: We had our own way of dancing, and you had
Speaker 4: one minute to say everything that you felt about the world.
Speaker 4: So heart Attack was my band. That was the name.
Speaker 4: We put out a single called God Is Dad when
Speaker 4: I was fourteen, and that is pretty much I think
Speaker 4: it's known as the first New York hardcore single. I'm
Speaker 4: not saying it's the best wherever it goes for a
Speaker 4: thousand and changed or a couple bucks. It's a rarity,
Speaker 4: but we did that.
Speaker 1: You kept something right.
Speaker 3: I kept the test pressing somewhere.
Speaker 4: But that was a thing that came out and made
Speaker 4: not want to be in school anymore. And from that
Speaker 4: we played the rits with the Misfits. We started to
Speaker 4: play with groups like Bad Brains, who were incredible. That
Speaker 4: was a band that had jazz fusion chops for black
Speaker 4: dudes from DC that took punk rock to a whole
Speaker 4: other level. Being tight, precise, the whole performance was like
Speaker 4: nothing I'd ever seen. And to know them, and we
Speaker 4: had cheap gear Japanese guitars, and they had they were adults,
Speaker 4: they were nineteen twenty, like you know, twenty one. They
Speaker 4: had real equipment. They would lend us their equipment. And
Speaker 4: they're talking about PMA positive mental latitude. It wasn't the
Speaker 4: seventies destroy cut yourself like. It was like, yeah, we
Speaker 4: can be crazy, have fun and not do drugs and
Speaker 4: not put a needle Like drugs just never seemed exciting
Speaker 4: to be put a needle in your arm, put some
Speaker 4: shit in your nose. Guys, scratching got like that's to me.
Speaker 4: I want to see like, you know, a strong guy
Speaker 4: going crazy up there, or a strong gay like you know,
Speaker 4: it wasn't we want to say all this stuff get
Speaker 4: in your face, and we're a lot of us are sober, like.
Speaker 1: You know, we mean this when you were never tempted
Speaker 1: down that other path because you're downtown New York and
Speaker 1: in the early age.
Speaker 3: And it seems sexy.
Speaker 4: Someone told me, Heroin, I didn't like when I got
Speaker 4: the flu because I couldn't go out and do what
Speaker 4: I like to do. And someone said, Heroin, if you
Speaker 4: you know when you get sick, it's like the flu
Speaker 4: times ten, and you know, you'd look over and it
Speaker 4: was some scratchy you know, and it just didn't look
Speaker 4: fun to me.
Speaker 1: And you were exposed just enough to it to know that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And there were some people saying, like, you know,
Speaker 4: you don't need to do that. I didn't understand. We
Speaker 4: dragged to an after hours club and suddenly like, what
Speaker 4: are they doing it? There's no bands, this music sucks,
Speaker 4: there's sand on the floor like a beach, and why
Speaker 4: these people Hitle seven?
Speaker 3: Well, I know now, you know, it's like I just
Speaker 3: thought they had a cold. I don't know the guys
Speaker 3: snippe it. It was so naive, but.
Speaker 4: It was always about the music, and I think my
Speaker 4: mom trusted that so I could go to junior high
Speaker 4: school and I could go to A seven and one
Speaker 4: seventy one or CEB's or max Is. In the beginning,
Speaker 4: the parents tried to like pick us up here and there,
Speaker 4: but the shows in those days depends on to go
Speaker 4: onto one or two, so they gave up on that
Speaker 4: and then I'd sneak out. But like she knew, like
Speaker 4: my son has this dream, he believes in music. And
Speaker 4: by the time, you know, still that year of my
Speaker 4: first record, we went to Mexico City did a tour.
Speaker 4: When I was fourteen, things started to open up.
Speaker 1: What was it like to be a fourteen year old
Speaker 1: touring and seeing Mexico City, and you know.
Speaker 4: It was interesting. I had to figure out, like, you know,
Speaker 4: something nobody wants to talk to me in school, little
Speaker 4: girls ever gave me. I felt like the biggest loser
Speaker 4: and suddenly go, oh, there's somebody interested in me, Like
Speaker 4: this is weird.
Speaker 3: Or but to get to play.
Speaker 4: Every night and learn how to control, you know, in
Speaker 4: Mexico we did like ten shows in a row at
Speaker 4: a place called hips and tenta, and like you know,
Speaker 4: had to like, wow, I'm playing so hard I cut
Speaker 4: my nail off and I'm.
Speaker 3: Bleeding all over the SG guitar.
Speaker 4: We got a gaff that I got to learn how
Speaker 4: to control my I got to learn how to be
Speaker 4: able to sustain this and have a tight show and
Speaker 4: make flyers for each show with glue and cutting things
Speaker 4: out and just learning in those early days, how to
Speaker 4: make it happen when there's no label, there's no manager,
Speaker 4: Learning how to book your own shows, all those diy
Speaker 4: as they call it, kind of eat those that has
Speaker 4: really stuck with me throughout, even when I was a singer,
Speaker 4: songwriter or whatever, all through my music career, that there's
Speaker 4: ways that we can make this happen. So that was
Speaker 4: a lessons. The drummer I had at the time was
Speaker 4: in his twenties and he was from Mexico and he
Speaker 4: lived in a chemore hotel on twenty third Street, this
Speaker 4: welfare spot, but like you know, hung out with older people.
Speaker 4: I was the youngest, and I just wanted to know
Speaker 4: more about the world and I wanted to be better,
Speaker 4: and I was taking in these records.
Speaker 3: You know, I was a kid too.
Speaker 4: I had a lot of rules, like you only listen
Speaker 4: to stuff that had certain kind of guitar. And I
Speaker 4: was when Sandinista came out at that time by the
Speaker 4: Clash and they were playing all these different styles of music.
Speaker 4: I broke it into pieces. I was like, give me
Speaker 4: a dead ken. I rebought it four years later. I
Speaker 4: was like, they're right. I was wrong, but I'm like,
Speaker 4: they're playing disco, they're selling out, you know they're selling
Speaker 4: I didn't go to Bonds when the Clash came. I
Speaker 4: saw him at London calling, but like my favorite band,
Speaker 4: suddenly they were hipper than I was blending the world,
Speaker 4: bringing it all together. That hip hop was the music
Speaker 4: of the streets and had a message and it was
Speaker 4: a punk rock in its own way. But at the time,
Speaker 4: at that age, I needed things in boxes. I needed
Speaker 4: you know, this is hardcore. This is what we're doing.
Speaker 1: Well, it's identity at that edge, yeah, and your identities,
Speaker 1: you know, that's how you differentiate yourself.
Speaker 4: And we were competitive to who was fastest, who was tightest,
Speaker 4: who got the mash bit going the most, and you know,
Speaker 4: got the action happening and the bad Brains asked heart
Speaker 4: Attack to open for them at Irving Plaza, their first
Speaker 4: big gig, and I was really surprised. We got a
Speaker 4: song called God Is Dead. They were very religious Rastafarian,
Speaker 4: yet we got this big show and they were so
Speaker 4: good to us. And you know, to see these different
Speaker 4: things develop and to watch that scene grow, like I said,
Speaker 4: just organically. And if you went on tour, people put
Speaker 4: you up on their floor. People you know, you booked
Speaker 4: a whole tour on like a stolen credit card you
Speaker 4: bought on forty second Street to some phone card, and
Speaker 4: you were able to go across this country. And when
Speaker 4: you got to San Francisco, the guy had the fanzine
Speaker 4: in there, Maxim Rock and Roll, Timy Hanna, and he
Speaker 4: put you up on his couch and turn you out,
Speaker 4: let you make a mixtape of his record collection, or
Speaker 4: and you'd meet another band. And it was just a thing.
Speaker 4: And watching that and being part of that was exciting.
Speaker 4: Until around eighty four it became a little too macho
Speaker 4: for me, a little too metal, this hybrid kind of thing,
Speaker 4: and it started to get extra violent. And it wasn't
Speaker 4: guys and gals on the dance floor, and it wasn't
Speaker 4: gay and straight in this and it was like became
Speaker 4: this metal, macho thing, which was everything I was trying
Speaker 4: to get away from in Queens. So I felt I
Speaker 4: dropped out a broke up heart attack in eighty four
Speaker 4: and last gig was at CBGB's fourth of July, and
Speaker 4: it was the first Chromax gig. They were on the bill,
Speaker 4: and I remember that was part of the new thing.
Speaker 4: They were great, but it was going to become this other, heavier,
Speaker 4: more metal type of thing, and that would go on
Speaker 4: and get a lot bigger and now even bigger than
Speaker 4: ever since then. But I started to want to write
Speaker 4: songs like the songs where lyrics mattered, and I started
Speaker 4: listening to things from my early early youth, like Jim
Speaker 4: Crochey and Elton John and somehow I stumbled upon Bruce
Speaker 4: Springsteen's Nebraska. And I'd never been a fan.
Speaker 1: I thought you would have been one of those fans
Speaker 1: from the beginning. But it was Nebraska that day.
Speaker 4: It had long his other records had long songs. It
Speaker 4: was in a deep voice. It was a lot of
Speaker 4: instruments and sacks, and I didn't really know what he
Speaker 4: was singing about. I wasn't from Jersey. I thought it
Speaker 4: he was singing about it just yeah, all these things
Speaker 4: that didn't fit in my box.
Speaker 3: He had a beard, you know, it was like, to
Speaker 3: be honest, I mean, I love the guy. Now I
Speaker 3: was a person at edits an art.
Speaker 4: But then I heard Nebraska and I said, whoa, this
Speaker 4: guy is, this big rock star and this record is
Speaker 4: just him And you know, I'd already had all this
Speaker 4: punk rock political caring and social ideas about the world
Speaker 4: and the underclass, and he's singing about this in such
Speaker 4: a great way and it's haunting, and I couldn't get
Speaker 4: enough of it. And so when Born in the USA
Speaker 4: came out, I was a fan. And all my friends
Speaker 4: on the scene were like, what's with this major label
Speaker 4: rambo shit? And I was like, have you read the
Speaker 4: lyric sheet? Like half these people end up in jail.
Speaker 4: This is not And yeah, that mixed message to America
Speaker 4: probably made them a lot of money that people thought
Speaker 4: it was, you know, pickup trucks and you're in the USA.
Speaker 4: But and then I realized this guy's deal. And then
Speaker 4: I found another record that same time, at which I
Speaker 4: called the punk rock Nebraska, which was Johnny Thunder's Hurt Me,
Speaker 4: and it was an acoustic solo record in the early eighties,
Speaker 4: and it was in my rehearsal studio. One of the
Speaker 4: other bands had their records there in a turntable, and
Speaker 4: it was just Johnny Thunders alone playing his songs and
Speaker 4: a few covers Joey by Bob Dylan and Eva Destruction
Speaker 4: Barry Maguire, and it had a great thing. Sometimes it
Speaker 4: sounded like a whiny junkie screaming in a little closet,
Speaker 4: but other times there was something. And I started busking
Speaker 4: in the L train on fourteenth at First Avenue in
Speaker 4: New York, just make some extra money, and I would
Speaker 4: sing my own new songs and I would throw in
Speaker 4: some oldies and then I'd try to make like Ramone
Speaker 4: songs sound like fifty songs next to the Dion song.
Speaker 3: And I'd make like got seventy bucks.
Speaker 4: But that's when I started to realize that when an
Speaker 4: acoustic guitar, I could write songs bring it down. And
Speaker 4: I wanted to try something different.
Speaker 1: And you were always writing on electric At this point I.
Speaker 4: Had always been before yeah, and that I wanted to
Speaker 4: present these songs. And then I'd go to some clubs.
Speaker 4: There was a great club called Dance Materyria that booked
Speaker 4: people that were coming up, and I saw the Pogues
Speaker 4: and the Replacements, and I saw Billy Bragg, and here's
Speaker 4: a guy. He's very punky, but it's him alone with
Speaker 4: an electric and he's got these political love songs and
Speaker 4: he's got his vulnerabilities out there. So between Billy Bragg,
Speaker 4: the Replacements, who weren't scared to do a ballad, this
Speaker 4: Johnny Thunders record, and then I started, you know, going
Speaker 4: back to Elvis Costello and Graham Parker, and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I want to do these these kind of song things.
Speaker 4: And my first gig I started a band called Hope,
Speaker 4: and all my punk rock friends had acoustic guitar started
Speaker 4: calling me, Jesse Cougar Mallencamp.
Speaker 2: We'll be back with more from Jesse Mallin and Bruce
Speaker 2: Hadlam after the break.
Speaker 1: So he became a singer songwriter.
Speaker 4: And I did in a band called Hope, and I
Speaker 4: tried to do everything that I would do in the
Speaker 4: early two thousands, but I couldn't get that band off
Speaker 4: the ground. I couldn't get us recorded outside of a demo.
Speaker 4: We'd play with like the Meat Puppets and Sonic youth
Speaker 4: and Radit red art from heart attack. I had a
Speaker 4: connection into the noise art scene that was coming out
Speaker 4: of some of the clubs here. So we would play
Speaker 4: on bills with Live Skull and it red our sonic youth.
Speaker 4: Swans and Hope did our time for a little bit,
Speaker 4: but it was a weird time for me. My mom
Speaker 4: got and I had to go back to Queens. Was
Speaker 4: living in my rehearsal studio on Avenue B and I
Speaker 4: had to take care of her and my sister, and
Speaker 4: so I decided I could move my gear. If I
Speaker 4: got a cheap used van, I could become a moving guy.
Speaker 4: So I started moving bands and gear from like rehearsal
Speaker 4: spots in Midtown down to clubs and coming back at
Speaker 4: the end of the night. Sometimes I'd watched the show
Speaker 4: and anything furniture and pianos and dead dogs and everybody
Speaker 4: from Barbarus dreis in to you know, some junkie that's
Speaker 4: getting thrown out the window.
Speaker 3: You know from there they're getting evicted.
Speaker 4: And we'd go everywhere. I met a lot of artists
Speaker 4: doing that, and I had a rough five years between
Speaker 4: my mom passing away eventually and I couldn't get this
Speaker 4: band off the ground. So I ended up after my
Speaker 4: mom passed, moving to green Point, Brooklyn with a few friends,
Speaker 4: and I kept trying to do this earnest songwriter thing.
Speaker 4: And I was living with this guy, Howie Pyro, who
Speaker 4: had been in The Blessed and been in a band
Speaker 4: called Freaks and done all these things. And I said,
Speaker 4: this is just make a band for fun where you know,
Speaker 4: I don't play guitar and I just jump around and
Speaker 4: roll on the floor and take my shirt off and yell,
Speaker 4: and we'll make like the band we wanted to see
Speaker 4: when we were little kids, like that five headed thing,
Speaker 4: like the Dolls or the Dead Boys, or you know,
Speaker 4: Aerosmith were rolling stones like but a punky And so
Speaker 4: we made Degeneration and it was just for for goof
Speaker 4: And suddenly that connected because we just did it totally
Speaker 4: for fun. Suddenly the shows are crowded. It's a band,
Speaker 4: it's a gang. It's all people that knew each other
Speaker 4: from the hardcore days. So it's like kind of some
Speaker 4: people would say a glam band meets a hardcore band.
Speaker 4: I don't really think of as as glam, but you know,
Speaker 4: we thought we were doing something so different we had,
Speaker 4: you know, brothel creepers or feet standing tall, tight pants
Speaker 4: and messy hair and messy ms. Garon had crazy dreads
Speaker 4: and hair extensions, and so people looked at that and
Speaker 4: talked about that and they listen to the song. So
Speaker 4: that became frustrating.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: It was a good seven years and we made records
Speaker 4: in major cities. We had a good time everywhere else
Speaker 4: it was like us fighting with the crowd.
Speaker 1: So in that period where you had that band, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got a tour to make money? Obviously, yes and no.
Speaker 4: Because we got a huge record deal and we had money,
Speaker 4: we broke it up so we would not take it all.
Speaker 3: Whatever.
Speaker 4: We use some on the record, and then we gave
Speaker 4: each other like a weekly or every two weeks so
Speaker 4: we could stay in New York and become junkies and
Speaker 4: stuff like a lot of people did. But we did
Speaker 4: want a tour. But at that time New York, the nineties,
Speaker 4: we were like the big band in the scene in downtown.
Speaker 3: We didn't like to go about fourteenth Street because it
Speaker 3: wasn't easy for us. So we did tour.
Speaker 4: We went out with the Ramones, and you know, you
Speaker 4: don't get paid a lot opening but we learned a lot,
Speaker 4: and those guys were so generous to us. And I
Speaker 4: became friends with Joey, who just loved music.
Speaker 3: Like his mo was.
Speaker 4: He wasn't about sex, drugs or money. It was like
Speaker 4: he just listened to music. He was, you know, kind
Speaker 4: of a real misfit and had a lot of health
Speaker 4: things and it was a creature from a different type
Speaker 4: of thing. So he just so passionate. He used to
Speaker 4: on our tour bus. They were in a van, smart
Speaker 4: saving money because they knew bus and we're in this
Speaker 4: big record company supported bus and he didn't want to
Speaker 4: be around his band.
Speaker 3: He'd be sitting in there with us.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting. I love the jump from van to bus.
Speaker 1: It's all about transportation.
Speaker 3: It is funny. And you hate the van.
Speaker 4: You think, oh man, I could go my bunk now
Speaker 4: and I can listen to music and I can you know,
Speaker 4: be alone and sleep. But I feel like you're tighter
Speaker 4: as a band connectively as people like you get along
Speaker 4: better in the van, Like you listen to the same thing,
Speaker 4: you get same kind of jokes. It's like summer camp,
Speaker 4: you know. It's like there's a camaraderie that once you
Speaker 4: get in the bus. Everybody's like a separate thing, and
Speaker 4: at least that's what I've experienced. But yeah, we did tour,
Speaker 4: and we toured. We did that band for seven years.
Speaker 4: We were on EMI, they were on Sony. We kept
Speaker 4: getting we got dropped, and then we got another record deal.
Speaker 4: I thought, I'm gonna have to sell shoes on Saint
Speaker 4: Mark's place or go back to moving furniture, but like
Speaker 4: somebody said, no.
Speaker 3: You're gonna get another deal.
Speaker 4: And I'm like all the bands I knew they had
Speaker 4: that one shot in the eighties to try to be
Speaker 4: the next Guns and Roses whatever they ended up, right,
Speaker 4: And now this is the ear is nineties, you know,
Speaker 4: grunge and all that stuff is in. So we're trying
Speaker 4: to be the reaction to that, Like we're not gonna
Speaker 4: wear flannel and look like a farm or a gas
Speaker 4: station attendant, Like we want to look like a band
Speaker 4: and have this thing. And we had a thing whatever
Speaker 4: the music is and whatever people feel about that, and
Speaker 4: I like some of the songs. We had a thing
Speaker 4: as people where it was it was real, so we
Speaker 4: could be really intense or really down on each other,
Speaker 4: but it was it was organic friendship, gang connection, to
Speaker 4: music that worked on stage. And after about seven years
Speaker 4: of doing that, and you know, we went to Europe
Speaker 4: and toured with Green Day and you know, Ramones and
Speaker 4: all kinds of bands and some of our heroes and stuff,
Speaker 4: and then I just felt again like similar heart attack
Speaker 4: that nobody could really they weren't caring again about the lyrics,
Speaker 4: what we were singing about. They were just talking about
Speaker 4: our outfits and shoes. And at that point the moshpit
Speaker 4: came back again. We were be out with Offspring or
Speaker 4: these bands, and the whole punk thing was the next
Speaker 4: wave of that, the nineties, rancid, Green Day, Offspring type
Speaker 4: of time. And so the whole show was about if
Speaker 4: we can get them dancing all crazy, and they weren't
Speaker 4: listening to songs. So I'm sitting in the van. We're
Speaker 4: back in the van or on the bus, and I'm
Speaker 4: listening to Neil Young again. I'm listening to Springsteen, and
Speaker 4: now I'm listening to Cannon Crows and Will Go, and
Speaker 4: there's these other things that are out there. Steve Earl
Speaker 4: sudden I hear that and I'm like, wow, this has
Speaker 4: rock and roll, but there's songs. And suddenly Lucinda Williams
Speaker 4: and I called up Jerry Moone and I said, I'm
Speaker 4: listening to this woman. Louten to Williams here, because he'd
Speaker 4: always say jokes, what are you listening to? We call
Speaker 4: every day, and I said, listen to Williams. He's on
Speaker 4: a Steve Earld record.
Speaker 3: And he said, I know, huh. I was like, how
Speaker 3: do you? I was on like a songwritere a paddle
Speaker 3: with her at the bottom line, you know, and I
Speaker 3: was like wow.
Speaker 4: And then years later I'd meet Lucinda Williams and I said, yeah, Joey.
Speaker 2: And she goes, oh, yeah.
Speaker 3: He sent me a song.
Speaker 4: He had a song you want Me to Ride about
Speaker 4: a train and he was passed away by them when
Speaker 4: I met Lucinda. But I I just kind of was
Speaker 4: looking again to break it down to go solo. And
Speaker 4: I watched suddenly people were coming out with acoustic guitars
Speaker 4: and approaching it. Maybe it was called old country now
Speaker 4: or whatever, like there's all these different eras where rock
Speaker 4: and country. Maybe it's the birds, and then in the
Speaker 4: seventies in La it's with the Eagles and this or right,
Speaker 4: you know, then you have rank and file in the
Speaker 4: late you know, whatever, long riders and and to me,
Speaker 4: it don't need those separate boxes. I was like, I
Speaker 4: don't know, can I be a solo guy? That seemed
Speaker 4: like very adult to me. I was scared, you know.
Speaker 4: I was like, like being in a band.
Speaker 1: What kept you? I mean at this point, you're thirty, yeah,
Speaker 1: early thirties. It's a tough life. Yeah, very hard life.
Speaker 1: You're leading you know all these ups and downs? What
Speaker 1: a lot of people did drop out? What kept you going?
Speaker 4: Just?
Speaker 3: I guess the love of music to drive.
Speaker 4: Always had a lot of drive and always excited about
Speaker 4: the next thing that I was going to make and
Speaker 4: having something that was there.
Speaker 3: If I woke up and I was like.
Speaker 4: Wow, I don't know if I want to go on
Speaker 4: stage and hit myself at the microphone and scream, you know,
Speaker 4: Frankie for degeneration tonight. I kind of want to play
Speaker 4: this acoustic guitar and have some people hear these songs.
Speaker 4: And I think there's a way to present this that
Speaker 4: could not be just me sitting on a stool with
Speaker 4: hush puppies, growing a mustache and be not that there's
Speaker 4: anything wrong with that, but like that I can find
Speaker 4: a way to be me and sing these New York
Speaker 4: story kind of songs and still be the songwriter guy,
Speaker 4: but come from where I come from, hardcore or whatever,
Speaker 4: and I really want to do this. I have this idea,
Speaker 4: and so somebody was nice enough to give me a
Speaker 4: weekly residency at a club called Brownies on Avenue A
Speaker 4: and go in there and I grabbed a piano player,
Speaker 4: this guy, Joe McGuinty, and we rehearsed in you know,
Speaker 4: a little rehearsal studio, and I take my acoustic songs
Speaker 4: and then he play a little piano on them, and
Speaker 4: suddenly it became like, wow, there's a song there, or
Speaker 4: you know, and I was thinking about Tom Waits, and
Speaker 4: I was thinking about Nick Cave, and I was thinking
Speaker 4: about Nebraska Springsteen. But then it came out to be
Speaker 4: something different and have a place to do this every
Speaker 4: Wednesday night for a month or two. You know, one
Speaker 4: gig is like ten rehearsals.
Speaker 1: So yeah, was there a time when you know, you
Speaker 1: started writing songs in those voices? Were you sitting there
Speaker 1: going this is a Tom Waite song? Ah, this is
Speaker 1: this song? Was there a moment where he thought, wait
Speaker 1: a second, it's my song now, wasn't so aware of it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: Usually you have some smart a musician, usually it's the drummer,
Speaker 4: and you bring it a song and they say, oh yeah,
Speaker 4: and they start singing the song that you read it
Speaker 4: all from or whatever they think, or and everything comes
Speaker 4: from something, you know. I think it's how you mix
Speaker 4: it up in the pot. You could take, you know,
Speaker 4: all these different ingredients and spit it out in your
Speaker 4: own way. But I wasn't aware till I started to
Speaker 4: read the reviews.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Then when I first solo record came out in England,
Speaker 4: first it got some reviews that were more positive than
Speaker 4: a lot of things I had experienced in a long time.
Speaker 4: And let those people say, you explain.
Speaker 3: What it was, And I was like, oh really, all right,
Speaker 3: you know they.
Speaker 4: Hear and it was nice.
Speaker 3: It was the first time though.
Speaker 4: We're like they got both sides of Queen's Boulevard, the Borrow,
Speaker 4: like yes, I'm in a garf Ucal and Johnny thunders,
Speaker 4: you know, like they got that that I was, you know,
Speaker 4: a creature of both those worlds. That that and when
Speaker 4: you read a review, they say you shouldn't read your press,
Speaker 4: but when it they're getting what you were setting out
Speaker 4: to do, which had never been the case with degeneration,
Speaker 4: and you kind of feel like, wow, maybe I'm onto
Speaker 4: something here. You know, people are connecting to this.
Speaker 1: Is it harder to grow up in music in New
Speaker 1: York because in a lot of places it's not that
Speaker 1: their standards are lower, but if you're the local band,
Speaker 1: they're kind of happy for you. There's not too many
Speaker 1: local bands, and they're supportive. You know. When I talk
Speaker 1: to Seater Kenny about, you know, being in Portland, it's
Speaker 1: like it's like everybody's lifting you up. New York's competitive, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the and the even the critics are competitive, and
Speaker 1: they're part of their competition is who can say the
Speaker 1: pissiest thing about something?
Speaker 3: Yeah, New York.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you think about it, the bands there
Speaker 4: hadn't been a big rock band. I mean and even
Speaker 4: out of CBGB's Blondie I guess they broke, but there
Speaker 4: hadn't been until I guess. Then came the Beastie Boys.
Speaker 4: There were most there.
Speaker 3: It was like a curse.
Speaker 4: You know, Sonic Youth it's a rock band, a little different.
Speaker 4: Beastie Boys are not really a rock band. But those
Speaker 4: acts got big, but nothing it was always they wanted
Speaker 4: to sign. The record companies wanted to sign something from Athens, Georgia.
Speaker 4: At one point, they want to sign from Seattle or anywhere,
Speaker 4: and the labels are here.
Speaker 3: In New York, so that they really don't want to
Speaker 3: see you. They see you out and about.
Speaker 4: But I guess in the early two thousands, which was
Speaker 4: when I was doing my solo stuff, that rock and
Speaker 4: roll in New York got to really happen, and with Strokes, Yaas,
Speaker 4: Enterpol all that, and even though maybe I wasn't, you know,
Speaker 4: in those bands, it was nice to see that really
Speaker 4: happened in a great way. And I remember friends of
Speaker 4: mine being really jealous of the Stroke and talking crap,
Speaker 4: and I was like, I know what that's like, because
Speaker 4: I was like a band that people talk to you
Speaker 4: because they're other musicians are you know, competitive, jealous, And
Speaker 4: I was like so happy, And yeah, maybe they grew
Speaker 4: up with similar records that I did the Strokes, you know,
Speaker 4: but they had their own take on it. They spit
Speaker 4: it out in their own way, and.
Speaker 3: It's nice to see.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it was definitely in our time, not a
Speaker 4: place where the journalists wanted to write about what was
Speaker 4: going on here and you know they're looking somewhere else,
Speaker 4: and it's a competitive place and a place that'll break
Speaker 4: your heart, Like like Hollywood. People go there to be famous,
Speaker 4: and you know there's a big competition. There's a bit
Speaker 4: you know, it's it's not what you think it's going
Speaker 4: to be.
Speaker 1: I want to talk a lot about your Solar solo career,
Speaker 1: but I kind of I want to do it through
Speaker 1: this new album because I want to talk about the
Speaker 1: people and the songs. But we probably should because we
Speaker 1: haven't explained. Tell me about May fourth, twenty twenty three. Wow,
Speaker 1: what was going on?
Speaker 4: Well, that had been a year that my bass player
Speaker 4: and best friend, Howie pyr died, who was in degeneration,
Speaker 4: and I had done a lot of fundraising to you know,
Speaker 4: concerts and memorials even after he passed, but benefits in
Speaker 4: the beginning. He had a liver transplant and he had
Speaker 4: passed on that day. I was on tour in Germany
Speaker 4: and Berlin. I say goodbye to him through the phone
Speaker 4: or whatever. But it was a year later and we
Speaker 4: wanted to celebrate him. Some of his friends, his family,
Speaker 4: sister flew in and so I created a dinner at
Speaker 4: six o'clock near my house, this Italian spot with some
Speaker 4: of those friends and family, and we were gonna go
Speaker 4: DJ and celebrate him. It sounds weird to celebrate someone's death,
Speaker 4: but he was morbid and he would have liked any celebrations.
Speaker 4: So I'm walking over that. I had rehearsed that day,
Speaker 4: I had had a couple of meetings. I took a
Speaker 4: little disco nap. I was ready and I just was
Speaker 4: going out. I was gonna eat, and I brought some
Speaker 4: cash with me because it's Italian restaurant. It's only cash,
Speaker 4: no credit card. And it was twelve people, and I
Speaker 4: threw the party, so I was gonna pay for the bill.
Speaker 4: And I'm starting to walk there and I run into
Speaker 4: Jonathan Tobin. He's a DJ, it's been around the world,
Speaker 4: plays old great records, and he's a friend of Howie's.
Speaker 4: And so I started to feel my hips and feel
Speaker 4: weird walking the street. And I thought it was the
Speaker 4: boots I was wearing, or I thought it was my back.
Speaker 4: And as I ate the dinner, I tried to pretend
Speaker 4: that this wasn't happening with these twelve people, and suddenly
Speaker 4: I ended up in so much pain. But I kept
Speaker 4: trying to fake it ended up on the floor. My
Speaker 4: best friend Jimmy g from Murphy's Law, the singer hardcore singer,
Speaker 4: was there and he said, come on, I'm gonna call
Speaker 4: an ambulance.
Speaker 3: And I said, I'm gonna shake it off.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna shake it off, and I realized I couldn't.
Speaker 4: And then I realized it was time to pay the bill,
Speaker 4: and everybody's coming around me, like go over there. It
Speaker 4: was like Rosemary's Baby. Everybody had a different phone out
Speaker 4: like do this, try this. They're all over me, standing
Speaker 4: over me, all these interesting looking people. But I paid
Speaker 4: the bill with the cash to the waiter. I was like,
Speaker 4: take take eightie all. And I was laying there and
Speaker 4: then I tried to get up, and then I realized
Speaker 4: that my legs were just ice and numb, and so
Speaker 4: I said, call the ambulance and took me to one
Speaker 4: hospital and next and took the the next day until
Speaker 4: I got a room. And that's how it is with that.
Speaker 4: And it took a while and then to figure out
Speaker 4: what had happened. And it's a very rare thing. It's
Speaker 4: a spinal stroke, and even an NYU here in New
Speaker 4: York and Mount Sinai. They don't see that many of them,
Speaker 4: and it left me pretty much paralyzed, you know, you
Speaker 4: know from the spinal cord, the legs couldn't walk everything
Speaker 4: below the waist and.
Speaker 1: So it's a stroke in your brain. It's like a
Speaker 1: blood cloth.
Speaker 4: It's something, yeah, something a inforcation in the in the
Speaker 4: spine where blood isn't getting to the area and it's
Speaker 4: just the nerves disconnected. And so three months in the
Speaker 4: hospital because they're figuring things out, and there's almost half
Speaker 4: it was a rehab hospital still NYU, and they said,
Speaker 4: you know, you'll never walk again, and you know never,
Speaker 4: you know, doctors weren't very optimistic. So a lot of
Speaker 4: friends of mine, a couple that have dealt with themselves
Speaker 4: in alternative medicine. They've had cancer and they've tried other
Speaker 4: ways to not just go with the mainstream medicine. And
Speaker 4: one of them called like forty places about stem cells
Speaker 4: and found a place that specialized in spinal cord injuries
Speaker 4: and they were in Argentina and they gave stem cells
Speaker 4: and they don't do it here at the FDA hadn't
Speaker 4: approved this and it wasn't expensive, but it was going
Speaker 4: to be six months in this other country, and I'm
Speaker 4: already so shaken up now. I lived in a walk
Speaker 4: up so I couldn't go back that day I left.
Speaker 4: I never packed and I never moved out, but I
Speaker 4: could never go back. So before I went to Argentina,
Speaker 4: which I would say yes to, I'm in hospitals.
Speaker 3: Then I'm in.
Speaker 4: Hotels, you know. And luckily people raised some funds for
Speaker 4: me through sweet relief in the music community. I was
Speaker 4: able to stay in hotels because I had to cancel
Speaker 4: six months of touring and all my stuff got put
Speaker 4: in storage. People moved me out of that was a rental,
Speaker 4: but I'd been there ten years and it was really haunting.
Speaker 4: They never go back, and you know, so I didn't
Speaker 4: have anywhere to live. So I said yes to Argentina
Speaker 4: for six months and it wasn't a money and they
Speaker 4: were really compassionate, intelligent, hard working people at this clinic,
Speaker 4: and not everybody spoke English and that made it challenging.
Speaker 4: But I got a lot out of it, and I
Speaker 4: got stem cell treatments along with five days a week
Speaker 4: of five hours a day of really intense, pt scary
Speaker 4: stuff putting blindfolds onto you and get you up and
Speaker 4: they want to get you up, and it did a lot.
Speaker 1: It was part of it keeping your legs moving so
Speaker 1: the muscle doesn't atrophy.
Speaker 4: Yeah in some way, and learning how to use other
Speaker 4: parts like the quads and the hips and you know,
Speaker 4: so if somebody sees me now and I can get
Speaker 4: up with a walker, I might have braces on below
Speaker 4: my knees, but I'm using other muscles and I'm using
Speaker 4: other things from doing it every day. And I was
Speaker 4: just convinced that, you know, I want to beat this
Speaker 4: somehow beat the odds. And you know when you see
Speaker 4: an MRI and you see there's a disconnection in there.
Speaker 4: And then there's other things that go with just not walking.
Speaker 4: They go with your body that make it really hard
Speaker 4: and not being able to tour, not being able to,
Speaker 4: you know, really do other things like I would DJ
Speaker 4: or was involved in some clubs. I had Downtown everything
Speaker 4: even after COVID was tough enough and we're just rebuilding.
Speaker 4: I thought that was the low. I know, I was like, man,
Speaker 4: my friend died COVID, but you know, the love and
Speaker 4: the support of the music community and my fans and
Speaker 4: friends and family, it was it blew my mind and
Speaker 4: I didn't want to. It was embarrassed I was. I
Speaker 4: didn't want to ask. I never wanted to need and
Speaker 4: be that person. I like to be the guy paying
Speaker 4: the bill or the guy that puts on the benefit.
Speaker 4: But it's a lesson to learn, you know how to receive.
Speaker 4: So now we'll be two years in May, and you know,
Speaker 4: when I got back, I could at least play the
Speaker 4: guitar and sing. And some of that the pain and
Speaker 4: the energy I had made it hard to I couldn't
Speaker 4: write for a while.
Speaker 3: I didn't.
Speaker 4: You know, people say, just write songs, lay in bed,
Speaker 4: but there's a lot more to it than Everything takes
Speaker 4: a long time.
Speaker 1: Man, did you lose because with some strokes people lose mobility,
Speaker 1: but not feeling necessarily. Did you lose both?
Speaker 4: I had no feeling earlier below my waist. Now I
Speaker 4: have it my upper thighs. There's some feeling, and but
Speaker 4: down below I don't like, you know, sound gross. I
Speaker 4: could step on attack. I wouldn't know, or I could. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I've I've burned my legs and stuff shaving under the sink,
Speaker 4: you know, like in weird times, other things have happened.
Speaker 4: I didn't even know, you know, so you got to
Speaker 4: really watch your skin and yeah, all this fun rock
Speaker 4: and roll stuff does.
Speaker 1: This do they think with stem cells, this will it'll
Speaker 1: slowly come back or they.
Speaker 4: Believe that a lot in the folks in Argentina, and
Speaker 4: you know, it's all new. Some people say, oh, it's
Speaker 4: like the wild West or whatever, but it's it's it's
Speaker 4: not harmful. It's my own stem cells. I had to
Speaker 4: get my some cells removed from like a you know,
Speaker 4: kind of like a love handle area and then put
Speaker 4: back in. And the thing that appealed to me was
Speaker 4: the combination with the physical therapy and stem cells that
Speaker 4: really made me think that this is a good thing.
Speaker 4: Because and so when I was getting some progress and
Speaker 4: I was leaving there, I said to the main doctor,
Speaker 4: is this this stuff that's happening. Is this because of
Speaker 4: the therapy we did or the cells? And she said,
Speaker 4: we don't know. That's why we do both. And I
Speaker 4: thought it was you know, and they're not trying to
Speaker 4: push this and sell you more stem cells and come
Speaker 4: down here like they're trying, and they're figuring out. The
Speaker 4: main doctor her father had studied this for thirty years plus,
Speaker 4: and so I just went with it. Another option was
Speaker 4: to stay in New York. I didn't have anywhere to
Speaker 4: live at the time. My insurance wasn't covering physical therapy.
Speaker 4: They weren't covering a new wheelchair. You know, a bunch
Speaker 4: of things. Healthcare in America is tough. But I gotta
Speaker 4: say Sweet Relief really got together with my manager and
Speaker 4: my friends that all came through to put together where
Speaker 4: people could donate and then eventually benefit concerts. And this album.
Speaker 4: That was another thing. I mean, it was pretty great
Speaker 4: just even like emotionally to hear these songs too, like
Speaker 4: it was a boost of like wow, Okay, you know,
Speaker 4: in the lowest points, I'd be really low in Argentina
Speaker 4: and I.
Speaker 3: Didn't like the food and it's a very meat place.
Speaker 3: I'm vegetarians.
Speaker 4: I just felt I can't walk, I'm away from my friends,
Speaker 4: and so it's been a ride. But I've always preached
Speaker 4: since the hardcore days PMA, you know, positive mental latitude,
Speaker 4: and it was a real all right, you talk about BMA.
Speaker 4: Now deal with this, see if you can. You know,
Speaker 4: all right, you're so positive, okay, positive you are now.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: Last break and we back with Jesse Mallen.
Speaker 1: The last few months have been sort of this incredible
Speaker 1: outpouring of your music. You had the tribute album Silver
Speaker 1: Patron Saints with a lot of friends, a lot of
Speaker 1: admirers Springsteen and a lot of other people you played with.
Speaker 1: You've got a new single out, and you had a
Speaker 1: live album out last year too, Is that right?
Speaker 4: Yeah, right before this happened, I had a record Chasing
Speaker 4: a Light, a live record in like a DVD film thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of something.
Speaker 4: We filmed a lot of it through in Lockdown, Pandemic
Speaker 4: and stuff, and it went with the record that we
Speaker 4: made at that time.
Speaker 1: So what's this been like? To see this kind of
Speaker 1: outpouring of people and your music everywhere and great reviews
Speaker 1: for this record.
Speaker 4: It's been really touching, really humbling. I always believed in
Speaker 4: people and the power of people's energies and generosity. You know,
Speaker 4: I'm an optimistic person in that way, but I know
Speaker 4: there's a lot of bad stuff in this world, a
Speaker 4: lot of bad people, but I've never seen it on
Speaker 4: this level. And I'd never like to receive. I always
Speaker 4: like to be the person since I'm like fifteen, putting
Speaker 4: on benefits, and you know, the music community, it's not
Speaker 4: just the artist. It's everybody involved, the fans, the people.
Speaker 4: I think they're the most giving, caring people of any
Speaker 4: kind of community. And it's been overwhelming but inspiring and
Speaker 4: just a lot to take in, a lot to you know,
Speaker 4: with what happened to me. Has been so hard and
Speaker 4: each day is tough, but that had made it so
Speaker 4: much bright And yeah, I guess there was funds that
Speaker 4: were needed. And that's a real thing to hear these songs,
Speaker 4: to hear the music and hear that, or just to
Speaker 4: see the messages from people that they gave a lot
Speaker 4: too as much, if not more.
Speaker 1: It's also one of those tribute albums that they're faithful
Speaker 1: to the songs, all these versions, but they kind of
Speaker 1: reintroduced the songs in a nice way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, sometimes I'd listen to it. I mean
Speaker 4: they came in slowly. I had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 4: The record was put together, you know, these two folks
Speaker 4: that one managed me, Diane Genteel years ago and my
Speaker 4: new manager, Dave Basin, And I was just in my
Speaker 4: recovery and I left the country to go to South America,
Speaker 4: to Argentina, and I couldn't speak the language and speak Spanish.
Speaker 4: I couldn't walk, and it was tricky to nurses. I'll
Speaker 4: speaking Spanish. And then little by little these songs would
Speaker 4: trickle in and they'd send me a song, you know,
Speaker 4: on the have it on my iPhone and didn't have
Speaker 4: a sound system, and I'd be in my room or whatever,
Speaker 4: and I'd listen to it. It would just make such
Speaker 4: a difference each time they came in, just to hear
Speaker 4: how these artists that they took the time went in
Speaker 4: the studio, gave so much of themselves, and then to
Speaker 4: hear the songs, some of them were so much better
Speaker 4: in my eyes than the original or I was like, wow,
Speaker 4: I thought I was just fooling people with a crooked
Speaker 4: hat and a leather jacket.
Speaker 3: There's a song in there, you know, like hey, youre wow.
Speaker 4: It actually is something you could sing back and hearing
Speaker 4: someone else do it, and it was just wonderful to
Speaker 4: hear all those different versions. And I felt like, to
Speaker 4: me from someone that's been on compilations and tribute records,
Speaker 4: I felt that the people, the artists went deep. They
Speaker 4: weren't phoning it in like I could feel that they
Speaker 4: thought about it. That's how it came across to me.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the songs and the people
Speaker 1: as a way of talking about the songs. Let's start
Speaker 1: with the Springsteen, who you've played with before, who sang
Speaker 1: on one or two of your albums. And then he
Speaker 1: does a just great version of she Don't Love You
Speaker 1: to Love Me Now. Yeah, it's just a it's got
Speaker 1: a great, great sax solo. Tell me first about the
Speaker 1: song and then his take on the song.
Speaker 4: We were going for it on my record New York
Speaker 4: before the War, to have a song kind of like
Speaker 4: Lee Dorsey, kind of New Orleans soul, Sam Cook kind
Speaker 4: of song with stabs and uh, and we were approaching
Speaker 4: that and and uh record the song and I don't
Speaker 4: think on that album I captured maybe the right tempo
Speaker 4: or it wasn't ready yet. Sometimes songs need a little
Speaker 4: more time. But as we played it live, it kind
Speaker 4: of grew into one of the songs in my set
Speaker 4: that the crowds seem to connect with.
Speaker 1: The guitar sound on that on your version of it,
Speaker 1: I mean, I.
Speaker 4: Like his, but it's it's got a great Oh cool. Well,
Speaker 4: that's Derek Cruz, who plays guitar with me, who I
Speaker 4: co wrote the song with. We were just jamming at
Speaker 4: a studio called Tucasa down on Avenue B and you know,
Speaker 4: he's just had this thing and in my mind and
Speaker 4: and you know, someti as I free form and if
Speaker 4: somebody's just hitting some chords, sometimes the whole thing will
Speaker 4: come out. And that was one of the ones where
Speaker 4: he's just banging these things and hitting those stabs, and
Speaker 4: then the lyrics fell out and the no melody fell out.
Speaker 4: But I felt like, you know, I wish that we
Speaker 4: always could have re recorded it a little quicker, but
Speaker 4: there it was, and live it became a song, and
Speaker 4: I guess that was the one that everybody thought when
Speaker 4: they're putting the record together.
Speaker 3: To get to Bruce and.
Speaker 4: Danny Clinch was really helpful, reaching out the photographer who
Speaker 4: was a friend and a fan and just.
Speaker 3: The guy we've worked with.
Speaker 4: And you know, Bruce's always been supportive. I mean, he
Speaker 4: was in touch with me a lot through this and
Speaker 4: checked in a lot from the road and Europe and stuff.
Speaker 4: So they they tracked it, actually I believe it was
Speaker 4: my band tracked it while I was away, and then
Speaker 4: they sent it to Jay Clemens, the sax player, and
Speaker 4: he played on it, and then it got to Bruce's
Speaker 4: studio and that he sang on it.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't know when you hear it.
Speaker 4: I think I felt like he really took the time
Speaker 4: to get inside the song. But I never talked to
Speaker 4: him about it or you know, was that right?
Speaker 3: It just all happened. They send me to song and there.
Speaker 4: It was, so I was like, wow, this is this
Speaker 4: is cool, this is And I think he kind of
Speaker 4: got the soul thing more than we did. But he's
Speaker 4: the boss, you know, Yeah.
Speaker 1: He's literally the boss in this case. I think what
Speaker 1: I like. I like about both versions, but your version.
Speaker 1: It's one of those songs where you kind of hear
Speaker 1: the room, if that makes any sense, Like, and you
Speaker 1: don't hear that so much on records anymore, no matter
Speaker 1: how much reverb they put on them, you don't. You
Speaker 1: don't feel like you're hearing the room.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I like that space.
Speaker 4: I mean, maybe it was something that harks back to
Speaker 4: a song I did on my first album, Queen of
Speaker 4: the Underworld, where there's those stabs and there's like a
Speaker 4: room and there's not a lot on it. I don't know,
Speaker 4: it's the sixties kind of approach to I think in
Speaker 4: some way.
Speaker 1: Great version about you that Frank Turner does. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: tell me first about the song.
Speaker 4: That song is something I wrote when I was in
Speaker 4: Europe and some different experiences. One verse, I was staying
Speaker 4: in a hotel where chet Baker fell out the window
Speaker 4: and he had put me in that room and he
Speaker 4: died and there's a plaque there and I was dealing
Speaker 4: with some.
Speaker 1: And you still opened the windows.
Speaker 3: It was only a second floor. He must have been
Speaker 3: having some powerful stuff.
Speaker 4: But it's a you know, a connection to somebody, and
Speaker 4: it references a lot of travel. And I guess I
Speaker 4: didn't want my second album to be about the road
Speaker 4: and you know, all that stuff, because I was touring
Speaker 4: a lot, because it's such cliche thing and I tried
Speaker 4: to avoid that. But it becas a few songs about
Speaker 4: the road, and that Frank Turner version was the first
Speaker 4: song that I heard that when they said they're doing
Speaker 4: this tribute record for me, and this is the thing.
Speaker 4: That was the first song that came in and I
Speaker 4: was fighting out of my mind. I was going to
Speaker 4: this doctor's office to remove fat to use for stem cells,
Speaker 4: and I was so frail and fragile, and I was
Speaker 4: in the waiting room and it came in and somebody
Speaker 4: forwarded to me and I was sitting and I had
Speaker 4: to go to Chicago, and that was really hard. And
Speaker 4: I listened to that and I thought Frank did such
Speaker 4: a great job, Like beautiful, it's one of my favorites,
Speaker 4: and he just stripped it down and just changed the melody.
Speaker 3: And I always been a fan of him.
Speaker 4: If you see him live, he's a great songwriter, but
Speaker 4: he also he's a great performer.
Speaker 1: And Shane by Rocky O Reardon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're picking some good ones. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I'd met Rocky or Corch or cat so many different ways.
Speaker 4: I pronounced her dable Calder. I met her we were
Speaker 4: doing some benefit shows for Music and Memory. We do
Speaker 4: this Clash tribute night that we did in London in
Speaker 4: New York a few years in a row and the
Speaker 4: money goes to Stromer Foundation and Music and Memory for Dementia.
Speaker 4: And she came and sang Lovers Rock from London calling
Speaker 4: the Clash song and we connected and I would go
Speaker 4: see her play with other people locally, and she's bass players.
Speaker 4: I'd seen her play in the pogues at Dance Atteria,
Speaker 4: but it was so long ago and I was asked
Speaker 4: to sing at Chee mc gowan's sixtieth birthday and he
Speaker 4: was in a wheelchair and it was in Dublin, and
Speaker 4: I went with Clem Burke and Glenn Mattlocke and some
Speaker 4: folks and I sang some stuff Spider from the Popes.
Speaker 4: We did some of the early stuff from Shane's first band,
Speaker 4: and I met him again and courch Rocky was the
Speaker 4: bass player in the house band, and the house band
Speaker 4: had Shane sing, had Bono, Johnny Depp, Nick Cave, Bobby
Speaker 4: Gillespie and Glenn Hazard. You know, it was just crazy,
Speaker 4: and it was my experience when I wrote the song
Speaker 4: about being there and feeling like it was my Forrest
Speaker 4: Gump moment, like I'm on stage with all these people,
Speaker 4: and it was like I felt like this New Yorker,
Speaker 4: you know that, why am I here? I mean, I
Speaker 4: love Shane and the Pogues. I wrote it about that,
Speaker 4: and she had been there, and then I guess they
Speaker 4: asked her to sing that song. And when I got
Speaker 4: that version back, it must have made sense to her.
Speaker 4: I would assume somewhere of the song because she did it,
Speaker 4: but I'd love the version. I just love what she did,
Speaker 4: and with the Irish accent, it just made the song
Speaker 4: so much more real. I like it better than my
Speaker 4: version two.
Speaker 1: Three of those, Three of those, okay, because it's one
Speaker 1: of your best known songs. Brooklyn, Yeah with Dinosaur Jr.
Speaker 1: Tell me about that.
Speaker 4: When I lived in green Point, Brooklyn after my mother died,
Speaker 4: and I had the van service and I was a
Speaker 4: moving guy. Me and my friend scrouched a lot of
Speaker 4: money together to have a first floor of a three
Speaker 4: level house or whatever, and I guess it would be
Speaker 4: eighty seven or something like that, and there would be
Speaker 4: some girl that lived upstairs and she was very nice
Speaker 4: and knew some people we knew, and we were the
Speaker 4: only city freaks in the neighborhood of green Point Polish
Speaker 4: and Italian. And it'd be just crazy noise blasting this
Speaker 4: guitar and it sounded like some I don't know what
Speaker 4: it sounded like.
Speaker 3: It was so noisy, and it was Jay. He was
Speaker 3: dating this girl. He was up there, but we never
Speaker 3: talked that.
Speaker 4: I would hear him and hear him, and then years
Speaker 4: later we'd meet in different places and talk about that,
Speaker 4: and somehow that you know, we got a little friendly.
Speaker 4: But he I Guess was contacted and agreed to do
Speaker 4: the song, and we'd been a little bit in touch,
Speaker 4: but not during that time with this accident for me,
Speaker 4: and I just love the way they played. He changed
Speaker 4: it up, took some verses out. The drumming is great.
Speaker 4: I think the drum rolls and it just has a
Speaker 4: sleazy swagger and very different version. So I was really
Speaker 4: taken in. Of course, his guitar playing is really really cool. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that was nice.
Speaker 1: And bleachers they do prisoners.
Speaker 3: Prisons are Paradise.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was another one where I heard it. And
Speaker 4: a month before this happened to me, I was in
Speaker 4: a dressing room in Brooklyn at the Barclays and seeing
Speaker 4: Bruce Springsteen and yeah, I'm just in this dressing room
Speaker 4: and it was kind of a strange thing.
Speaker 3: He just usually have to show.
Speaker 4: Sometimes they'll you'll get a text Bruce wants to say hello,
Speaker 4: and so we went back and I had missed him
Speaker 4: at the garden.
Speaker 3: So if we're going to say hello.
Speaker 4: And I get back in the dressing room and nobody
Speaker 4: really theres Bruce and this guy with crazy glasses on,
Speaker 4: younger guy and then in comes Jan Winner, who coincidently
Speaker 4: is in a wheelchair. I've never met Jan Winner, but
Speaker 4: it was nice. And everyone's talking to Bruce about the show.
Speaker 4: I started talking to Bruce about him meeting Sean McGowan
Speaker 4: recently went to his house, like, we're just having some
Speaker 4: music talk Bruce. You hang out with Bruce and you
Speaker 4: you forget that it's him. He's just like becomes one
Speaker 4: of your friends that you grew up with and geeking
Speaker 4: out on music like he's that. It really feels that real.
Speaker 4: And he's just down to earth like that. And there's
Speaker 4: this other guy and he's talking about suicide with these
Speaker 4: goofy glasses on. I'm like, what's this And he's really
Speaker 4: nice and he's like and Jesse knows, and we're talking
Speaker 4: about Alan Vega and we're talking to Bruce and then
Speaker 4: we leave. Bruce says, you know what, guys, I gotta go.
Speaker 4: He doesn't have one of these people to come in
Speaker 4: and say, you know, Bruce for five minutes, he just
Speaker 4: says it. He goes, right, okay, I'm out of here. Yeah,
Speaker 4: there's no problem, you know, being really directed.
Speaker 3: It's nice.
Speaker 4: I walk out into the street, you know, down and
Speaker 4: the guy that with the glasses says to me yeah,
Speaker 4: you want you want to take a ride into the city,
Speaker 4: you know, you need a ride. And I was like, nah,
Speaker 4: you know, I'll go to I'm gonna go drink at
Speaker 4: this bar or Smith Street Social or something. You know,
Speaker 4: I'm in Brooklyn for once, you know.
Speaker 3: But I didn't realize who it was.
Speaker 4: And I guess we had met before in some clubs,
Speaker 4: but it was Jack and.
Speaker 1: So it was some black Anton.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Jack Anton, And I was like, God, I should
Speaker 4: have probably taken a ride with him in the gap.
Speaker 4: Would have been a nice thing. He's got up studioed
Speaker 4: electric lady with neighbors. He was nice. I didn't realize
Speaker 4: who it was. Still after I'm like, oh, that's who
Speaker 4: it was. But somehow, you know, down the line, someone
Speaker 4: that knew someone a friend of a friend that bumped
Speaker 4: into someone that manages him, and somewhere in the summer
Speaker 4: and it came up and he was down to do.
Speaker 4: I guess they sent him a handful of songs. He
Speaker 4: picked prisoners, And when I heard it back, I was like, Wow,
Speaker 4: this is like Johnny Cash suicide. It's like such a
Speaker 4: cool like he's got his own spin, Like wow, this
Speaker 4: is great. And then they asked you, what do you
Speaker 4: think this record should be called? And that was the
Speaker 4: only input I had. I don't sing on it, you know,
Speaker 4: I wrote the songs, but you know, so I was like,
Speaker 4: I don't know, and then that song came in and
Speaker 4: I was like, Silver Patron Saints. It's in the verse
Speaker 4: of Prisoners that.
Speaker 3: There's some title. Yeah, he did so good. I love
Speaker 3: it when it's different.
Speaker 1: And then you know, there's some people from the good
Speaker 1: old days like yeah, hardcore, yeah, Agnostic Front and Murphy's
Speaker 1: Law and you know, doing well God is.
Speaker 3: Dead, Yeah, Agnostic Front did God His dad was like wow,
Speaker 3: realty stigma.
Speaker 4: But the thing that also, besides the great versions and
Speaker 4: how much people gave, is just to have a record
Speaker 4: that for me has Agnostic Front and Bruce Springsteen on
Speaker 4: it and Lucinda Williams and Murphy's Law, and it's like,
Speaker 4: I was like, I guess I have pretty crazy life,
Speaker 4: but it makes sense to me.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: The last time I saw you, you were playing with
Speaker 1: Lucinda Williams and it was a City Winery show and
Speaker 1: people know that she had a stroke and has come
Speaker 1: back and she's had various problems, and it was after
Speaker 1: that and I remember during our interview, she was telling
Speaker 1: me how thrilled she was that you were working with
Speaker 1: her and what a great songwriter you were. So how
Speaker 1: is first of all, how do you guys originally meet?
Speaker 4: We met at the Blue Note at a Charlie Watts
Speaker 4: gig in two thousand and four. Yeah, I think Ryan
Speaker 4: adamspace Player might have been dating her Billy and I
Speaker 4: don't know. We all went there and I just hit
Speaker 4: it off. I'd been a fan, and we started, you know, talking,
Speaker 4: and just we stayed in touch and became friends. If
Speaker 4: we were in the same city, Chicago or La New York,
Speaker 4: we would get together and hang out, and you know,
Speaker 4: I have some really fun nights and great conversations. And
Speaker 4: we found out we have the same birthday and in January,
Speaker 4: and I just felt the real connection. And then I
Speaker 4: realized she lived in New York and she played in
Speaker 4: Queens where I'm from in the nineteen eighty She came
Speaker 4: and lived in East Village and lived where I was
Speaker 4: living now on Second Street and First Avenue at that time.
Speaker 4: And we just stayed friends and that was it. And
Speaker 4: then at one point we made a record, Sunset Kids,
Speaker 4: with my second and last record, from Now and her
Speaker 4: and her husband Tom Overbye produced the record and it
Speaker 4: was great and we did a little writing together too,
Speaker 4: and we had such a great experience making that record
Speaker 4: was one of my favorite. It's we did some in
Speaker 4: la where she was living, and some in New York.
Speaker 4: They love New York or and her husband. So when
Speaker 4: she had this stroke, I was so upset. It was
Speaker 4: COVID and it was just everything was so bleak. But
Speaker 4: she couldn't play guitar, and uh so, I don't know
Speaker 4: if I offered or they asked, but I ended up
Speaker 4: coming to Nashville several times and sat in the kitchen
Speaker 4: and wrote songs with them, you know, and we wrote
Speaker 4: a bunch and because she couldn't play guitar, play the guitar,
Speaker 4: and it was just trying to help out. And you know,
Speaker 4: know what would happen with these songs? They have many,
Speaker 4: We went through many, and some of them ended up
Speaker 4: on that record. And it was just, you know, a
Speaker 4: great experience. And you're sitting in the kitchen table and
Speaker 4: it's your friend and you're you know, bring out some carrits,
Speaker 4: bring out some chips and dip or whatever, and then
Speaker 4: here's a beer and then suddenly that voice.
Speaker 3: Pops out and you turn your head and it's listening there.
Speaker 4: It's like, wow, we're in the kitchen here, but it's
Speaker 4: a good place to cook up a song. And so
Speaker 4: I was helping her out with a stroke, so that
Speaker 4: some of the songs made the album and one that
Speaker 4: I sang with her on stage New yor Comeback and.
Speaker 3: Stuff like that. So yeah, have a few that I
Speaker 3: wrote with her.
Speaker 4: So it was really wild when then I have a stroke,
Speaker 4: you know, after just doing this helping somebody, and a
Speaker 4: different kind of stroke. But yeah, it was It was
Speaker 4: just another strange thing connected to this.
Speaker 1: You talk about sitting with a guitar writing songs with her.
Speaker 1: Have songs not to say, songs ever come easily? Have
Speaker 1: they always come for you? Has music always come if you?
Speaker 1: If you sit down with a guitar and you know
Speaker 1: something's going to come out at the other end.
Speaker 4: Well, the more you sit down, the more you'll get stuff.
Speaker 4: I mean, there is writer's block. It's a real, real thing.
Speaker 4: I was once on a songwriter panel in south By,
Speaker 4: Southwest with a bunch of writers, and one was Pat
Speaker 4: de Nunzio, the late Patnunzio, the Smith of Reens seeing
Speaker 4: a lot of hits and funny guy.
Speaker 3: So somebody asked the question, you know.
Speaker 4: Hey, hey, Pat, you know what's what's the best cure
Speaker 4: for writer's block? And he said, ass in chair. And
Speaker 4: the thing is that if you sit down and you
Speaker 4: you know you're gonna you might And I record a
Speaker 4: lot of stuff that I do.
Speaker 3: It's nice.
Speaker 4: You think it's garbage, and guards you can listen back
Speaker 4: a week later or a couple of days and there's
Speaker 4: something in there. Every time you sit down. You might
Speaker 4: not finish a song and write Bridge over Trouble Water
Speaker 4: or whatever. But if you sit down you do it,
Speaker 4: you're gonna get something. I mean, you know, and then
Speaker 4: some days you're gonna hit some really good things. So
Speaker 4: I think to stay active with it. And then another
Speaker 4: thing I got was like the Joe Strummer thing, like
Speaker 4: no input, no output. You know, you gotta constantly as
Speaker 4: a writer. If I listen to my favorite records, I'm
Speaker 4: desensitized to them. I love them unless I'm a little drunk,
Speaker 4: a little buzzed, and I hear it in a different way.
Speaker 4: But otherwise they don't want to hear new things. They
Speaker 4: make me want to write when I see a new
Speaker 4: film where I get like, when something's just coming at
Speaker 4: me for the first time, it inspires me to kind
Speaker 4: of do that. I used to carry little notebook. Now
Speaker 4: sometimes I write on the phone. People think you're texting.
Speaker 4: If I go to a film, I get ideas, just
Speaker 4: got you gotta cut out the world. We're always being
Speaker 4: inundated with with you know, emails and this and Instagram
Speaker 4: and like that early part of the morning, to not
Speaker 4: turn the phone on that late at night, you know,
Speaker 4: like just to really get that quiet time, and also
Speaker 4: to take things in and from all different things and
Speaker 4: then be able to spit it out.
Speaker 1: It makes sense that I didn't know you were so
Speaker 1: interested in film, but you've got very visual songs. You're
Speaker 1: that kind of writer.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know a certain film a certain period of time.
Speaker 4: But still it's like, you know, I just saw a movie,
Speaker 4: the Last Showgirl. It was with Pamela Anderson, which I
Speaker 4: know what that was gonna be like, and it was.
Speaker 3: It was really good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a female version of the Wrestler in a way,
Speaker 4: but made by one of the couple of grandchildren.
Speaker 1: With that After you had your stroke, did the music
Speaker 1: go for a while or were you were you sitting
Speaker 1: there you spent I'm sure a lot of long, tedious
Speaker 1: hours in hospitals.
Speaker 4: Were you thinking, yeah, well, every little thing you got
Speaker 4: to do is taking so long, and everything is very scary,
Speaker 4: and you know, this is all kinds of tests. And
Speaker 4: but I did eventually get the guitar brought to the
Speaker 4: hospital and see what it was like, and to see
Speaker 4: what it was like to sing. And eventually when it
Speaker 4: got me, trump me how to get out of the
Speaker 4: bed and had to get my body in a wheelchair
Speaker 4: was a big step. And then eventually the guitar was
Speaker 4: sitting in the corner, and eventually the wheelchair rolled over
Speaker 4: and I closed the hospital door. You know, as much
Speaker 4: as I played lots of people all these years, when
Speaker 4: I'm alone playing a guitar or writing a song, it's
Speaker 4: a very private, you know, personal moment. And I didn't
Speaker 4: know it was going to sound like. And I closed
Speaker 4: the hospital door and I just started to sing. And
Speaker 4: I think the first song I did was a Room thirteen,
Speaker 4: which is one from Sunset Kids, and a song about
Speaker 4: being isolated and having to reflect on your whole life.
Speaker 4: But I don't know why, I just it's a key
Speaker 4: that I thought would be nice, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 4: this is here, and little by little I would play
Speaker 4: and didn't have a lot of time, and eventually I
Speaker 4: wheeled myself into We got me in a car, in
Speaker 4: the back of a special cab or whatever, and I
Speaker 4: got down to a rehearsal place where it didn't have stairs,
Speaker 4: and they put a mic in front of me, and
Speaker 4: the band was there and selling. Those guys were right
Speaker 4: in front of me, and it was super emotional, but
Speaker 4: it seemed to go really well, and I was just like, wow,
Speaker 4: this is still here, you know. And it was hard
Speaker 4: to sit and things hurt my shoulder getting over the
Speaker 4: Like it was a lot of different because I'm a
Speaker 4: very physical singer, at least the ones I always grew
Speaker 4: up watching from the Bad Rains Tootus reading. It's like
Speaker 4: it was your body and I'm nervous, so like I
Speaker 4: moved my body a lot, but like it was a
Speaker 4: different focus and it felt good.
Speaker 1: Well, keep writing now. It's been just wonderful talking to you.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming in. Yeah, thanks for
Speaker 1: having us, great luck with everything.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: In the episode description, you'll find a link to a
Speaker 2: playlist to some of our favorite Jesse Mallen tracks. Be
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Speaker 2: I'm justin Richmond.