Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Jesse Malin

Transcript

Jesse Malin · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Jesse Mallin quite literally came of age on stage in
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: the gritty clubs of New York City. At just twelve
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: years old, he fronted Heart Attack, one of the earliest
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: hardcore groups in the city. After they broke up in
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: eighty four, Jesse went on to play in other groups,
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: including Hope, and later co found a d Generation, a
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: glam punk band that toured extensively through the nineties, opening
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: for acts like Kiss, the Ramones and Social Distortion. In
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: the early two thousands, Jesse launched a solo career, trading
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: hardcore for a more singer songwriter driven approach. As a
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: solo artist, he's collaborated with a wide range of musicians,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: including Bruce Springsteen, lusen To Williams, and Billy Joe Armstrong.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: A true musician's musician, Jesse has long been a beloved
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: figure in the rock community, so when he suffered a
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: rare spinal stroke in twenty twenty three that left him
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: temporarily paralyzed from the waist down, that community rallied around him.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: The result was Silver Patron Saints The Songs of Jesse Mallin,
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: a twenty twenty four tribute album featuring covers of his
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: songs by friends and admirers. Jesse's also debuting a musical
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: this fall, called Jesse Mallin Silver Manhattan, A Musical Guide
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: to Survival, at the Grammercy Theater in New York. On
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: today's episode, Bruce Hedlm talks with Jesse Mallin about his
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: colorful upbringing and Queen's, how he found the nerve to
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: try out for a gig at CBGB's at age twelve,
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: and what it was like during the formative years of
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: New York's hardcore scene. Jesse also shares how his positive
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: mental attitude helped him through the toughest chapter of his life,
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: recovering from the stroke that nearly ended his ability to walk.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: This is broken record, real musicians, real conversations. Here's Bruce
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: Headlam with Jesse Mallin.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: I always assumed, because you're the mayor of East Village,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: that you grow up downtown New York. But you didn't.
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm not in politics. I don't know about the
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: mayor thing.
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: Somebody once said that, But no, I grew up in
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: Queen's and I was born in Flushing, and yeah, the
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: city isn't that far away from Queens but when you know,
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: living in a suburban, middle class kind of you know,
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: place like that. It's not everybody goes there or gets
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: to go there to do. They stay sometimes and just
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: become part of Queen's. But I knew that there were
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: things in the city, and you could, you know, see
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: it in magazines and hear it on the radio, or
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: if you went to the circus at Mattis Square Garden.
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: You might drive down another street and see something crazy
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: and suddenly be like.
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: Wow, what's going on over there?
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: You know? Man in movies you got to see New York.
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: New York just different now. But yeah, Queen's was definitely
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: the early days.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: And what was it like? What was family life like?
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: I grew up with my mom and my sister of
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: a sister younger. My father left pretty early on, and
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: my mom was a single mom who wanted to be
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: a singer, but they got divorced young. They had us young,
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: and she just did everything from waitressing to working in
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: Bloomingdale's at a makeup counter to you know, whatever she
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: could do to get by, and so it led for
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: some freedom. Sometimes we had babysitters and limes. She couldn't
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: afford babies that we were alone, and that was exciting.
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: I didn't think it was anything bad or dangerous. It
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: was fun to me. But my mom was very loving,
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: but she had a lot on her plate. She was
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: in her twenties, so I think sometimes she let me
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: do a lot of things that a kid my age
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: wouldn't be able to do or see, like go to
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: see One Floor of the Cuckoo's Nest with Jack Nicholson
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: when I'm eight for my birthday, because you know, where
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: other parents, she.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: Maybe felt bad, she wasn't able to give other things,
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: so she was loose.
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: You know, here, here's a record, or here's magazines you want,
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: or you know, to break some of those rules. In
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: those days, films were such a big thing for me.
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: If I couldn't see a film, I'd read the Mad
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: magazine satire of it and pretend to somebody that I
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: saw the film. But they were windows into an adult life.
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: I really wanted to grow up fast. I was excited
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: by film and music and the teenagers. Queen's had a
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: day different thing than my neighborhood in Whitestone, where people
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: hung out in the streets, you know, even though it
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: was the seventies and it wasn't like.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: Do wop people in a tunnel.
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: But there were like kids listening to like Leonard Skinner
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: and drinking forty ounce bottles in the park or a
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: school yard with a boombox, or you know, you'd hear
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: Cashmeer by led Zeppelin, and you know they were stoned
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: out like a Cheech and Chong movie. The bus that
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: went to school was a city bus, and it was
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: just boomboxes and smoke. And I got caught up in
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: you know, radio AM radio first, and me and my
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: cousin would judge any song if we heard on a radio,
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: we'd try to get a buck or fifty cents, I think,
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: and buy a single at Corvette's out there. And then
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: if we liked it, the way we judge it is
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: we could jump on the bed really fast and try
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: to hit the ceiling. That meant it was a good song.
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: And in the seventies, the fifties was a big nostalgia
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: so American graffiti. We got Chuck Berry Johnny be Good
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: and it was so rocket and Elton John came out
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: with Crocodile Rock, which had a fifties thing, and suddenly
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: I got Intelton John and that would be the first
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: artist that I really Some babysitter had Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: and I just opened it up and I stared at
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: the illustrations for each song, and I read the lyrics
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: along with the record, and it was very adult, but
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: very It was something dark, but he were these beautiful
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: songs with this beautiful voice. And then there was some
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: kind of anger and something dirty and screwed up. And
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: I don't know what's going on to merrilman Roe or
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: what happened with this lesbian Alice or this, you know, like,
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: but I wanted to know, and I felt something, even
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: though I didn't know fully.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Was that was that stuff a little scary to you
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: or just attractive to you?
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: It was attractive scary a little In some of the photos,
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: you know, the drummer Nigel Olsen had long hair. He
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: looked like a woman. And then it was just it
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: said it was okay, you know. I mean, I liked
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: in Benny and the Jets because I'd be angry at
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: my father, angry at teachers, and it said, you know,
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: we'll fight our parents out in the street to prove
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: who's right and who's wrong. And it was like a
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: rallying cry and some of this I'd never heard a
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: live audience. The beginning of Benny and Jetsy, here a
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: crowd applause, and like you felt like it was a
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: concert entering your little room. And then Elton John came
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: out in the seventies that he was bisexual, and we
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: were living in a kind of racist, homophobic being. You know,
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: it's Archie Bunker's Queens. It's a lot of close minded
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: people that would say stuff about other races. You know,
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: we grew up talking that way. And my family, my
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: grandfather and you know, they were Jewish people. I wasn't
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: raised religious, but they understood discrimination and that kind of
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: persecution that people got. So we were hip to like
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: that we weren't going to say the N word or
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: look at anyone different than I was black, right, red,
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: you know, brown Like it was in that way that
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: was put into my head that to that people are
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: people and that there's no judgment. So when Elton John
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: kind of came out and said, oh, he's gay, he's by,
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: he's this, to me, I was like, well that's cool,
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: that's okay. If my guy is, he's great. Elton John like,
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: and here was this person that had to wear glasses,
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: and I had to wear glasses, and here's this guy
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: that wasn't like beautiful, looking like a Rod Stewart or
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: Robert Plant and took maybe the things and I didn't
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: realize at the time, but those weaknesses where you're you
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: don't feel you're the super Elvis hunk, and you do
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: all this other stuff to make yourself larger than life
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: and make you create your own image and your own
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: art and reality with your appearance. And that was mixed
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: with this beautiful voice and the fact that oh he's
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: bisexual and kids said, oh he's gay. He's like, well,
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: then that's okay. So it sent a lot of great
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: messages to somebody. Same thing with seeing the movie Dogged
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: Afternoon at a young age and you find out that
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: al Pacino's robbing the bank the character Sonny to pay
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: for his lover's you know, operation to have a you know,
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: sex change, and I'm in Queen's where everybody is so
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: anti gay, and yet it's al Pacino who just did
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: The Godfather and just did Cerpercos. It's the guy like
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: in Sanulai Fever when johns Fulda goes, oh, do you know, well,
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: they were a hero and they stuck with him. I
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: remember nobody yelled out home, oh well, walked out. Everybody stayed.
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: And it just the messages that it's okay to be different,
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: it's okay to be weird. And I was hyperactive kid.
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: I was getting thrown out of school. I was angry
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: at it. So I had to go to a therapist
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: or go talk to people in the school. So I thought,
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: I'm crazy or they treat me like great, well, then
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: maybe crazy's okay, and maybe the character one flow of
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: the Cucko's Nest is different than the rest of the
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: mold and the system and the mainstream. And I think
• 8:46
  Speaker 4: those were punk rock ideas that were being fed into me.
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: And then I got into Kiss. I was at that
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: age and they were from New York and it was like,
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: you know, all the action films, Billy Jack and Clint
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: East and everything and rock and roll thrown into one
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: and fire and at that point, the older kids they
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: didn't like it. The kids that like Sabbath and Zeppelin
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: and even the Grateful Dead.
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: It was like Kiss sucks, Yeah, got beat up.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: It was the first album, that Kiss album, I guess Destroyer.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: I remember people just carrying around at school with their books. Ye,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: well so cool. I know you're not there. There's no
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: record play. It's just like they just carried it with
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: them everywhere they went.
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it was twelve inches. It's it's you know, it's
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: a statement. But so that was you know, I was
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: loved the band. I was in the Kiss Army. I
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: would have did anything, played in the Talent Show first time,
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: spitting ketchup instead of blood, dressed as Steet Simmons. But
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: the thing about them, it was a band. It felt
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: like a gang. It felt like more than just a song.
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: It was like, I want to be part of this thing.
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: I want to raise my fist. I want to tell
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: my parents I'm not going to be like them and
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: work that job. I'm not going to turn into them.
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: We have another there's another chance, there's another road. And
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: we got beat up and made fun of by everybody
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: that you know, was like kiss suck that didn't like it.
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: So that was preparing me for punk rock because once
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: I got it to that, then you're really hated at
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: that time, even by you know, it wasn't like these
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: days where people like a lot of different things, like
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: to what you liked and if you were into punk.
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: They figured you killed your girlfriend like said Vicious or
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: a junkie or a fact like.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: Whatever it was.
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: It wasn't didn't have that open minded this that a
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: festival might have right now at Coachella or somewhere where
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: you get.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: A little everything.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fine, but I.
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: Respect like in the mods and rockers or punks and skins.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: Like I respected people.
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: If you go to London, you go to some SKA
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: show now or something, and you see people that they're lifers,
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: like rockabilly, like they're in it and they'll fight and
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: that's their thing. Metal people are like that. They're they're
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: very into it. That dedication I respect. But I think
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: that you know, we all kind of probably like just
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: good music, all kinds of music. It's almost it's.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: Good, you know.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no you said tribes. Yeah, what was the first
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: punk song you heard?
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: I probably heard blitz Creak Bop, but I didn't realize
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: what was going on. It came through on the radio
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: and I just knew it. But I was watching some
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: TV Choice Awards, some kind of awards show somehow, and
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: the sex Pistols came on and it heard about them
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: The New York and a few things. But it just
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: you know, just seeing it, seeing the little clip of
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: how Johnny Rotten played to the camera, and it was
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: way tougher than Kiss and way angrier. And it also
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: was like I could do this, I think, like, you know,
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: it just had a thing. It was like if Kiss
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: made me want to yell and scream, this made you
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: don't want to go to my room and throw everything
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: out and like just start again and break things up
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: in a way.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Now, had you started playing any instruments by this point.
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, like around the Kiss time, I started to go
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: for some guitar lessons and of course, you know, they're
• 11:42
  Speaker 4: teaching you Stare Away the Heaven by Led Zeppelin, and
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: they're teaching you all this free bird and classic stuff.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: And it took a lot of work.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: So once I you know, then got a Ramones record,
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: I realized, oh, they're from Queens. They wear the same
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: leather jackets as Phonsie, one of my TV heroes. They're
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: they're like a band, like the way the Beatles and
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: Kiss are like each person is like a character, and
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: they have these chants like Kiss had you know these
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: shouted out loud or rock and roll night, these big
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: anthems to chant certain parts with get the floor tom
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: and the snare. Well ramones had it in a different way.
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: They're yelling, hey ho, let's go a lobotomy. So I
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: started to learn those songs. And from learning those songs,
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: I was like, I can write. And we heard about
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: CBGB's and somebody said, you know, if you call this number,
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: you can come in and do an audition.
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: I was like twelve, and I called.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: This amazes me. I still want to hear this story.
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: I called from the school payphone, and you know, the
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: rule was you had to play original music. So you
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: put together a band with whoever, like, oh, you have
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: a basement and your father has a drum set, you
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: have the drummer, like, you know, we'd get whoever could contribute.
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: And I wrote some songs and we practiced in the
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: basement of somebody else because I lived in an apartment.
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: And we got dropped off on the Bowery on a
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: Monday night and we went in there.
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: It was pretty scary.
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: It was like March and we were all about twelve
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: or thirteen, and we got on that stage and it
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: was like the whole place smelled like you know, I
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: didn't know piss and alcohol and vomit. But that's what
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: I thought it was supposed to be. And I couldn't
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: believe this was the place where Blondie and Talking Heads
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: and everybody in Ramones had played. And we played our
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: set and I called a week later and they said
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: we failed, you know, the audition And I was into
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: the Dead Boys and the Ramones and the pistols, and
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: they said, yeah, you missed it. That stuff's over, man,
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: like you got to try something new like that's because
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: this is nineteen eighty. So I was like, well, all right,
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: what and they're like, you know, like rockabilly or or
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: a new romantic or I was like, wait a minute,
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: this is weird. But I found out in time that
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: you had to bring twenty people that drank. We didn't
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: bring anybody, But somehow, a week later I got a
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: call to play at Max's Kansas City. There was somebody
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: that saw us there and they booked us for that
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: July July fifteenth. It was I remember because it's Johnny
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: Thunder's birthday and we knew who he was, and he actually.
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: Showed up at the gig.
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: But we got to play a show at Max's and
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: little By little what they told me I had missed
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: this raw, mounky music that I was just getting into. Yeah,
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: it was changing. Blondie was starting to get more pomp
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: and disco. Ramons are putting on striped shirts and taking
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: off the leather and working with Phil Spector, and everybody
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: was trying to have a hit. And I walked a
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: little further down the street where I bought my leather
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: wristbands and records called Saint Mark's Place, and I walked further.
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: As I walked further down on the light posts, there
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: were signs that looked punky to other clubs that weren't
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: advertised in the Village Voice, and they said, you know,
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: come down to a seven seventh Street Avenue and bad brains, stimulators,
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: false prophets. And that led me to another place where
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: this music was still going on. And somehow, without cell
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: phones and without you know, even this being in the paper,
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: we used a like in spaceballs, used the schworts or whatever,
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: some collective unconscious thing. We found each other. Kids my
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: age and a little older from Jersey, Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens,
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: a lot all ended up on Avenue A because of music.
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: So in Queens you had a band like Crowd coming
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: on in Forest Hills, Queens. You had Reagan Youth and
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: the name says a lot right there. You know, the
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: undead lived in the city False Prophets on Avenue B
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: and we all just maybe fifty or sixty people were
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: part of this thing that would become hardcore. And I
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: didn't realize that this was kind of happening in different
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: cities where yeah, maybe that was over in the Ramones,
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: but somebody that saw the Ramones took it to another level.
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: And you had Black Flag in California, and you had
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: Dead Kennedy's in Northern California and down in DC, and
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: it wasn't ready to end. It was a new chapter
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: and Reagan was president, and it felt like we had
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: a lot of things to sing about it. It was faster,
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: We had our own way of dancing, and you had
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: one minute to say everything that you felt about the world.
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: So heart Attack was my band. That was the name.
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: We put out a single called God Is Dad when
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: I was fourteen, and that is pretty much I think
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: it's known as the first New York hardcore single. I'm
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: not saying it's the best wherever it goes for a
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: thousand and changed or a couple bucks. It's a rarity,
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: but we did that.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: You kept something right.
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: I kept the test pressing somewhere.
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: But that was a thing that came out and made
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: not want to be in school anymore. And from that
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: we played the rits with the Misfits. We started to
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: play with groups like Bad Brains, who were incredible. That
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: was a band that had jazz fusion chops for black
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: dudes from DC that took punk rock to a whole
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: other level. Being tight, precise, the whole performance was like
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: nothing I'd ever seen. And to know them, and we
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: had cheap gear Japanese guitars, and they had they were adults,
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: they were nineteen twenty, like you know, twenty one. They
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: had real equipment. They would lend us their equipment. And
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: they're talking about PMA positive mental latitude. It wasn't the
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: seventies destroy cut yourself like. It was like, yeah, we
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: can be crazy, have fun and not do drugs and
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: not put a needle Like drugs just never seemed exciting
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: to be put a needle in your arm, put some
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: shit in your nose. Guys, scratching got like that's to me.
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: I want to see like, you know, a strong guy
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: going crazy up there, or a strong gay like you know,
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: it wasn't we want to say all this stuff get
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: in your face, and we're a lot of us are sober, like.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: You know, we mean this when you were never tempted
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: down that other path because you're downtown New York and
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: in the early age.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: And it seems sexy.
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: Someone told me, Heroin, I didn't like when I got
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: the flu because I couldn't go out and do what
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: I like to do. And someone said, Heroin, if you
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: you know when you get sick, it's like the flu
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: times ten, and you know, you'd look over and it
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: was some scratchy you know, and it just didn't look
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: fun to me.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: And you were exposed just enough to it to know that.
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And there were some people saying, like, you know,
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: you don't need to do that. I didn't understand. We
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: dragged to an after hours club and suddenly like, what
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: are they doing it? There's no bands, this music sucks,
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: there's sand on the floor like a beach, and why
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: these people Hitle seven?
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: Well, I know now, you know, it's like I just
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: thought they had a cold. I don't know the guys
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: snippe it. It was so naive, but.
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: It was always about the music, and I think my
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: mom trusted that so I could go to junior high
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: school and I could go to A seven and one
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: seventy one or CEB's or max Is. In the beginning,
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: the parents tried to like pick us up here and there,
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: but the shows in those days depends on to go
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: onto one or two, so they gave up on that
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: and then I'd sneak out. But like she knew, like
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: my son has this dream, he believes in music. And
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: by the time, you know, still that year of my
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: first record, we went to Mexico City did a tour.
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: When I was fourteen, things started to open up.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: What was it like to be a fourteen year old
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: touring and seeing Mexico City, and you know.
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: It was interesting. I had to figure out, like, you know,
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: something nobody wants to talk to me in school, little
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: girls ever gave me. I felt like the biggest loser
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: and suddenly go, oh, there's somebody interested in me, Like
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: this is weird.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: Or but to get to play.
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: Every night and learn how to control, you know, in
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: Mexico we did like ten shows in a row at
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: a place called hips and tenta, and like you know,
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: had to like, wow, I'm playing so hard I cut
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: my nail off and I'm.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: Bleeding all over the SG guitar.
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: We got a gaff that I got to learn how
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: to control my I got to learn how to be
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: able to sustain this and have a tight show and
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: make flyers for each show with glue and cutting things
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: out and just learning in those early days, how to
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: make it happen when there's no label, there's no manager,
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: Learning how to book your own shows, all those diy
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: as they call it, kind of eat those that has
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: really stuck with me throughout, even when I was a singer,
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: songwriter or whatever, all through my music career, that there's
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: ways that we can make this happen. So that was
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: a lessons. The drummer I had at the time was
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: in his twenties and he was from Mexico and he
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: lived in a chemore hotel on twenty third Street, this
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: welfare spot, but like you know, hung out with older people.
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: I was the youngest, and I just wanted to know
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: more about the world and I wanted to be better,
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: and I was taking in these records.
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: You know, I was a kid too.
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: I had a lot of rules, like you only listen
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: to stuff that had certain kind of guitar. And I
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: was when Sandinista came out at that time by the
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: Clash and they were playing all these different styles of music.
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: I broke it into pieces. I was like, give me
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: a dead ken. I rebought it four years later. I
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: was like, they're right. I was wrong, but I'm like,
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: they're playing disco, they're selling out, you know they're selling
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: I didn't go to Bonds when the Clash came. I
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: saw him at London calling, but like my favorite band,
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: suddenly they were hipper than I was blending the world,
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: bringing it all together. That hip hop was the music
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: of the streets and had a message and it was
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: a punk rock in its own way. But at the time,
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: at that age, I needed things in boxes. I needed
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: you know, this is hardcore. This is what we're doing.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Well, it's identity at that edge, yeah, and your identities,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: you know, that's how you differentiate yourself.
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: And we were competitive to who was fastest, who was tightest,
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: who got the mash bit going the most, and you know,
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: got the action happening and the bad Brains asked heart
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: Attack to open for them at Irving Plaza, their first
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: big gig, and I was really surprised. We got a
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: song called God Is Dead. They were very religious Rastafarian,
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: yet we got this big show and they were so
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: good to us. And you know, to see these different
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: things develop and to watch that scene grow, like I said,
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: just organically. And if you went on tour, people put
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: you up on their floor. People you know, you booked
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: a whole tour on like a stolen credit card you
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: bought on forty second Street to some phone card, and
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: you were able to go across this country. And when
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: you got to San Francisco, the guy had the fanzine
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: in there, Maxim Rock and Roll, Timy Hanna, and he
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: put you up on his couch and turn you out,
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: let you make a mixtape of his record collection, or
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: and you'd meet another band. And it was just a thing.
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: And watching that and being part of that was exciting.
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: Until around eighty four it became a little too macho
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: for me, a little too metal, this hybrid kind of thing,
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: and it started to get extra violent. And it wasn't
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: guys and gals on the dance floor, and it wasn't
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: gay and straight in this and it was like became
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: this metal, macho thing, which was everything I was trying
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: to get away from in Queens. So I felt I
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: dropped out a broke up heart attack in eighty four
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: and last gig was at CBGB's fourth of July, and
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: it was the first Chromax gig. They were on the bill,
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: and I remember that was part of the new thing.
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: They were great, but it was going to become this other, heavier,
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: more metal type of thing, and that would go on
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: and get a lot bigger and now even bigger than
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: ever since then. But I started to want to write
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: songs like the songs where lyrics mattered, and I started
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: listening to things from my early early youth, like Jim
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: Crochey and Elton John and somehow I stumbled upon Bruce
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: Springsteen's Nebraska. And I'd never been a fan.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: I thought you would have been one of those fans
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: from the beginning. But it was Nebraska that day.
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: It had long his other records had long songs. It
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: was in a deep voice. It was a lot of
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: instruments and sacks, and I didn't really know what he
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: was singing about. I wasn't from Jersey. I thought it
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: he was singing about it just yeah, all these things
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: that didn't fit in my box.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: He had a beard, you know, it was like, to
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: be honest, I mean, I love the guy. Now I
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: was a person at edits an art.
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: But then I heard Nebraska and I said, whoa, this
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: guy is, this big rock star and this record is
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: just him And you know, I'd already had all this
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: punk rock political caring and social ideas about the world
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: and the underclass, and he's singing about this in such
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: a great way and it's haunting, and I couldn't get
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: enough of it. And so when Born in the USA
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: came out, I was a fan. And all my friends
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: on the scene were like, what's with this major label
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: rambo shit? And I was like, have you read the
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: lyric sheet? Like half these people end up in jail.
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: This is not And yeah, that mixed message to America
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: probably made them a lot of money that people thought
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: it was, you know, pickup trucks and you're in the USA.
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: But and then I realized this guy's deal. And then
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: I found another record that same time, at which I
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: called the punk rock Nebraska, which was Johnny Thunder's Hurt Me,
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: and it was an acoustic solo record in the early eighties,
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: and it was in my rehearsal studio. One of the
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: other bands had their records there in a turntable, and
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: it was just Johnny Thunders alone playing his songs and
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: a few covers Joey by Bob Dylan and Eva Destruction
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: Barry Maguire, and it had a great thing. Sometimes it
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: sounded like a whiny junkie screaming in a little closet,
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: but other times there was something. And I started busking
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: in the L train on fourteenth at First Avenue in
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: New York, just make some extra money, and I would
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: sing my own new songs and I would throw in
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: some oldies and then I'd try to make like Ramone
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: songs sound like fifty songs next to the Dion song.
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: And I'd make like got seventy bucks.
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: But that's when I started to realize that when an
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: acoustic guitar, I could write songs bring it down. And
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: I wanted to try something different.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: And you were always writing on electric At this point I.
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: Had always been before yeah, and that I wanted to
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: present these songs. And then I'd go to some clubs.
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: There was a great club called Dance Materyria that booked
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: people that were coming up, and I saw the Pogues
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: and the Replacements, and I saw Billy Bragg, and here's
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: a guy. He's very punky, but it's him alone with
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: an electric and he's got these political love songs and
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: he's got his vulnerabilities out there. So between Billy Bragg,
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: the Replacements, who weren't scared to do a ballad, this
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: Johnny Thunders record, and then I started, you know, going
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: back to Elvis Costello and Graham Parker, and I was like, yeah,
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: I want to do these these kind of song things.
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: And my first gig I started a band called Hope,
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: and all my punk rock friends had acoustic guitar started
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: calling me, Jesse Cougar Mallencamp.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: We'll be back with more from Jesse Mallin and Bruce
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Hadlam after the break.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: So he became a singer songwriter.
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: And I did in a band called Hope, and I
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: tried to do everything that I would do in the
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: early two thousands, but I couldn't get that band off
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: the ground. I couldn't get us recorded outside of a demo.
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: We'd play with like the Meat Puppets and Sonic youth
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: and Radit red art from heart attack. I had a
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: connection into the noise art scene that was coming out
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: of some of the clubs here. So we would play
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: on bills with Live Skull and it red our sonic youth.
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: Swans and Hope did our time for a little bit,
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: but it was a weird time for me. My mom
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: got and I had to go back to Queens. Was
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: living in my rehearsal studio on Avenue B and I
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: had to take care of her and my sister, and
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: so I decided I could move my gear. If I
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: got a cheap used van, I could become a moving guy.
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: So I started moving bands and gear from like rehearsal
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: spots in Midtown down to clubs and coming back at
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: the end of the night. Sometimes I'd watched the show
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: and anything furniture and pianos and dead dogs and everybody
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: from Barbarus dreis in to you know, some junkie that's
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: getting thrown out the window.
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: You know from there they're getting evicted.
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: And we'd go everywhere. I met a lot of artists
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: doing that, and I had a rough five years between
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: my mom passing away eventually and I couldn't get this
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: band off the ground. So I ended up after my
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: mom passed, moving to green Point, Brooklyn with a few friends,
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: and I kept trying to do this earnest songwriter thing.
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: And I was living with this guy, Howie Pyro, who
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: had been in The Blessed and been in a band
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: called Freaks and done all these things. And I said,
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: this is just make a band for fun where you know,
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: I don't play guitar and I just jump around and
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: roll on the floor and take my shirt off and yell,
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: and we'll make like the band we wanted to see
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: when we were little kids, like that five headed thing,
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: like the Dolls or the Dead Boys, or you know,
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: Aerosmith were rolling stones like but a punky And so
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: we made Degeneration and it was just for for goof
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: And suddenly that connected because we just did it totally
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: for fun. Suddenly the shows are crowded. It's a band,
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: it's a gang. It's all people that knew each other
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: from the hardcore days. So it's like kind of some
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: people would say a glam band meets a hardcore band.
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: I don't really think of as as glam, but you know,
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: we thought we were doing something so different we had,
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: you know, brothel creepers or feet standing tall, tight pants
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: and messy hair and messy ms. Garon had crazy dreads
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: and hair extensions, and so people looked at that and
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: talked about that and they listen to the song. So
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: that became frustrating.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: It was a good seven years and we made records
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: in major cities. We had a good time everywhere else
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: it was like us fighting with the crowd.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: So in that period where you had that band, Yeah,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: you've got a tour to make money? Obviously, yes and no.
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: Because we got a huge record deal and we had money,
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: we broke it up so we would not take it all.
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: Whatever.
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: We use some on the record, and then we gave
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: each other like a weekly or every two weeks so
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: we could stay in New York and become junkies and
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: stuff like a lot of people did. But we did
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: want a tour. But at that time New York, the nineties,
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: we were like the big band in the scene in downtown.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: We didn't like to go about fourteenth Street because it
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: wasn't easy for us. So we did tour.
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: We went out with the Ramones, and you know, you
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: don't get paid a lot opening but we learned a lot,
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: and those guys were so generous to us. And I
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: became friends with Joey, who just loved music.
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: Like his mo was.
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: He wasn't about sex, drugs or money. It was like
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: he just listened to music. He was, you know, kind
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: of a real misfit and had a lot of health
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: things and it was a creature from a different type
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: of thing. So he just so passionate. He used to
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: on our tour bus. They were in a van, smart
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: saving money because they knew bus and we're in this
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: big record company supported bus and he didn't want to
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: be around his band.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: He'd be sitting in there with us.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Oh interesting. I love the jump from van to bus.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: It's all about transportation.
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: It is funny. And you hate the van.
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: You think, oh man, I could go my bunk now
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: and I can listen to music and I can you know,
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: be alone and sleep. But I feel like you're tighter
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: as a band connectively as people like you get along
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: better in the van, Like you listen to the same thing,
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: you get same kind of jokes. It's like summer camp,
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: you know. It's like there's a camaraderie that once you
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: get in the bus. Everybody's like a separate thing, and
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: at least that's what I've experienced. But yeah, we did tour,
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: and we toured. We did that band for seven years.
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: We were on EMI, they were on Sony. We kept
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: getting we got dropped, and then we got another record deal.
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: I thought, I'm gonna have to sell shoes on Saint
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: Mark's place or go back to moving furniture, but like
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: somebody said, no.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: You're gonna get another deal.
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: And I'm like all the bands I knew they had
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: that one shot in the eighties to try to be
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: the next Guns and Roses whatever they ended up, right,
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: And now this is the ear is nineties, you know,
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: grunge and all that stuff is in. So we're trying
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: to be the reaction to that, Like we're not gonna
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: wear flannel and look like a farm or a gas
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: station attendant, Like we want to look like a band
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: and have this thing. And we had a thing whatever
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: the music is and whatever people feel about that, and
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: I like some of the songs. We had a thing
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: as people where it was it was real, so we
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: could be really intense or really down on each other,
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: but it was it was organic friendship, gang connection, to
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: music that worked on stage. And after about seven years
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: of doing that, and you know, we went to Europe
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: and toured with Green Day and you know, Ramones and
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: all kinds of bands and some of our heroes and stuff,
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: and then I just felt again like similar heart attack
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: that nobody could really they weren't caring again about the lyrics,
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: what we were singing about. They were just talking about
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: our outfits and shoes. And at that point the moshpit
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: came back again. We were be out with Offspring or
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: these bands, and the whole punk thing was the next
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: wave of that, the nineties, rancid, Green Day, Offspring type
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: of time. And so the whole show was about if
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: we can get them dancing all crazy, and they weren't
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: listening to songs. So I'm sitting in the van. We're
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: back in the van or on the bus, and I'm
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: listening to Neil Young again. I'm listening to Springsteen, and
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: now I'm listening to Cannon Crows and Will Go, and
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: there's these other things that are out there. Steve Earl
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: sudden I hear that and I'm like, wow, this has
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: rock and roll, but there's songs. And suddenly Lucinda Williams
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: and I called up Jerry Moone and I said, I'm
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: listening to this woman. Louten to Williams here, because he'd
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: always say jokes, what are you listening to? We call
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: every day, and I said, listen to Williams. He's on
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: a Steve Earld record.
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: And he said, I know, huh. I was like, how
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: do you? I was on like a songwritere a paddle
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: with her at the bottom line, you know, and I
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: was like wow.
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: And then years later I'd meet Lucinda Williams and I said, yeah, Joey.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: And she goes, oh, yeah.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: He sent me a song.
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: He had a song you want Me to Ride about
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: a train and he was passed away by them when
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: I met Lucinda. But I I just kind of was
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: looking again to break it down to go solo. And
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: I watched suddenly people were coming out with acoustic guitars
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: and approaching it. Maybe it was called old country now
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: or whatever, like there's all these different eras where rock
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: and country. Maybe it's the birds, and then in the
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: seventies in La it's with the Eagles and this or right,
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: you know, then you have rank and file in the
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: late you know, whatever, long riders and and to me,
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: it don't need those separate boxes. I was like, I
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: don't know, can I be a solo guy? That seemed
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: like very adult to me. I was scared, you know.
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: I was like, like being in a band.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: What kept you? I mean at this point, you're thirty, yeah,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: early thirties. It's a tough life. Yeah, very hard life.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: You're leading you know all these ups and downs? What
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: a lot of people did drop out? What kept you going?
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: Just?
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: I guess the love of music to drive.
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: Always had a lot of drive and always excited about
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: the next thing that I was going to make and
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: having something that was there.
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: If I woke up and I was like.
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: Wow, I don't know if I want to go on
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: stage and hit myself at the microphone and scream, you know,
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: Frankie for degeneration tonight. I kind of want to play
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: this acoustic guitar and have some people hear these songs.
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: And I think there's a way to present this that
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: could not be just me sitting on a stool with
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: hush puppies, growing a mustache and be not that there's
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: anything wrong with that, but like that I can find
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: a way to be me and sing these New York
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: story kind of songs and still be the songwriter guy,
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: but come from where I come from, hardcore or whatever,
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: and I really want to do this. I have this idea,
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: and so somebody was nice enough to give me a
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: weekly residency at a club called Brownies on Avenue A
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: and go in there and I grabbed a piano player,
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: this guy, Joe McGuinty, and we rehearsed in you know,
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: a little rehearsal studio, and I take my acoustic songs
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: and then he play a little piano on them, and
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: suddenly it became like, wow, there's a song there, or
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: you know, and I was thinking about Tom Waits, and
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: I was thinking about Nick Cave, and I was thinking
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: about Nebraska Springsteen. But then it came out to be
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: something different and have a place to do this every
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: Wednesday night for a month or two. You know, one
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: gig is like ten rehearsals.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: So yeah, was there a time when you know, you
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: started writing songs in those voices? Were you sitting there
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: going this is a Tom Waite song? Ah, this is
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: this song? Was there a moment where he thought, wait
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: a second, it's my song now, wasn't so aware of it.
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: Usually you have some smart a musician, usually it's the drummer,
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: and you bring it a song and they say, oh yeah,
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: and they start singing the song that you read it
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: all from or whatever they think, or and everything comes
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: from something, you know. I think it's how you mix
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: it up in the pot. You could take, you know,
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: all these different ingredients and spit it out in your
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: own way. But I wasn't aware till I started to
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: read the reviews.
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: Then when I first solo record came out in England,
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: first it got some reviews that were more positive than
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: a lot of things I had experienced in a long time.
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: And let those people say, you explain.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: What it was, And I was like, oh really, all right,
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: you know they.
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: Hear and it was nice.
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: It was the first time though.
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: We're like they got both sides of Queen's Boulevard, the Borrow,
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: like yes, I'm in a garf Ucal and Johnny thunders,
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: you know, like they got that that I was, you know,
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: a creature of both those worlds. That that and when
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: you read a review, they say you shouldn't read your press,
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: but when it they're getting what you were setting out
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: to do, which had never been the case with degeneration,
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: and you kind of feel like, wow, maybe I'm onto
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: something here. You know, people are connecting to this.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: Is it harder to grow up in music in New
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: York because in a lot of places it's not that
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: their standards are lower, but if you're the local band,
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: they're kind of happy for you. There's not too many
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: local bands, and they're supportive. You know. When I talk
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: to Seater Kenny about, you know, being in Portland, it's
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: like it's like everybody's lifting you up. New York's competitive, yeah,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: and the and the even the critics are competitive, and
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: they're part of their competition is who can say the
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: pissiest thing about something?
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, New York.
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: I mean, if you think about it, the bands there
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: hadn't been a big rock band. I mean and even
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: out of CBGB's Blondie I guess they broke, but there
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: hadn't been until I guess. Then came the Beastie Boys.
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: There were most there.
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: It was like a curse.
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: You know, Sonic Youth it's a rock band, a little different.
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: Beastie Boys are not really a rock band. But those
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: acts got big, but nothing it was always they wanted
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: to sign. The record companies wanted to sign something from Athens, Georgia.
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: At one point, they want to sign from Seattle or anywhere,
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: and the labels are here.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: In New York, so that they really don't want to
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: see you. They see you out and about.
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: But I guess in the early two thousands, which was
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: when I was doing my solo stuff, that rock and
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: roll in New York got to really happen, and with Strokes, Yaas,
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: Enterpol all that, and even though maybe I wasn't, you know,
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: in those bands, it was nice to see that really
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: happened in a great way. And I remember friends of
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: mine being really jealous of the Stroke and talking crap,
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: and I was like, I know what that's like, because
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: I was like a band that people talk to you
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: because they're other musicians are you know, competitive, jealous, And
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: I was like so happy, And yeah, maybe they grew
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: up with similar records that I did the Strokes, you know,
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: but they had their own take on it. They spit
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: it out in their own way, and.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: It's nice to see.
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: But yeah, it was definitely in our time, not a
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: place where the journalists wanted to write about what was
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: going on here and you know they're looking somewhere else,
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: and it's a competitive place and a place that'll break
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: your heart, Like like Hollywood. People go there to be famous,
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: and you know there's a big competition. There's a bit
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: you know, it's it's not what you think it's going
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: to be.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: I want to talk a lot about your Solar solo career,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: but I kind of I want to do it through
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: this new album because I want to talk about the
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: people and the songs. But we probably should because we
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: haven't explained. Tell me about May fourth, twenty twenty three. Wow,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: what was going on?
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: Well, that had been a year that my bass player
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: and best friend, Howie pyr died, who was in degeneration,
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: and I had done a lot of fundraising to you know,
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: concerts and memorials even after he passed, but benefits in
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: the beginning. He had a liver transplant and he had
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: passed on that day. I was on tour in Germany
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: and Berlin. I say goodbye to him through the phone
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: or whatever. But it was a year later and we
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: wanted to celebrate him. Some of his friends, his family,
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: sister flew in and so I created a dinner at
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: six o'clock near my house, this Italian spot with some
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: of those friends and family, and we were gonna go
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: DJ and celebrate him. It sounds weird to celebrate someone's death,
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: but he was morbid and he would have liked any celebrations.
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: So I'm walking over that. I had rehearsed that day,
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: I had had a couple of meetings. I took a
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: little disco nap. I was ready and I just was
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: going out. I was gonna eat, and I brought some
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: cash with me because it's Italian restaurant. It's only cash,
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: no credit card. And it was twelve people, and I
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: threw the party, so I was gonna pay for the bill.
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: And I'm starting to walk there and I run into
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: Jonathan Tobin. He's a DJ, it's been around the world,
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: plays old great records, and he's a friend of Howie's.
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: And so I started to feel my hips and feel
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: weird walking the street. And I thought it was the
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: boots I was wearing, or I thought it was my back.
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: And as I ate the dinner, I tried to pretend
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: that this wasn't happening with these twelve people, and suddenly
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: I ended up in so much pain. But I kept
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: trying to fake it ended up on the floor. My
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: best friend Jimmy g from Murphy's Law, the singer hardcore singer,
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: was there and he said, come on, I'm gonna call
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: an ambulance.
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: And I said, I'm gonna shake it off.
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: I'm gonna shake it off, and I realized I couldn't.
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: And then I realized it was time to pay the bill,
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: and everybody's coming around me, like go over there. It
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: was like Rosemary's Baby. Everybody had a different phone out
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: like do this, try this. They're all over me, standing
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: over me, all these interesting looking people. But I paid
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: the bill with the cash to the waiter. I was like,
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: take take eightie all. And I was laying there and
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: then I tried to get up, and then I realized
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: that my legs were just ice and numb, and so
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: I said, call the ambulance and took me to one
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: hospital and next and took the the next day until
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: I got a room. And that's how it is with that.
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: And it took a while and then to figure out
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: what had happened. And it's a very rare thing. It's
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: a spinal stroke, and even an NYU here in New
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: York and Mount Sinai. They don't see that many of them,
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: and it left me pretty much paralyzed, you know, you
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: know from the spinal cord, the legs couldn't walk everything
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: below the waist and.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: So it's a stroke in your brain. It's like a
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: blood cloth.
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: It's something, yeah, something a inforcation in the in the
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: spine where blood isn't getting to the area and it's
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: just the nerves disconnected. And so three months in the
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: hospital because they're figuring things out, and there's almost half
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: it was a rehab hospital still NYU, and they said,
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: you know, you'll never walk again, and you know never,
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: you know, doctors weren't very optimistic. So a lot of
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: friends of mine, a couple that have dealt with themselves
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: in alternative medicine. They've had cancer and they've tried other
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: ways to not just go with the mainstream medicine. And
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: one of them called like forty places about stem cells
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: and found a place that specialized in spinal cord injuries
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: and they were in Argentina and they gave stem cells
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: and they don't do it here at the FDA hadn't
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: approved this and it wasn't expensive, but it was going
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: to be six months in this other country, and I'm
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: already so shaken up now. I lived in a walk
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: up so I couldn't go back that day I left.
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: I never packed and I never moved out, but I
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: could never go back. So before I went to Argentina,
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: which I would say yes to, I'm in hospitals.
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: Then I'm in.
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: Hotels, you know. And luckily people raised some funds for
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: me through sweet relief in the music community. I was
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: able to stay in hotels because I had to cancel
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: six months of touring and all my stuff got put
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: in storage. People moved me out of that was a rental,
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: but I'd been there ten years and it was really haunting.
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: They never go back, and you know, so I didn't
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: have anywhere to live. So I said yes to Argentina
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: for six months and it wasn't a money and they
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: were really compassionate, intelligent, hard working people at this clinic,
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: and not everybody spoke English and that made it challenging.
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: But I got a lot out of it, and I
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: got stem cell treatments along with five days a week
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: of five hours a day of really intense, pt scary
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: stuff putting blindfolds onto you and get you up and
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: they want to get you up, and it did a lot.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: It was part of it keeping your legs moving so
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: the muscle doesn't atrophy.
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah in some way, and learning how to use other
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: parts like the quads and the hips and you know,
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: so if somebody sees me now and I can get
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: up with a walker, I might have braces on below
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: my knees, but I'm using other muscles and I'm using
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: other things from doing it every day. And I was
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: just convinced that, you know, I want to beat this
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: somehow beat the odds. And you know when you see
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: an MRI and you see there's a disconnection in there.
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: And then there's other things that go with just not walking.
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: They go with your body that make it really hard
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: and not being able to tour, not being able to,
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: you know, really do other things like I would DJ
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: or was involved in some clubs. I had Downtown everything
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: even after COVID was tough enough and we're just rebuilding.
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: I thought that was the low. I know, I was like, man,
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: my friend died COVID, but you know, the love and
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: the support of the music community and my fans and
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: friends and family, it was it blew my mind and
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: I didn't want to. It was embarrassed I was. I
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: didn't want to ask. I never wanted to need and
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: be that person. I like to be the guy paying
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: the bill or the guy that puts on the benefit.
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: But it's a lesson to learn, you know how to receive.
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: So now we'll be two years in May, and you know,
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: when I got back, I could at least play the
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: guitar and sing. And some of that the pain and
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: the energy I had made it hard to I couldn't
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: write for a while.
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: I didn't.
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: You know, people say, just write songs, lay in bed,
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: but there's a lot more to it than Everything takes
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: a long time.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: Man, did you lose because with some strokes people lose mobility,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: but not feeling necessarily. Did you lose both?
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: I had no feeling earlier below my waist. Now I
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: have it my upper thighs. There's some feeling, and but
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: down below I don't like, you know, sound gross. I
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: could step on attack. I wouldn't know, or I could. Yeah,
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: I've I've burned my legs and stuff shaving under the sink,
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: you know, like in weird times, other things have happened.
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: I didn't even know, you know, so you got to
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: really watch your skin and yeah, all this fun rock
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: and roll stuff does.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: This do they think with stem cells, this will it'll
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: slowly come back or they.
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: Believe that a lot in the folks in Argentina, and
• 44:40
  Speaker 4: you know, it's all new. Some people say, oh, it's
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: like the wild West or whatever, but it's it's it's
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: not harmful. It's my own stem cells. I had to
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: get my some cells removed from like a you know,
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: kind of like a love handle area and then put
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: back in. And the thing that appealed to me was
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: the combination with the physical therapy and stem cells that
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: really made me think that this is a good thing.
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: Because and so when I was getting some progress and
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: I was leaving there, I said to the main doctor,
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: is this this stuff that's happening. Is this because of
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: the therapy we did or the cells? And she said,
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: we don't know. That's why we do both. And I
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: thought it was you know, and they're not trying to
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: push this and sell you more stem cells and come
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: down here like they're trying, and they're figuring out. The
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: main doctor her father had studied this for thirty years plus,
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: and so I just went with it. Another option was
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: to stay in New York. I didn't have anywhere to
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: live at the time. My insurance wasn't covering physical therapy.
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: They weren't covering a new wheelchair. You know, a bunch
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: of things. Healthcare in America is tough. But I gotta
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: say Sweet Relief really got together with my manager and
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: my friends that all came through to put together where
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: people could donate and then eventually benefit concerts. And this album.
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: That was another thing. I mean, it was pretty great
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: just even like emotionally to hear these songs too, like
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: it was a boost of like wow, Okay, you know,
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: in the lowest points, I'd be really low in Argentina
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: and I.
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: Didn't like the food and it's a very meat place.
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: I'm vegetarians.
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: I just felt I can't walk, I'm away from my friends,
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: and so it's been a ride. But I've always preached
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: since the hardcore days PMA, you know, positive mental latitude,
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: and it was a real all right, you talk about BMA.
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: Now deal with this, see if you can. You know,
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: all right, you're so positive, okay, positive you are now.
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: Well.
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: Last break and we back with Jesse Mallen.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: The last few months have been sort of this incredible
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: outpouring of your music. You had the tribute album Silver
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: Patron Saints with a lot of friends, a lot of
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: admirers Springsteen and a lot of other people you played with.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: You've got a new single out, and you had a
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: live album out last year too, Is that right?
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, right before this happened, I had a record Chasing
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: a Light, a live record in like a DVD film thing.
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of something.
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: We filmed a lot of it through in Lockdown, Pandemic
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: and stuff, and it went with the record that we
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: made at that time.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: So what's this been like? To see this kind of
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: outpouring of people and your music everywhere and great reviews
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: for this record.
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: It's been really touching, really humbling. I always believed in
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: people and the power of people's energies and generosity. You know,
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: I'm an optimistic person in that way, but I know
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: there's a lot of bad stuff in this world, a
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: lot of bad people, but I've never seen it on
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: this level. And I'd never like to receive. I always
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: like to be the person since I'm like fifteen, putting
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: on benefits, and you know, the music community, it's not
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: just the artist. It's everybody involved, the fans, the people.
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: I think they're the most giving, caring people of any
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: kind of community. And it's been overwhelming but inspiring and
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: just a lot to take in, a lot to you know,
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: with what happened to me. Has been so hard and
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: each day is tough, but that had made it so
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: much bright And yeah, I guess there was funds that
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: were needed. And that's a real thing to hear these songs,
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: to hear the music and hear that, or just to
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: see the messages from people that they gave a lot
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: too as much, if not more.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: It's also one of those tribute albums that they're faithful
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: to the songs, all these versions, but they kind of
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: reintroduced the songs in a nice way.
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, sometimes I'd listen to it. I mean
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: they came in slowly. I had nothing to do with it.
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: The record was put together, you know, these two folks
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: that one managed me, Diane Genteel years ago and my
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: new manager, Dave Basin, And I was just in my
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: recovery and I left the country to go to South America,
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: to Argentina, and I couldn't speak the language and speak Spanish.
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: I couldn't walk, and it was tricky to nurses. I'll
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: speaking Spanish. And then little by little these songs would
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: trickle in and they'd send me a song, you know,
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: on the have it on my iPhone and didn't have
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: a sound system, and I'd be in my room or whatever,
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: and I'd listen to it. It would just make such
• 49:10
  Speaker 4: a difference each time they came in, just to hear
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: how these artists that they took the time went in
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: the studio, gave so much of themselves, and then to
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: hear the songs, some of them were so much better
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: in my eyes than the original or I was like, wow,
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: I thought I was just fooling people with a crooked
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: hat and a leather jacket.
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: There's a song in there, you know, like hey, youre wow.
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: It actually is something you could sing back and hearing
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: someone else do it, and it was just wonderful to
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: hear all those different versions. And I felt like, to
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: me from someone that's been on compilations and tribute records,
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: I felt that the people, the artists went deep. They
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: weren't phoning it in like I could feel that they
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: thought about it. That's how it came across to me.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about the songs and the people
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: as a way of talking about the songs. Let's start
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: with the Springsteen, who you've played with before, who sang
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: on one or two of your albums. And then he
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: does a just great version of she Don't Love You
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: to Love Me Now. Yeah, it's just a it's got
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: a great, great sax solo. Tell me first about the
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: song and then his take on the song.
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: We were going for it on my record New York
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: before the War, to have a song kind of like
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: Lee Dorsey, kind of New Orleans soul, Sam Cook kind
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: of song with stabs and uh, and we were approaching
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: that and and uh record the song and I don't
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: think on that album I captured maybe the right tempo
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: or it wasn't ready yet. Sometimes songs need a little
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: more time. But as we played it live, it kind
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: of grew into one of the songs in my set
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: that the crowds seem to connect with.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: The guitar sound on that on your version of it,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, I.
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: Like his, but it's it's got a great Oh cool. Well,
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: that's Derek Cruz, who plays guitar with me, who I
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: co wrote the song with. We were just jamming at
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: a studio called Tucasa down on Avenue B and you know,
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: he's just had this thing and in my mind and
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: and you know, someti as I free form and if
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: somebody's just hitting some chords, sometimes the whole thing will
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: come out. And that was one of the ones where
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: he's just banging these things and hitting those stabs, and
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: then the lyrics fell out and the no melody fell out.
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: But I felt like, you know, I wish that we
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: always could have re recorded it a little quicker, but
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: there it was, and live it became a song, and
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: I guess that was the one that everybody thought when
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: they're putting the record together.
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: To get to Bruce and.
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: Danny Clinch was really helpful, reaching out the photographer who
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: was a friend and a fan and just.
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: The guy we've worked with.
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: And you know, Bruce's always been supportive. I mean, he
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: was in touch with me a lot through this and
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: checked in a lot from the road and Europe and stuff.
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: So they they tracked it, actually I believe it was
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: my band tracked it while I was away, and then
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: they sent it to Jay Clemens, the sax player, and
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: he played on it, and then it got to Bruce's
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: studio and that he sang on it.
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: You wouldn't know when you hear it.
• 52:05
  Speaker 4: I think I felt like he really took the time
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: to get inside the song. But I never talked to
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: him about it or you know, was that right?
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: It just all happened. They send me to song and there.
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: It was, so I was like, wow, this is this
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: is cool, this is And I think he kind of
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: got the soul thing more than we did. But he's
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: the boss, you know, Yeah.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: He's literally the boss in this case. I think what
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: I like. I like about both versions, but your version.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: It's one of those songs where you kind of hear
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: the room, if that makes any sense, Like, and you
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: don't hear that so much on records anymore, no matter
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: how much reverb they put on them, you don't. You
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: don't feel like you're hearing the room.
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I like that space.
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: I mean, maybe it was something that harks back to
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: a song I did on my first album, Queen of
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: the Underworld, where there's those stabs and there's like a
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: room and there's not a lot on it. I don't know,
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: it's the sixties kind of approach to I think in
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: some way.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: Great version about you that Frank Turner does. Yeah, so
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: tell me first about the song.
• 53:01
  Speaker 4: That song is something I wrote when I was in
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: Europe and some different experiences. One verse, I was staying
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: in a hotel where chet Baker fell out the window
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: and he had put me in that room and he
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: died and there's a plaque there and I was dealing
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: with some.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: And you still opened the windows.
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: It was only a second floor. He must have been
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: having some powerful stuff.
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: But it's a you know, a connection to somebody, and
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: it references a lot of travel. And I guess I
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: didn't want my second album to be about the road
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: and you know, all that stuff, because I was touring
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: a lot, because it's such cliche thing and I tried
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: to avoid that. But it becas a few songs about
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: the road, and that Frank Turner version was the first
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: song that I heard that when they said they're doing
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: this tribute record for me, and this is the thing.
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: That was the first song that came in and I
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: was fighting out of my mind. I was going to
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: this doctor's office to remove fat to use for stem cells,
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: and I was so frail and fragile, and I was
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: in the waiting room and it came in and somebody
• 53:58
  Speaker 4: forwarded to me and I was sitting and I had
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: to go to Chicago, and that was really hard. And
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: I listened to that and I thought Frank did such
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: a great job, Like beautiful, it's one of my favorites,
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: and he just stripped it down and just changed the melody.
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: And I always been a fan of him.
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: If you see him live, he's a great songwriter, but
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: he also he's a great performer.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: And Shane by Rocky O Reardon.
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you're picking some good ones. Yeah.
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: I'd met Rocky or Corch or cat so many different ways.
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: I pronounced her dable Calder. I met her we were
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: doing some benefit shows for Music and Memory. We do
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: this Clash tribute night that we did in London in
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: New York a few years in a row and the
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: money goes to Stromer Foundation and Music and Memory for Dementia.
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: And she came and sang Lovers Rock from London calling
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: the Clash song and we connected and I would go
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: see her play with other people locally, and she's bass players.
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: I'd seen her play in the pogues at Dance Atteria,
• 54:57
  Speaker 4: but it was so long ago and I was asked
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: to sing at Chee mc gowan's sixtieth birthday and he
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: was in a wheelchair and it was in Dublin, and
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: I went with Clem Burke and Glenn Mattlocke and some
• 55:10
  Speaker 4: folks and I sang some stuff Spider from the Popes.
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: We did some of the early stuff from Shane's first band,
• 55:15
  Speaker 4: and I met him again and courch Rocky was the
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: bass player in the house band, and the house band
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: had Shane sing, had Bono, Johnny Depp, Nick Cave, Bobby
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: Gillespie and Glenn Hazard. You know, it was just crazy,
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: and it was my experience when I wrote the song
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: about being there and feeling like it was my Forrest
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: Gump moment, like I'm on stage with all these people,
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: and it was like I felt like this New Yorker,
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: you know that, why am I here? I mean, I
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: love Shane and the Pogues. I wrote it about that,
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: and she had been there, and then I guess they
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: asked her to sing that song. And when I got
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: that version back, it must have made sense to her.
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: I would assume somewhere of the song because she did it,
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: but I'd love the version. I just love what she did,
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: and with the Irish accent, it just made the song
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: so much more real. I like it better than my
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: version two.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: Three of those, Three of those, okay, because it's one
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: of your best known songs. Brooklyn, Yeah with Dinosaur Jr.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: Tell me about that.
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: When I lived in green Point, Brooklyn after my mother died,
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: and I had the van service and I was a
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: moving guy. Me and my friend scrouched a lot of
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: money together to have a first floor of a three
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: level house or whatever, and I guess it would be
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: eighty seven or something like that, and there would be
• 56:29
  Speaker 4: some girl that lived upstairs and she was very nice
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: and knew some people we knew, and we were the
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: only city freaks in the neighborhood of green Point Polish
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: and Italian. And it'd be just crazy noise blasting this
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: guitar and it sounded like some I don't know what
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: it sounded like.
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: It was so noisy, and it was Jay. He was
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: dating this girl. He was up there, but we never
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: talked that.
• 56:49
  Speaker 4: I would hear him and hear him, and then years
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: later we'd meet in different places and talk about that,
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: and somehow that you know, we got a little friendly.
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: But he I Guess was contacted and agreed to do
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: the song, and we'd been a little bit in touch,
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: but not during that time with this accident for me,
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: and I just love the way they played. He changed
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: it up, took some verses out. The drumming is great.
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: I think the drum rolls and it just has a
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: sleazy swagger and very different version. So I was really
• 57:20
  Speaker 4: taken in. Of course, his guitar playing is really really cool. Yeah,
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: that was nice.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: And bleachers they do prisoners.
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: Prisons are Paradise.
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that was another one where I heard it. And
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: a month before this happened to me, I was in
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: a dressing room in Brooklyn at the Barclays and seeing
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: Bruce Springsteen and yeah, I'm just in this dressing room
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: and it was kind of a strange thing.
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: He just usually have to show.
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: Sometimes they'll you'll get a text Bruce wants to say hello,
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: and so we went back and I had missed him
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: at the garden.
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: So if we're going to say hello.
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: And I get back in the dressing room and nobody
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: really theres Bruce and this guy with crazy glasses on,
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: younger guy and then in comes Jan Winner, who coincidently
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: is in a wheelchair. I've never met Jan Winner, but
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: it was nice. And everyone's talking to Bruce about the show.
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: I started talking to Bruce about him meeting Sean McGowan
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: recently went to his house, like, we're just having some
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: music talk Bruce. You hang out with Bruce and you
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: you forget that it's him. He's just like becomes one
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: of your friends that you grew up with and geeking
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: out on music like he's that. It really feels that real.
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: And he's just down to earth like that. And there's
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: this other guy and he's talking about suicide with these
• 58:28
  Speaker 4: goofy glasses on. I'm like, what's this And he's really
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: nice and he's like and Jesse knows, and we're talking
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: about Alan Vega and we're talking to Bruce and then
• 58:35
  Speaker 4: we leave. Bruce says, you know what, guys, I gotta go.
• 58:38
  Speaker 4: He doesn't have one of these people to come in
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: and say, you know, Bruce for five minutes, he just
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: says it. He goes, right, okay, I'm out of here. Yeah,
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: there's no problem, you know, being really directed.
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: It's nice.
• 58:47
  Speaker 4: I walk out into the street, you know, down and
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: the guy that with the glasses says to me yeah,
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: you want you want to take a ride into the city,
• 58:54
  Speaker 4: you know, you need a ride. And I was like, nah,
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: you know, I'll go to I'm gonna go drink at
• 58:57
  Speaker 4: this bar or Smith Street Social or something. You know,
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: I'm in Brooklyn for once, you know.
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: But I didn't realize who it was.
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: And I guess we had met before in some clubs,
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: but it was Jack and.
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: So it was some black Anton.
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Jack Anton, And I was like, God, I should
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: have probably taken a ride with him in the gap.
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: Would have been a nice thing. He's got up studioed
• 59:13
  Speaker 4: electric lady with neighbors. He was nice. I didn't realize
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: who it was. Still after I'm like, oh, that's who
• 59:18
  Speaker 4: it was. But somehow, you know, down the line, someone
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: that knew someone a friend of a friend that bumped
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: into someone that manages him, and somewhere in the summer
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: and it came up and he was down to do.
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: I guess they sent him a handful of songs. He
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: picked prisoners, And when I heard it back, I was like, Wow,
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: this is like Johnny Cash suicide. It's like such a
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: cool like he's got his own spin, Like wow, this
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: is great. And then they asked you, what do you
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: think this record should be called? And that was the
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: only input I had. I don't sing on it, you know,
• 59:50
  Speaker 4: I wrote the songs, but you know, so I was like,
• 59:52
  Speaker 4: I don't know, and then that song came in and
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: I was like, Silver Patron Saints. It's in the verse
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: of Prisoners that.
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: There's some title. Yeah, he did so good. I love
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: it when it's different.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: And then you know, there's some people from the good
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: old days like yeah, hardcore, yeah, Agnostic Front and Murphy's
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: Law and you know, doing well God is.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: Dead, Yeah, Agnostic Front did God His dad was like wow,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: realty stigma.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: But the thing that also, besides the great versions and
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: how much people gave, is just to have a record
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: that for me has Agnostic Front and Bruce Springsteen on
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: it and Lucinda Williams and Murphy's Law, and it's like,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 4: I was like, I guess I have pretty crazy life,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 4: but it makes sense to me.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: The last time I saw you, you were playing with
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: Lucinda Williams and it was a City Winery show and
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: people know that she had a stroke and has come
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: back and she's had various problems, and it was after
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: that and I remember during our interview, she was telling
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: me how thrilled she was that you were working with
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: her and what a great songwriter you were. So how
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: is first of all, how do you guys originally meet?
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: We met at the Blue Note at a Charlie Watts
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: gig in two thousand and four. Yeah, I think Ryan
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: adamspace Player might have been dating her Billy and I
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 4: don't know. We all went there and I just hit
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: it off. I'd been a fan, and we started, you know, talking,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 4: and just we stayed in touch and became friends. If
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: we were in the same city, Chicago or La New York,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 4: we would get together and hang out, and you know,
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: I have some really fun nights and great conversations. And
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: we found out we have the same birthday and in January,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 4: and I just felt the real connection. And then I
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: realized she lived in New York and she played in
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 4: Queens where I'm from in the nineteen eighty She came
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 4: and lived in East Village and lived where I was
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: living now on Second Street and First Avenue at that time.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: And we just stayed friends and that was it. And
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 4: then at one point we made a record, Sunset Kids,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: with my second and last record, from Now and her
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: and her husband Tom Overbye produced the record and it
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: was great and we did a little writing together too,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: and we had such a great experience making that record
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: was one of my favorite. It's we did some in
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: la where she was living, and some in New York.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 4: They love New York or and her husband. So when
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 4: she had this stroke, I was so upset. It was
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: COVID and it was just everything was so bleak. But
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: she couldn't play guitar, and uh so, I don't know
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 4: if I offered or they asked, but I ended up
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: coming to Nashville several times and sat in the kitchen
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: and wrote songs with them, you know, and we wrote
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 4: a bunch and because she couldn't play guitar, play the guitar,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: and it was just trying to help out. And you know,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: know what would happen with these songs? They have many,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: We went through many, and some of them ended up
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: on that record. And it was just, you know, a
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: great experience. And you're sitting in the kitchen table and
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: it's your friend and you're you know, bring out some carrits,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: bring out some chips and dip or whatever, and then
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: here's a beer and then suddenly that voice.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: Pops out and you turn your head and it's listening there.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: It's like, wow, we're in the kitchen here, but it's
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 4: a good place to cook up a song. And so
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 4: I was helping her out with a stroke, so that
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 4: some of the songs made the album and one that
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 4: I sang with her on stage New yor Comeback and.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: Stuff like that. So yeah, have a few that I
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: wrote with her.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: So it was really wild when then I have a stroke,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 4: you know, after just doing this helping somebody, and a
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 4: different kind of stroke. But yeah, it was It was
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: just another strange thing connected to this.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: You talk about sitting with a guitar writing songs with her.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: Have songs not to say, songs ever come easily? Have
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: they always come for you? Has music always come if you?
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: If you sit down with a guitar and you know
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: something's going to come out at the other end.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: Well, the more you sit down, the more you'll get stuff.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: I mean, there is writer's block. It's a real, real thing.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 4: I was once on a songwriter panel in south By,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: Southwest with a bunch of writers, and one was Pat
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: de Nunzio, the late Patnunzio, the Smith of Reens seeing
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 4: a lot of hits and funny guy.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: So somebody asked the question, you know.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 4: Hey, hey, Pat, you know what's what's the best cure
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: for writer's block? And he said, ass in chair. And
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: the thing is that if you sit down and you
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 4: you know you're gonna you might And I record a
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: lot of stuff that I do.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: It's nice.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: You think it's garbage, and guards you can listen back
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: a week later or a couple of days and there's
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 4: something in there. Every time you sit down. You might
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: not finish a song and write Bridge over Trouble Water
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 4: or whatever. But if you sit down you do it,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: you're gonna get something. I mean, you know, and then
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 4: some days you're gonna hit some really good things. So
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: I think to stay active with it. And then another
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 4: thing I got was like the Joe Strummer thing, like
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 4: no input, no output. You know, you gotta constantly as
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 4: a writer. If I listen to my favorite records, I'm
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 4: desensitized to them. I love them unless I'm a little drunk,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: a little buzzed, and I hear it in a different way.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 4: But otherwise they don't want to hear new things. They
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 4: make me want to write when I see a new
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 4: film where I get like, when something's just coming at
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 4: me for the first time, it inspires me to kind
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 4: of do that. I used to carry little notebook. Now
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: sometimes I write on the phone. People think you're texting.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: If I go to a film, I get ideas, just
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 4: got you gotta cut out the world. We're always being
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 4: inundated with with you know, emails and this and Instagram
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: and like that early part of the morning, to not
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 4: turn the phone on that late at night, you know,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 4: like just to really get that quiet time, and also
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: to take things in and from all different things and
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: then be able to spit it out.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: It makes sense that I didn't know you were so
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: interested in film, but you've got very visual songs. You're
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: that kind of writer.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know a certain film a certain period of time.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: But still it's like, you know, I just saw a movie,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: the Last Showgirl. It was with Pamela Anderson, which I
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 4: know what that was gonna be like, and it was.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: It was really good.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a female version of the Wrestler in a way,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 4: but made by one of the couple of grandchildren.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: With that After you had your stroke, did the music
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: go for a while or were you were you sitting
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: there you spent I'm sure a lot of long, tedious
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: hours in hospitals.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 4: Were you thinking, yeah, well, every little thing you got
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 4: to do is taking so long, and everything is very scary,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 4: and you know, this is all kinds of tests. And
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 4: but I did eventually get the guitar brought to the
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: hospital and see what it was like, and to see
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 4: what it was like to sing. And eventually when it
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 4: got me, trump me how to get out of the
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 4: bed and had to get my body in a wheelchair
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 4: was a big step. And then eventually the guitar was
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: sitting in the corner, and eventually the wheelchair rolled over
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 4: and I closed the hospital door. You know, as much
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 4: as I played lots of people all these years, when
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 4: I'm alone playing a guitar or writing a song, it's
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 4: a very private, you know, personal moment. And I didn't
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 4: know it was going to sound like. And I closed
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 4: the hospital door and I just started to sing. And
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 4: I think the first song I did was a Room thirteen,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 4: which is one from Sunset Kids, and a song about
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 4: being isolated and having to reflect on your whole life.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 4: But I don't know why, I just it's a key
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 4: that I thought would be nice, and I was like, oh,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: this is here, and little by little I would play
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 4: and didn't have a lot of time, and eventually I
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 4: wheeled myself into We got me in a car, in
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 4: the back of a special cab or whatever, and I
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 4: got down to a rehearsal place where it didn't have stairs,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 4: and they put a mic in front of me, and
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 4: the band was there and selling. Those guys were right
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 4: in front of me, and it was super emotional, but
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 4: it seemed to go really well, and I was just like, wow,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 4: this is still here, you know. And it was hard
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 4: to sit and things hurt my shoulder getting over the
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 4: Like it was a lot of different because I'm a
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 4: very physical singer, at least the ones I always grew
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 4: up watching from the Bad Rains Tootus reading. It's like
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 4: it was your body and I'm nervous, so like I
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 4: moved my body a lot, but like it was a
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: different focus and it felt good.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: Well, keep writing now. It's been just wonderful talking to you.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming in. Yeah, thanks for
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: having us, great luck with everything.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: In the episode description, you'll find a link to a
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: playlist to some of our favorite Jesse Mallen tracks. Be
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: sure to check us out on YouTube at YouTube dot
• 1:07:51
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• 1:07:53
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• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: at the Broken Record Pod. You can follow us on
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited
• 1:08:03
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• 1:08:06
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• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: us on your podcast. Apt are the Music's by Kenny Beats.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: I'm justin Richmond.