In less than three months, Jesse Malin went from standing on the back bar of the Garage in London to being in a bed in a hospital in New York. That night at The Garage, his elongated mic lead stretched out over the heads of the sold-out audience, and conducting a singalong to The Replacements’ Bastards Of Young, Malin was his own archetype: parts broken-down folk singer and brawling, cocky rock’n’roller. There was nothing quite like him live.
Then, on May 4 2023, Malin suffered an exceedingly rare spinal-cord infarction – a stroke in his back – while having dinner in the East Village. Gathered with friends to mark the one-year anniversary of the death of Howie Pyro, Malin’s former D Generation bandmate and best friend, he felt a burning pain down his hips, through his thighs and into his heels.
“I thought it was sciatica or that I’d worn the wrong motorcycle boots or something, but it turned out this thing was happening,” he says now. “I tried to pretend it wasn’t and continued to eat, and then I was on the restaurant floor.”
Malin is speaking from his apartment in New York – after the accident, he had to move from his old walk-up to a building with a lift. Even though he’s very slowly graduating to a walker, getting around is done mostly in a wheelchair. After the initial stint in hospital, and then a rehabilitation centre, Malin headed to Argentina to seek treatment for the paralysis in his legs.
“I went there for physical and stem cell therapy at a clinic in Buenos Aires,” he says. “A friend of mine is heavily into alternative medicine. She researched it, and really felt that this place was the most effective, and had a great connection with the doctor, so we took a chance. It was very daunting. I don’t speak the language, I can’t walk, I’m far from home, but they were very compassionate and really driven. I got stem cell treatment, and I had therapy five days a week for four hours a day for six months.”
Still, the road is long. Malin recently appeared on US TV show CBS Saturday Sessions performing live. During the coverage he’s seated, but his voice is reassuringly strong. Giving a forthright interview on the events of May 4, at one point in the conversation he’s seen moving slowly around his New York neighbourhood with his walker. It’s a far cry from the man leaping from the Garage stage to wade through the audience to the bar.
“It’s a process,” he says. “These eighteen months have been the hardest thing I’ve ever been through in my life, and I’m still very much in it. But you have to remember that at first I was in bed for a month, so this is a progression from that. And I won’t pretend, this messes with your mind and can screw you up. But now having things like the new gigs out there helps. That’s me finding any way to make the music happen, because the music is my lifeblood and medicine to me.”
By the time you read this, Malin – along with his band and a stellar cast of guests including Counting Crows, The Hold Steady, Lucinda Williams, J Mascis and Butch Walker, among others – will have performed his two December shows at the Beacon Theatre in New York. It’s been a long time away from the stage for a man who made his name as a performer.
“And the weird thing is that I’ve never played the Beacon Theatre before,” says Malin. “I’ve seen everybody from the Dead Kennedys there in the early eighties with MDC, when it was a dirty old spot, to when they shined it up with Madison Square Garden money and opened it again and I saw Simon And Garfunkel there.
“So, the plan is I do a set of originals, with this new song that I wrote in South America called Argentina, and then it’ll be a big show with all the artists, they’ll come out.”
The live shows, to help pay Malin’s medical costs and keep him afloat financially – there will be two more in London in May next year – follow the extraordinary triple-album tribute Silver Patron Saints – The Songs Of Jesse Malin, which includes contributions from Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Ian Hunter, Billie Joe Armstrong, Graham Parker, Rancid and Willie Nile. It must be a little bit like hearing your eulogy while you’re still alive.
“You got it right there. That’s really how it is. You know, some people don’t ever get to see that,” he says. “Financially, of course, but also spiritually and emotionally the record is such a boost to me. And just hearing these songs at the time. I was down in Argentina with no stereo, and these songs would come in and I would have my phone and that’s the only way I could listen to them.
“I think the first thing I heard was Frank Turner doing About You, and what he did with it, I was like: ‘Wow!’ People went deep, to have a record that’s kind of my life in a nutshell. Agnostic Front to Springsteen, come on. It makes me chuckle, but the whole thing really touches my heart.”
You were laid up for a long time. When you were finally able to play the guitar again – which must have been a comfort – which song did you do first?
“I think I started to play my song Room 13 from Sunset Kids. And it’s ironic, because I did that with Lucinda Williams, and I was down with her producing and writing and helping her out with her last album, because she had had a stroke and couldn’t play guitar. And then it’s wild that something like this happened to me.
“But I can play and sing and all that, maybe better than ever, so that’s okay. But the other stuff, I’ve got to get there – I miss my dance moves, I miss doing those jumps…”
