New York state of mind

Jesse Malin is so New York that even on a wet night in Dublin he manages to locate maybe the only taxi driver in the city who’s playing Lou Reed’s Rock ’N’ Roll Animal on the deck. He’s so New York he does not betray one iota of self-consciousness as he produces a compact and powders his nose before entering Whelan’s on Wexford Street. He’s so New York he was once directed by Scorsese (okay it was only a bit part in Bringing Out The Dead, one of the director’s worst-rated movies, but that’s still better than a day in the bog).

He’s also very rock ‘n’ roll, so much so that he doesn’t have any money in his pockets and I end up paying the cab driver and the tour manager ends up paying me. In the dressing room he has a friend read him the Blender write-up of his debut album The Fine Art Of Self Destruction down the phone, getting agitated because the reviewer spent the first paragraph casting aspersions on his transformation from mascara-eyed singer with glam-punk NY outfit D-Generation to check-shirted troubadour drinking buddy of Ryan Adams.

Malin protests that he’s never worn a check shirt in his life. Or maybe it was a cowboy hat, I forget. Anyway, his point was that it’s an urban slice-of-life record, not some Johnny come lately alt-country effort (despite being produced by Adams, but don’t let that put you off).

“To me it’s always been about the songs,” he says, “whether it’s Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, Woody Guthrie or Crass or the Dead Kennedys or even the Beatles and the Stones.”

Then he’s back on the cell phone to a variety of people discussing (a) the details of a forthcoming video shoot (b) the nuts and bolts of an impending US tour (“routing is crucial” he says at one point, “when I worked with ___ she never scheduled anything more than a six hour drive, you tell them that”) and (c) the possibilities of training in an old buddy from the hood as a professional crew member.

Malin is a small guy in a vintage Rum Sodomy & The Lash t-shirt with the same slightly rodentine features as Johnny Thunders, a hawk nose and piercing eyes peering out from under a dyed black hatchet-cut.

I met him first when his old band supported Green Day here in 1997, intrigued by their Dead Boys trash aesthetic, which at the time made them seem as anomalous as the Golden Horde in the early ’80s. Four years later the world couldn’t get enough of CBGBs and Ramones retro chic and The Strokes. Jesse even wrote a song with Joey Ramone before he died. Timing is cruel sometimes.

“Yeah, timing is a lot of funny things,” he says. “It’s cool. Everything happens in its own way. We got compared to groups we didn’t even understand like Mötley Crue and Poison, meanwhile we listened to The Clash and the New York Dolls and the Stooges.”

Malin’s new album tips its hat to people like The Replacements and Springsteen and a young, punky Tom Petty and even Little Steven in his Disciples Of Soul days. It’s pretty good. Not as good as Uncut says it is, but there’s definitely something there. As I was saying, it’s very urban hustler (he comes onstage later on to the strains of ‘Everybody’s Talkin’’ from Midnight Cowboy), very New York.

“New York’s definitely like a backdrop and a character in the record,” he admits. “I go all over, I grew up in Queens, sometimes I sit in old man’s bars uptown. It’s a very autobiographical record. Even if I’m writing about a junkie or a murderer you have to be able to see a piece of yourself in the character to be able to write it. I’m very hyper so I learned a lot from records and movies rather than books, Cassavetes films and Scorsese films, Midnight Cowboy, Dog Day Afternoon, On The Waterfront.

“I like living out of a suitcase, I like being a Martian going into some supermarket or truck stop in the middle of nowhere; it isn’t always comfortable but it helps in being an observer. A lot of times if I’m in New York in a local pub it’s like the big fish small pond thing, shaking people’s hands, you’re starring in this little movie as opposed to watching it.”