# A Life In Moives: Jesse Malin

An episode of [All The Right Movies](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1471502633), 10 Oct 2025, 1 h 04 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO5334328639.mp3

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## Transcript

[0:04] All the rent movies. Hi everyone, welcome to ATR
[0:39] Meets, the Movie interview show brought to you by All the Right
[0:41] Movies. My name is Luke.
[0:43] On the show, we talk to people in entertainment about their
[0:46] work, the movies they love and how movies have influenced them.
[0:49] And on today's show, I'm talking to a man who's been in the music
[0:51] biz for over 40 years, from 80s hardcore punk band Heart Attack
[0:55] when he was a kid, to influential 90s band
[0:58] Degeneration, to continued critically acclaimed Solar Work
[1:01] since the turn of the century, It's a pleasure to be talking to
[1:04] the one and only Jesse Mallon. Great to have you on the show.
[1:07] Jesse, how you doing? I'm doing good.
[1:10] Good to be here, man. Yeah, it sounds like a fun show.
[1:12] I was checking it out earlier and I like what you guys do.
[1:15] So cool. Thanks for having me.
[1:16] Yeah. Awesome.
[1:17] Thank you. So what's it like being back on
[1:20] the road after the last 18 months?
[1:22] In some ways it feels like riding a bike, you jump right
[1:25] back in and other ways there is some real appreciation of seeing
[1:29] people's faces and and hearing the music play through those big
[1:32] PA systems. And there there's just after not
[1:35] having it, you know, there's something about that human
[1:37] connection of a crowd firing up and having that back and forth
[1:41] with your audience. And and so it was really great.
[1:43] I mean, we just did England, which is one of my favorite
[1:46] places to go. The audience's come out early.
[1:49] They watch the support bands, They they by merch, They they
[1:52] know the so. Grace.
[1:54] I mean, it must have felt like a distant memory over the last
[1:57] 1218 months or so that that too. Yeah, well, we were playing, you
[2:02] know, to the cameras. I start out with a podcast in my
[2:05] house, live stream, you know, not even a podcast, a live
[2:08] stream where I set up a little camera on a stick with some gaff
[2:11] tape and took everybody into my home and recommended films and
[2:14] books and sang songs with back stories.
[2:17] But that grew to the band going in the basement of a club with
[2:20] nobody there but the cameras. So, you know, you finish a song
[2:23] and it's silent and there's no applause.
[2:25] It's kind of the silence is deafening.
[2:28] But you know, I got used to it knowing that there were people
[2:31] out there on the tour. I was telling stories about how
[2:33] I compared it to the film Wings of Desire, the Vin Vendors film
[2:37] where Peter Falk is the American actor Columbo.
[2:40] You know, he's out there. Yeah.
[2:41] And and he's, it's about angels and there's angels watching
[2:44] people. And he says he goes, I I can't
[2:47] see it, but I can feel that you're there.
[2:50] And like, you know, that's how I felt about the shows.
[2:52] I felt like it was like Wigs of desire, you know, like due to
[2:55] Falk. But after a while, you know, you
[2:58] look at the numbers and, and, and see how the people are
[3:00] watching and people are sending comments and things like that.
[3:03] And so that was a good connection.
[3:04] I mean, music in general is always for me to a way to say,
[3:08] all right, we're not alone. There's other people that are
[3:10] going through something that you might be going through.
[3:12] And you know, if we turn up the music loud enough, we might not
[3:15] feel the pain. Cool, but it's a great Peter
[3:18] Faulk impression as well. Yeah, I got a raincoat in the
[3:21] closet too when we were kids, you know, seen a lot of films
[3:25] with him. Obviously Colombo was a huge hit
[3:27] over here as a as a show and it was something comforting about
[3:30] him and amazing. And he had that one eye.
[3:33] I guess it's a glass eye. And it it just, I love to see
[3:37] actors wear their charisma and their their balls and their
[3:40] personality is so strong that they don't have to be
[3:44] traditionally good looking like by the book, like Jack Nicholson
[3:47] being one my favorites. You know, he's this little guy
[3:50] and receding hair, but he's got so much attitude.
[3:53] And I think, yeah, life is like that.
[3:55] And, and with Peter Falk, you know, I was a kid, I had a lazy
[3:58] eye and I had to wear a patch and glasses and I, I just felt
[4:02] like, you know, such a misfit. We were always moving and always
[4:05] the new kid on the bus and the new kid at school.
[4:07] And I have this patch and these glasses and my mother would say,
[4:10] get on the bus, Captain Hook, come on, Captain Hook, be brave.
[4:14] But Peter Falk, you know, was able to be all that and, and
[4:17] have such a hit series with Colombo, which which I did
[4:20] enjoy. And as I got more into film and
[4:22] got older, I was like, oh, that's the guy you know, from,
[4:26] from Cassavetes, from Colombo. He's in these Cassavetes films
[4:29] that are so edgy and like nothing I had ever seen when I
[4:33] saw my first Cassavetes. And there was Peter Falk and and
[4:37] in a different kind of lovable miss and a different kind of
[4:40] heart on his sleeve. And it the same way.
[4:43] It was a Kinect, but it was like, wow, he's done these
[4:45] really tough. Yeah.
[4:47] Human, human films in any place. This this, you know, bumbling
[4:50] sweet detective. I think he gave money to
[4:54] Cassavetes to get a woman under the influence into production.
[4:59] Oh, wow. That makes sense.
[5:00] Yeah. I mean, Cassavetes took wherever
[5:02] you get it, I guess. That film was so real to me.
[5:04] It felt when I was younger, I guess in the 80s, in my late
[5:08] teens, I'd seen a lot of tough films and I thought I could hang
[5:11] with, you know, the Midnight Cowboys and the Deliverances of
[5:14] the World. And I went to see in the
[5:16] theater, Woman Under the Influence.
[5:17] And it felt so stark and hard that I walked out the first two
[5:21] or three times that I tried to make it through.
[5:23] Granted, it's a long film, but it was just so intense.
[5:26] And I once, the first time I ever met Jim Jarmusch, was a fan
[5:32] of his work since the 80s. And we were at a birthday party
[5:35] for a photographer friend of ours, Bob Gruen.
[5:38] And Jim was there. And I had been at a party for
[5:41] the film Night on Earth. And I remember we were so
[5:44] excited. That's where I met Bob Gruen,
[5:45] the photographer. He was there and we went up to
[5:48] him. We were just starting
[5:48] Degeneration. And I said, Bob Gruen, you know,
[5:51] we got this band where you take our picture and he gave us his
[5:53] card. And it's like, I got good rates.
[5:55] They're not too bad, reasonable. And we're like, oh, boy.
[5:58] But then Debbie Harry was at this party, and she was there
[6:01] like Debbie Harry, Blondie. And she's like, she was nervous
[6:04] and excited, she told us, and we were just excited to meet her,
[6:08] but she was going to meet Jenna Rollins, who was in Night on
[6:11] Earth. So flash forward to a couple
[6:14] years later at Bob Gruen's Christmas party.
[6:15] And I did, I was talking to Jim Jarmusch for the first time.
[6:18] And I said, man, you worked with Jenna Rollins?
[6:20] You know, what was that like? And he said, well, once I
[6:24] started working with her, you know, obviously John was dead
[6:27] and she hadn't done anything. Maybe it's her first film coming
[6:30] back. And he got he got a call.
[6:33] Hey, Jim, it's Peter here. Peter.
[6:35] Fuck, yeah. Anything you need with, with
[6:38] with Jenna, just give me a call if you need anything.
[6:41] Just just checking in. I'm here.
[6:43] I was like, wow, that's old school white.
[6:45] Buddy look Bob Gruen. Did he photograph the New York
[6:51] Dolls as well? He photographed pretty much
[6:54] everybody. I mean, Bob, you know, started
[6:56] out doing Dylan, I think at Newport Folk and he made his
[6:59] bones with Ike and Tina touring with Ike and Tina and the Ike
[7:03] gets and actually had was on the first video cameras.
[7:06] There's a film out there of his time with, you know, Ike and
[7:09] Tina and a lot of behind the scenes stuff.
[7:12] And then went on to I mean, I guess his is he would say, or
[7:15] some people say his big hit single might be John Lennon.
[7:19] A lot of that, but also Zeppelin front of the plane and Kiss
[7:22] Ramones and of course the clash. And yeah, Bob is just he's got
[7:26] such a vibe. He's one of these guys that you
[7:28] want him around because he doesn't like he doesn't blow the
[7:31] vibe or feel intrusive and the camera and he's just there as a
[7:35] person. He's chill and then he catches
[7:37] the moment and he caught a lot of moments.
[7:39] So it's fun when you hang out with somebody like that.
[7:42] The stories are equally as good as the photos.
[7:45] And for years or push them to write a book from all these
[7:47] dinners with the stories and beers and stories.
[7:50] And then finally he's got the book of the stories out now.
[7:53] So that matches, you know, with the photos.
[7:55] But just this film and, you know, I'm a fan of of
[7:58] photography and other things that just just capture and
[8:02] express, you know, a feeling of the kind of things I like.
[8:06] So yeah. Does that well.
[8:08] Cool. Yeah.
[8:09] So I will. I'd like to go back a little
[8:11] bit, Jesse, if that's all right. Start us off with just to hear
[8:14] about some of your experiences growing up in New York.
[8:16] What kind of things influenced you like from an early age?
[8:19] An early age, you know, I came from a a broken home.
[8:23] My father left first grader. So but before that we moved a
[8:27] lot. So I was always the new kid.
[8:29] As I said, I had that patch. I was like, so my defense became
[8:32] like the class clown. That was how I didn't feel like
[8:35] a freak and an outsider. Little did I know.
[8:38] We're in the passion, moving and being the new kid and looking
[8:41] different. Feeling different was going to
[8:43] help me, I guess, into the world of punk rock, rock'n'roll,
[8:47] because you're an outsider. But then I felt so insecure so I
[8:51] would take the patch off and roll around the floor and throw
[8:54] it and you know, put on skits and goof around the class and
[8:58] and then we'd move. But when I I got to Queens, NY,
[9:02] I, I felt I was born in Queens and we moved around to Jersey a
[9:05] bit. When I got back to Queens I was
[9:07] living with my mom and I was pretty embarrassed that we all
[9:11] lived in one bedroom. My mother slept on a pull out
[9:13] couch and me and my sister shared A room.
[9:16] We didn't have a stereo and we didn't have a color TV like
[9:20] other kids had. It wasn't a fancy neighborhood
[9:22] but but it was Queens in the 70s and the 70s in Queens were
[9:27] pretty wild. Teenagers on the street blasting
[9:29] rock'n'roll, hanging out in parks, smell of pot.
[9:32] My mom tried to have a single life working as a waitress and
[9:35] makeup artist at whatever odd jobs she did.
[9:38] She occasionally would have babysitters so she could go out,
[9:41] you know, go see whatever the single scene and hang out on
[9:45] dates, whatever friends. So I was around babysitters.
[9:49] They were older and they all had a cool look and they loved
[9:52] Rock'n'roll and film. And I was just excited, you
[9:54] know, and I had exposure to, I guess shows like Batman, the
[9:58] series on reruns. And it was so exciting to me.
[10:01] And and I like cartoons like Flintstones and stuff like that.
[10:04] But I would get a glimpse of some films, children's films
[10:08] like Kirby and the Love Bug and you know, even then maybe some
[10:11] James Bond, but they'd let us see.
[10:13] But the movies, you know, my parents would talk about film
[10:16] when they were together. And then on my mother's side, it
[10:18] was always films like, oh, look at who that is or wow, he was in
[10:21] this. And there was these people that
[10:24] were dreamers that wanted to be singers, wanted to be actors,
[10:27] but they ended up just doing mundane stuff and not following
[10:31] through. But, you know, I was in school
[10:33] and I was hyper and I had all this anger and energy and, and I
[10:38] guess, you know, I'd seen some, a couple of films.
[10:40] I can't remember what the first one was, but I would feel like
[10:42] me and my cousin who lived across the street, like we'd
[10:44] want to go make a movie at first or second grade.
[10:46] Like we pretend we're like James Bond or pretend like in an
[10:49] elevator or the floor is falling out.
[10:51] Hold on. And so I, I just got exposed to
[10:55] music, you know, from the radio and then from my father would
[10:58] visit now and then he'd be playing stuff and we couldn't
[11:00] really talk, have conversations often he didn't know what to do
[11:03] with us. I kind of felt like we were
[11:05] talking through records, you know, through Jim Croce Records
[11:08] or Rock'n'roll. It just became a thing to me.
[11:12] And then my babysitters would have records and I'd listen to
[11:14] the radio and artists like Elton John and Jim Croce and Chuck
[11:19] Berry really spoke to me. But I was living in this one
[11:22] bedroom and I felt like such a Tor, you know, outcast until I
[11:29] watched this show called Good Times, which was a Afro American
[11:32] family with Jimmy Walker, Dino, my JJ and they all lived in one
[11:38] place and slept on the couch. And it was a tiny place where
[11:41] the couch was a pull out bed and, and so I didn't feel so
[11:45] weird. And I, I really love this show.
[11:46] It was funny. And I was obsessed with
[11:48] amusement parks where roller coasters and rides, any kind of
[11:51] adrenaline and cool T-shirts and rock'n'roll on the radio.
[11:55] And the radio was everywhere blasting out of cars.
[11:58] So I'd watch good times and I felt a little better about
[12:01] myself. And then a show called Happy
[12:03] Days came on. Yeah.
[12:05] And at the same time and the same night, see how to choose.
[12:09] And I remember I started to check out Happy Days to some
[12:11] kids with this and that. And it had that thing that
[12:14] America had in the 70s of fascination with the 50s,
[12:17] leather jackets. American feety had been a hit.
[12:20] So I really got into this character, Fonzie.
[12:22] And I started to put Vaseline in my hair.
[12:24] And I wanted a leather jacket. And I got a plastic vinyl one
[12:28] that was cheap, but it really spoke to me.
[12:31] And then I'd watch a show called Welcome Back Cotter with John
[12:33] Travolta about these misfit dumb kids in Brooklyn, the sweat hogs
[12:38] that. And it was a wonderful concept.
[12:40] Not the smartest show, but the teacher was one of them once.
[12:44] And he got out of the dumb class, the the lowest class.
[12:47] And he then became a teacher and came back to teach these kids in
[12:51] Brooklyn. And he always started the show.
[12:53] It a joke and he ended the show with a joke to his wife.
[12:56] So there was something very sweet.
[12:58] But it's the first the world got to see Travolta.
[13:01] So these shows I would start to write little sketches in class
[13:05] and give out props and I, you know, whatever I can have the
[13:09] class act out these things. And then I would see movies.
[13:12] My father would come to visit. When he did, he didn't know what
[13:14] to do with us. He'd take us to the movie.
[13:16] Same thing with my grandfather. And the movies were at that
[13:19] point, they didn't think too hard to not let us see certain
[13:22] things. So at a young age we saw films
[13:25] that had a restricted rated R and I was fascinated with what
[13:28] was going on at night, what was going on away from my town, what
[13:32] was going on the city, sex at a young age, violence, action.
[13:38] So I would read Mad magazine. If I wasn't able to see a film
[13:41] I've read they do a spoof on it for Paige and I could really
[13:45] digest some of the film from the Mad Magazine spoof.
[13:48] I would talk to babysitters about films and grill them.
[13:51] And in those days, films would run for a year, The Exorcist or
[13:55] they would go like 72 seconds Smash week.
[13:59] Like people would line up and there was films on TV, you know,
[14:03] that were edited that and there were there were films in the
[14:06] theater and and at a young age, it was a way out from the pain.
[14:09] It was the music coming through on the radio.
[14:12] Definitely Elton John, which actually spoke to me at a young
[14:14] age. Somebody said, oh, he's gay.
[14:16] And I said, well, then I guess that's OK because I like his
[14:18] music. So I guess like he was a message
[14:21] and also this ugly guy that that, you know, his thinning
[14:24] hair and not the, you know, tallest, most handsome guy.
[14:27] But he took all that stuff with this great voice and he made big
[14:30] glasses and big outfits and take something that's a weakness and
[14:34] make it into a strength. And that's one of my songs on
[14:37] the new record Tall Black Horses about that.
[14:40] But anyway, the influx of film and music, music from the
[14:43] street, going to movies with, you know, my mother's boyfriends
[14:47] didn't care. They'd want to impress her or
[14:48] they'd take us to see Taxi Driver or Billy Jack or my
[14:52] father would go with his New Girl girlfriend.
[14:54] So we were always being schlepped along.
[14:56] And then when we eventually could make it, about 20 blocks
[14:59] from the house, there was a theater called the Quartet and
[15:02] it had four movies in there. It was a new thing or at the
[15:05] time to me, 545 movies and you could pay for one and then sneak
[15:10] into the one you shouldn't see or sneak into them all.
[15:13] And so we would go from theater to theater like a pinball.
[15:16] And I got to see a lot of stuff and I was very curious on the
[15:20] sex and violence. And they were very worried about
[15:22] me in school in second grade, that they maybe go to a
[15:25] therapist. They're worried I wasn't going
[15:27] to have a childhood, that I wanted to be an adult so bad.
[15:30] I was so one. Flow of the Cuckoo's Nest for my
[15:32] third grade birthday. My mother took all my friends.
[15:35] It became my favorite movie and still is one of them.
[15:38] I was able to digest some of this stuff, not fully understand
[15:41] it. There was the 70s film era,
[15:44] which was so great, as well as the 70's rock and roll era.
[15:47] You know, if you read that book Easy Riders and Raging Bulls,
[15:50] you read Please Kill Me Ray. Easy Riders is like please film
[15:54] me a very similar oral history. But you know, films like death
[15:57] wish, which don't really hold up now, meant a lot to me.
[16:00] I was angry and the city felt scary.
[16:03] So I I'd take a knife out of the draw on a newspaper and I'd
[16:07] recreate the scene in school with the kids and be like, all
[16:10] right, you're going to be reading a newspaper with a knife
[16:12] under it and someone's going to mug you and you cut the paper.
[16:15] And I would try to reenact scenes out of Death Wish or
[16:18] Dirty Harry. And some of the politics are a
[16:21] little different for me right now.
[16:23] But Billy Jack, Taxi Driver, there was so much of these
[16:26] characters that were outsiders feeling like they're being
[16:30] pushed to the limits and they're going to explode.
[16:33] Maybe it's just post Vietnam thing, some of it.
[16:36] Maybe it's just the isolated. And in this case it was more
[16:39] men, but those characters are related to.
[16:43] And then as I got a little older, maybe a year or two, it
[16:46] was Dog Day afternoon and one flow of the Cuckoo's Nest where
[16:49] these guys wore their their humanity, their heart on their
[16:53] sleeves so heavily that they're prepared to go down with the
[16:56] whole ship like Pacino character and dog day.
[17:00] He becomes friends with the people in the bank.
[17:02] It doesn't even do it right. And, and Cuckoo's Nest is very
[17:05] similar to me where Nicholson Mcmurphy has to stay to get
[17:09] Billy Bibbett laid and throw a party and, and, and he could
[17:12] have got out, He had his moment, but something inside him he's,
[17:16] you know, this is where he's comfortable or that whatever.
[17:19] But so that's going on. And I'm really into Elton John
[17:22] and The Who and my babysitters, I have crushes on them and I
[17:25] would grill them on things about the world and I would try to see
[17:28] as many films in the city or whatever.
[17:31] But I was in Queens a lot and that was my way out to the
[17:34] world. And it it took away pain and it
[17:36] felt so exciting and elected trick when you heard Benny and
[17:40] The Jets on the radio and there was a crowd noise and you heard
[17:43] applause. Live records were a new thing.
[17:46] You know, Chuck Berrys biggest hit was my Ding a Ling, which is
[17:49] the dumb song. But it was live in live in
[17:51] London. And then Frampton like and kiss.
[17:54] You know, Frampton comes alive like just to hear the crowd
[17:56] that's probably dubbed in. That was a thing.
[17:59] So to hear Benny and The Jets in the street and I was mad at my
[18:03] family and had a line about we'll fight our parents out in
[18:06] the street because I wanted like no rules and I want to do
[18:09] whatever I want to do, which whatever it was, eat candy and
[18:12] stay up late. But that that feeling.
[18:15] So I started to really see a lot of films and I was feel very
[18:18] fortunate that it was the 70s and I got to hear all that.
[18:21] And then I got into to Kiss, you know, and that that was the next
[18:24] chapter that that hit me on a comedy Halloween special, Paul
[18:29] Lynn Halloween special. And there they were a Firehouse.
[18:31] And wow, well, it has violence, it has leather and this energy
[18:36] and it's railing. If I was a little older, I would
[18:38] have saw through it, but I was at that age where it spoke to
[18:41] me. If I was older, I'd have been
[18:42] like, oh, this is cheesy, but some of us got taken in by Kiss
[18:46] at that point. So I went from Elton John to
[18:49] like Kiss, and that was everything.
[18:51] And then from there, you know, punk rock.
[18:53] So you mentioned you were born in Queens, and I think that like
[18:56] outside is when you say in New York, everybody thinks Manhattan
[18:59] films like Annie Hall, Pelham, 123, Marathon Man, I think
[19:02] influenced that. What did Manhattan symbolize or
[19:05] mean to you in your youth growing up in like the outer
[19:07] borough of Queens? Well, like, I have a song called
[19:10] Brooklyn, and it's about people that lived in Brooklyn, 15
[19:13] minutes away at the other side of the bridge.
[19:15] And they'd never really go into the city or they went when I was
[19:18] a kid in Queens, that's where everything was.
[19:21] My mother worked in Bloomingdale's, Yeah.
[19:23] And 59th St. And I'd go to work with her and
[19:25] just she'd let me walk around the neighborhood and look at
[19:28] shops that had Led Zeppelin posters and crazy boots and
[19:31] black light stuff and head shops.
[19:33] And, you know, and I would meet all kinds of people in
[19:36] Bloomingdale's and I'd get on the tram and ride over the
[19:39] Roosevelt Island because it felt like a ride or, you know, I just
[19:43] was the city. It's just it in the suburbs now.
[19:45] It's reversed. When I wrote the song Brooklyn,
[19:48] it was about if he didn't make it in the city, not make it like
[19:51] huge like Sinatra make it but your, your dreams, you know, or,
[19:56] or you won't be able to sustain to survive.
[19:59] Some people have deeds and people took their tail, packed
[20:02] up their tail, held it and went back to where they came from.
[20:05] And this song is about going back to Brooklyn after it didn't
[20:08] work out in the city. You know, now kids, it's a
[20:12] different meeting. They've left the old apple of
[20:14] Manhattan and they go to Queens and Brooklyn.
[20:16] There's galleries and vegan shops and vintage and clubs and
[20:20] and that's changed but. That song is, is almost 20 years
[20:23] old. It is 20 years old.
[20:25] So it was a different concept till Williamsburg, Brooklyn and
[20:27] Bushwick. But I would go into the city on
[20:31] my own because once I realized the train that it was 2 trains
[20:35] and a bus to go from Whitestone, Queens into Manhattan and I
[20:39] could be down there. And I I went to see a film
[20:43] called Rock'n'roll High School, a Ramones movie made by Rodger
[20:47] Carman. Alan Arkish directed it.
[20:49] You've probably seen it. It's great and I was looking for
[20:52] a theater called the 8th St. Playhouse which I had no idea
[20:54] was above Electric Lady Studios and I had no history about the
[20:59] village. I'd never been down there but I
[21:02] heard of these places CBT, BS, whatever.
[21:04] So I I got out of the train on Broadway and 8th St. the R train
[21:08] and I was supposed to go right make a right turn towards the
[21:12] 8th St. Playhouse which is 3 blocks WI
[21:16] walked E past third Ave. 8th St. I'm looking for the A St.
[21:20] Playhouse now turns to Saint Mark's place.
[21:23] It has a different name. I don't know what this is.
[21:25] Saint Mark's. I never seen a street with a St.
[21:28] name. I'm walking down that street and
[21:31] suddenly it's just shops with dead boys shirts, Ramones,
[21:35] cardboard standees, record stores, scary fun people,
[21:39] leather pants, music, blasting records, spike bracelets, things
[21:43] you couldn't get in Queens, crazy pants, shoes.
[21:47] And the further EI walked second Ave. that were people with stuff
[21:50] laid out on the sidewalk selling stuff like, you know, stolen
[21:53] shit. Who knows?
[21:55] The further EI walked it got scarier and scarier.
[21:58] People walking in the middle of the street yelling things like
[22:00] it was like out of a, you know, a Scorsese film or something.
[22:03] But so I turned around back and I made a mental note.
[22:07] This is the place I found my tribe.
[22:10] I've come home, but I got to find the A St.
[22:12] Playhouse. So I turned around and I walked
[22:14] the other way somehow. So maybe I asked somebody and
[22:18] then I ended up right there waiting online.
[22:20] I used to get the things very early hours and be the first,
[22:24] you know. And there were these two kids in
[22:25] front of me and I, they were like, yeah, this is the A St.
[22:28] Playhouse. And they said you like the
[22:30] Ramones. And, and I said, yeah, I love
[22:32] the Ramones. And so you like the pistols.
[22:34] I said, yeah, I do. But the Ramones, that's it for
[22:37] me. They were from Queens.
[22:39] They wore the same jacket that Fonzie wore in my favorite TV
[22:42] show, Happy Days. They let it.
[22:44] So it was a lot of stuff. And they had these anthems like
[22:46] Kiss hat where they bang on a floor Tom and shout lobotomy or
[22:50] Hey ho, let's go. Wasn't that far from rock'n'roll
[22:53] night or shout it out loud. Or there was this gang, this
[22:57] thing of this band that was 4 superheroes, four guys with
[23:01] their personalities, just like Kiss or The Beatles, you know?
[23:04] So but Kiss had been the the prototype for me to understand
[23:08] a, a band, a gang, A-Team, a thing.
[23:11] And Ramones had that. Except I could learn the songs a
[23:14] lot easier and write my own. So I'm online and these older
[23:18] kids turn around and they said, yeah, you like the Pistols, you
[23:20] like the Ramones. Well, you should hear the Clash.
[23:24] I said, yeah, I don't know if I ever heard them.
[23:25] So they're better than the remotes.
[23:27] And I was like, yeah, sure. Whatever.
[23:30] Next thing I know, I buy a Clash record.
[23:32] I'm like, oh, I know this one. I fought the law and I heard
[23:35] this on the radio suddenly reading the lyrics, and my life
[23:37] changed. But while I'm standing there
[23:39] waiting to get into the film because it was opening day, I
[23:42] was that obsessive. I would go into the city to see
[23:45] Rock'n'roll High School. I got to be there 4 hours early
[23:48] opening day. Get the best seat because it's
[23:51] general admission. So you just put the work in and
[23:53] it's 8th St. and it's the West Village.
[23:55] It's a lot of shoe stores and record stores and we're online
[23:59] and it's not that busy. I feel like it's a Friday
[24:01] afternoon and as we're standing there waiting for the movie to
[24:05] let us in, there's only about 10 of us I happen to notice on the
[24:09] other side of the street walking.
[24:11] I guess it'd be East is Johnny Ramone and some blonde
[24:15] girlfriend, whatever wife. I don't know.
[24:17] And I see him now. I think back, what was he doing?
[24:20] He live on 10th St. He's walking by to see, you
[24:23] know, probably like your name of your movies, like on this big
[24:27] thing like I like we do that, you know, first time it happens,
[24:30] it's exciting. Of course, if I saw him, I
[24:33] chased him down the road and I want an autograph, but he would
[24:36] be the first real person that I was a fan of that meet.
[24:40] And when he spoke, he had a very nasal, strange kind of voice
[24:44] that didn't he never sang in that band.
[24:46] He's playing the guitar. Such an amazing guitarist and he
[24:48] looks so cool. The legs spread and the
[24:51] downstroke. Inventing that really and
[24:53] perfecting that to such a level. I couldn't think of any song
[24:56] except Zeppelin. Communication Breakdown, I guess
[24:59] has that. But but Johnny really invented
[25:01] and perfected that and I asked him for an autograph and I was
[25:04] just in heaven like him. He was so nice and great.
[25:07] I ran back to my place online and then I made a note that I
[25:10] would go back into that city. I would go back to that
[25:13] neighborhood again and go to the store Trash and Vaudeville that
[25:17] had a glossy pink bag and they sold stuff like the shirt you're
[25:20] wearing, the cast like that you couldn't get anywhere else,
[25:23] especially then, not at all. Like if you wanted cool bondage
[25:27] pants or whatever they were called, you wanted Doc Martens.
[25:29] You had to send somebody with money to England, but that would
[25:32] be later. But these things they had, they
[25:34] can have in Queens, cool T-shirts, spike bracelets, like
[25:37] you saw in the pictures of the bands, the Sid Vicious and this
[25:40] one and that one and badges, buttons.
[25:43] So I would go into the city and I, I started to make a group
[25:47] with kids that had equipment in Whitestone, Queens.
[25:50] If you had a basement, all right, you're the manager.
[25:52] You, you have a drum set. Your, your brother has drum set.
[25:55] You're the drummer. We're going to do this band and
[25:56] I'm going to dress you. So I go into the city with, you
[25:59] know, whatever money I could muster up and I'd come back and
[26:02] the older kids, you got to remember now Queens, NY is, is
[26:06] pretty close minded, you know, the Archie Bunker, all in the
[26:10] family. It's a, it's big bigoted,
[26:11] prejudice, homophobic, racist in a lot of ways.
[26:14] Not everybody. So in the village people are on
[26:17] the radio. They had Macho Man addressed,
[26:19] you know, very openly gay, which was wonderful, but not on the
[26:22] same label as Kiss Casablanca. So that's in the air and people
[26:26] or you know, they're making fun of people and people getting
[26:29] beat up for stuff. They would fight in those days.
[26:31] If you look different, when I was into a Kiss, I got beat up
[26:34] by people that like Zeppelin that were older, a Sabbath.
[26:37] When I got into a punk, you got beat up by everybody.
[26:41] So, So The funny thing is I'd come back with the pink glossy
[26:46] trash and vaudeville bags. That's what they gave you.
[26:48] And then these kids would go like where you coming from?
[26:52] The village, The village and what they kept saying and what
[26:56] they was to the village meant, like, you were gay and whatever.
[27:00] Obviously, that's not a bad thing.
[27:01] And these days it's way more accepted.
[27:04] Thank JA. So that would be the thing,
[27:06] like, oh, yeah, you're coming from the village, you know?
[27:08] Yeah. And they would say that.
[27:10] And that's where I was coming from, because that's where the
[27:11] stuff was now. In my eyes, the West Village was
[27:14] where all that stuff was, and the East Village was where the
[27:18] Rock'n'roll was. I didn't realize how everything
[27:21] is mixed and there's degrees of sexuality, all that.
[27:23] I had no idea of this, but I did know that Elton John was gay and
[27:28] David Bowie was gay. Even if they said they were bi
[27:30] or whatever, they that it was a part of the human thing.
[27:32] And so those people, you know, it broke those, those
[27:35] stereotypes and those boundaries and that ignorance.
[27:38] You know, I came from a Jewish background.
[27:39] We get into fights, people would say, oh, you're cheap, there's a
[27:42] penny on the floor. There was a lot of
[27:44] anti-Semitism. I never thought I was a Jew.
[27:47] I always wanted to be just, you know, my own self.
[27:51] And none of my favorite bands were Jews.
[27:53] I'd say to my babysitter who's Jewish in Rock'n'roll because
[27:56] you'd see the big crosses on Sabbath and broad adultery and
[28:00] Zeppelin. Everyone had a crucifix and
[28:02] should be like Bob Dylan. And I'd be like, oh, some curly
[28:05] head guy with acoustic guitar with a weird nose talking weird.
[28:09] I didn't get it back then, you know, And I realized, you know,
[28:12] down in the road that there's so much Jews in, in Chopas.
[28:15] I don't care. I wasn't bar mitzvahed.
[28:17] I wasn't raised any religious way.
[28:19] Yeah, the Judaism I liked was Mel Brooks.
[28:22] And, you know, you know, films like that were impactful too.
[28:25] So there was so much hate, racism, you know, they had
[28:29] fireworks on 4th July. They blow up the whole
[28:31] neighborhood. Halloween, they'd wreck it.
[28:33] Like it was so fucked up. It was just so much.
[28:36] But my family wasn't like that. You know, we, we were fans.
[28:39] My cousin was fan of Hank Garren, had a poster.
[28:42] And we, you know, it was never like we, we didn't have that
[28:45] Mike, my grandfather brought down into my mom and my uncle.
[28:49] Like it was just, there wasn't that kind of thing maybe being
[28:52] Jews that were not that far off from the times of the Holocaust
[28:57] that there was acceptance of in my household of that maybe in in
[29:02] some ways, some judgment of people that were different.
[29:05] But the homophobia was pretty huge.
[29:07] But it is an interesting thing with all that attitude in Queens
[29:12] and probably all of the boroughs and suburbs and parts of
[29:15] America. Dog Day Afternoon comes out and
[29:18] it stars Al Pacino. And Al Pacino is, you know,
[29:22] superstar from the godfather of Italian macho, right?
[29:27] So you go into this film in a pack theater.
[29:29] Here's the new Pacino. It's about robbing a bank.
[29:31] And it's still one of my favorite movies.
[29:33] True story. And you're watching this film
[29:36] with every knucklehead, homophobic, racist or whatever.
[29:39] Probably some good people, too. It's packed.
[29:41] Just, you know, regular Joe Queens.
[29:45] And as you're watching the film that robbed the bank and, you
[29:47] know, if you know the film and somewhere in the middle, you're
[29:49] just rooting for them. I mean, it's like you want them
[29:51] to win. You want the money, you want
[29:53] them to get away. And then you find out why he's
[29:55] robbing the bank and he's robbed in the bank to get his
[29:58] boyfriend, wife, male, a sex change to become a woman, Leon.
[30:02] And this is the true story. And nobody in the theater, they
[30:05] stick with him. They back him.
[30:07] One, because the story's so good. 2 Because Pacino fucking
[30:11] plays it, man. He plays it so hard.
[30:14] So the whole theater is with him and the biggest, you know,
[30:18] homophobic, macho douchebags, all you know, the you're rooting
[30:22] for this guy and, and they bring in his wife, played by Chris
[30:26] Sarandon. And, and you see that he's a
[30:28] mess and a nervous wreck by it's been beaten down by whatever he
[30:32] has in his mind and his life. And you still root for this guy.
[30:36] So it it was a great little observation and lesson.
[30:39] I didn't realize till years later how powerful that was.
[30:42] And of course, Pacino Rosenma, yeah, Pacino would go and they
[30:46] would go and play Cruising years later freaking film that, which
[30:49] is a weird, flawed film, but he went for another extreme, you
[30:53] know, role in the, you know, S&M leather West Village world.
[30:57] Yeah, Cruising. That's a, that's a film that
[30:59] doesn't get talked about too much, but it's it's pretty
[31:02] fantastic. I've recently read Sil Sylvan's
[31:05] biography and it seems like you couldn't move at the time
[31:09] without seeing something cool or iconic.
[31:11] Did you feel that? I mean, it might have been maybe
[31:13] 5-10 years on. We felt we missed a lot of that,
[31:16] but you know, my drive home from the city after my mother would
[31:19] take us to visit somebody and look out the window of the car
[31:22] and see all the hookers lined up and see people outside of Max's.
[31:25] And it looked like, you know how the hookers look outside the
[31:27] window. And the Taxi Driver film of
[31:29] Travis Bickles, the character. You'd see people hang out in the
[31:34] street. I mean, outside my window.
[31:35] I didn't want to go to bed. Even in Queens, they've been
[31:37] blasting Zeppelin on a boom box and drinking.
[31:40] And, you know, the special city bus was full of weed, like a
[31:43] Cheech and Chong film. And in the city it was just like
[31:47] freedom and sex. It's before AIDS, It's they you
[31:50] could go to clubs. When I started to go to clubs
[31:52] 1213, they didn't ask you for your ID.
[31:54] You didn't have, you had to be 918, but then eventually 21.
[31:58] They didn't enforce it, you know, So I started playing music
[32:01] in clubs from I was 12 years old and going to Max's and going to
[32:05] CBG BS. And it was more about what you
[32:08] played and what you know, who you brought in the scene and how
[32:10] you looked and how you carried yourself.
[32:12] But there was so much mystery and the city was falling apart.
[32:17] But yet a lot of the things that in great art, I think come out
[32:21] of times of, of poverty. So, you know, that's probably
[32:24] why all the people moved to Brooklyn and Queens because the
[32:26] artists couldn't afford the corporate Manhattan in the 90s
[32:30] and early 2000s. You got to go where you could
[32:32] live and create. So the East Village, which as I
[32:35] walked further E on Saint Mark's, bombed out buildings and
[32:39] really tough neighborhoods of Puerto Rican gangs and a lot of
[32:43] junkies and violence and people desperate.
[32:46] But in there you can find a $200 rent for a place where you could
[32:49] rehearse and do all these things.
[32:51] So yeah, the city was was everything.
[32:53] It was eye opening. It was a change.
[32:55] And I guess the main thing was it was a place that you could be
[32:58] yourself, you know, you could be different.
[33:01] You know what, like I said early on, the music spoke to me, film
[33:04] spoke to me. It's okay to be scared.
[33:06] It's okay to look different. It's okay to be angry.
[33:08] It's okay, there's other people that are going through this,
[33:11] feel isolated and we can get through this because you're not
[33:15] alone. These songs are speaking to you
[33:16] and these neighborhoods in these streets spoke to me and we kind
[33:20] of missed out. When I went to CBG BS and
[33:23] audition with my first band, Heart Attack, we were influenced
[33:26] by the Pistols and the Ramones and the Clash and Dead Boys.
[33:29] So we went there on a Monday night for the CBG BS audition
[33:32] showcase and we failed. They said you missed it, it's
[33:35] over what you're doing. They tried to tell us that the
[33:38] music was over, but I think we also are supposed to bring like
[33:40] 35 drinking drunks to pay for the car, which we didn't know
[33:44] anybody with kids drinking in a brown paper bag in an alley
[33:47] somewhere. What happened was they said, I
[33:50] said, what do you mean we missed?
[33:51] He said, Oh yeah, that shit's over.
[33:52] It's 1980, It's 81. It's it's done.
[33:55] Try something new. Like really.
[33:58] Well, I only knew that the main three food groups have punk them
[34:01] the distance, the Clash in the Ramones, maybe the Dead Boys,
[34:04] but you know, Blondie was playing disco and the Ramones
[34:08] are trying to have power pop hits and blah, blah, blah.
[34:10] So I said, yeah, won't you try something new?
[34:12] I said what? They go like rockabilly or New
[34:14] Romantic. I'm like, I'm not going to dress
[34:16] up like a pirate and you know, rockabilly like.
[34:19] So I started to walk further east towards Avenue A past the
[34:22] Bowery and I saw Flyers for groups like the Stimulators and
[34:25] the Bad Rains and, and there were clubs and everything was
[34:27] put up with. We paste on a flyer on a wall
[34:30] and a bucket and you just put a brush.
[34:32] And even things are bands that aren't advertised as much in the
[34:35] Village Voice, the paper that you got that had all the gigs
[34:38] listings, the free listings weekly.
[34:41] So I ended up walking down and and saw things and I had seen
[34:45] this kid online backstage to try to meet the Clash on at the
[34:48] Palladium. And it's this little kid that
[34:50] the Clash was so nice to. Turns out it's the same age as
[34:53] me, but he lives in the city and his name is Harley Flanagan.
[34:56] He's a drummer. The Stimulators.
[34:59] So I saw the flyer. I was like, all right, I went to
[35:01] see them. They had a little 7 inch out,
[35:03] independent 7 inch, loud, fast rules.
[35:05] And there were kids my age with the gig and they were jumping up
[35:08] and down and knocking into each other.
[35:10] They weren't just pogoing like the 70 Sevens thing.
[35:13] They were pushing in and out and moving side to side and knocking
[35:17] tables over. And the audience was just a lot
[35:22] of kids that would eventually make other bands like the
[35:24] Beastie Boys and stuff from that band, which I see as a bridge
[35:28] band from the punk days to what would become hardcore.
[35:32] We we start to see the Bad Brains.
[35:34] And they were the fastest, tightest, greatest group I'd
[35:36] ever seen. They even had a song called At
[35:38] the Movies or Love Movies. And HR, the singer would do
[35:42] backflips. And, you know, and my friend
[35:44] Jack Flanagan said, you know, you got to see this.
[35:46] And we went. And then he started to listen to
[35:49] his Ramones records on Faster Speed and listen to groups like
[35:52] The Dickies. But at that point, the fastest
[35:55] stuff you could hear was the Ramones or The Dickies.
[35:57] And then here's this Bad Brains from DC jazz fusion chops as
[36:02] players, tight as hell and angry and punk.
[36:06] It was like this great thing. And, and, and then suddenly we
[36:09] start to feel like, wow, there's something else that could
[36:11] happen. Maybe we can add something to
[36:13] this. And subconsciously you're saying
[36:15] that to ourselves in some way out West.
[36:18] Here's a record. You'd go into a record store.
[36:19] The record guy would be like, check this out.
[36:21] Here's some stuff in England you might like.
[36:23] It's called Oi. All right, give me the UK Subs.
[36:25] Cockney rejects. Give me dis.
[36:27] Give me discharge. Wow, this is different.
[36:29] This is crazier. Give me exploited even then.
[36:32] All right, give me the Dead Kennedy's record.
[36:34] You'd hear it. You'd look at the cover, look in
[36:36] some fanzine from the West Coast.
[36:37] Holy shit. Circle Jerks.
[36:39] Wow, this is faster. Black Flag.
[36:42] Suddenly these bands go on tour. I go see them.
[36:44] I start to change the way I'm writing with my band.
[36:47] I'm in junior high school. I put together.
[36:49] I put ads in the Village Voice and Flyers up in head shops and
[36:52] I find a trio. I put together a band after
[36:55] different failed attempts and that's Heart Attack, which we
[37:00] started to play in the city and we finally got booked at CBS and
[37:03] Max's the summer of 81 with other bands of kids from Queens,
[37:07] Jersey, Long Island, Brooklyn, around my age, maybe a little
[37:11] older that all found each other on a corner in East Village here
[37:15] and there without cell phones, without like in the Mel Brooks
[37:18] Baseballs, use the shorts. You just had that thing and a
[37:22] Heart Attack put out the first, I think the first New York
[37:24] hardcore single, God is Dead. I didn't know anything about
[37:27] Nietzsche. It was an EP3 songs recorded in
[37:30] Long Island City in Queens and I was on a label Damaged Goods,
[37:34] which was my friend Lyle Hyson had a fanzine that would review
[37:37] Gang of Four and The Stranglers an interview other bands and
[37:41] Dead boys and Jello Biafra. And it really chronicled the
[37:44] scene and records coming out at that time.
[37:47] And he thought, wow, there's this label, you know, in DC
[37:50] Discord. We had met those guys.
[37:52] They put out teen idols and minor threat and SOA Henry
[37:55] Rollins first band, right? And and Lyle put together
[37:58] damaged goods and we did one single with them and it took so
[38:01] long for it to come out and we had all these young angry
[38:04] issues. So we were like, we're cutting
[38:06] the, the limited pressing to 300.
[38:09] And so it became a collector item.
[38:11] The ban went on from I was 12 to 16, did 3 records.
[38:15] We got to tour America a bunch. I had it went to a weird high
[38:18] school that I could go away from and not get beat up and be on
[38:22] tour. Go to Mexico City.
[38:24] We went out West, we'd have a group called GBH and Social
[38:26] Distortion. And you took a credit card, like
[38:29] a fake telephone card number from some guy in Times Square
[38:33] for 5 bucks and you could book the whole tour because long
[38:35] distance calls were pricey. And, you know, 12 to 16.
[38:40] We play with all those bands, Misfits, Ted Kennedy, Circle
[38:43] Jerks, Black Flag and did our records.
[38:45] And I played the whole club scene in New York.
[38:47] I never really got into drugs. Music was like the thing.
[38:50] It was a big, big message. I mean, Straight Edge has become
[38:53] kind of trendy. But it was a sentiment that Ian
[38:56] Mackay, the singer of mine, it's Red Hat and, you know, put it in
[38:59] a song. But also people like Jello
[39:00] Biafra from the Dead Kennedys and Henry Rollins and other
[39:03] people like, you know what, we're going to have something to
[39:05] say. We're going to be in your face.
[39:07] We're going to be loud, crazy, and we're not going to be on
[39:10] drugs. We're not going to be the
[39:11] hippies or Sid Vicious or Johnny Thunders moaning and burning
[39:14] out. We're going to be here.
[39:16] We're going to make a statement. And the Bad Brains were all
[39:18] about PMA, positive mental attitude.
[39:20] They were dabbling into little by little and growing into
[39:23] Rastafarian culture, which had a lot of positive sides,
[39:27] vegetarianism and health and just a, you know, a spirituality
[39:32] that was going on. So it's different elements.
[39:34] Reggae music and you know, a lot of things were just coming to us
[39:38] and through hardcore, which would be this movement in the
[39:41] early 80s was a little blip. It didn't get records, money
[39:45] put, it didn't get a lot of attention till maybe now.
[39:48] But it was something that we were part of.
[39:50] It wasn't. Oh, you're trying to copy Johnny
[39:52] Rotten. This is like we're singing about
[39:54] shit that's going on now. Ronald Reagan, nuclear arms
[39:57] race, you know, the war in Central America.
[39:59] We could be 16, get drafted. Vietnam was not that far behind.
[40:03] And and we had our own way of looking and dancing and the
[40:07] music. And you had one minute, the
[40:08] songs were faster and shorter and you had like 60 seconds to
[40:11] say everything you felt in a song.
[40:14] And we got to work with, you know, all kinds of wonderful
[40:16] people and play, you know, a recorded a record at Radio City
[40:19] Music Hall upstairs where the Ramones had worked and, you
[40:22] know, Blondie and Rick Rubin was in a group.
[40:25] The producer called the Pricks, and he'd open up for my band
[40:28] Heart Attack. Gave a couple gigs at Max's,
[40:30] like come home from school. The phone was everything Ma, I'm
[40:33] 14. Anybody call?
[40:35] She's like, yeah, Jello Biafra. And then one day he called.
[40:38] I'm like, stop, Ma, stop joking. Then he called.
[40:41] Yeah, Rick the Prick called Rick the Prick.
[40:43] I'm like, because it was Rick Rubin, he'd say, yeah, it's Rick
[40:46] from the Pricks. And you know, we would do stuff
[40:50] with with him, with his band and, and, and other bands, great
[40:53] bands, Reagan Youth and the Misguided.
[40:56] And there was just so much the nihilistics and they were all
[40:59] from different areas and every band was a little different in
[41:01] that first few years of New York hardcore.
[41:04] And then it kind of got a little more cookie cutter to me.
[41:07] But and some of those things that I learned from that time
[41:11] period was the DIY thing, like make shit happen, do it
[41:14] yourself. Like if you can't, no one wants
[41:16] to sign you. We'll make your own record
[41:18] label. You can't book, be booked at a
[41:20] club, put on your own gig. You know, you don't have an
[41:22] agent. Book your own tour.
[41:24] Get a stolen credit card. So you were like, you were
[41:28] obviously, you were in heart attack.
[41:29] You're in a number of bands, the 80s, nineties, and you took the
[41:33] leap from hardcore punk to solo singer-songwriter.
[41:36] I mean, I can't imagine it was as clean cut as that, but it's
[41:39] quite a dramatic change. Yeah, it was.
[41:42] I mean, I mean, for, you know, me telling the story, I always
[41:44] loved songs that had great lyrics and I loved, you know,
[41:48] the imagery of, you know, to me an Elton John or a Jim Croce
[41:51] song, Sam Cooke or something like that.
[41:53] Even, you know, a Rod Stewart song that had like a story like
[41:56] the killing of Georgie or Maggie May or whatever, you know, it
[42:00] just so it wasn't that different to me, but to my friends it
[42:03] seemed weird. But we were out there touring
[42:05] and everybody was just more concerned about the mosh pit and
[42:08] the slam dancing and the they weren't listening to the lyrics
[42:11] or the songs we felt. And it was frustrating because
[42:14] Degeneration had some pretty good lyrics and something to
[42:17] say. It wasn't just about like stupid
[42:19] shit like, you know, tits and ass and cars and girls.
[42:22] It was a little more socially conscious stuff.
[42:25] So when I went solo, I, I stripped it down to an acoustic
[42:28] level where I wanted people, just me and a piano and acoustic
[42:32] guitar to hear the songs. And degeneration was always
[42:35] misunderstood in the press. They always wrote about the
[42:37] image and not not the songs as much.
[42:39] So finally, you know, I was brave enough to go under my own
[42:42] name and, and some other friends of mine had broken up bands and
[42:46] went solo. And first I thought it was very
[42:48] adult, but people started to listen to the songs more and get
[42:52] them. And at least it appeared that
[42:54] way in the in the press. And then when I went on the
[42:56] road, people seemed to sing along here and there and talk
[43:00] about the songs with me. And it's kind of all I wanted it
[43:03] at that moment. And that was very, very exciting
[43:06] and scary to be alone with acoustic guitar and eventually a
[43:09] band go out and open up for people in theaters and, you
[43:12] know, just figure out how to do that as a singer and
[43:15] communicator. But I'd had a little experience
[43:18] when I needed money in the, I guess, in the 80s, I'd go in the
[43:21] subway train and do some busking and I'd play like, Ramon songs
[43:25] and 50s songs and try to pretend they were all 50s songs for the
[43:29] working class people. And you know, I'd get a few
[43:32] bucks on a Friday and be able to eat for the weekend and drink.
[43:38] Your lyrics said like stuff full of movie references.
[43:40] The first thing I picked up when I when I first started listening
[43:43] to you like 19 years ago or whenever it was almost grown
[43:47] from the Fine Arts. You know, it's dark from
[43:49] outsiders. So what would the like the movie
[43:51] characters that that you were drawn to?
[43:54] Again, these people that were outsiders that were fighting for
[43:58] what they believed in. An almost grown, I reference
[44:00] Billy Jack saw that movie with Tom Laughlin and, you know,
[44:04] fighting for, you know, people, Native Americans and
[44:08] underprivileged kids and then just using martial arts.
[44:11] I mean, of course it's violence. Like don't push me.
[44:13] And then he beats everybody up. It's, you know, an eye for an
[44:16] eye. But you know, Billy Jack was
[44:18] this great independent film. I didn't realize that the story
[44:21] behind it, how powerful that would be.
[44:24] But as far as in the history of independent film and the success
[44:27] of it, I just like the character, you know, characters
[44:31] like that, characters like Travis Bickle and Taxi Driver,
[44:35] probably Danny Rose, Woody Allen character.
[44:37] And oh, it's not PC to say right now, but it's a very positive
[44:41] person. Acceptance, forgiveness, love.
[44:45] Yeah, exactly. You know, people like that at
[44:48] early age, I guess Dirty Harry and Charles Bronson, like Clint
[44:51] Eastwood, all that. But it kind of went away.
[44:54] And more people like Jack Nicholson's character and
[44:57] Cuckoo's Nest RP Mcmurphy and and I guess that those kind of
[45:02] people, Sonny Warsick, the Pacino character in Dark Day,
[45:05] Those would be some of my favorites.
[45:06] And Brando and the Fugitive kind.
[45:09] Definitely an old cinema met film in the 60s and and then
[45:13] eventually, you know, people that that seem to really care,
[45:16] but we're in a messy place like Harvey Keitel's Charlie and mean
[45:20] streets and then female characters, you know, Ellen
[45:24] Burstyn, Alice doesn't even live here anymore was one of my
[45:26] favorite films, but was my mother's favorite movie.
[45:30] And it really is kind of very much like a single mom dealing
[45:33] with a crazy kid that wants to play guitar and be friends with
[45:36] Jodie Foster and, you know, do bad things.
[45:39] And he's just a kid that the kid and Alice doesn't live anymore.
[45:41] But you know, that my I could really relate to that film and,
[45:45] and how Ellen Burstyn was and, and even films like corny as it
[45:49] may be Wizard of Oz, just just the message Miracle on 34th St.
[45:55] as I got older, Casablanca would be, you know, one of my
[45:58] favorites. As as popular as it is, it, it
[46:00] has so much in the in the dialogue and the writing and I
[46:04] don't know, it's just amazing. Chinatown.
[46:06] One of my favorite films ever too.
[46:08] Incredible you also you had a small part to play in Scorsese.
[46:12] He's bringing out the dead as well.
[46:13] How did that come about? You know, somebody said, oh,
[46:17] they're they're interviewing people for this, this movie,
[46:20] it's going to be in New York. And I said, I want to go get,
[46:22] you know, can I get in there? But you know, I always believe
[46:25] in manifesting things in life where, you know, you got to say
[46:28] it to the universe. I'm not like some super
[46:30] spiritual, like whatever a person.
[46:31] But I feel like if you just kind of say it out loud or kind of
[46:35] put your eyes on the prize, so to speak.
[46:38] So I said to my girlfriend, you know, I just want to like be in
[46:40] a movie. I just want to do some acting.
[46:42] I don't know. I want to kind of do that.
[46:44] Just set it. Next thing you know, I got this
[46:46] opportunity to read for Ellen Lewis, the casting director, and
[46:49] Martin Scorsese at the World of Astoria, where probably Danny
[46:52] Rose, Louie Allen film has a lot to do with this particular hotel
[46:57] in this in this film. And I had to go up in this
[46:59] little room and read for him. And it was that alone was
[47:04] amazing. I was like, wow, that's great.
[47:05] I called my sister. I said, I can't play this walk
[47:07] through the Waldorf. And I read.
[47:09] And he asked me if I did any acting.
[47:11] And I said, well, I was in the school play, but I've done a lot
[47:13] of music videos. I'm a singer.
[47:14] And I read this line and I got a call a couple days later.
[47:18] They liked you. But they cut that scene out now.
[47:21] And but Marty Scorsese has a memory of an elephant.
[47:25] You know, you, he'll think of you.
[47:26] And I said, whatever, this was great enough.
[47:28] You know, about two weeks later, I got a call.
[47:32] We got a part for you. I said, when do I come in and
[47:34] read? They said, no, you don't have
[47:36] to, you've got the part. I said, what?
[47:37] What? You know this tiny part?
[47:39] So it was a doorman at CBG BS no big stretch.
[47:44] You know it's a film about an EMS worker.
[47:46] It's kind of like after hours meets taxi driver called
[47:48] bringing out the dead. I walked the guy into the the
[47:52] person that's ODA musician on stage.
[47:55] Turns out it's Paul Simon's son, Harper Simon, who's.
[47:58] Oh, I did not know that. From Queens, yeah, yeah.
[48:00] And we're at CBG BS where I was very comfortable, but we spent
[48:04] two days. I didn't get on so good with
[48:05] Nick Cage to start a film, but Bing Rhames is very nice.
[48:09] And Marty, just right away we started talking movies.
[48:12] I walked in to CBGB's and I had a trailer on Bleecker St. and
[48:18] there's a light intersection on Bleecker and Bowery.
[48:22] And that's the scene in Mean Streets, I always thought, where
[48:24] the car stops and the light takes forever to change.
[48:27] And he goes, what is this, a coffee and cake light?
[48:29] What is this? And so I walked up to Scorsese
[48:33] right away and I said, is that the coffee and cake light right
[48:35] out there? And suddenly he started talking
[48:38] to me and we just started talking music for two days that
[48:40] we were filming and music would come on, Jane's Addiction would
[48:43] come on. And he goes, that's James
[48:45] addiction. They're one of the good ones,
[48:46] right? And I was like, yeah, So it just
[48:50] became like a, a great experience.
[48:52] And he started to let me sit next to him and like watch back
[48:56] the thing. And he, I didn't really have a,
[48:57] a official line. Like you better have a line come
[49:00] up with something to say. So my line was like, right this
[49:03] way. Like my father would joke that,
[49:05] oh, your line was walked this way.
[49:06] But you know, I got paid like $1500 for two days and I would
[49:10] have probably paid a lot more to sit to be around a guy.
[49:14] We really talked a lot of music in between watching how the
[49:17] cameras all worked. It was this crazy shot where the
[49:20] camera was on this tracking coaster kind of thing and to
[49:24] film coming in the door of the club.
[49:27] And the film has a great soundtrack.
[49:29] I do will say honestly, I don't think it's the best film of his
[49:33] and I I think there's moments and there's a lot of, there's
[49:36] some Johnny Thunders and Clash and yeah, reggae and great stuff
[49:39] and it's filmed good. I got to go back to it.
[49:41] But yeah, it's a compared to all the the body work that he had.
[49:46] Yeah, it's a little going to rated it, isn't it?
[49:48] Yeah, I met him recently again and I brought up that stuff and
[49:51] he appeared to remember, like me and whatever.
[49:54] And really, well, I don't know, we were talking.
[49:56] I was giving him, we were at this David Johansson thing.
[49:59] And I said, you know, you did this film After Hours.
[50:02] Your music is always so spot on, like every film from Mean
[50:05] Streets, Goodfellas, whatever. You know, I said when you did
[50:09] the punk scene and After Hours, you put the ultimate hardcore
[50:13] song in there. You put pay to come by the Bad
[50:15] Brains. I mean, and he's 76 years old.
[50:17] He just goes pay to come is the best pay to come.
[50:20] Like 76 year old man telling me Batman.
[50:23] And I was like, you know, I just, it was like a week before
[50:26] I I'd seen Mata Hoople do a reunion at the Beacon Theatre
[50:29] and Ian Hunter's 80 years old. They were really good.
[50:32] So I was like, yeah, Marty, I saw Mata Hoople, you know too.
[50:35] And it was great. He's 80.
[50:37] And I said, you know, you're so good.
[50:38] You not only put Mata Hoople and Alice doesn't live her anymore
[50:42] all the way from Memphis, but you have it in the dialogue
[50:45] where Ellen Burstyn says turn down that Mato Hoopo.
[50:52] I would like to know what your perception is of British
[50:55] culture. Actually, Jesse, I know that
[50:57] you're obviously you're a big fan of The Clash and of the
[50:59] British bands, but what about films?
[51:01] Are there any that stand out or do they translate well for you?
[51:04] You know, my family was really big on A Christmas Carol, the
[51:07] Alistair SIM version that was like 1.
[51:09] Like there was like, that's the one you got to watch in the
[51:11] house. Obviously it's a kid Bond films,
[51:14] you know, from the Ian Fleming books.
[51:17] I grew up as a Rodger Moore Bond guy and then went backwards to
[51:20] Sean Connery. But at that age, it really spoke
[51:23] to me. The action, the excitement, the
[51:26] the violence, the just all the as a little kid, like the
[51:29] imagination going wild. But in time, I guess, you know,
[51:32] Mona Lisa with Bob Hoskins. Oh yeah, is definitely one of my
[51:37] favorite, you know, I guess films from that I would say, you
[51:40] know, culturally, we grew up first with Benny Hill watching
[51:44] this crazy goofy show. Get to see some titties and
[51:48] people dressing up in drag and slapstick to the Kenny Everett
[51:51] video show to other British things on PBS on public
[51:56] television. But it really was the songs, the
[51:59] places that the clash would sing about Generation X streets and
[52:02] the Jam a bomb on Wardo Street or, you know, the Kinks Waterloo
[52:06] sense. It's when I first got over to to
[52:08] England and everything felt like a song and a place and all these
[52:12] local spots. I thought the crown that Nick
[52:14] Jones sings about in the clash day three was like a particular
[52:17] bar. It's like, I found the crown, Oh
[52:19] my God from that song, and then I realized there's a ton of
[52:23] crowns in. Every Pope in England is called
[52:25] the crown. Yeah, you know, it's like a
[52:26] Blarney Stone. So I would say film wise, you
[52:32] know, I like some of the, I guess the Rock films, the kids
[52:36] are right. The film on The Who, Gregory's
[52:38] girl. I think there's been, obviously
[52:40] there's a lot, but with Neil and I has been a favorite of mine
[52:44] from the tour buses. That is so a certain kind of
[52:48] British thing. Seeing Quadrophenia, the film,
[52:51] which I like better than the record, actually.
[52:53] I just like that, even though Sting is in there for a second,
[52:56] but it just seemed brightened and the fights and the mods and
[53:00] the rockers learning about that culture, seeing Rude Boy by the
[53:03] Clash and hearing how people spoke.
[53:05] And you know, there wasn't. I guess I was more involved in
[53:08] American films and eventually for foreign films, more into
[53:12] French and Italian films like Umberto D and Fellini, like
[53:16] Knights of Kaberia. God, I don't have to swing back
[53:19] to this. My brain is just freezing on on
[53:21] really good, you know, because there's.
[53:23] A lot of great there's a. Lot of great, no?
[53:25] There's a lot of good British film, I'm sure.
[53:27] Things that come to my mind get caught.
[53:29] Or it was, it was filmed near me where I am.
[53:32] Yeah, along Good Friday. Small acts that show that was on
[53:35] recently about Notting Hill in the 70s.
[53:38] That was a good series. Yeah, there was a film called
[53:42] Babylon I saw recently, an older film about reggae and and
[53:45] Jamaican community in in in London.
[53:48] So bringing it back to your your latest record, Saturn, beautiful
[53:52] world, what kind of influences were you watching, reading,
[53:55] listening to at the time when you were recording that, if any?
[53:59] You know, it's always some of your favorite bands, but it's
[54:01] nice you desensitized to hearing those records over and over
[54:03] again. But the idea that The Clash, we
[54:06] had just learned London Calling the whole album for a charity
[54:09] thing, and the fact that they made that record and then a year
[54:11] later this is a double record. That's amazing.
[54:14] A year later, do a triple record.
[54:15] One year I was like, all right, we got up this, Sunset Kids was
[54:19] out. We did it with Lucinda Williams.
[54:20] We had a lot of songs we wrote. How can we make this better?
[54:23] You know, how can we take this to another level?
[54:26] And I just kept writing, but I guess I'd be listening to a lot
[54:30] of old mellow stuff that I, you know, Neil Young Harvest and Tom
[54:35] Petty wildflowers stuff from the past.
[54:38] And then, you know, still thinking about things like
[54:41] Sandinista and the Jam and and then some energy of some new
[54:45] groups like the Fontaine's DC out of Dublin.
[54:48] They just had an angst to it. And going back to some of the
[54:51] pop stuff that I loved, you know, Blondie and Cheap Trick
[54:54] and the Raspberries and and it'd be just a mix of Stooges and the
[54:59] Stones. But really things just come in a
[55:02] free form way. I mean, I listen to I always try
[55:04] to take in new stuff. I don't always find new stuff
[55:07] that I love, but I like some Saint Vincent and I like this
[55:11] band of clock works from over in UK, you know, just just things
[55:15] coming in. But I guess you just kind of
[55:17] walk into a room and you spit something out on a guitar and
[55:20] start banging on singing. It's a free form kind of
[55:22] expression. And then try to figure out
[55:24] what's really going on, like it's a Rorschach test.
[55:27] Go back and what am I saying here?
[55:29] Sometimes we sit down and say, you know, let's write something.
[55:32] Me and Derek wrote this song Dance with the system.
[55:34] Like let's let's kind of go for some like Stooges 1971 kind of
[55:40] groove, sleazy kind of thing. Stooges, Stones, what New York,
[55:45] you know, and, and then some of it just, I don't know, you know,
[55:48] sometimes things that I wouldn't expect like big audio dynamite,
[55:52] Mick Jones and the Clash side band, like some things just kind
[55:55] of stick with me. But then I like a lot of new
[55:57] artists, you know, that are doing stuff like Jason Isbell
[55:59] and I really like that. You know what he's been doing.
[56:02] I I just sent the songs and science students kind of come
[56:05] out and you're not aware of the influences, you know, I guess
[56:08] some songs like Sinner, which is different on the record maybe.
[56:12] I've been listening to a lot of Nick Cave in the Bad Seats when
[56:15] I wrote that one with Derek. And sometimes riding alone, I
[56:18] have a set kind of head. I get into a a very good trance
[56:22] of a place and, and just go and get lost and just write and
[56:26] write and listen back later and see what songs are sticking.
[56:31] And then sometimes I Co write with Derek or with Rob, my piano
[56:35] player in this record where they're kind of leading the
[56:38] thing musically and they're playing the instrument and I'm
[56:40] freer because I'm not boxed into my hands thinking about each
[56:43] chord change melodically. I find myself freer to just go
[56:48] into the places and then be like, wow, really?
[56:50] You were just playing two chords the whole time and I was able to
[56:54] hit all these different melodies that I wouldn't have hit.
[56:56] So, you know, sometimes we'll just guide each other.
[56:59] We work off a beat. My guitar player Derek, who
[57:02] produced the record, will have a drum beat on a beatbox and bring
[57:05] it over and that beat will give us some kind of mojo or give me
[57:09] some kind of attitude like Backstabbers.
[57:13] I think we were thinking about the Velvet Underground
[57:15] Rock'n'roll, the song Rock'n'roll, and then we had
[57:17] this beat and that. It just, it's nice.
[57:20] It's a real mix. I think that's what makes every
[57:21] artist when they pull together is a a bunch of different
[57:25] influences thrown it to a pot like you're making a soup or
[57:28] something and how you mix up the ingredients and spit it out is
[57:31] how that's going to be your specialty.
[57:35] You know if or it's crap. You.
[57:38] Make everybody sick and you're poison the whole world.
[57:41] You recorded that on a thing and it was a mixture of the East and
[57:45] West Coast. And does the geography affect
[57:48] your writing, your music? Like the influences of the city
[57:51] that. You're in.
[57:52] Well, that was Sunset Kids. Half was done in LA, Lucinda
[57:55] Williams. The other half was done in in
[57:57] New York with Lucinda Williams and her husband, Tom Overby.
[58:00] So, you know, I always have New York in the even if I go to LA,
[58:03] you can't take the city out of the kid.
[58:04] I don't know what the expression is, but this record was done
[58:07] during lockdown. So it's not a COVID like
[58:10] handbook rah, rah, rah. But it's also, you couldn't have
[58:14] made a record sitting in this apartment without, you know,
[58:17] being locked in alone and nobody on the streets except fire
[58:22] engines and ambulances and people cheering with pots and
[58:26] pans for healthcare workers and then people rioting, protesting,
[58:31] looting, you know, like it. It definitely seeped into the
[58:34] records content in some ways, but it's not the guidebook
[58:38] souvenir COVID pandemo, you know, and that's serious stuff.
[58:43] I don't mean to be funny, but it's just like, you know, it's
[58:45] enough of that. But in some ways it's just part
[58:48] of our, you know, the atmosphere.
[58:51] A few songs were written a good amount, half of them probably
[58:54] before the pandemic, so we just couldn't finish the record.
[58:58] It was supposed to be out a year sooner, so the some of the
[59:00] singles came out sooner. But I've always loved the mellow
[59:03] stuff with my favorite bands and the loud stuff.
[59:05] And as a writer and singer, I love to do acoustic ballads and,
[59:08] and go break it down or with the piano.
[59:11] And then I love to move my body and have something physical
[59:13] that, you know, I can really sweat it out to.
[59:16] And on this record, I decided to, you know, serve up both
[59:19] sides of that, you know, the the roots rock and the radicals, as
[59:24] we call it. So it became a double record and
[59:26] one side's more of that Americana thing and the other
[59:28] side's more like Saturday night in the City with the vibrator in
[59:31] your pocket or something. I don't care, Jesse, I've got a
[59:36] few hypothetical questions for you, just kind of few quick fire
[59:39] ones to finish this off. Hypothetically, you're doing a
[59:42] soundtrack for a movie. Who would you have as director
[59:44] and star, living or dead? Oh wow, Living or Dead?
[59:48] Director and star doing a soundtrack for a film.
[59:52] John Cassavetes and Jenna Rollins starring it.
[59:55] Yeah. Cool dream team and in a film
[59:58] about your life, what songs would be on the soundtrack?
[1:00:02] Jim Croce. Bad bad.
[1:00:03] Leroy Brown. The Batman theme.
[1:00:05] I just want to have something do.
[1:00:06] The Ramones. She knows A punk rocker.
[1:00:09] You know, I'm so bored with the USA.
[1:00:12] Been caught stealing Jane's addiction.
[1:00:14] Operator. Jim Croce.
[1:00:16] Memphis. Chuck Berry.
[1:00:18] You never can tell. Chuck Berry.
[1:00:20] Someone saved my life tonight. Elton John Probably Neil Young.
[1:00:24] Heart of gold. The change is going to come.
[1:00:26] Sam Cooke. Here comes a regular.
[1:00:29] The Replacements. Cool, and who plays you Livin?
[1:00:33] Oh, I don't know. God.
[1:00:36] Mike Imperioli. Oh, great choice.
[1:00:42] And if you could be in a film like John Moosh's Coffee and
[1:00:45] Cigarettes, which is like broken up to the number of short
[1:00:48] stories, who would you like to act with in your segment, Steve?
[1:00:52] Coogan. Really.
[1:00:53] Coogan. Yeah, yeah, he's versatile.
[1:00:59] OK. What are your all time top five
[1:01:01] favorite films, Jesse? Chinatown Taxi driver.
[1:01:05] Casablanca Broadway. Danny Rose.
[1:01:09] Oh boy, this is tough. There's too many of them trying
[1:01:11] to commit to this. Look around my room here.
[1:01:15] Oh my God. Lenny by Bob Fosse.
[1:01:17] Cool. So like final question, Jesse,
[1:01:20] sub question to what we've just talked about, say your favorite
[1:01:23] film. I will just pick one of those.
[1:01:26] Taxi Driver if you could choose one of your songs to play as the
[1:01:29] credits roll, which will be all. Right for taxi Driver.
[1:01:33] Wow, that's an interesting one. God's lonely people, I guess.
[1:01:36] Well, I don't know. Let me see.
[1:01:38] I got to dig in there. What would be fine art of self
[1:01:41] destruction? The song.
[1:01:42] Excellent. OK, great.
[1:01:44] Thank you, Jesse. You've been a real sport
[1:01:46] answering those. All right.
[1:01:48] Thank you for this. I really appreciate it.
[1:01:50] And yeah, we'll talk again soon, I hope.
[1:01:53] OK. Yeah, that's absolutely great.
[1:01:55] Jesse, I really appreciate you coming on.
[1:01:57] Good luck with the show and the new record, the two.
[1:02:00] It's been a pleasure talking to you.
[1:02:02] Same here man, great time. Thank you.
[1:02:11] So there you have it. Fan of all the right movies,
[1:02:14] Jesse Mallon. Great conversation, a great guy.
[1:02:16] Check out Jesse's new record, Saturn.
[1:02:18] Beautiful World out now physical and streaming.
[1:02:21] Jessie is back on tour at the end of October, early November.
[1:02:25] So if you're one of our listeners in Europe, Sweden,
[1:02:27] Netherlands, Germany, France and Belgium, go check out Jessie
[1:02:30] Live. Speaking from experience, it
[1:02:32] really is one of the best live performances you'll see.
[1:02:34] As for us, our latest podcast on classic and hit films is on
[1:02:37] Poltergeist. That came out last week and is
[1:02:39] available everywhere, as are our most recent 20 episodes.
[1:02:43] The rest along with a load of exclusive shows are available
[1:02:46] only on Patreon. So go to patreon.com/all the
[1:02:49] right movies to support us and get access to hours and hours of
[1:02:53] great content. Coming up for our Patreon
[1:02:55] supporters at the end of October is our conversation on 2 Jack
[1:02:58] Nicholson Classics, Chinatown and Cookie's Nest on General
[1:03:01] release. The next podcast is our Take 30
[1:03:04] show where we talk about Tom Hanks and Big that's available
[1:03:06] from Friday the 29th of October. Then on our classic podcast the
[1:03:10] week after John, Matt and Pi are in 50s LA to bring you the
[1:03:14] behind the scenes story of LA Confidential coming out your
[1:03:16] thick and fast with loads of five star content.
[1:03:19] In the meantime, check out our social media for great daily
[1:03:22] movie content as well. On Twitter, we are at AT right
[1:03:25] movies, Instagram at all the under score right movies.
[1:03:28] Join our Facebook group, follow us on TikTok, subscribe to our
[1:03:31] YouTube channel and like our videos.
[1:03:34] We've got loads more coming on YouTube in the future as well,
[1:03:36] so stay tuned. We will be back on ATR meets
[1:03:39] next month with another special guest.
[1:03:41] Hope we'll keep you in suspense and for me by the time thanks
[1:03:44] for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed my
[1:03:46] conversation with Jessie. We'll see you soon.

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