“I was in Argentina for six months, and when I came back to New York, I thought I was home,” Jesse Malin told the crowd at the Beacon Theatre in New York City during his concert in December 2024. “But now, I’m f—king home.” The show, the second of a two-night run supporting Malin, who suffered a rare spinal stroke in May of 2023, which left him paralyzed from his waist down, was a triumph for the New York singer and songwriter.
In the weeks leading up to the benefit shows, Malin practiced rising from a seated position daily using a raised microphone stand in his living room, an effort he called a “magic trick” and one that was rewarded by huge applause when he stood several times during his performances.
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Inside his Greenwich Village apartment, Malin is sitting in a wheelchair reflecting on that night nearly two years ago, when everything changed, and the journey he’s been on since.
[RELATED: Jesse Malin’s Ballad to the Country That Helped Him Get Back on His Feet, “Argentina”]
“Everything takes a lot longer because I can’t move as fast, and those simple things you don’t really think about take a lot longer,” says Malin, who spends most of his days working with a physical therapist at his home or doing exercises on his own, including stretches, standing and sitting, or walking, with a walker, outside.
The night was May 4, 2023, when Malin joined friends at an Italian restaurant in the East Village to mark the one-year anniversary of the death of his friend and former D Generation bandmate, bassist Howie Pyro, who died a year to the day earlier, and to commemorate the 20th-anniversary of his solo debut, The Fine Art of Self Destruction.
While walking over, Malin noticed a sensation in his back but brushed it off. “I was like, ‘Nothing’s happening,’” he recalls. “It was happening.” Shortly after arriving, he felt a burning pain in his lumbar region, or the lower back area of his spine, which gradually traveled down his hips before moving down his legs and feet.
After collapsing in the restaurant, Malin initially suspected his new boots were cutting off his circulation. When his longtime friend, Murphy’s Law singer Jimmy G, removed his shoes and felt that his feet were ice cold, he called an ambulance.
Malin suffered a rare spinal cord infarction, or spinal stroke, which left him unable to walk. After spending three months at Mount Sinai and NYU Langone, hospitals in New York City, Malin uprooted to Buenos Aires, Argentina, after a friend told him about a stem cell treatment that could potentially help his condition.
Undergoing monthly intravenous treatments and intensive physical therapy, Malin remained at a rehabilitation clinic in Argentina for six months. He later recounted his experience, where he didn’t speak the language and was at the mercy of the facility in the bittersweet ballad “Argentina.”
I’m going to South America / Don’t know when I’ll be back / Even when you don’t want me / You always have my back sings Malin, a reminder of the unexpected journey he’d been on for the past 18 months and a tribute to the doctors, physical therapists, and new friends he made in Buenos Aires.
“I wouldn’t think in my wildest dreams … it’s a very rare thing that happened to me, and it really threw me,” says Malin, who wears braces along his shins to help aid him while standing and walking with a mobility device. “It takes a lot to keep that going because that’s the goal, to recover,” he adds. “But the spine is not an easy thing.”
For Malin, the December benefit concerts were a beacon of light, not only helping to alleviate his rising medical bills but also as a spiritual healer. “I have to be the biggest, coldest, deadest person to not feel several thousand people a night, for two nights, with an audience of people who came from all over—Japan, Sweden, and California,” he says. “The artists, the crew, and the people that gave their time, it was unreal.”
Each night featured a three-hour set, including a lengthy block by Malin, who was mostly sitting but stood to sing several times throughout each show. His sets were broken up by special guests, including Steven Van Zandt, Elvis Costello, Lucinda Williams, Rickie Lee Jones, Jakob Dylan, Tommy Stinson, Dinosaur Jr.‘s J. Mascis, The Hold Steady, the Counting Crows’ Adam Duritz, photographer Danny Clinch, Willie Nile, Gogol Bordello’s Eugene Hütz and Sergey Ryabtsev, Butch Walker, Low Cut Connie’s Adam Weiner, and more, along with director Jim Jarmusch, actor Matt Dillon, and comedian Fred Armisen as hosts.
Shortly after Malin suffered the stroke, a Sweet Relief Musicians Fund was also launched to help with his ongoing treatment and care. “The support from friends and fans and the music community, it’s blown me away,” shares Malin. “I always knew there was a lot of goodness in people. You meet strangers when your car breaks down, or you find common ground at work with people, and you meet them on a human level. I’ve learned these lessons over the years, but this is taking it to another level with the love I’ve received and the support. I think the music community brings it more than any other.”
Several months before the Beacon shows, more support flooded in for Malin with the September 2024 release of Silver Patron Saints. Produced by Diane Gentile and David Bason, the album featured new renderings of Malin’s songs by some who participated at the Beacon benefits, including Costello, Williams, Stinson, Counting Crows, Dinosaur Jr., the Wallflowers, and The Hold Steady, along with Bruce Springsteen, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, Alison Mosshart, late MC5 singer Wayne Kramer, Tom Morello, Spoon, the Bangles’ Susanna Hoffs, Rancid, and Frank Turner, among other artists.
“Hearing these versions was such a spiritual and emotional boost,” says Malin, who has since moved from his former East Village walkup to a building with an elevator. He insists that he’s still living by the motto of P.M.A. (positive mental attitude), a phrase he snatched from Bad Brains’ 1982 song “Attitude.” For decades, it was something he always emitted to others, but he admits it’s not so easy for him to find some days.
Though he hasn’t lost any of his quick and clever wit or sharpened sense of humor, he still feels the highs and lows of his condition. He misses waking up in the morning and getting charged up and excited for what the day could bring, or walking out to find inspiration, leaving his phone behind and sitting in a coffee shop, or plowing through favorite sections at the 96-year-old Strand bookstore to “steal some words from book titles” for later use. Malin jokes that he recently visited the Strand in his wheelchair, which was too wide to go down the narrower aisles he always liked perusing, including poetry, so he resigned to the Classics table instead.
“I didn’t get lost in the sections I wanted to,” laughs Malin. “But I have my eyes and my hands, and I’m gonna be down there in this baseball cap and hoodie and look around. I’m trying to look at this as having a slower perspective, as opposed to marching into the Strand and going where I want to go, being all cool, standing there, checking my phone.” He jokes, “Now I’m crawling on the floor, so it’s a different eye view, but it still felt good.”
Now, Malin says he’s ready to put out new music and finished writing a memoir, something he started working on during the last two years. The book begins at the beginning of his life and ends in 2001, around the release of his debut solo album.
Flipping through his musical life, Malin’s spans more than 40 years, from his early hardcore days in the band Heart Attack from his hometown of Queens, New York, and playing in New York City nightclubs in the early ‘80s when he was barely a teen and into the ‘90s with his punk band D Generation. The band ran from their eponymous 1994 debut through Nothing is Anywherein2016, the band’s final album with Pyro. A decade after forming D Generation, Malin emerged as a solo artist in 2001 with The Fine Art of Self Destruction.
“The solo stuff was liberating because it focused more on being quiet and with the words and the melodies,” says Malin, who released his most recent album, Sad and Beautiful World,in 2021. “With D Generation, everybody wrote stuff that was a little deeper than people thought, but we couldn’t get away from the image and playing punk shows, it was all about the mosh pit. It didn’t matter what we were singing. It could have been the back of the cereal box; it didn’t matter, and that was frustrating.”
During the D Generation days, Malin says he found himself in the back of the van while touring, listening to Neil Young, Wilco, the Counting Crows, and Lucinda Williams, who would later collaborate with him, co-writing and singing on several songs from his 2019 album Sunset Kids. Malin also co-wrote Williams’ “New York City Comeback” from her 2023 releaseStories from a Rock n Roll Heart.
“I would think, ‘I want to do something [like this], or strip it down,’” says Malin, who was prompted to go solo by the early ‘00s when waves of singer-songwriters like Pete Yorn and Brendan Benson started branching out.
Since 2001, Malin has released a total of nine albums that all came with ups and downs, he says, from bouts of writer’s blocks to labels that went out of business and a shifting music industry. Though he’s written new material, there are batches that are still not finished. “Sometimes I’m just not in the right head, but a lot of the process comes from the energy of walking around the city and being out there and coming into the room here and sitting down and just spitting it out into a recorder or a notebook,” says Malin. “Now I’m more confined and slower, so I don’t get that same adrenaline boost.”
He adds, “I love the energy you get from the city. You’re forced to deal with people from all cultures and forced to find that commonality and get along, and it’s inspiring. There’s a lot in the old Big Apple. I’m initially a Queens boy, but I like to see the world. That was a great thing, and it still is, about touring. You get to see how small this planet is and how connected we really are.”
Following his stroke, Malin says he didn’t know what he wanted to say or who he was. It’s something he still struggles with. “I feel subhuman at times,” he says. “I know I have a right to sing anything, but my attitude, my self-perception, and swagger … I’m still trying to find that.”
[RELATED: Bruce Springsteen Contributes Cover Song for Benefit Album of Jesse Malin’s Work]
Now set to play two more shows and return to London in May, Malin recently played a more intimate “warm-up” show in the East Village before heading to a benefit concert for Parkinson’s disease supporting the Light of Day Foundation in Red Bank, New Jersey, which he’s been involved with for the past 22 years.
Everything is different now, but Malin still tries to live by the one thing that’s kept him going all these years: P.M.A. Malin says he plans to return to Argentina for additional treatments. Though he isn’t sure what the future holds for him, he’s still fighting to get back what he lost.
“I want to get my body back so I can stand up and walk and be able to tour again, be on stage, and work as an artist, and I work at it every day,” he says. “Spiritually, when that day comes, I’m going to try to remember to not take anything for granted.
“When I’m on the bed, I realize I can’t get out without a walker,” adds Malin. “It feels like being trapped, and to have that freedom again … I want to get that back. I want to get my body back.”
Photos by Vivian Wang
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