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Jeremy Williams-Chalmers
Arts Correspondent
@jeremydwilliams
2:40 PM 12th December 2014
arts

Interview: Jesse Malin

 
Jessie Malin
Jessie Malin
Jesse Malin has shown that he is something musical chameleon. Having started his public career at just 12 years old, the 46 year old New Yorker has made a name for himself in everything from heavy rock to tender folk. Currently making his way around the UK on a solo tour, he is set to release his latest studio album in early 2015.

You spend a lot of time on the road, have you got used to such a transient lifestyle?

You get certain rituals, ways to stay connected. When I first started touring I was just a little teenager and I was totally disconnected from home. There was one payphone in the lobby and there would be the next guy waiting for you to get done so that he could call his girlfriend.

Now you can stay plugged in with all the technology, but it used to be like you were going to a different planet, especially in the USA as you would just be on a tour van, stopping places to get out of the van and go to a mall, which was like something from Dawn of the Dead. I like playing every night, so whatever it takes I will do.

I love writing songs in your little room at home and suddenly people know the song in another part of the world that you'd never thought you'd go. I always try to walk around the cities before the gigs to try get an idea of what this place might be like, so I connect to the people a little bit.



How much do the places you see on the road influence the records you release?

Occasionally I have got hooked on going out at night in a certain place. Liverpool, when I first started going there, I would go to these crazy soul dance places that looked like they were from Quadrophenia.

There is something about being a in strange town, like that The Jam song by Paul Weller, where you are an outsider and it is not like Cheers and everybody knows your name.

You are forced to walk around unfamiliar, you are not comfortable.

You are not in your cosy, comfortable bed with your cat and your girl.

It puts you as the outsider, the alien, and I think that is good for your writing and it gives you a different perspective.

Everywhere I have been I have seen different cultures and how people relate, but it shows how we are all fundamentally the same.

There are people wanting to fight wars over whose religion is right or whose football team is right, but the great thing about music is that it connects everybody together.

The people that come to see me in my shows allow my music to bring us together.

Music always told me it was ok to be different.

I'm a vegetarian and a record collector. I'd go to certain towns and have certain missions that I am on, but sometimes you turn the wrong corner and stuff happens - you find a book store, you fall in love.

These are things you can't find on the internet. I am all about real life experiences, sweating out the poison under the hot lights on stage, getting in the crowd and getting that connection.

I think if I wasn't into music I would still be after that same thing, as people get it out of church or school or the community centre.

Connection is something really primitive, primal and its not just out of tequila shots.

How does the touring life effect your concept of home?

New York is the kind of place that is good to leave and is good to come back to.

It has gone through a lot of changes.

I am a native New Yorker, I was born in New York.

Most people there are from America now.

It used to be its own thing, like a European provincial colony, but its become part of America with its corporations and chain stores.

The world has become connected corporately too. We have the same shops in my town as in every fuck town I go to; McDonalds, Starbucks... There is something comforting for people about it but there is a lack of uniqueness and individuality.

I think home is having something that is yours, special to you and your neighbourhood.

I have got into that Hank Williams/Woody Guthrie thing of wherever I lay my hat it home.

If you have a guitar, it will travel.

I love packing up a suitcase and getting together with a bunch of people to create an alternate universe that is your home.

I love getting together a tour bus, it is like a pirate ship. You are putting the people you want on that ship.

You get together and go on a mission like the Blues Brothers, on a mission from God, if you believe in God.

Your recording career started thirty years ago, how have you managed something so few achieve?

I am grateful that I have that.

It is either that the glass is half empty or half full.

People will say 'why haven't you made it bigger after all these years?'

Others will say, 'I can't believe you are still getting record deals and don't have to work a day job and eat cheese doodles!'

I am grateful that there is still an audience.

I started in a band when I was 12 in a band called Heart Attack doing hardcore thrash music, we put out a couple of records and toured with GBH, Misfits, Dead Kennedys then did D Generation.

We did a couple of records and that broke up.

I was very lucky to be able to find a way to not really reinvent myself, but have another life, like a cat.

As an artist you want to challenge what you are doing, to go through phases and grow.

This record that comes out in March, it is definitely me and a record of my songs, but I have challenged myself. It is an evolution but is true to my old self as the Beach Boys would say.

Your records always explore different genres, is that a conscious decision?

Each time you feel different.

Fine Art of Self Destruction is very different to the more electric The Heat, which was at a time when everyone my age was getting married and having kids, but I was still living it up and going on tour.

Fine Art of Self Destruction is much more of sensitive deconstruction of myself.

I had been going through a lot of stuff, so I was able to look at myself for the first time after having been in lots of bands and writing about band stuff.

I had to dig deep into my own personal crisis.

Glitter In The Gutter was made in LA, so it was more a pop record.

It was weird time but some great songs.

Love It To Life was made to be more of a high-energy live record to rock out to.

This record was made over a period of two years. Part of it was made in a farmhouse in Virginia, the other part was made in a studio in Soho, New York.

I picked the best from both.

To answer your question, you go, you write and then you figure a way how it all connects and talks to each other. I will never just sit there and say to myself, 'today I want to write a Motown record'.

How aware are you of what your audience expects?

I think you are always aware when you are saying something in public.

If you want to just do it, then do it alone in your room. If you are making it public, you are aware that there is an audience.

I don't give a fuck, I want to do what I want to do and I don't care how people receive.

It is nice though if people get what I am trying to do, that way I can stay out there a little longer on the road and do it more comfortably. I want to give the audience the best version of what I can do.

For years I banged my head against the wall with my old band, D Generation, as no one understand what we were trying to be.

They misunderstood us, or at least that is how we felt.

Then when I did my first solo record, I felt people got what I was singing about, they got the sentiment and it made a big difference to me to get reviewed and have them get it.

You risk that everytime, it is critics and it is their interpretation. Sometimes there is great journalism, sometimes there is lazy journalism. If we wanted, we could sit here and write a new bio that says I came from out of space, then just put it out there in the way Malcolm McClaren did when created The Sex Pistols brand, and the lazy journalists will just copy it and write it into their piece.

You can feed the media as much as you want as some will just reproduce what they do. But there is still great journalism out there and I am the guy in New York paying too much on import magazines.

Looking back is there anything you would do differently?

I like to try to say that Frank Sinatra line of 'regrets, I've have too few to mention', but I think that I have some things that you wished you did differently.

But records are just snapshots of a moment, like old photos and movies from your childhood.

It is what going on then, that was what I wanted to do at the time.

You have to live with your winning and losses. Live with your sins.

Sometimes that can give you a reason to see clearer if you get another opportunity.