Jesse's Rock And Roll Life's Journey

Jesse's Rock And Roll Life's Journey

Bruce Von Stiers

Jesse Malin is a musical artist whose career spans from gigging at CBGB when he was thirteen to playing Madison Square Garden while still in his twenties. He has worked on music from such notables as Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead and Green Day. And he also recorded with Bruce Springsteen. Lucinda Williams produced his solo album, Sunset Kids, which featured her and Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day.

In 2023, Jesse had a spinal stroke that paralyzed him from the waist down. The prognosis was that he might never be able to walk again, and might not even be able to stand.

But Jesse wasn't going to let the prognosis stop him from striving towards a complete recovery. While he was working on the recovery process, Jesse decided to write a book. This book would chronicle his life from being a young teen upstart musician to his eventual success. The resulting book is titled Almost Grown: A New York Memoir.

Jesse begins the book by describing his parents and grandparents. How his parents, Paul and Enid, got married young and almost immediately started a family. And how his paternal grandparents didn't really like his mom. Apparently, they found fault in any girl Paul dated. I can definitely relate to that. My parents never liked any of the girls I dated.

Jesse got his love of music early as his mom sang along to Frank Sinatra and loved The Beatles. His dad preferred Elvis, Chuck Berry and Bobby Darrin. Jesse relates his early childhood, with his parents having intense arguments and fights. And how his grandparents were definitely a bit different, especially Papa Artie, who relates a story to Jesse on having Albert Einstein come to speak to his high school class.

All of this serves as a springboard for when, as a young teen, Jesse decides he wants to be a musical artist. He accumulates an old beat-up acoustic guitar and learns to play. Because his mom can't afford an electric guitar for him, Jesse jury rigs the acoustic to sound like one. Along the way, Jesse becomes sort-of friends with Joey Ramone of The Ramones.

Jesse takes the reader through the growing pains of starting his first group, a punk band called Heart Attack. From finding a place to practice to actually getting a venue to allow the band to play, Jesse relates it all with the skill of a true storyteller. An opportunity to play Max's Kansas City ends up being a lot different than Jesse had anticipated.

Jesse goes into a lot of detail about the ups and downs of trying to make it as a rock artist. From starting his own delivery service, in a beat-up Ford Econoline, to skipping school for three weeks so that Heart Attack could play in Mexico City, the book has a lot of interesting stories about Jesse's slow rise to fame. There are the girls and women that he loved, some he left and some who left him. There are the various iterations of bands that Jesse started and how he ended up becoming a solo artist. He details a lot of things about his later band, D Generation.

At the time I am writing this review, Jesse Malin is still recovering from his stroke. But he has been performing some, with a little bit of help from his friends.

Almost Grown is a very entertaining memoir. Not only does it detail Jesse Malin's life and times, the book also provides a snapshot of the New York punk music scene from the 1980's forward.

Almost Grown: A New York Memoir was published by Akashic Books. It is available at most major book outlets. You can also obtain a signed copy directly from Akashic Books at https://www.akashicbooks.com/catalog/almost-grown/

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