New Yorker Jesse Malin, he of the heartbroken punk-ish ballads and leather jackets, has just released On your Sleeve. It’s an album of covers, a tribute to his influences and heroes; what he calls a “schizophrenic” assortment songs. The track list ranges from punk classics like The Ramones’ Do You Remember Rock n Roll Radio to the storytelling nous of The Hold Steady’s ( You Can Make Him Like You ).
On the line from New York (“Can you tell me the future?” he asks, curious about the time difference), Malin is friendly, talkative and very much an enthusiastic rock and roll fan. He explains his latest project was “just something fun that I wanted to do…in my live shows I’ve always played covers, songs that meant a lot to me, whether they were new artists or songs that I’d heard my whole life or that I remember from a certain time and place and I like sharing that with the audience. I’ve always enjoyed going to see bands that weren’t afraid to show their influences or take something that might not be their influence and make it their own.”
“It started as a joke, then fans kept saying, ‘When’s the covers record?’ We just did it in between the holidays…Everybody was home, we got some friends together. It was like making a mixtape for somebody…It’s strange to do, but I was writing a lot of new songs for my next record and it was a good break.” Malin and company went in with 21 songs and culled seven for the record. Amongst those that narrowly missed the cut was The Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, which will instead appear as a B-side.
One of the most interesting choices is Gates of The West. It’s hardly the obvious pick from The Clash’s mighty back catalogue, but its theme of new horizons was one that struck a chord with Malin. “When I was first going over to the UK to tour with Ryan (Adams, his close friend and sometime record producer), I was nervous. I’d never done anything like that, played alone, solo, and I just started to think about all the English music…things that have always spoken to me about places. Carnaby St by The Jam or Waterloo Sunset – The Kinks and hearing that stuff. It was always that and then the excitement, for me, of going into one city and then going into the next. It’s like coming to New York for them, coming to America, and for me going the other way, going into the United Kingdom with your guitar as your suitcase and your ammunition and your navigation coming from rock and roll. I thought that was just a song I always related to, historically and emotionally; trying to unfold the city.”
Malin also seems to love The Clash’s ‘last gang in town’ shtick, and the life of a travelling rock and roller. “I travel and tour so much and I’m always looking for a place to find a perfect crime, or the perfect jukebox, or a vegetarian restaurant, or a cool bar, record shop, or a great girl or whatever.” The only downside of touring life seems to be, “I don’t really get to karaoke much because I’m always on the road.” Hence the covers record.
Not all the song choices are as unexpected as Gates of the West, with Lou Reed’s immortal Walk on The Wild Side also making an appearance. It may seem daunting to tackle a song which has been so influential, and so often covered, but Malin explains the song’s depiction of New York’s underbelly made it a natural choice for the record. “I grew up going to bars around 12 and 13. I would just get on a train. My parents weren’t together so nobody was watching, and I would just sneak into the city. You would see someone that you thought maybe was a man or maybe was a woman, you didn’t know, what people were. Being approached by men as a young boy, even on the street and in movie theatres…it was that dark side of people’s sexuality. Homosexuality and drag queens – it’s just always been a part of the underground in New York, and I loved that song. It’s something I’m familiar with, maybe not directly, but this kind of environment.
“My old band (D-Generation) used to play a lot of drag-queen parties and just the decadence of the story, I felt like it had become historical.” After beginning to play the song, Malin also remembered seeing Joe Strummer cover it in New York, and thinks this may have subconsciously spurred him to start covering it himself. “I asked him if he was ever going to record it and he said [nonchalantly], ‘No’.”
Before his solo career, Malin fronted a down and dirty punk band, and he also sidelines in the boisterous hardcore project The Finger. So where did the soft rock ( On Your Sleeve includes covers of songs by Harry Nillson, Paul Simon and folkie Jim Croce) come into the picture? “Before I was into hardcore punk…when I was a little kid, I was listening to Elton John and Paul Simon on the radio, things my parents and babysitters and people would listen to. I always liked that too, I love pop music. I love the three-minute song, and to me, whether it’s The Dead Kennedys, The Ramones, The Buzzcocks or Chuck Berry, you know, Elton John, or The Bee Gees, I like them all. It’s really the songs, the melodies and the power of what you can do with that.”
The thing that immediately hits you about Malin’s music is his disarming voice, raw and emotional. It’s a remarkable blend of grit and grace that puts some off, but for this writer is amongst the most effecting voices in contemporary music, perhaps the closest thing we have to Johnny Thunders. So did he choose songs that seemed to match his distinctive vocals? “I didn’t think of that way. I’m just drawn to different songs…I didn’t think about well I don’t sing like Elton John, how the hell am I going to match that?” The cover of Neil Young’s Looking For a Love seems particularly apt, Malin often drawing comparisons with the Canadian’s yearning voice.
“I always just liked Looking For a Love and I used to sing it in the subway for money when I was 16. I would sing a lot those songs by Neil Young because they were simple songs, but they were melancholy but optimistic. I’m a big fan of happiness and sadness in the same note. I think the master of that is Sam Cooke (whose ‘Wonderful World’ Malin covers on the record), who can write something like that where it’s a celebration, but there’s a somberness, and I think you can wrap life up, in a funny sense, in one little box, you know.”
Like his debut The Fine Art of Self Destruction, the covers record was recorded in only a few days; was this a matter of choice or necessity? “It’s just a budgetary thing; the label won’t give me that much money for a covers record, because unless you’re Cat Power, or a Barry Manilow (laughs), they don’t sell that much.” Having conceded that he would probably still be recording if there was enough money, Malin goes on to explain there are advantages in the hit-and-run approach to making records “there’s something good I think, about the ‘50s and Motown and all the people that made records really fast. There’s a punk rock DIY ethic that goes with that too. It’s a snapshot of a time and a place.” Said snapshot was recorded in “an old, warm studio…where they recorded (John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s) Double Fantasy and (Stevie Wonder’s) Songs in the Key of Life, and it was just that kind of place.”
Having worked with his idol Bruce Springsteen on Glitter in the Glutter, the icon contributing guitar and vocals to Broken Radio after hearing Malin’s cover of Hungry Heart. Is there anyone else Malin is itching to record with? “Producers, more than singers,” he says. “A lot of people come to mind that are people I’ve met and that I admire, like Bruce, who I’ve got to work with, so I feel pretty good about that.” Malin also relished the opportunity to play with the MC5’s Wayne Kramer at a recent benefit gig organised by Tom Morello. Producers Phil Ramone and Chris Thomas, who was at the controls for The Sex Pistols and The Pretenders incendiary debuts, and some of the later Pulp records, are now at the top of his wish-list.
Recently, Malin played a couple of dates with the LA-via-Dublin punk rockers Flogging Molly. “Their fans were great, one night they threw beer bottles at me. They didn’t like it, I played too many ballads.” Such indifference to raffish crowds should come as no surprise to those who saw his stirring, if poorly attended, Sydney shows last visit. He told one indifferent crowd, “Come on, at least heckle me, someone. I’m from Brooklyn, I can take it.”
So does he plan to return to Australia for some down under-style heckling? “I’d like to, man, I was there like five years ago. It’s been so long, I’d really like to come back – but nothing yet. Probably in the next year, in 2009, when I make the next record.”
