American singer, Jesse Malin of the New York City punk bands Heart Attack and D Generation has revealed that he suffered a rare spinal stroke that has left him paralyzed from the waist down.
The 56-year-old singer in an interview with Rolling Stone published on Wednesday shared that his health issues happened on May 4 while he was having dinner in the East Village.
Malin was with friends to mark the one-year anniversary of the death of his D Generation bandmate and best friend Howie Pyro when he felt a burning pain in his lumbar region that traveled down his hips, through his legs, and into his heels. He dropped to the floor of the restaurant and was unable to move.
‘Everybody was standing above me like in Rosemary’s Baby, saying all these different things, and I was there not knowing what was going on with my body,’ Malin told Rolling Stone during a phone call from his room at an NYU rehab facility.
Malin was carried by Murphy’s Law singer from the Italian restaurant to the hallway of a nearby apartment where he was taken by ambulance to Mount Sinai Hospital.
‘This is the hardest six weeks that I’ve ever had,’ he told the music magazine.
‘I’m told that they don’t really understand it, and they’re not sure of the chances. The reports from the doctors have been tough, and there’s moments in the day where you want to cry, and where you’re scared. But I keep saying to myself that I can make this happen. I can recover my body,’ Malin said.
Malin has been preaching ‘P.M.A.’, or positive mental attitude, onstage and in interviews for years and admits it’s hard to summon lately.
‘It’s almost like a joke. Like, ”You talk all this P.M.A.? Well, see how you deal with this”,’ he said. ‘They took me outside for the first time the other day in a wheelchair, and I went through the lobby and I could see the sun shining through the glass, and I just started bawling. It felt like I was watching myself in this movie. I didn’t know this person. By the time I got to the corner, I got myself together and into a park, and just breathed in the air.’
Malin began his music career at the age of 12 as the front-man of the seminal New York City hardcore band Heart Attack that formed in 1980.
He also was an original member of the glam punk band D Generation that formed in 1991 in New York City.
D Generation band member Howie Pyro, real name Howard Kusten, died in May 2022 at age 61 in Los Angeles from COVID-19 related pneumonia after suffering from liver disease.
