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The Fine Art of Self Destruction came out at a time before punk rockers were picking up acoustic guitars and doing singer/songwriter songs. I wouldn’t want it to be lost that at that time very few people were mixing Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska and punk rock or any of that. You either liked one or the other. I believe liking the Rolling Stones was a sin in my circle of friends at this time. The internet hadn’t been there to absolve us of such sins yet.

There were a few people who liked these mixes of genres and took in everything instead of shunning things. They took it all in and received the transmissions that spoke to their hearts rather than thinking of what was allowed or safe. One of these was a guy who once set fire to bars in the Lower East Side, had things tied inside his dreadlocked hair, and fronted one of the wildest punk rock bands since The New York Dolls… And then says he has a singer/songwriter record coming? Mercy on our souls…

The Fine Art of Self Destruction opened up a new room in Jesse Malin’s world. And maybe, unknowingly at the time, opened up doors for many others who would follow in the future, myself included.

Jesse Malin and Ryan Adams were two of the first people in the forefront of showing that you could sing songs on records in a new way for punk rockers. The songs on The Fine Art of Self Destruction were punk in spirit yet broken and delicate in execution. These are beautiful songs about people in an in between, nocturnal world who “moved to Brooklyn”, back when that meant something, and people who “come so hard but their songs are so slow.” Those were the people I knew. That was a lot of people. And they felt like they were my songs, not that I wrote them, or could’ve, but that they belonged to me in my world. Jesse put those characters in songs that could sit with you on the drives next to Nebraska and Closing Time when you drove home at night.

I don’t think without Jesse making that bold move of doing exactly what he wanted instead of what was expected that I would’ve been here doing what I do now. I think there are a lot of people who could say the same. It’s not that we never heard music like this, we just didn’t know “we” could do it too. You didn’t have to be Dylan, or Bruce, or Tom Waits. You could be a punk rocker who knew three chords and had a story to tell and that was enough.

I also believe that there was no better person to produce this record than Ryan Adams, even though he may have cheated by knowing five or six chords to our three, but he knew what needed to happen with this record. He was in tune and tapped into the spirit. There was a magic Jesse and Ryan both caught on The Fine Art… And I think we’re all better for it.

-Brian Fallon