Almost Grown
A New York Memoir
$38.36
- Hardcover
272 pages
- Release Date
12 July 2026
Summary
“New York City is the center of the universe, and there is no New York City without Jesse Malin.” -Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day
JESSE MALIN IS A “GRITTY TROUBADOUR OF THE STREETS” and “fearless storyteller” who tours internationally, and collaborates with artists like Bruce Springsteen, Green Day, Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead, and Lucinda Williams. Malin went from playing CBGB at age thirteen to Madison Square Garden in his twenties. His first solo album, The Fine Art of Sel…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781636142876 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 1636142877 |
| Author: | Jesse Malin, Debra Devi |
| Publisher: | Akashic Books,U.S. |
| Imprint: | Akashic Books,U.S. |
| Format: | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages: | 272 |
| Release Date: | 12 July 2026 |
| Weight: | 198g |
| Dimensions: | 3mm x 14mm x 22mm |
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Critics Review
Almost Grown is many things. At first blush, it’s Jesse Malin’s life story … The book is also a love letter to the desperate New York City of the 70s and 80s, a paved maze of rats, manhole steam, danger, graffiti, and boiling tensions, lit by neon hope and flickering streetlit squalor. The book almost reads like the notes to a lost Scorsese film … It’s a history, filled with cool info nuggets and anecdotes … Most of all: Almost Grown is important. Every music school should assign this to their teenage students. Jesse tells an essential story of the fragility and randomness of life, of the benefits of sidestepping the norms and the rules, of the glamour that can be found in the dingiest ruts. Of the need for persistence, passion, and stubbornness. Of knowing when to rebel and when to roll with it.– “Support Life and Music”
Queens native and street-level rock troubadour Jesse Malin has a story that demands to be told in full … Almost Grown … traces Malin’s life from a scrappy kid in a broken home to CBGB at thirteen, Madison Square Garden in his twenties, and collaborations with Bruce Springsteen, Billie Joe Armstrong, and Lucinda Williams. It reads less like a rock memoir and more like The Basketball Diaries with a guitar slung over its shoulder.– “That Eric Alper”
[M]uch of [his memoir] is devoted to growing up in New York and New Jersey and the many people, ‘the beautiful characters, ’ he has met and lost along the way … Almost Grown is full of anecdotes of life lived on the edge and opening for or touring with the likes of Green Day and the Ramones.– “Booklist”
Almost Grown stands toe to toe with The Basketball Diaries as a story about growing up in New York–Lucinda Williams
Jesse Malin
Jesse Malin
Jesse Malin is a “gritty troubadour of the streets” (Rolling Stone) who tours internationally and collaborates with artists like Bruce Springsteen, Green Day, Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead, and Lucinda Williams. Malin went from playing CBGB at age thirteen to Madison Square Garden in his early twenties; from crashing the stage with his friends during Fear’s infamous Saturday Night Live performance to playing his own songs on The Tonight Show and CBS Saturday Morning.
His body of work has garnered praise from Rolling Stone, Uncut, Paste, American Songwriter, Spin, the Times (UK), Classic Rock Magazine, No Depression, Pitchfork, Brooklyn Vegan, and many more.
His autobiographical play, Jesse Malin’s Silver Manhattan, debuted at the Gramercy Theatre in 2025.
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