When Howie Pyro, the bassist and co-founding member of D Generation died in 2022, it shook his former D Gen bandmate Jesse Malin to the core. Last week, the New York songwriter released a tribute song to Pyro, “Hollywood Forever,” with a B-side of the Clash’s “Rudie Can’t Fail.” Malin takes the Pyro homage a step further on Wednesday with the release of an accompanying music video featuring photos of Pyro, also a popular DJ, as well as items from his vast collection of curiosities, including figurines and books on the occult.
“He would always say, if he had to go, Hollywood Forever Cemetery is the place he’d want to be buried,” Malin says in a statement. “Howie could get along with anybody. He was friends with both Johnny and Joey Ramone. Hells Angels, skinheads, drag queens, comic-book nerds, art collectors, fashionistas — they all loved him.”
Pyro, born Howard Kusten in 1960, died May 4, 2022, after a battle with liver disease. A year later, while celebrating Pyro’s memory over dinner with friends, Malin himself was struck by a rare spinal stroke, which left him paralyzed. He tells the story of his health injury and his long history with Pyro in his ongoing stage show, Silver Manhattan. Malin announced the final extension of the production, which now runs through May 10 at the Bowery Palace theater.
“My play Silver Manhattan is a love letter to New York City, and it’s also a love letter to Howie,” Malin says. “I didn’t make it to the end of that party. I ended up in the hospital for three months, but I did write this song to show him how much he meant to me. It’s our story.”
The video for the single “Hollywood Forever,” released on Little Steven’s Wicked Cool Records, was directed by Marti Wilkerson, whom Malin writes about in his just released memoir, Almost Grown. Known as the “sixth member of D Generation,” Wilkerson was the band’s unofficial documentarian. “Instead of having a guitar or mic, she had a camera. She’d be on the bar, she’d be dancing, shooting photos, she’d be on the floor, anything, doing it. And she documented those days,” Malin says. “She made the video showing all the things — the many things — from Howie’s collection of weird and obscure stuff that do exist in the bar 96 Tears.”
Performances of Malin’s Silver Manhattan run Wednesdays through Sunday. He talked about the production during a recent appearance on Little Steven’s Underground Garage Cruise where he sat for a reading of his memoir and gave a pair of celebratory live performances backed by his longtime band.
