J MascisIllustration by João Fazenda
When DinosaurJr. goes out on tour, JMascis, the band’s guitarist and principal singer and songwriter, takes along a bicycle. “Biking has helped me get through the pandemic,” he said on a recent sunny Sunday afternoon, in his halting monotone. “My only social media is Strava. This year is my most miles ever. I’m approaching five thousand.”
He was standing with his bike on a patch of lawn near Strawberry Fields, in Central Park, while his wife, Luisa, and his fourteen-year-old son, Rory, played in the grass with a friend’s miniature Dachshund. Passersby made a fuss over the puppy but not over Mascis, in spite of his glum-wizard bearing. He has long white hair and a gray beard, and wore pink-rimmed glasses that complemented his purple helmet. “I have lots of bikes,” he said. “This is my tour bike.” It was all steel—better for the wear and tear of the load-out—and had pedals patterned with images of doughnuts.
He and his family had spent the night in a hotel next to the Beacon Theatre. Bob Dylan was in town. “He seems like he doesn’t ever want to go home,” Mascis said. “I understand that now, as I get older. Being home for two years is hard. I’d never done it, not since high school.”
DinosaurJr. (Mascis, the bassist Lou Barlow, and the drummer known as Murph) had performed in Brooklyn the previous night. “It feels weird but good,” he said, about playing in front of real people again. “Last night was the best one. There was even a stage dive.” Earlier in the year, after releasing the album “Sweep It Into Space,” the band had streamed a live performance from an empty park. “I was exhausted—putting out so much energy without any coming back.”
Mascis lives in Amherst, where he grew up. When he was a teen-ager, he sometimes came down to the city to see hardcore bands like U.K.Subs, Anti-Nowhere League, and Minor Threat. He had his own hardcore band, Deep Wound, but then formed Dinosaur, in 1984. The group quickly wore out its welcome at the clubs in Massachusetts. “We were really loud and had no fans,” Mascis said. “It was a bad combination.”
Eventually Mascis moved to New York, and the band began building a following. He enrolled at Hunter College—“only because my father would pay for me to exist if I went to college”—and later rented an apartment on East Twenty-second Street. “I had a good system,” he said. “Two days here, five in Amherst. It gave me the sensation of moving. I got more bored here, in the city. My friends were always working. They had to have too many jobs, to be able to afford to live here. I’d hang out all day watching TV, waiting.”
This time around, in the city, he’d done some cycling, using Google Maps to piece together viable routes, but not much else. “I don’t like museums,” he said. “I feel instantly tired. I check out guitar shops, but it’s weird now. Everything’s weird.”
Weird for sure. Travel, people, cities, the news—
“Just, guitar shops.”
Luisa and Rory left to get some pizza. Mascis set off on the Park loop, pedalling past clots of pedestrians and other cyclists. He had hardly ever spent time in the Park. “It always felt stupid,” he said. “It seems fake. I can just go to Amherst and walk in the woods.”
He may never have hung out atStrawberry Fields, but he remembered when John Lennon was shot, in 1980—or really just the relief of being let out of school early the next day, amid the grief of a hippie town. “Now everybody cries when they hear ‘Imagine,’” he said. “I don’t really feel anything. What makes me tear up is ‘Can’t Tell No One,’ by Negative Approach.”
Round and round went the doughnuts as he swung past the wreckage of Lasker Rink and around the top of the Park. Back on the West Side, a few miles closer to five thousand and within earshot of a man playing the “Godfather” theme on a dan bau, he stopped to rest.
In 1995, at the height of Dinosaur’s popularity and MTV ubiquity, he recalled, “I was just bummed out in general. Depressed. Jaded by music. It was the classic ‘I’ve got some money, but I still feel terrible.’” A friend told him to check out Mata Amritanandamayi, the Hindu spiritual teacher, known as Amma—the hugging saint. She had an audience at a Universalist church a few blocks from Strawberry Fields. “It was crowded and crazy. There was a really long line. I bailed and went to see her a week later in Boston instead. It was a lot more mellow.” He became a devotee. “In the late nineties, I followed her around on tour. I’d book shows to go where she’d be.”
He went on, “I’ve had over a hundred hugs. They’re all different. Sometimes I cry, sometimes I’m happy. It’s kind of whatever you need. Whatever you’re ready for.”♦
