Former MTV VJ and New Jersey native Matt Pinfield has been “incapacitated” after suffering a stroke, his family said.
Pinfield, 63, had the incident in Los Angeles on Jan. 6 and is incapable of moving or making cognitive decisions, according to court documents obtained by the Asbury Park Press.
His daughters, Jessica and Maya Pinfield, are petitioning the court for a temporary conservatorship and asking that the court not give his girlfriend Kara Brown any decision-making power.
Los Angeles radio station KCSN said earlier this month that Pinfield was taking a leave of absence for health reasons.
Pinfield began DJing out of his family home in East Brunswick and on college radio at Rutgers. He gained a following spinning records at the Melody Bar in New Brunswick in the 1980s and ’90s. At the same time, he was the program director of Eatontown’s WHTG-FM, which became a renowned alternative rock station.
Between 1995 and 1999, he hosted “120 Minutes” — another alternative rock launching pad — and other programs on MTV. From 2001 to 2006, he was the vice president of A&R and artist development for Columbia Records.
He’s since been a radio personality in a number of cities, an occasional TV host and has made frequent appearances as a talking head in documentaries.
“I found my calling by the time I was in kindergarten,” he wrote in his autobiography “All These Things That I’ve Done: My Insane, Improbable Rock Life.”
“All I wanted to do was listen to records and get other people as excited about them as I was.”
