Gavin DeGraw Attacked Outside His Club

Gavin DeGraw, the hook-savvy singer and songwriter, was recovering from a broken nose at Bellevue Hospital Center on Tuesday which he said he suffered when a group of men assaulted him on the Lower East Side, his publicist said.

Mr. DeGraw, 34, was taken to Bellevue hospital at 4:15 a.m. Monday, where he told the police as many as three men had attacked him shortly after he left "The National Underground", a bar at 159 East Houston Street, a law enforcement official said.

The publicist, Fran Curtis, said the singer not only had a broken nose, but had suffered a concussion, as well as cuts and bruises.

No one had been arrested in the assault and the motive remained unclear, the police said. None of his belongings were taken.

Mr. DeGraw told investigators the men had attacked him after he left the club, which he owns with his brother, Joey DeGraw, who is also a musician. He told the police he had spent the night drinking with friends, the official said.

Mr. DeGraw did not call the police immediately after the attack, the official said. Instead he walked across the East Village, heading up First Avenue to 19th Street, where a southbound taxi knocked him over as he stood in the middle of the avenue, his shirt ripped and his face bloodied. Although he did not sustain serious injuries from his encounter with the taxi, a passerby saw the accident and called an ambulance and the medics took him to the hospital.

Investigators do not know precisely where the attack occurred, and they were seeking a second interview with Mr. DeGraw to get a clearer account, the official said.

Detectives have tried to reconstruct Mr. DeGraw’s movements with footage from surveillance cameras, the official said. One video captured Mr. DeGraw at 3:26 a.m. on Monday as he walked alone from the bar near Allen and Houston Streets. He wore a ripped shirt but did not appear to be bleeding. At 3:48 a.m. a second camera filmed him as he walked on First Avenue, between Third and Fourth Streets. Then at 4:01 a.m. he appeared to be bloodied and injured when a camera filmed him walking on the west side of First Avenue, near Seventh Street.

Mr. DeGraw became a pop-rock star in 2003, when his debut album Chariot (J Records) yielded several hit singles, among them “I Don’t Want to Be,” which reached the No. 1 on the Billboard Mainstream Top 40 chart and later became the theme song for the television show “One Tree Hill.” His new album, “Sweeter,” is due out on Sept. 20.

Still hospitalized on Tuesday afternoon, Mr. DeGraw canceled a concert at the performing arts center in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., but he had not yet called off a performance at Jones Beach on Friday.