David Johansen 1950 -2025
When the New York Dolls burst forth upon an unsuspecting public via the release of their eponymous album debut, they were draggy, druggy, and degenerate, resembling a team of transvestite hookers. Their startling appearance rattled a world of "Rock & Roll" that thought it had seen and been it all. Bob Harris described their appearance on his show The Old Grey Whistle Test as "Mock Rock," a slogan opportunity they should have stolen with a knowing wink. Raw and in your face in the way that The Velvet Underground and The Stooges were, the Dolls took no prisoners and startled all of the mostly empty horses. Fronted by the glamourous androgyny of David Johansen in high heels, who claimed he wanted to look like the French movie star Simone Signoret, he actually resembled Lauren Bacall in a beret, after many nights on cold and slippery, dirty tiles.
Cribbing their name from the building opposite where they used to rehearse, "The New York Dolls Hospital," where kids took their damaged dolls to be repaired, proved a strangely befitting choice. Their sound was loud, nasty, and aggressive, something that didn't go amiss when Todd Rundgren, a man known for his aural elegance, captured it, warts, rhinestones, and all, in the eight days that it took to record. Despite decent reviews it didn't sell. Their stripped-back angry energy was an unintentional rallying call for what would later become known as a Punk, but in those days, they stuck out like a bruised and throbbing sore thumb. Songs like "Personality Crisis," "Jet Boy," and "Trash" perfectly exemplify their ragged, jagged grace. Formed from the ashes of a Bronx-based band Actress whose members Johnny Thunders and Billy Murcia decided to create a new band. But when Thunders decided against being the frontman, David Johansen, who'd previously played in a few Staten Island garage bands, was recruited. He was born there in 1950. The original line-up, including Sylvain Sylvain and Arthur "Killer" Kane, performed their first gig on Christmas Eve at the Endicott Hotel, which was by then a shelter for the homeless.
Invited to the UK to support the Faces at Wembley in 1972 and to undertake a handful of shows, disaster befell the band when, at a party in London, Billy Murcia overdosed. Placed in the bath and fed coffee, he asphyxiated. The journalist Peter Burton (1945-2011), then Rod Stewart's P.A., remembered the party but had no idea till he heard the following morning what had transpired. "There were plenty of strung-out people there. A passed-out drummer in a bath didn't seem much of a cause for concern."
The tour was abandoned, and a teenage Stephen Patrick Morrissey never got to redeem his ticket for their canceled show at Manchester's Hard Rock. He'd ran their UK Fan Club. and penned an early book about them. The band returned to New York to consider their future, recruiting Jerry Nolan as Murcia's replacement, and secured a deal with Mercury Records.
In October 1973, they juddered an American viewing public via their appearance on The Midnight Special. Middle America dropped jaws and coffee cups and flipped channels in the days when the shock was both palpable and awesome. Eventually recording a second album, the gloriously monikered Too Much Too Soon, with the legendary Shadow Morton, on account of their adoration for the girl groups he'd worked with in the Sixties like the Shangri-La's. Again, the print reviews didn't translate into sales, but a legend was growing. Their divisive appeal was reflected in the fact that Creemmagazine awarded them Best Band of The Year and The Worst.
When burgeoning rock Svengali Malcolm MacLaren visited New York on a trip to sell his then-partner Vivienne Westwood's clothes designs, he tracked them down, became their manager, and dressed them in red leather. He claimed the new look was his idea, but Johansen later disputed that maintaining it was his. Either way, it didn't work since it effectively alienated their old fans whilst hardly attracting any new ones. There was a tour of Japan, but the drug use of Kane, Thunders, and Nolan exacerbated inner conflicts within the band. Dropped by Mercury Records in late 1975, the Dolls staggered on, more from reputation than industry support, finally bowing out at a post-Christmas gig in 1976 with Blondie at Max's Kansas City in New York.
Johansen, between 1978 and 1984, released a quartet of creatively strong but commercially underachieving albums. He successfully drifted into acting, appearing alongside Bill Murray as the Ghost of Christmas Past in Scrooged, (1988), Let It Ride with Richard Dreyfuss (1989), and Freejack with Mick Jagger and Emilio Estevez (1992)., a mere triptych of his many noteworthy screen appearances.
By the late eighties, he'd reinvented himself as Buster Poindexter, a vaudevillian persona, after the fashion of his glam contemporary Jobriath, who morphed into Cole Berlin, a gin-soaked lounge pianist. As Poindexter, he scored a modest but memorable hit with "Hot. Hot. Hot," a cover of a song by soca artist Arrow. Johansen later admitted that skirmish with success had become the bane of his life. He released Buster's Happy Hour, an album sourced and soaked in the subject of alcohol. Another followed as Buster Poindexter's Spanish Rocket Ship, rooted in salsa music. These albums were a long way from the flash and thrash of the New York Dolls.
In 2004 Morrissey was curating the Meltdown Festival at the Royal Festival Hall. His jewel in the crown was the reformation of the New York Dolls, or rather, the three left standing. Johnny Thunders died in a hotel room from a drug overdose in 1991, or a possible homicide, whilst Jerry Nolan succumbed to bacterial meningitis and a stroke, his life support being switched off in January 1992. The performance resulted in a vinyl album, a DVD, and a permanent return of the Dolls, although Arthur Kane's reprise was tragically brief. A mere twenty-two days after the glory of their reunion he died two hours after being diagnosed with leukemia and having gone to hospital in LA complaining of fatigue. He thought he'd caught flu whilst in London. Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain continued with the New York Dolls releasingthree further albums One Day It Will Please Us To Even Remember This(1996), Coz I Sez So (2009), and Dancing Backwards In High Heels (2011). It was a brave, concerted and credible comeback. They played their final gig in Scotland during a tour with Alice Cooper in 2011.
David Johansen was immortalized by Martin Scorsese in the documentary Personality Crisis: One Night Only, recordedmostly in 2020 at an intimate show at Cafe Carlyle. Released in 2023, it captures and encapsulates all his raw and ragged peacock glory, a perfect testament to an era already descending into the amber of memory and absence. His final years were beset with health issues, diligently cared for by his wife Mara Hennessey. He gradually faded from view but not from memory. In the documentary he recalls being arrested for impersonating a woman at the height of his Dollsiian notoriety. "I had to go to jail dressed like Liza Minnelli!" he drawled.
His will be a hard act to follow. There'd be little need for anyone to try since Johansen was uniquely unclassifiable, a source of inspiration and beguilement, a man for all seasons who deserves another addition. He died from cancer on the 28th of February, 2025, at his New York City home, holding hands with his wife and daughter Leah, surrounded by music, flowers, and love.