Latest news with #BusterPoindexter
Chicago Tribune
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
David Johansen, singer from the seminal punk band the New York Dolls, dies at 75
NEW YORK — David Johansen, the wiry, gravelly-voiced singer and last surviving member of the glam and protopunk band the New York Dolls who later performed as his campy, pompadoured alter ego, Buster Poindexter, has died. He was 75. Johansen died Friday at his home in New York City, Jeff Kilgour, a family spokesperson told The Associated Press. It was revealed in early 2025 that he had stage 4 cancer and a brain tumor. The New York Dolls were forerunners of punk and the band's style — teased hair, women's clothes and lots of makeup — inspired the glam movement that took up residence in heavy metal a decade later in bands like Faster Pussycat and Mötley Crüe. 'When you're an artist, the main thing you want to do is inspire people, so if you succeed in doing that, it's pretty gratifying,' Johansen told The Knoxville News-Sentinel in 2011. 'Mutant children of the hydrogen age' Rolling Stone once called the Dolls 'the mutant children of the hydrogen age' and Vogue called them the 'darlings of downtown style, tarted-up toughs in boas and heels.' 'The New York Dolls were more than musicians; they were a phenomenon. They drew on old rock 'n' roll, big-city blues, show tunes, the Rolling Stones and girl groups, and that was just for starters,' Bill Bentley wrote in 'Smithsonian Rock and Roll: Live and Unseen.' The band never found commercial success and was torn by internal strife and drug addictions, breaking up after two albums by the middle of the decade. In 2004, former Smiths frontman and Dolls admirer Morrissey convinced Johansen and other surviving members to regroup for the Meltdown Festival in England, leading to three more studio albums. In the '80s, Johansen assumed the persona of Buster Poindexter, a pompadour-styled lounge lizard who had a hit with the kitschy party single 'Hot, Hot, Hot' in 1987. He also appeared in such movies as 'Candy Mountain,' 'Let It Ride,' 'Married to the Mob' and had a memorable turn as the Ghost of Christmas Past in Bill Murray-led hit 'Scrooged.' Johansen was in 2023 the subject of Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi's documentary 'Personality Crisis: One Night Only,' which mixed footage of his two-night stand at the Café Carlyle in January 2020 with flashbacks through his wildly varied career and intimate interviews. 'I used to think about my voice like: 'What's it gonna sound like? What's it going to be when I do this song?' And I'd get myself into a knot about it,' Johansen told The Associated Press in 2023. 'At some point in my life, I decided: 'Just sing the (expletive) song. With whatever you got.' To me, I go on stage and whatever mood I'm in, I just claw my way out of it, essentially.' Named after a toy hospital David Roger Johansen was born to a large, working class Catholic family on Staten Island, his father an insurance salesman. He filled notebooks with poems and lyrics as a young man and liked a lot of different music — R&B, Cuban, Janis Joplin and Otis Redding. The Dolls — the final original lineup included guitarists Sylvain Sylvain and Johnny Thunders, bassist Arthur Kane and drummer Jerry Nolan — rubbed shoulders with Lou Reed and Andy Warhol in the Lower East Side of Manhattan the early 1970s. They took their name from a toy hospital in Manhattan and were expected to take over the throne vacated by the Velvet Underground in the early 1970s. But neither of their first two albums — 1973's 'New York Dolls,' produced by Todd Rundgren, nor 'Too Much Too Soon' a year later produced by Shadow Morton — charted. 'They're definitely a band to keep both eyes and ears on,' read the review of their debut album in Rolling Stone, complementary of their 'strange combination of high pop-star drag and ruthless street arrogance.' Their songs included 'Personality Crisis' ('You got it while it was hot/But now frustration and heartache is what you got'), 'Looking for a Kiss' (I need a fix and a kiss') and a 'Frankenstein' (Is it a crime/For you to fall in love with Frankenstein?') Their glammed look was meant to embrace fans with a nonjudgmental, noncategorical space. 'I just wanted to be very welcoming,' Johansen said in the documentary, ''cause the way this society is, it was set up very strict — straight, gay, vegetarian, whatever… I just kind of wanted to kind of like bring those walls down, have a party kind of thing.' Rolling Stone, reviewing their second album, called them 'the best hard-rock band in America right now' and called Johansen a 'talented showman, with an amazing ability to bring characters to life as a lyricist.' Decades later, the Dolls' influence would be cherished. Rolling Stone would list their self-titled debut album at No. 301 of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, writing 'it's hard to imagine the Ramones or the Replacements or a thousand other trash-junky bands without them.' Blondie's Chris Stein in the Nolan biography 'Stranded in the Jungle' wrote that the Dolls were 'opening a door for the rest of us to walk through.' Tommy Lee of Motley Crue called them early inspirations. 'Johansen is one of those singers, to be a little paradoxical, who is technically better and more versatile than he sounds,' said the Los Angeles Times in 2023. 'His voice has always been a bit of a foghorn — higher or lower according to age, habits and the song at hand — but it has a rare emotional urgency. 'Dirty angels with painted faces' The Dolls, representing rock at it's most debauched, were divisive. In 1973, they won the Creem magazine poll categories as the year's best and worst new group. They were nominated several times for The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame but never got in. 'Dirty angels with painted faces, the Dolls opened the box usually reserved for Pandora and unleashed the infant furies that would grow to become Punk,' wrote Nina Antonia in the book 'Too Much, Too Soon.' 'As if this legacy wasn't enough for one band, they also trashed sexual boundaries, savaged glitter and set new standards for rock 'n' roll excess.' By the end of their first run, the Dolls were being managed by legendary promoter Malcolm McLaren, who would later introduce the Sex Pistols to the Dolls' music. Culture critic Greil Marcus in 'Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century' writes the Dolls played him some of their music and he couldn't believe how bad they were. 'The fact that they were so bad suddenly hit me with such force that I began to realize, ''I'm laughing, I'm talking to these guys, I'm looking at them, and I'm laughing with them; and I was suddenly impressed by the fact that I was no longer concerned with whether you could play well,' McLaren said. 'The Dolls really impressed upon me that there was something else. There was something wonderful. I thought how brilliant they were to be this bad.' After the first demise of the Dolls, Johansen started his own group, the David Johansen band, before reinventing himself yet again in the 1980s as Buster Poindexter. Inspired by his passion for the blues and arcane American folk music Johansen also formed the group The Harry Smiths, and toured the world performing the songs of Howlin' Wolf with Hubert Sumlin and Levon Helm. He also hosted the weekly radio show 'The Mansion of Fun' on Sirius XM and painted. He is survived by his wife, Mara Hennessey, and a stepdaughter, Leah Hennessey.
CNN
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
David Johansen, singer from the seminal punk band the New York Dolls, dead at 75
David Johansen, the wiry, gravelly-voiced singer and last surviving member of 1970s glam and protopunk band the New York Dolls who later performed as his campy, pompadoured alter ego, Buster Poindexter, has died. He was 75. Johansen died Friday at his home in New York City, according to Rolling Stone, citing a family spokesperson, the Associated Press reported on Saturday. It was revealed in early 2025 that he had stage 4 cancer and a brain tumor. The New York Dolls were forerunners of punk and the band's style – teased hair, women's clothes and lots of makeup – inspired the glam movement that took up residence in heavy metal a decade later in bands like Faster Pussycat and Mötley Crüe. 'When you're an artist, the main thing you want to do is inspire people, so if you succeed in doing that, it's pretty gratifying,' Johansen told The Knoxville News-Sentinel in 2011. Rolling Stone once called the Dolls 'the mutant children of the hydrogen age' and Vogue called them the 'darlings of downtown style, tarted-up toughs in boas and heels.' 'The New York Dolls were more than musicians; they were a phenomenon. They drew on old rock 'n' roll, big-city blues, show tunes, the Rolling Stones and girl groups, and that was just for starters,' Bill Bentley wrote in 'Smithsonian Rock and Roll: Live and Unseen.' The band never found commercial success and was torn by internal strife and drug addictions, breaking up after two albums by the middle of the '70s. In 2004, former Smiths frontman and Dolls admirer Morrissey convinced Johansen and other surviving members to regroup for the Meltdown Festival in England, leading to three more studio albums. In the '80s, Johansen assumed the persona of Buster Poindexter, a pompadour-styled lounge lizard who had a hit with the kitschy party single 'Hot, Hot, Hot' in 1987. He also appeared in such movies as 'Candy Mountain,' 'Let It Ride,' 'Married to the Mob' and had a memorable turn as the Ghost of Christmas Past in the Bill Murray-led hit 'Scrooged.' Johansen was in 2023 the subject of Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi's documentary 'Personality Crisis: One Night Only,' which mixed footage of his two-night stand at the Café Carlyle in January 2020 with flashbacks through his wildly varied career and intimate interviews. 'I used to think about my voice like: 'What's it gonna sound like? What's it going to be when I do this song?' And I'd get myself into a knot about it,' Johansen told the Associated Press in 2023. 'At some point in my life, I decided: 'Just sing the (expletive) song. With whatever you got.' To me, I go on stage and whatever mood I'm in, I just claw my way out of it, essentially.' David Roger Johansen was born to a large, working class Catholic family on Staten Island, his father an insurance salesman. He filled notebooks with poems and lyrics as a young man and liked a lot of different music – R&B, Cuban, Janis Joplin and Otis Redding. The Dolls – the final original lineup included guitarists Sylvain Sylvain and Johnny Thunders, bassist Arthur Kane and drummer Jerry Nolan – rubbed shoulders with Lou Reed and Andy Warhol in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the early 1970s. They took their name from a toy hospital in Manhattan and were expected to take over the throne vacated by the Velvet Underground in the early 1970s. But neither of their first two albums – 1973's 'New York Dolls,' produced by Todd Rundgren, nor 'Too Much Too Soon' a year later produced by Shadow Morton – charted. 'They're definitely a band to keep both eyes and ears on,' read the review of their debut album in Rolling Stone, complementary of their 'strange combination of high pop-star drag and ruthless street arrogance.' Their songs included 'Personality Crisis' ('You got it while it was hot/But now frustration and heartache is what you got'), 'Looking for a Kiss' ('I need a fix and a kiss') and 'Frankenstein' ('Is it a crime/For you to fall in love with Frankenstein?') Their glammed look was meant to embrace fans with a nonjudgmental, noncategorical space. 'I just wanted to be very welcoming,' Johansen said in the documentary, ''cause the way this society is, it was set up very strict – straight, gay, vegetarian, whatever… I just kind of wanted to kind of like bring those walls down, have a party kind of thing.' Rolling Stone, reviewing their second album, called them 'the best hard-rock band in America right now' and called Johansen a 'talented showman, with an amazing ability to bring characters to life as a lyricist.' Decades later, the Dolls' influence would be cherished. Rolling Stone would list their self-titled debut album at No. 301 of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, writing 'it's hard to imagine the Ramones or the Replacements or a thousand other trash-junky bands without them.' Blondie's Chris Stein in the Nolan biography 'Stranded in the Jungle' wrote that the Dolls were 'opening a door for the rest of us to walk through.' Tommy Lee of Mötley Crüe called them early inspirations. 'Johansen is one of those singers, to be a little paradoxical, who is technically better and more versatile than he sounds,' said the Los Angeles Times in 2023. 'His voice has always been a bit of a foghorn – higher or lower according to age, habits and the song at hand – but it has a rare emotional urgency.' The Dolls, representing rock at its most debauched, were divisive. In 1973, they won the Creem magazine poll categories as both the year's best and worst new group. They were nominated several times for The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame but never got in. 'Dirty angels with painted faces, the Dolls opened the box usually reserved for Pandora and unleashed the infant furies that would grow to become Punk,' wrote Nina Antonia in the book 'Too Much, Too Soon.' 'As if this legacy wasn't enough for one band, they also trashed sexual boundaries, savaged glitter and set new standards for rock 'n' roll excess.' By the end of their first run, the Dolls were being managed by legendary promoter Malcolm McLaren, who would later introduce the Sex Pistols to the Dolls' music. Culture critic Greil Marcus in 'Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century' writes the Dolls played him some of their music and he couldn't believe how bad they were. 'The fact that they were so bad suddenly hit me with such force that I began to realize, ''I'm laughing, I'm talking to these guys, I'm looking at them, and I'm laughing with them; and I was suddenly impressed by the fact that I was no longer concerned with whether you could play well,' McLaren said. 'The Dolls really impressed upon me that there was something else. There was something wonderful. I thought how brilliant they were to be this bad.' After the first demise of the Dolls, Johansen started his own group, the David Johansen band, before reinventing himself yet again in the 1980s as Buster Poindexter. Inspired by his passion for the blues and arcane American folk music, Johansen also formed the group The Harry Smiths, and toured the world performing the songs of Howlin' Wolf with Hubert Sumlin and Levon Helm. He also hosted the weekly radio show 'The Mansion of Fun' on Sirius XM and painted. He is survived by his wife, Mara Hennessey, and a stepdaughter, Leah Hennessey.
Yahoo
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
David Johansen, influential singer for proto-punk New York Dolls, dead at 75
By Frank McGurty NEW YORK (Reuters) - David Johansen, the former lead singer for the New York Dolls, whose unvarnished sound and flamboyant style helped inspire punk and glam rock in the 1970s, has died at age 75, his wife Mara Hennessey said on Saturday. "We had a marvelous adventure of a life together," she said, confirming that Johansen had died on Friday afternoon. "He was an extraordinary man." See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. Johansen, perhaps best known for the 1987 party hit "Hot Hot Hot" after he reinvented himself as the lounge singer Buster Poindexter, had been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and had a brain tumor, his daughter Leah Hennessey revealed last month. He had been dealing with cancer for a decade, she wrote in an online appeal for donations to help defray the cost of his medical care. His condition had worsened about five years ago, she said. A native of New York City, Johansen formed the Dolls in 1971 with bassist Arthur Kane, drummer Billy Murcia and guitarists Johnny Thunders and Rick Rivets, who was replaced by Sylvain Sylvain in 1972. Johansen was the last survivor from the band's classic lineup. In its early years, the band released two albums, "New York Dolls" (1973), produced by Todd Rundgren, and "Too Much Too Soon" (1974), with Johansen and Thunders writing most of the material. Neither of the albums were big sellers despite decent reviews. But the Dolls' buzzsaw sound and a style that featured heavy makeup, teased-out hair, high heels and spandex caught the attention of tastemakers and had an outsized influence on rock music in the 1970s and beyond. Critics say the band anticipated the emergence of punk, inspiring bands such as the Ramones, the Damned and the Sex Pistols, while fueling the genres of glam rock and heavy metal. Johansen had "guts" and "oozed style," said Todd Abramson, a music historian and DJ who hosts the Todd-O-Phonic Todd show on WFMU radio in Jersey City, New Jersey. "As ridiculous as some (or most) of his attire was, he made it work! You and I would look like absolute idiots but he looked cool," Abramson said. "And he was able to sound tougher with that New York accent and attitude wearing a dress than most people could have in jeans and a biker jacket." Morrissey, the singer-songwriter who fronted the Smiths and was once president of a New York Dolls fan club, posted a tribute to Johansen on his Morrissey Central website, captioned "RIP" and "NOSOTROS TE AMAMOS!" or "We love you." After the demise of the Dolls, Johansen performed an eclectic mix of jump blues, swing and other genres under the moniker Buster Poindexter, appearing frequently on "Saturday Night Live." Later, he focused on the blues with his band the Harry Smiths, and acted in television and films, notably appearing with Bill Murray in "Scrooged" (1988) as the Ghost of Christmas Past. Johansen's own life was the subject of a 2023 documentary co-directed by Martin Scorcese and David Tedeschi. The film -centered around a New York cabaret performance by Johansen, interspersed with archival footage of the Dolls - highlights the range of his musical tastes. "At his core he was a fan (and not just of music), and he wanted to share his passion with as many people as he could," Abramson said. (Reporting By Frank McGurty in New York; Editing by Nia Williams)
Reuters
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Reuters
David Johansen, influential singer for proto-punk New York Dolls, dead at 75
NEW YORK, March 1 (Reuters) - David Johansen, the former lead singer for the New York Dolls, whose unvarnished sound and flamboyant style helped inspire punk and glam rock in the 1970s, has died at age 75, his wife Mara Hennessey said on Saturday. "We had a marvelous adventure of a life together," she said, confirming that Johansen had died on Friday afternoon. "He was an extraordinary man." Johansen, perhaps best known for the 1987 party hit "Hot Hot Hot" after he reinvented himself as the lounge singer Buster Poindexter, had been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and had a brain tumor, his daughter Leah Hennessey revealed last month. He had been dealing with cancer for a decade, she wrote in an online appeal for donations to help defray the cost of his medical care. His condition had worsened about five years ago, she said. A native of New York City, Johansen formed the Dolls in 1971 with bassist Arthur Kane, drummer Billy Murcia and guitarists Johnny Thunders and Rick Rivets, who was replaced by Sylvain Sylvain in 1972. Johansen was the last survivor from the band's classic lineup. In its early years, the band released two albums, "New York Dolls" (1973), produced by Todd Rundgren, and "Too Much Too Soon" (1974), with Johansen and Thunders writing most of the material. Neither of the albums were big sellers despite decent reviews. But the Dolls' buzzsaw sound and a style that featured heavy makeup, teased-out hair, high heels and spandex caught the attention of tastemakers and had an outsized influence on rock music in the 1970s and beyond. Critics say the band anticipated the emergence of punk, inspiring bands such as the Ramones, the Damned and the Sex Pistols, while fueling the genres of glam rock and heavy metal. Johansen had "guts" and "oozed style," said Todd Abramson, a music historian and DJ who hosts the Todd-O-Phonic Todd show on WFMU radio in Jersey City, New Jersey. "As ridiculous as some (or most) of his attire was, he made it work! You and I would look like absolute idiots but he looked cool," Abramson said. "And he was able to sound tougher with that New York accent and attitude wearing a dress than most people could have in jeans and a biker jacket." Morrissey, the singer-songwriter who fronted the Smiths and was once president of a New York Dolls fan club, posted a tribute to Johansen on his Morrissey Central website, captioned "RIP" and "NOSOTROS TE AMAMOS!" or "We love you." After the demise of the Dolls, Johansen performed an eclectic mix of jump blues, swing and other genres under the moniker Buster Poindexter, appearing frequently on "Saturday Night Live." Later, he focused on the blues with his band the Harry Smiths, and acted in television and films, notably appearing with Bill Murray in "Scrooged" (1988) as the Ghost of Christmas Past. Johansen's own life was the subject of a 2023 documentary co-directed by Martin Scorcese and David Tedeschi. The film -centered around a New York cabaret performance by Johansen, interspersed with archival footage of the Dolls - highlights the range of his musical tastes. "At his core he was a fan (and not just of music), and he wanted to share his passion with as many people as he could," Abramson said.
Voice of America
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Voice of America
David Johansen, singer from New York Dolls punk band, dies at 75
David Johansen, the last surviving member of the glam and protopunk band the New York Dolls who later performed as his campy, pompadoured alter ego, Buster Poindexter, has died. He was 75. Johansen died Friday at his home in New York City, according to Rolling Stone, citing a family spokesperson. It was revealed in early 2025 that he had stage 4 cancer and a brain tumor. The New York Dolls were forerunners of punk and the band's style — teased hair, women's clothes and lots of makeup — inspired the glam movement that took up residence in heavy metal a decade later in bands like Faster Pussycat and Motley Crue. "When you're an artist, the main thing you want to do is inspire people, so if you succeed in doing that, it's pretty gratifying," Johansen told The Knoxville News-Sentinel in 2011. Rolling Stone once called the Dolls "the mutant children of the hydrogen age" and Vogue called them the "darlings of downtown style, tarted-up toughs in boas and heels." "The New York Dolls were more than musicians; they were a phenomenon. They drew on old rock 'n' roll, big-city blues, show tunes, the Rolling Stones and girl groups, and that was just for starters," Bill Bentley wrote in "Smithsonian Rock and Roll: Live and Unseen." The band never found commercial success and was torn by internal strife and drug addictions, breaking up after two albums by the middle of the decade. In 2004, former Smiths frontman and Dolls admirer Morrissey convinced Johansen and other surviving members to regroup for the Meltdown Festival in England, leading to three more studio albums. In the 1980s, Johansen assumed the persona of Buster Poindexter, a pompadour-styled lounge lizard who had a hit with the kitschy party single "Hot, Hot, Hot" in 1987. He also appeared in such movies as "Candy Mountain," "Let It Ride," "Married to the Mob" and had a memorable turn as the Ghost of Christmas Past in Bill Murray-led hit "Scrooged." Johansen was in 2023 the subject of Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi's documentary "Personality Crisis: One Night Only," which mixed footage of his two-night stand at the Cafe Carlyle in January 2020 with flashbacks through his wildly varied career and intimate interviews. "I used to think about my voice like: 'What's it gonna sound like? What's it going to be when I do this song?' And I'd get myself into a knot about it," Johansen told The Associated Press in 2023. "At some point in my life, I decided: 'Just sing the (expletive) song. With whatever you got.' To me, I go on stage and whatever mood I'm in, I just claw my way out of it, essentially." David Roger Johansen was born to a large, working-class Catholic family on Staten Island, his father an insurance salesman. He filled notebooks with poems and lyrics as a young man and liked a lot of different music — R&B, Cuban, Janis Joplin and Otis Redding. The Dolls — the final original lineup included guitarists Sylvain Sylvain and Johnny Thunders, bassist Arthur Kane and drummer Jerry Nolan — rubbed shoulders with Lou Reed and Andy Warhol in the Lower East Side of Manhattan the early 1970s. They took their name from a toy hospital in Manhattan and were expected to take over the throne vacated by the Velvet Underground in the early 1970s. But neither of their first two albums — 1973's "New York Dolls," produced by Todd Rundgren, nor "Too Much Too Soon" a year later produced by Shadow Morton — charted. "They're definitely a band to keep both eyes and ears on," read the review of their debut album in Rolling Stone, complimentary of their "strange combination of high pop-star drag and ruthless street arrogance." Their songs included "Personality Crisis" ("You got it while it was hot/But now frustration and heartache is what you got"), "Looking for a Kiss" (I need a fix and a kiss") and a "Frankenstein" (Is it a crime/For you to fall in love with Frankenstein?") Their glammed look was meant to embrace fans with a nonjudgmental, noncategorical space. "I just wanted to be very welcoming," Johansen said in the documentary, "'cause the way this society is, it was set up very strict — straight, gay, vegetarian, whatever... I just kind of wanted to kind of like bring those walls down, have a party kind of thing." Rolling Stone magazine, reviewing their second album, called them "the best hard-rock band in America right now" and called the wiry, gravelly-voiced Johansen a "talented showman, with an amazing ability to bring characters to life as a lyricist." Decades later, the Dolls' influence would be cherished. Rolling Stone would list their self-titled debut album at Number 301 of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, writing "it's hard to imagine the Ramones or the Replacements or a thousand other trash-junky bands without them." The Dolls, representing rock at its most debauched, were divisive. In 1973, they won the Creem magazine poll categories as the year's best and worst new group. They were nominated several times for The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame but never got in. By the end of their first run, the Dolls were being managed by legendary promoter Malcolm McLaren, who would later introduce the Sex Pistols to the Dolls' music. Culture critic Greil Marcus in "Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century" writes the Dolls played him some of their music and he couldn't believe how bad they were. After the first demise of the Dolls, Johansen started his own group, the David Johansen band, before reinventing himself yet again in the 1980s as Buster Poindexter. He is survived by his wife, Mara Hennessey, and a stepdaughter, Leah Hennessey.
