Latest news with #DavidJohansen
Otago Daily Times
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Obituary: David Johansen, musician
American singer, songwriter and actor, David Johansen, poses for a portrait circa 1980 at The Old Waldorf in San Francisco, California. Inspired by British glam rock and inspirational to the emergence of punk rock, David Johansen was the face of influential United States band the New York Dolls. A New York native, Johansen gravitated to Andy Warhol's Factory scene. Having cut his teeth in several bands and the theatre industry, Johansen's break came in 1971 when the Dolls then singer Johnny Thunders opted to stick to his bass. Their raucous lifestyle, androgynous look and wild-eyed hard rock earned them a cult following but not commercial success. The band's last show was in December 1976, just before the many bands who had taken their cue from the Dolls look and sound started to make it big. Johansen went solo, with limited success, although his blues/swing alter ego Buster Poindexter did trouble the lower reaches of the charts and one single, a cover of Hot Hot Hot, made the US top 20. The surviving New York Dolls reformed in 2004 for a London festival, touring until 2011. Johansen was also an accomplished actor whose credits included appearances in the films Scrooged and Freejack, as well as TV shows Oz and The Equaliser. David Johansen died on February 28 aged 75. — APL/agencies
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Martin Scorsese Remembers David Johansen: ‘What a Remarkable Artist. What an Amazing Man'
Martin Scorsese has paid tribute to David Johansen, who died on Feb. 28 at age 75. The filmmaker helmed the Johansen doc Personality Crisis: One Night Only, which featured interviews with the New York Dolls frontman and punk rock pioneer. 'With David Johansen, it started with the music, of course. Actually, with a New York Dolls song, 'Personality Crisis.' I heard that song, I can't remember when or where, and it stayed with me. I listened to it obsessively,' Scorsese said in a statement shared with Rolling Stone. 'The sound was rough, the playing was raw, the voice was wildly theatrical and immediate. And the energy was New York, 100 percent pure and uncut, right off the streets. More from Rolling Stone Flashback: David Johansen Appears as the Ghost of Christmas Past in 'Scrooged' Watch the New York Dolls Play 'Jet Boy' and 'Pills' at Their Final Show in 2011 David Johansen, New York Dolls Frontman and Punk Pioneer, Dead at 75 'After the Dolls broke up, I kept watching and listening to David. He never stopped growing as a songwriter and a singer, always exploring, always staking out new paths,' he continued. 'There was the Buster Poindexter alter ego.' In the 2023 film named after the New York Dolls' song 'Personality Crisis,' Scorsese explored the many facets of Johansen's art, including his persona Buster Poindexter, which Johansen didn't expect to take off. He created the act as one not intended to tour, after spending a ton of time on the road with his post New York Dolls band, David Johansen Group. 'With Buster, I can do anything I want,' he said in the film. 'People aren't expecting something else. They come because it's unexpected what I'm gonna do. They kind of trust that it's gonna be good, and it's always good.' Scorsese also noted Johansen's weekly radio show, Mansion of Fun, which the director said he listened to 'obsessively.' 'That was when I understood just how wide and deep David's knowledge of music history was—all of music history, from Debussy to the Cadillacs to Loretta Lynn to the Incredible String Band to Gregorian chants to David's beloved Maria Callas, all of it mysteriously connected.' It was Johansen's love of opera singer Maria Callas that reunited the New York Dolls in 2004 by way of Morrissey. In the documentary, he tells the story in-between songs at a performance at Café Carlyle. '[Morrissey] called me, and he said, 'I understand you're a pretty big Maria Callas fan.'' Johansen explained in the doc. 'And I said, 'Yes, I happen to be known for that in certain circles.' He said, 'Well, you know that film she made where she did a fantastic concert at the Royal Festival Hall?' I said, 'Yes, by heart.' He said, 'How would you like to play the Royal Festival Hall?… All you have to do is get the Dolls back together.' And I thought, 'Royal Festival Hall, Maria Callas…' I combed every opium den in Chinatown, and I pulled that band together. We were fantastic.' Scorsese said that even as Johansen grew 'fragile' (he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and a brain tumor, and in November 2024 he had broken his back in two places following a fall), he would still show up for screening and gatherings along with Mara and Leah Hennessey, Johansen's wife and stepdaughter. 'He would sit quietly, preserve his energy, but he was always fully there, right up to the end,' Scorsese said. 'What a remarkable artist. What an amazing man. I was so lucky to have known him. I just wish there had been more time.' Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Best 'Saturday Night Live' Characters of All Time Denzel Washington's Movies Ranked, From Worst to Best 70 Greatest Comedies of the 21st Century
Arab Times
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab Times
David Johansen, singer of the New York Dolls band, dies at 75
NEW YORK, March 2, (AP): 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. Guitarist Steve Stevens, a kid from Queens who went on to work with Billy Idol and Robert Palmer, said the Dolls were never about technique: "It was always about the sound of the subway, the stinking, overflowing garbage cans, the misfits of Times Square. The Dolls did it to perfection. Safe travels David Johansen,' he wrote on X. 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.' 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. 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.
Yahoo
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
David Johansen, New York Dolls frontman, dies at 75
The Brief David Johansen, the frontman for the New York Dolls, has died. David Johansen, the last surviving member of the glam and protopunk band the New York Dolls who later performed as his alter ego, Buster Poindexter, has died. He was 75. Johansen died Friday at his home in New York City after it was revealed earlier this year that he had stage 4 cancer and a brain tumor. The backstory David Roger Johansen was born on Staten Island. 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. RELATED: Celebrity deaths of 2025: Who we've lost this year 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. 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?") 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. Dig deeper 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. RELATED: Bruce Willis' daughter gives glimpse into actor's birthday plans as he battles dementia 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." RELATED: Actress Michelle Trachtenberg found dead in Manhattan apartment 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. He is survived by his wife, Mara Hennessey, and a stepdaughter, Leah Hennessey. The Source This report includes information from The Associated Press.
Yahoo
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
New York Dolls singer David Johansen dead at 75
David Johansen, frontman with glam rock band New York Dolls, has died aged 75. "David Johansen passed away peacefully at home, holding the hands of his wife Mara Hennessey and daughter Leah, in the sunlight surrounded by music and flowers," a statement read on a website created to raise funds for his medical care. Johansen had stage 4 cancer, which had progressed to a brain tumour. The news of his passing comes after the announcement just last month that Johansen was living with cancer, and had recently suffered a broken back. The Personality Crisis singer's daughter revealed those details via her Instagram story. "As some, but not many of you know, David has been in intensive treatment for stage 4 cancer for most of the past decade," her message began. "There have been complications ever since." In a statement to Rolling Stone at the time, Johansen, who was the last surviving founding member of the '70s punk band, said, "We've been living with my illness for a long time, still having fun, seeing friends and family, carrying on, but this tumble the day after Thanksgiving really brought us to a whole new level of debilitation. "This is the worst pain I've ever experienced in my entire life. I've never been one to ask for help, but this is an emergency. Thank you."
