Latest news with #PersonalityCrisis
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
The Independent
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
New York Dolls frontman David Johansen dies aged 75
New York Dolls frontman David Johansen has died aged 75. Johansen died on Friday at his home in New York City, according to Rolling Stone, citing a family spokesperson. Earlier this year it was revealed that he had stage four cancer and a brain tumour. Johansen helped to redefine what rock and roll could be, providing the blueprint for the British punk bands who followed, with tracks such as Looking For A Kiss, Trash and Personality Crisis. Born in New York City to an Irish American mother and Norwegian American father, Johansen's gravelly yet camped-up vocals were the perfect complement to the band's cross-dressing style and hard and fast blues punk sound. The singer began his career in Staten Island band the Vagabond Missionaries in the late 1960s, before being invited to join the New York Dolls in 1971, after guitarist Johnny Thunders decided he no longer wanted to be the group's lead singer. The band, who took their name from the New York Doll Hospital, a doll repair shop, released their self-titled debut LP in 1973, produced by Todd Rundgren, which achieved limited commercial success at the time, and saw them voted both the best and worst group of the year in US rock publication Creem. Following the album's release, the band toured Europe and landed a spot on BBC music show The Old Grey Whistle Test, hosted by Bob Harris. After the band performed Jet Boy on the show, Harris, who preferred the folk and country music of the day, infamously branded them 'mock rock', with the moment bringing the group to wider attention in the UK. It is reported that Harris made the remarks after Johansen told him he had 'bunny teeth' prior to the performance. During their heyday, the band became a favourite and friends of David Bowie, with Johansen once recalling a story of the pair being catcalled in New York after a passing driver had mistaken them for women due to their feminine style. The band released their second album Too Much Too Soon in 1974, bringing in George 'Shadow' Morton on production. Morton had worked with girl group the Shangri-Las, from whose track Give Him A Great Big Kiss the band took their Looking For A Kiss's 'when I say I'm in love, you best believe I'm in love, L.U.V' intro. Too Much Too Soon saw limited sales, despite Morton's production receiving critical acclaim for bringing out the band's raw sound. In 1975, the band appointed Malcolm McLaren as manager, who would go on to achieve success with the Sex Pistols. McLaren dressed the band in red leather outfits and made them perform against a communist flag backdrop. The change in style was unsuccessful and the band split up in 1976, amid creative differences and drug and alcohol problems among some of its members. Shortly after their demise, the band would be quoted as a major influence on British punk bands such as The Clash, The Damned and the Sex Pistols, who wrote the deprecating New York about the Dolls. After the break-up of the band, Johansen embarked on a solo career which spawned four studio albums from 1978 to 1984, with former New York Dolls guitarist Sylvain Sylvain regularly reuniting with him for live performances during that time. In the late 1980s and 1990s, he would go on to have some commercial success, releasing four albums under the pseudonym Buster Poindexter, which saw a change in style to novelty, blues, pop and swing. Johansen also embarked on an acting career which saw him appear as the Ghost Of Christmas Past in Scrooged (1988). In 2004, with the help of The Smiths' lead singer Morrissey, who had been the head of the Dolls' UK fan club and regularly described the group as his favourite, the band's three surviving original members Arthur 'Killer' Kane, Sylvain and Johansen reunited. The trio performed their first reunion gig at the Meltdown Festival at London's Royal Festival Hall, curated by Morrissey, which was released as a live album and DVD. The band continued to perform until 2011, having returned to recording with One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This (2006), Cause I Sez So (2009) and Dancing Backward In High Heels (2011). In 2016, Johansen re-recorded the Dolls' Personality Crisis and cover of Stranded In The Jungle for Martin Scorsese's HBO series Vinyl, which saw the singer portrayed by Christian Peslak in the series' opening sequence, which shows the band performing at the Mercer Arts Centre in New York. Scorsese also directed a 2023 documentary on Johansen's life entitled Personality Crisis: One Night Only. At the time of his death, Johansen was the sole surviving member of the band, after Kane died just days after the first reunion concert in 2004, Sylvain died in 2021 after a cancer diagnosis, Thunders died in 1991, and drummers Jerry Nolan and Billy Mercia died in 1992 and 1972 respectively. Up until his death, the singer had continued to present his US radio show David Johansen's Mansion Of Fun on Sirius XM. In 2013, Johansen married artist Mara Hennessey, and he is also survived by his stepdaughter Leah Hennessey. Prior to his death, his stepdaughter revealed Johansen had been suffering with stage four cancer for 'most of the past decade' and had been diagnosed with a brain tumour at the beginning of the Covid pandemic. She also said he had broken his back in two places, leaving him 'bedridden and incapacitated', in a post on the singer's fundraising page, but said he remained 'hilarious and wise' in his final days.
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
David Johansen, New York Dolls and Buster Pointdexter singer, dead at 75
David Johansen, the charismatic frontman of influential protopunk band the New York Dolls and later the creator of 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. Johnson's health status had been updated by his stepdaughter, Leah Hennessey, in January, as part of a fundraiser with the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund. Hennessy said Johansen had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer during the pandemic and also had a brain tumour. A fall several weeks earlier had left him bedridden and requiring around-the-clock care. "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," Johansen said in an accompanying statement. Johansen's death ends a unique career as a quintessential New York City artist, with turns that also included a recent stint as a deejay on a Sirius XM show and some acting roles, most notably as the cigar-chomping cab driver with rotting teeth (the Ghost of Christmas Past) in 1988's Scrooged starring Bill Murray. Johansen is seen seated while posing for a photograph with fellow New York Dolls members in October 1972. Standing, left to right: Jerry Nolan, Johnny Thunders, Killer Kane and Sylvain Sylvain. ( P. Felix/Daily Express/) Johansen's colourful life was captured in 2023's Personality Crisis, co-directed by Martin Scorcese and David Tedeschi, and executive produced by Ron Howard and Brian Glazer. The title of the documentary came from a handful of enduring songs from the Dolls, a band that was described by leading New York City rock critic Robert Christgau as mixing "early-'60s popsong savvy with late-'60s fast-metal anarchy." A handful of the band's songs became touchstones for punk, alternative and rock bands to know — versions of Personality Crisis would be recorded by Scott Weiland, Sonic Youth and Teenage Fanclub, while Guns 'n' Roses included Human Being on their The Spaghetti Incident covers album. The band, volatile off stage and often leaving destruction in their wake, also favoured heels, makeup and women's clothing. Only Johansen among them could be remotely described as androgynous, resembling Mick Jagger and — to his bandmates — Butch from Our Gang (the Little Rascals). Johansen, right, and Sylvain perform in New York City in October 1973. (Richard Drew/The Associated Press) "I had to go jail [once] dressed like Liza Minnelli," Johansen quipped to a British talk show, captured in Personality Crisis. Johansen was the last to join the band after initially demurring, as described by bandmate Sylvain Sylvain in his 2018 memoir, There's No Bones in Ice Cream. "He dressed like we did, he liked the same music as we did, and he had the same dramatic effect when he walked into a room as we did," said Sylvain. "The girls would stare and the guys would glare." Improbably, despite Johansen's subsequent further afield stints as Poindexter as well as albums of Americana music with backup group Harry Smiths, the three living Dolls at the time reunited for a 2004 Meltdown Festival lineup curated by superfan Morrissey. "England always got the Dolls, and that show was bordering on euphoria," Johansen told Mojo magazine years later. A version of the Dolls piloted by Johansen and Sylvain would go on to record three more studio albums. 'Brats from the outer boroughs' Johansen was born to a Norwegian father and Irish mother in the New York City borough Staten Island on Jan. 9, 1950, the oldest of six kids. "Most of the people in my family sing, dance, are always in plays," he told the Associated Press in the late 1980s. "I was the least inclined in that direction. I'm the one who took it up as a profession." But he grew up entranced by music heard on the radio and from record shops — blues, doo-wop, R&B and early rock — and played in bands as a teen. By 1971, when the New York Dolls began to rehearse, he was eking out a living in underground clothing stores and theatre groups. Johansen performs in New York City in March 2006. (The Associated Press) The original lineup coalesced from acquaintances and high school friends from the outer New York City boroughs - guitarists Johnny Thunders (John Gezale), Sylvain (Ronald Mizrahi), drummer Billy Murcia and bass player Arthur (Killer) Kane. Soon after debuting to paying customers in early 1972, they were making the biggest splash of an underground New York band since the Velvet Underground in the mid-1960s. "They brought a sense of fun and self-awareness to rock and roll, at a time when perhaps things were getting a bit more serious than they needed to be," said Lenny Kaye, rock journalist and Patti Smith Group guitarist, in the 2014 documentary Looking For Johnny: The Legend of Johnny Thunders. Johansen poses for a photograph in Toronto in May 2006. (Aaron Harris/The Canadian Press) David Bowie in September 1972 famously attended a Dolls show at one of their main haunts, the Mercer Arts Centre, housed in a dilapidated hotel that would partially collapse months later, killing four people. They also gained notice in the British music press, with Johansen the most voluble in the band; he once described their proclivities as "trysexual." "It wasn't like we would talk about what we were going to sound like or what we were going to look like or anything, we just kinda did it," Johansen told Mojo decades later. The New York Dolls are photographed in New York City in July 2006. (Jim Cooper/The Associated Press) But during a tour in November 1972, Murcia — described as the least likely member of the band to engage in self-destructive behaviour — died of an accidental overdose. With Jerry Nolan as drummer, the band would debut on disc with a self-titled release produced by Todd Rundgren in 1973. "It takes brats from the outer boroughs to capture the oppressive excitement Manhattan holds for a half-formed human being the way these guys do," Christgau, who wrote in Village Voice and CREEM, said in doling out a rare A-plus review. Future Good Morning in America film critic Joel Siegel, then a reporter for New York's CBS television affiliate, was more bemused, describing a band concert at the time as "always belligerent, hostile and definitely loud." Conflicts with band mates The following year saw the release of Too Much Too Soon, but neither album sold massively, and the band was paired on the road with any number of acts, including odd fits with Canadian bands Rush and Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Personality conflicts arose and both Thunders and Nolan were addicted to heroin, with Johansen and Kane said to be heavy drinkers. British music and fashion impresario Malcolm McLaren, who would guide the Sex Pistols, briefly bolstered the Dolls' enthusiasm for several months, though his choice of red leather suits for the band raised eyebrows. The final show of the original lineup was in late 1976, and less than two years later, Johansen was releasing the first of four solo albums that featured contributions from Joe Perry, Ian Hunter, Nona Hendryx and Patti Scialfa. Solo career The solo career saw him open for the Who but didn't lead to commercial success. Tiring of life on the road, by the mid-1980s he was dabbling incognito in New York clubs as Poindexter, with a repertoire of songs, usually decades old, that jumped genres. The song that would launch him to a wider audience in 1987 was actually only a handful of years old — Hot Hot Hot, originally recorded by Caribbean artist, Arrow. Johansen then promoted the first studio album as Poindexter with a series of appearances with the Saturday Night Live house band and a duet with SNL guest host Sigourney Weaver on Baby, It's Cold Outside. Four albums of Poindexter material were recorded in 10 years, though it sometimes felt like he had created a monster. Hot Hot Hot, he said in Personality Crisis, became the "bane of my existence." Post-Scrooged acting roles didn't make as much impact for Johansen, as he appeared in commercial flops Mr. Nanny with Hulk Hogan, Freejack — both he and Jagger had supporting roles — and Let It Ride. The 21s century saw him bounce from passion projects musically, with the Dolls reunited with Rundgren as producer on 2009's Cause I Sez So. In the years before his death, he was sharing his eclectic music knowledge on the Sirius radio show David Johansen's Mansion of Fun. Johansen was the last surviving member of the original New York Dolls lineup. Thunders died of a heroin overdose in 1991, with Nolan following months later after a prolonged illness. Kane died three weeks after the 2004 reunion of leukemia, with Sylvan dying aged 69 in 2021 from cancer.
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."
