Latest news with #SylvainSylvain
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 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.
CBC
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
David Johansen, New York Dolls and Buster Pointdexter singer, dead at 75
Johansen was last surviving member of the original New York Dolls lineup 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. Image | 57483636 Caption: 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). "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." Embed | Other 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. 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. 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. 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. Embed | Other 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.
Boston Globe
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
David Johansen, singer from punk band New York Dolls, dies at 75
'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. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 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.' Advertisement '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 New York Dolls at the Waldorf Halloween Ball, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, in New York on Oct. 31, 1973. At right is lead singer David Johansen, with guitarist Sylvain Sylvain. RICHARD DREW/Associated Press 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. Advertisement '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. FILE - The New York Dolls in New York in July 2006. David Johansen is at left. JIM COOPER/Associated Press '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?') Advertisement 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. Advertisement '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. Advertisement He is survived by his wife, Mara Hennessey, and a stepdaughter, Leah Hennessey.
