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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
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
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.
The Guardian
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Wild, waspish and whip-smart, there are few rock stars as great as David Johansen
Nick Kent's fabled 1974 NME piece about New York Dolls, Dead End Kids on the Champs-Élysées, is packed with characters and incident. The band have arrived in France after a showcase gig at London boutique Biba, marred by various members getting caught while attempting to shoplift from the store. Their famously dissolute guitarist Johnny Thunders vomits copiously in front of the assembled press at a record company reception to welcome the band to France, then pukes again midway through a 'horrendous, tuneless' Dolls gig at Paris's prestigious Olympia theatre. Bassist Arthur Kane, a large man clad in a ballerina's tutu who apparently looks 'like he'd just been run over by a truck load of Valium' confides that he's in fear of his life: the last groupie he slept with tied him up in his sleep and attempted to cut off his thumb with a knife. And yet, even in such exalted company, there's no doubt who the star of the show is. Frontman David Johansen never appears to stop talking throughout, an endless, wildly entertaining source of tall tales – at one juncture, he claims to have been an underage star of gay porn films – hysterical bitching about other artists (John Lennon is an 'asshole hypocrite', Keith Richards is 'past it', Mott the Hoople's Ian Hunter has 'terrible piggy eyes') and eminently quotable statements: 'We attract only degenerates to our concerts'; 'We want to be known as the tackiest boys in New York.' Whatever you made of New York Dolls' music – and, as the evident distaste with which host Bob Harris greeted their appearance on The Old Grey Whistle Test proved, it was nothing if not divisive – you would have a hard time arguing that Johansen wasn't fantastically good at the business of being a rock star. He was also very much the right man to front New York Dolls. He was good-looking, charismatic and the press loved him – Johansen always provided great copy – and he sang in a brash, snotty yowl, the perfect complement to the band's punk-inspiring edge-of-chaos sound. A former participant in the confrontational avant garde Theatre of the Ridiculous shows put on by directors John Vaccaro and Charles Ludlam – big on drag queens, outrage and cast members covered in glitter – Johansen applied their techniques to New York Dolls' image, helping make the band an instant underground sensation in early 70s New York. Their early residency at the Lower East Side's Mercer Arts Centre attracted not just an equally flamboyant crowd of followers, but celebrities including David Bowie, Elton John, Lou Reed and Bette Midler, while Rod Stewart invited them to support Faces in London before they'd even released a note of music. Johansen wrote or co-wrote every original song that appeared on New York Dolls' eponymous 1973 debut and its follow-up Too Much Too Soon bar one, minting a raunchy, trashy style. Flying in the face of rock's increasing seriousness and grandeur, his songs were as in love with 60s girl group pop as they were the Rolling Stones: Looking for a Kiss opened with a steal from the Shangri-Las' 1964 hit Give Him a Great Big Kiss. They made a virtue of the band's rudimentary musicianship, but for all Johansen claimed 'there wasn't a lot of intellectualising going on', they were always far sharper and deeper than the band's detractors gave them credit for. Vietnamese Baby pondered the effects of the Vietnam war and collective guilt on attitudes to hedonism ('everything connects,' it suggests); Frankenstein was a garbled hymn to the alternately glitzy and grubby allure of New York; Subway Train quoted the lyrics of the 19th-century folk song I've Been Working on the Railroad. The music press understandably thought New York Dolls were going to be huge, but perhaps they were too polarising for their own good. A degree of homophobia provoked by their appearance – every member of the band was straight – undoubtedly hampered their progress in the US; a sound that seemed incredibly prescient when punk arrived was easy to dismiss as sloppy, semi-competent flailing in 1973: 'the worst high-school band I ever saw', sniffed the Rolling Stones' Mick Taylor. Even the producer of their debut album, Todd Rundgren, thought they couldn't play and treated them with a degree of disdain. Certainly, everything that could go wrong for New York Dolls did go wrong: drug addiction, a disastrous hook-up with the alcoholic former Shangri-Las' producer Shadow Morton on 1974's Too Much Too Soon, a dalliance with Malcolm McLaren as their manager who convinced them to take up a new Marxist-inspired image that succeeded only in alienating even the New York hipsters who had flocked to their gigs in the first place. They lost their record deal, and most of the band quit: Johansen and guitarist Sylvain Sylvain soldiered on until late 1976, finally giving up just as the seeds New York Dolls had sown began to bloom: their last gigs featured a support act called Blondie. Johansen's first eponymous post-Dolls solo album and 1979's In Style – the latter featuring a guest appearance by Ian Hunter, who'd presumably forgiven him for the 'piggy eyes' jibe – should theoretically have capitalised on punk, a genre he'd done more than most to inspire, but both flopped. A pity, because they were packed with smart, impactful, witty songs: Funky But Chic's brilliant defence of the Dolls' image ('mama says I look fruity, but in jeans I feel rotten'), Girls' surprisingly pro-feminist rallying call; the gleeful Wreckless Crazy. He finally scored an American hit with a medley of British Invasion classics in 1982, and finally became the star he'd always threatened to be by adopting the character of Buster Poindexter: a dinner-suit clad lounge singer performing old jump blues, swing and R&B numbers. His cover of Arrow's Hot Hot Hot ended up all over MTV (Johansen later called its success 'the bane of my life') and he regularly turned up on Saturday Night Live before tiring of his alter ego in the early 00s, returning to his own name and making a couple of blues albums that revealed his deep knowledge and understanding of the genre: New York Dolls had covered Bo Diddley and Sonny Boy Williamson. The surviving members of New York Dolls reformed at the behest of super-fan Morrissey when he curated the 2004 Meltdown festival: bassist Arthur Kane died shortly after the gig, but Johansen and Sylvain carried on under the name. You could hardly blame them for basking in the glow of belated glory, moreover the new albums they then made as New York Dolls were far better than anyone might reasonably have expected them to be. They evoked the band's past without seeming like a wan facsimile, they addressed latter-day topics – the 'war on drugs', mobile phones, online surveillance – with enough wit to avoid sounding like old-man-shouts-at-cloud moaning. And they occasionally boasted an affecting air of reflective melancholy. Implausible as the very idea of a grownup New York Dolls seemed, here it was, sounding oddly moving as it looked back at their glory days, 'jumping around the stage like teenage girls, casting our swine before the pearls,' as Johansen put it on We're All in Love, a song from 2006's One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This. On their final album, 2011's Dancing Backwards in High Heels, there was a song called I'm So Fabulous, a paean to the band's good looks and sense of style, filled with snorting disgust at what passed for fashion in 'nebulous' 21st-century Manhattan. 'I'm so fabulous, you arriviste … The way you dress is so insidious – how do they even let you on the subway? … you're so Cincinnati … I don't even want to look at you,' sang Johansen, to a backdrop of raging guitar and wailing harmonica, sounding just like the guy who'd boasted to Nick Kent about New York Dolls' tackiness and degenerate audience nearly 40 years before. In its own cocky, swaggering, outspoken way, it's the perfect epitaph.
