The New York Dolls in The New York Times

Return of the New York Dolls, What?s Left of Them
July 23, 2006
By WILL HERMES



AS frontman for the New York Dolls, a band credited with inspiring, if not inventing, punk rock, David Johansen, 56, seems to regard the movement as one might an upstart kid brother.

?A lot of punk was really whiny,? he said last month over lunch at T, a tea salon on East 20th Street in Manhattan. ?I think of all the bands that came out of that alleged genre, the Clash was the best. That was a real rock ?n? roll band.?

?Our total attitude towards art,? he added, ?was, like, get up and do something ? quit sitting there whining. That?s what we stood for, that do-something spirit.?

For a band that effectively lasted three years, made two records and achieved but a dusting of fame, the Dolls? do-something spirit left a huge, platform-booted imprint on rock history. In the early 1970?s their hooky primitivism offered a back-to-basics model amid the excesses of the progressive rock scene. And their lipsticked decadence suggested a stylistic alternative to headbands that would eventually be blamed for glam-metal. (More on that in a minute.)

Mr. Johansen, a wayward Catholic-school student from Staten Island, has spent a lot of time talking about his band?s legacy since deciding, to the surprise of many, to reunite with the surviving Dolls for a British music festival in 2004. That one-shot performance quickly sold out; a second was added. Then came a third, and a fourth. And now, what?s left of the East Village group that ignited the city?s rock scene in the 1970?s but imploded before cashing in on it has made its third studio album, 32 years after its second. It?s called ?One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This.? And most remarkable of all ? as these sorts of latter-day reunions go ? it?s very good.

The timing seems perfect. Catchy, punk-inflected shout-alongs that reflect the Dolls legacy is rock?s main toehold in the pop arena these days. And there is a general return to the Dolls? dress-up-and-put-on-a-show approach in the preening style of bands like the Killers and My Chemical Romance; even Green Day is sporting mascara.

Wearing a tight ribbed white V-neck top, black jeans and a tangle of amulets around his neck, Mr. Johansen shows his taste in couture has clearly mellowed from the days when the Dolls were notorious for their transvestite fashion sense. He still has the unmistakable bearing of a rock star. Lithe and sinewy, his face deeply creased, he is a hometown bohemian: tossing off wisecracks in a phlegmy New Yawk baritone while discussing the ritual of performance or the ?antidualistic? nature of Latin music, he comes off as a cross between a veteran street urchin and a matronly hipster-intellectual.

In their early days the Dolls were a spectacle: five scrappy young dudes looking like hard-luck prostitutes, they played loud, sloppy, three-minute songs when rock was increasingly about virtuoso drum solos and 20-minute jams. ?Musically we wanted to bring back stuff with that Little Richard punch to it,? Mr. Johansen said. ?You know, you?d see him play, he?d come on and in like two and a half minutes he?d wreck the place. It wasn?t like these guys with their backs to the audience, noodling on the guitar.?

The Dolls magic was erratic, though, and their shows could be disasters. The group landed a modest deal with Mercury and made two records that, while now considered classics, sold poorly. Their back-to-basics antics didn?t translate well at the time; they were misread as camp or comedy or sheer incompetence. When they appeared on the BBC?s ?Old Grey Whistle Test? in 1973, the tut-tutting host memorably introduced them as being ?to the Stones what the Monkees were to the Beatles, a pale and amusing derivative.?

Yet certain young fans who saw that performance on British television were more impressed. They included Mick Jones (of the Clash) and Stephen Morrissey (of the Smiths), two of many musicians who cite the Dolls as a primary influence. ?I grew my hair like Johnny Thunders?s,? said Mr. Jones, recalling the shock-wig crop of the Dolls guitarist. The Clash, he admitted, ?took a lot from the New York Dolls. A lot.?

Mr. Morrissey, a huge Dolls fan since he was 13, can be credited with the band?s reunion. He was given carte blanche to curate the 2004 Meltdown festival at Royal Festival Hall in London, and naturally a Dolls reunion was at the top of his list. So he called Mr. Johansen. But he wasn?t optimistic.

?I had met David previously,? Mr. Morrissey said in an interview after the festival, ?and I?d known that historically he would always just pull the shutters down at the mention of the Dolls. I expected him to laugh at me and put the phone down.?

Mr. Johansen, sipping Irish breakfast tea with his pinky outstretched, recalled: ?I hemmed and hawed. I remember saying, ?Would you do it?? ? referring to Mr. Morrissey?s famous unwillingness to reunite the Smiths. That British singer?s reply, which Mr. Johansen repeated in a mock English accent, was ?absolutely not.? He laughed, then continued: ?But I had this, like, mantra, that I decided to try to not be so dismissive of things, you know? I said I?d think about it. And I figured it?d be fun.?

Mr. Johansen?s fellow surviving Dolls ? the guitarist Sylvain Mizrahi, a k a Sylvain Sylvain, and the bassist Arthur Kane, known as Killer ? were easier to persuade. (The guitarist Johnny Genzale, a k a Johnny Thunders, and the drummer Jerry Nolan died in the early 1990?s; the original drummer, Billy Murcia, died while touring with the band in 1972.) Mr. Kane, in particular, had spent most of his hardscrabble post-Dolls life longing for a reunion, and literally praying for one: when his struggle with alcoholism and other demons left him at rock bottom, he joined the Mormon church. When he got word of the reunion, he was working in Los Angeles at the church?s Family History Center library.

As it happened, his prayer came true, but just briefly. After playing the two Meltdown festival shows, Mr. Kane returned to Los Angeles and, only weeks after his long-awaited comeback, became ill. He checked himself into a hospital, learned he had leukemia, and died hours later. Coincidentally, Greg Whiteley, a fellow Mormon who was captivated by Mr. Kane?s life story, had been making a film about his return to rock ?n? roll. The documentary, ?New York Doll,? had a much different ending from what Mr. Whitely first imagined, but it won a Grand Jury Prize nomination at last year?s Sundance Film Festival.

The timing of Mr. Kane?s death was in keeping with what Mr. Morrissey has called ?probably the unluckiest band in the history of the world.? Mr. Murcia died in a drug-related mishap while the group was in England on its first big tour and on the brink of signing a record deal, a tragedy the band arguably never recovered from. He was replaced, but drugs and clashing egos soon hobbled the band. And despite the 11th-hour appearance of an enterprising young manager named Malcolm McLaren (who went on to manage the Sex Pistols), the group ground to a halt in Florida while touring in 1975.

Mr. Johansen found some success with various solo acts (most notably the lounge lizard alter ego Buster Poindexter) and the occasional film role; he recently became host of the well-regarded ?Mansion of Fun Show? on Sirius satellite radio. Mr. Thunders and Mr. Nolan were recognized as punk forefathers when they formed the short-lived, heroin-plagued Heartbreakers; both died young. Mr. Mizrahi played a bit with other bands, drove a cab for a few years and raised a son as a single parent.

Meanwhile the next generation had stepped in. Fellow outer-borough rockers the Ramones tightened and further simplified the Dolls? stripped-down sound (and rethought the wardrobe), and along with the heavily Dolls-influenced Sex Pistols, received full credit for giving birth to punk. Bands like Ratt, Poison and most famously Guns N? Roses would become superstars with a Dolled-up hard rock style. Along with countless bootlegs, the two New York Dolls studio records have remained in print. But royalty payments from Mercury remain in dispute, making for a familiar industry story.

The new Dolls is, obviously, a new animal. In some ways ?One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This? feels as though it?s more about the New York Dolls than it is by them. Its brashly classic sound points to the band?s often-overlooked roots in blues and Brill Building pop. It is smartly written and well played (but, thankfully, not too well played) by Mr. Johansen, Mr. Mizrahi and a seasoned gang of New York-based rockers: the bassist Sami Yaffa (formerly of the Dolls-worshipping pop-metal act Hanoi Rocks), the guitarist Steve Conte, the keyboardist Brian Koonin, and the drummer Brian Delaney. Iggy Pop, a fellow punk forefather, adds backing vocals, as does R.E.M.?s Michael Stipe, a longtime fan of the Dolls.

But what?s perhaps most striking about the new record is its tone. Alongside characteristic, happily debased romps like ?Fishnets and Cigarettes? and ?Rainbow Store? (in which the singer apparently gets swept off his feet by a tough girl at a lesbian boutique) is a wistfulness and a sort of wisdom, plus a quality you could almost call spiritual, a word that wouldn?t have been used to describe the old Dolls except in reference to alcohol.

?Feel excited from the divine

Me and these sad friends of mine

Just waitin? down here, drinkin? beer

And losin? time?

Mr. Johansen sings on ?Plenty Of Music,? which could almost be a Ronettes tune. Similarly, ?Seventeen? sounds like an enlightened high school lament:

?Yet here we all stood

Confident in smug world view

That nothin? higher will sweep

Out of the heavens anew.?

Mr. Johansen, who laughingly described himself as ?a Catholic Taoist,? isn?t exactly born again. But his perspective has clearly broadened over the years. ?I don?t know if it?s more spiritual,? he said of the new Dolls record. ?But it?s more worldcentric, y?know what I mean? It?s not as colloquial as when we first came out. We were really just entertaining the neighborhood at that point. We were the band of the East Village that everybody danced to.?

The new record?s best song, ?Dance Like a Monkey,? is a rock ?n? roll answer to a timely theological question. Trying to woo a ?pretty creationist,? the singer invites her onto the dance floor. ?Evolution is so obsolete,? Mr. Johnansen shouts like a leering old bluesman. ?Got to stomp your hands and clap your feet.?

The band?s new label, the hard-rock indie Roadrunner, hopes the song might be a breakout hit this summer. And it could be, with its driving Bo Diddley-flavored beats and Mr. Mizrahi?s heady falsetto ?oooo-oooohs.? Either way it makes its case for rock ?n? roll as a spiritual force in its own right, a valid enough reason for the Dolls? return.

?It?s been so long since we had the other band,? Mr. Johansen concluded. ?This just fell together, and then all the guys turned out to be great. I really love them, so what we do onstage is really genuine, there?s a lot of love in it, and hopefully that will affect the audience.?

?I mean, I have my ideas about music and rock ?n? roll and all that kind of stuff,? he added. ?I don?t know if it?s actually necessary for the species, but it sure makes life fun. It sure made my life fun. And I like to show other people that.?


Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company