Who were the New York Dolls?
The New York Dolls were an American rock band formed in New York City in 1971. Along with the Velvet Underground and the Stooges, they were one of the first bands of the early punk rock scenes. Although the band never achieved much commercial success and their original line-up fell apart quickly, the band’s first two albums—New York Dolls (1973) and Too Much Too Soon (1974)—became among the most popular cult records in rock.
The line-up at this time consisted of vocalist David Johansen, guitarist Johnny Thunders, bassist Arthur Kane, guitarist and pianist Sylvain Sylvain, and drummer Jerry Nolan; the latter two had replaced Rick Rivets and Billy Murcia, respectively, in 1972.
On stage, they donned an androgynous wardrobe, wearing high heels, eccentric hats, satin, makeup, spandex, and dresses. Nolan described the group in 1974 as the Dead End Kids of today.
After reuniting, they recruited new musicians to tour and record. They released three more albums—One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This (2006), Cause I Sez So (2009) and Dancing Backward in High Heels (2011). Following a 2011 British tour with Alice Cooper, the Dolls disbanded again.[2] All of the founding members have died.
FACES IN THE CROWD: NEW YORK DOLLS
Trash: The Story of the New York Dolls
Kris Needs, Sounds, 25 June 1977
Fifty years ago, the most important American underground rock band of its generation was dying. The New York Dolls, the androgynous-but-tough band who mixed the Rolling Stones, girl groups and garage rock, were imploding under the weight of their own addictions and failures. You wouldn’t say they split, per se – there was still a version of the band led by David Johansen in existence until the end of 1976. But 1975 was the end for Johnny Thunders, Arthur Kane and Jerry Nolan, and the Dolls stopped being the Lower East Side’s rock’n’roll street gang.
The New York Dolls only made two albums, and barely played outside New York. But the band laid the foundations for punk. Along the way the band taught a generation of outsiders that they could be something different, as those whose lives were changed by them recall.
One of the bands energy on stage happened to be in excellent shape in early 1974 at the opening night of the Rainbow Room on the sixth floor of Biba. For a while it was the tackiest and most extravagantly chic place in town, a technicolor dream palace of mirrors, garish decoration, bright lights and clientele to match. The Rainbow Room was the perfect place for the New York Dolls. The Rainbow Room was as spectacular and short-lived as they were.
On that opening night the place was packed and you could feel the anticipation rising as Dolls-time approached. I’d been playing their debut album for months and heard all these great reports from across the Atlantic about the band with the Jagger look-a-like singer and stage act of rampant rock ‘n’ roll sleaze.
As the lights were down, the music stops. Suddenly, the lights flared up and suddenly we all saw them as they were…there were The New York Dolls! That moment when they tottered on and Johnny Thunders, clad in a one-armed black leather bikini top, ripped out the opening chords to ‘Personality Crisis’. The New York Dolls, looking like five Biba dummies, came to life, decked out in the grossest items from the ladies’ floors below, catapulting around the stage and into the air like pinballs.
The New York Dolls rambled through stuff off of the album and some classy blasts from the past. The venue suddenly went crazy when they did an amazing version of the Shangri-Las’ ‘Give Him A Great Big Kiss’. I can just see Johnny Thunders, a staggering tornado of hair and leather, skidding up to the mike to ask the pouting David Johansen, “Well, how’s she dance?”. “Close, real close”, he purred. And off whirled Thunders again in another ground attack of kamikaze chords.
Something you should know: you can see so much of the Dolls in today’s bands. They laid the dynamite after a short burst of their own for the Pistols to come along and light the fire. As has been said before the Dolls were the right band at the wrong time.
“The Dolls were an attitude. If nothing else they were a great attitude,” says Johnny Thunders.
Yeah, the boys were all in Lower East Side street gangs in their pre-Doll days. Suddenly it had to be rock ‘n’ roll then — his other love — and Johnny started to get a group together.
There was his best mate Billy Murcia on drums, Arthur Kane on bass and a bloke called Rick Rivets on guitar.
Johnny: “Originally Rick Rivets was the other guitar player, but he started fucking around, coming to practice late and stuff like that, and so we canned him, and got Sylvain in. He’d been in a band with me before the Dolls, and it was him in fact who named the New York Dolls, even though he wasn’t in the group at the time.”
Sylvain joined in March, 1972. He’d just been deported from somewhere and was stateless at the time. A couple of months before Arthur had met a pretty young rubber-lipped teenager at a screening of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, liked what he saw and promptly asked him to join the Dolls.
Johnny: “I was originally the lead singer, but then we got David in; we sort of liked the way he looked… and he could play harmonica pretty good.”
Right around this time (mid 1972) Bowie and glitter were the latest news. The Dolls took the bisexual preoccupation to a tatty extreme which stopped just short of Wayne County’s total transexualism.
Done up in an assortment of high-heels, lurex tights, feather boas, flimsy tops and make-up, topped with high level rooster coiffures, they had a tacky elegance which probably couldn’t have worked for any other group, although enough tried.
A photo and ad in Village Voice heralded their first gig — a political benefit party, although they didn’t know what for. Regular gigs at places like the Mercer Arts Centre followed. At this time the group were living in a cramped Manhattan loft, earning a few dollars a night. As they did more gigs the word got around and soon the Dolls became the hottest band in town, packing out wherever they played. Energy can be contagious, as we know at the moment, and soon New York had a rock explosion on its hands that was spearheaded by the New York Dolls.
“Four years ago you couldn’t touch New York,” says Jerry Nolan. “It was really ahead of the times and the bands were all learning off each other. It was very creative and friendly.” But he adds with disgust: “Right now the whole scene is as fucked up as it was creative four years ago.”
In November, 1972, the Dolls made their first visit to Britain. Johnny: “We got a pretty good write-up in Melody Maker, before we had a record contract or a manager even. And our reputation spread pretty fast, especially in England, it seems, because the promoters of a Rod Stewart and the Faces concert called me up and brought us over to England to be the support group. That was at the Empire Pool, Wembley, in November 1972… by far the biggest gig we’d ever done up to that time”.
It was a colossal break for the Dolls and despite bad sound they made a good impression, although they mystified pressmen.
The set they played was the one which had been wowing New York audiences for the previous six months — their own numbers and a weighty selection of golden greats from the 60s, stuff like ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’, ‘Back in the USA’, Otis Redding’s ‘Don’t Mess With Cupid’ and Gary US Bonds’ ‘Seven Day Party’.
“THE DOLLS were like a gang who turned over to instruments instead of guns” — Jerry Nolan.
It would have been better if the Dolls had come over and done a tour of Britain’s clubs. All of the plans and optimism borne by the English sortie were shattered by one tragic event which caused Johnny Thunders grief. Billy Murcia, his best friend, OD’d in the bath on booze and barbs. Shocked and shaken the Dolls flew home immediately to recruit a new drummer. They chose Jerry Nolan, who they knew because Billy always used to borrow his drums.
Jerry has played in many New York bands but looks back on his early days with the Dolls with affection: “When the Dolls started they were great… very raw. A real rock ‘n’ roll band. Nobody could top them.”
At the time Jerry joined, the group were without a record contract. Perhaps the fact the band reputedly wanted a quarter of a million dollars for their signatures had something to do with it but some companies definitely thought they were too raw and wild and shied away.
Eventually the group signed with Mercury — mainly due to the persuasive efforts of A and R man Paul Nelson, who later got the sack.
The Dolls went into the studio to start work on their first album, although the group had dreams of a string of hit singles.
Producing the New York Dolls was none other than Todd Rundgren. The combination of Todd’s lack of sympathy with the group and, according to Jerry and Johnny, David JoHansen’s rather large ego, meant the album wasn’t quite the absolute all-time killer expected. The band’s album was a stunning debut, The best album of ’73 and still one of rock’s best 40 minutes.
But when you listen to the group lamenting the poor sound and methods used for recording you realize that maybe the greatest rock record of all time might be lying under the mud! Time after time that fact keeps shining through. What went wrong then?
“A lot of people thought Todd Rundgren was great, but he sucked with us. He really fucked us up. ‘The first two albums were butchered. They were great songs and we could have done great performances, but David was the type of guy who didn’t want to do a song twice in the studio. But sometimes you have to! He didn’t give a shit about anybody in the band giving a good performance, as long as he sounded ok.‘ said Jerry.
The band’s album still stands as the ultimate American teenage rock ‘n’ roll statement, packed with adolescent anthems, all delivered in JoHansen’s petulant pout and stamped with the louder-than-life personality and rage which probably ended up busting the Dolls apart.
It was the group’s whole attitude that did it, their stance — flash, outrageous, didn’t-give-a-shit and, despite the high heels, street tough.
Once you get past the lipstick-smeared sleeve the first song you encounter is Personality Crisis, screwed-up teenage frustration personified. Great lines like ‘Your mirror’s getting jammed up with all your friends‘.
It’s followed by another of the Dolls’ finest moments, ‘Looking for a Kiss‘, which boasts the chorus ‘I didn’t come here looking for no fix… I’m looking for a kiss‘. Johnny’s dive-bombing guitar before the last time around still makes the moment to swing on the lampshade.
‘Vietnamese Baby‘ sounds dated now, and ‘Lonely Planet Boy‘ is a weird attempt at something a little prettier with honking saxophones. These two tracks are ok but obliterated by side one’s closer, ‘Frankenstein‘.
The song asks if it’s wrong to fall in love with a monster and ends with the searching query, ‘Do you think that you could make it with Frankenstein?’
Side Two starts off on the right foot with ‘Trash‘, if anything the Dolls’ theme song. ‘Bad Girl‘ is raunch incarnate as the comics might say and then it’s a ride on the ‘Subway Train‘, with a great cruising guitar break.
Bo Diddley’s ‘Pills‘ crashes in like a bulldozer through a brick wall with a shower of blistering chords and wailing harmonica. ‘Private World‘ slows it up with its pounding trip-hammer on the brainpan rhythm, and the whole lot goes out on the steaming ‘Jet Boy’.
The band’s debut album got mixed reviews and sold moderately but it sure didn’t set the record stores alight.
The New York Dolls went into the studio to start work on their first album, although really the group had dreams of a string of hit singles. The production was handled by Todd Rundgren.
The combination of Todd’s lack of sympathy with the group and, according to Jerry and Johnny, David JoHansen’s rather large ego, meant the album wasn’t quite the absolute all-time killer expected.
David JoHansen predicted when the album was released (in late-ish 1973), ‘In five years time that album’s going to be considered a classic. I know it!‘
In early 1974 the Dolls made the afore-mentioned British visit. Reaction was a mixture of euphoria from Dolls freaks, curiosity and stark hatred. They did a proper tour this time, opening at Bibas for two nights (Funny how Bibas turned out to be as spectacular but short-lived as the Dolls. It was so expensive to run it was forced to close up).
A highlight of the tour was the Dolls’ appearance on The Old Grey Whistle Test. It was undoubtedly the television appearance of the ’70s, with the Dolls coming on so strong I thought the old box was gonna bounce out of the room and explode.
The band did ‘Jet Boy‘ (then out as a single) and ‘Looking For A Kiss‘, David JoHansen doing his wide-eyed cutie-pouts full into the camera and Thunders, decked out in skull-and-cross-bones-emblazoned old leathers, strutting and falling all over the place.
Johnny Thunders sparked a storm when he appeared on the cover of Melody Maker wearing a swastika arm-band (ahead of their time yet again). Being a Dolls fan was so much fun then!
By now the drugs and booze life-style of the Dolls was beginning to catch up with them. With the ever-increasing personality clashes came behind the first in quality of sound and songs. What went wrong this time?
The answer came partly in the form of the album’s producer, the legendary Shadow Morton. Now the Dolls made no secret of their admiration for the sounds which came out of New York’s Brill Building from girlie groups like the Dixie Cups. Musically the Dolls were poles apart, but their songs had a lot in common with teenage romance epics by the Shangri Las. A campy, not-as-innocent-as-I-look sense of sleazy style. Lieber and Stoller were at one time touted to produce the Dolls’ second album but the job eventually went to Morton.
The prospect sounded great — the Dolls stance, over-the-top playing and great songs combined with ‘Leader of the Pack‘ style big production epics. Something must have snuffed Shadow Morton’s sparkle. Johnny sums it up: ‘Shadow was a drunk. First we had an acid freak, then a drunk.’ Morton may have been just a shadow of his former self but he managed a couple of his renowned tricks, like the gunshot at the end of ‘Puss ‘n’ Boots‘. But unfortunately his main contribution was the awful sound.
The songs were a bit patchy. There were some very early Dolls songs here, like the opener, ‘Babylon’, their ode to a drag queen. There were also four non-originals — ‘Stranded in the Jungle‘, ‘There’s Gonna be a Showdown‘, ‘Bad Detective‘ and Sonny Boy Williamson’s ‘Don’t Start Me Talking‘.
‘Jungle‘ and ‘Detective‘ were novelty trash epics, adventures into the cheap ‘B’ movie scenario the Dolls felt so at home in. ‘Showdown‘ was on the same trip but this was much more serious; street gang duel time, no less, complete with switchblade quickstep confrontation at the end and a lumbering chorus.
The band’s second album got mixed reviews and sold moderately. I spotted many Dolls album ended up lying in bargain bins.
The drugs and booze life-style of the Dolls was beginning to catch up with them. With the ever-increasing personality clashes came behind the first in quality of sound and songs. What went wrong this time?
The answer came partly in the form of the album’s producer, the legendary Shadow Morton and the New York Dolls made no secret of their admiration for the sounds which came out of New York’s Brill Building from girlie groups like the Dixie Cups. Musically the Dolls were poles apart, but their songs had a lot in common with teenage romance epics by the Shangri Las. A campy, not-as-innocent-as-I-look sense of sleazy style. Lieber and Stoller were at one time touted to produce the Dolls’ second album but the job eventually went to Morton.
The prospect sounded great — the Dolls stance, over-the-top playing and great songs combined with ‘Leader of the Pack‘ style big production epics. A corker was just around the corner but in the end the sound of the album was shitty.
Morton may have been just a shadow of his former self but he managed a couple of his renowned tricks, like the gunshot at the end of ‘Puss ‘n’ Boots‘. But unfortunately his main contribution was awful sounds.
True trash, down to the garish sleeve (the album was dedicated to Dianna Barrymore, an actress who starred in a film called Too Much Too Soon). The songs were a bit patchy. There were some very early Dolls songs here, like the opener, ‘Babylon‘, their ode to a drag queen. There were also four non-originals — ‘Stranded in the Jungle‘, ‘There’s Gonna be a Showdown‘, ‘Bad Detective‘ and Sonny Boy Williamson’s ‘Don’t Start Me Talking‘. ‘Jungle‘ and ‘Detective‘ were novelty trash epics, adventures into the cheap ‘B’ movie scenario the Dolls felt so at home in. ‘Showdown‘ was complete with switchblade quickstep confrontation at the end and a lumbering chorus.
‘Talkin” is the Dolls back on the speedball circuit known, loved and hoped for. There’s a rampant frenzied attack on this one which rather overshadows the closer, another early song called ‘Human Being‘ which powers on over the time it should with almost desperate courage-against-all-odds. It ends on an unexpectedly sweet saxophone note.
The rest of the group-composed numbers range between good and outstanding. ‘Babylon‘ has a weird, stuttering riff which could have blown out yer fillings with a bit more presence. The words are good and so’s Johnny’s coughing guitar solo. ‘Who Are the Mystery Girls‘ is not bad either, specially the stamping chorus at the end.
‘It’s Too Late‘ is a speedy R&B workout gets through on classic Dolls put-down lyrics: ‘I saw you last night on the midnight flight to the stars, but you spend all your time in the powder room with your chit-chat with Diana Dors.’, and equally cutting stuff. When the Dolls took a dislike to a chick, ‘specially a posey one’, she didn’t stand a chance. ‘Puss ‘n’ Boots‘ sees Sylvain getting a writing credit on one of the album’s best cuts.
Side two also sees Johnny Thunders’ only sole composition to appear on a Dolls record, ‘Chatterbox‘, which he also sings. It’s a vicious little number with a wasted, spat-out vocal and lashings of his characteristic anarchic guitar.
On the social side of things Johnny was shacked up by now with legendary ex-Queen of the L.A. Groupies Sable Starr, who he’d met when the Dolls toured the West Coast. ‘I met Sable when she was 15 and I was 18. I sent her home to New York while we carried on the tour. When we got back the police were looking for her at the airport and everywhere.’ The pair stayed together for two years and became one of the Big Apple’s most celebrated couples. But it went the way of most teenage romances…
But Johnny wasn’t really into the star-around-town trip. He was a bit more mysterious and usually out of it on his public appearances. It seems many an airport or stage have been christened by the contents of his stomach at sometime or another. With rumors of the drug use which permeated the band, Johnny was building up a sort of Keef death wish type image.
Meanwhile, JoHansen acted out the Jagger jet-set counterpart, appearing at all at the places, acting the social butterfly, as Jerry Nolan described him. Jerry himself was getting pretty involved with the Big H round then. Arthur Kane’s preoccupations centered around large bottles of intoxicating liquids. (Hey, remember that story about Arthur waking up one morning to find his chick had tried to saw off his thumb? It was the same one who shoved a bottle up Dee Dee Ramone’s arse).
As 1974 drew to a close the New York Dolls found themselves in a bit of a delicate situation. Glitter had long since been wiped out by new crazes yet they were still saddled with this tarty glam-rock image. Coupled with those ego problems, the ever more excessive excesses and disappointments of both albums the group’s morale was at a decidedly low ebb and the cracks were starting to show.
What seemed like the answer came along in the form of Macolm McLaren in early ’75. The Dolls met him during the ’74 tour when they paid a visit to his Kings Road shop, then called Let It Rock.
Malcolm hadn’t liked any ’70s rock ‘n’ roll until he encountered the Dolls and then it was their style which hooked him. At the start of 1975 Malcom became their manager and after attempting to attend to the respective group habits, decided they needed a drastic change of image to kill off the glitter impression.
Malcolm’s solution to the problem was for the group to adopt an extreme Left pose. He made the band use red leather suits and similarly-slanted songs were written. Initial gigs were real hot apparently and hope was re-kindled… for a while anyway.
The Dolls popularity had waned in the States and though some places would sell out others did not. Soon they found themselves back in the small clubs churning out the hits to keep the customers satisfied. The relationship with Malcolm lasted about six months. “He was the icing on the cake,” says Jerry.
By now the Dolls were in their death throes. Finally Jerry and Johnny could take no more. They split and flew back to New York in the middle of a club tour in Florida.
Johnny: “Me and Jerry left because we felt we weren’t getting anywhere playing our old songs in tiny clubs.”
Jerry: “The group was getting stale and staying behind the times, not advancing in any way.”
Apparently JoHansen made a sizable contribution to the split too.
“He thought anybody in the band could be replaced,” said Jerry. “Especially when Malcolm came in. They felt they were going to take over the world… but they were doing everything but rock ‘n’ roll music.
“We told David we were going back to New York to start again and he said ‘OK… anybody in this band can be replaced’. And that was the end of the Dolls. David carried on with other guys, but that was the end of the Dolls… the ONLY Dolls.”
It was summer ’75. The New York Dolls had lasted three years.
There was nearly a third Dolls album, which would have included such numbers as ‘Pirate Love’ which is now a highlight of the Heartbreakers’ set, and one called ‘Teenage News’. Would it have been the ultimate killer they always promised? We’ll never know. I’m leaving that one to the Heartbreakers…
To most people, the Dolls expired when Thunders and Nolan upped and quit. Arthur Kane and his drink problem were just about out of the band by this time anyway. Soon after getting off the ground this group did a money-spinning tour of Japanese stadiums, supporting people like Jeff Beck. Pictures filtered over of JoHansen posing around in a baggy old suit and hat pulled over his eyes.
After their return to New York, the Dolls resumed playing shows in the US and Canada. Mercury dropped the Dolls on 7 October 1975, their contract with Mercury having expired on 8 August 1975.
Five months after Thunders’ and Nolan’s departures from the band, the New York Dolls delivered a rousing show at the Beacon Theatre on New Year’s Eve, 1975. The show met with great critical acclaim.
The group toured throughout 1976, performing a set including some songs with lyrics by David Johansen that would later appear on David Johansen’s solo albums including Funky But Chic, Frenchette and Wreckless Crazy. The New York Dolls played their last show on December 30, 1976 at Max’s Kansas City; on the same bill as Blondie.
In interviews at the time, JoHansen stressed the Dolls never split just swapped some of the old members for new ones. They never got any records out although demos were done, including a song called ‘Funky But Chic‘, which is how JoHansen liked to describe the new music. Yeah the Dolls go disco!
A posthumous New York Dolls album, Lipstick Killers, made up of early demo tapes of the original Dolls (with Billy Murcia on drums), was released in a cassette-only edition on ROIR Records in 1981, and subsequently re-released on CD, and then on vinyl in early 2006. All the tracks from this title – sometimes referred to as The Mercer Street Sessions (though actually recorded at Blue Rock Studio, New York) – are included on the CD Private World, along with other tracks recorded elsewhere, including a previously unreleased Dolls original, “Endless Party”.
Three more unreleased studio tracks, including another previously unreleased Dolls original, Lone Star Queen, are included on the Rock ‘n’ Roll album. The other two songs are covers: the Courageous Cat theme from the original Courageous Cat cartoon series; and a second attempt at Don’t Mess With Cupid, a song written by Steve Cropper and Eddie Floyd for Otis Redding, and first recorded independently for what was later to become the Mercer Street/Blue Rock Sessions.
Johansen formed the David Johansen Group, and released a self-titled LP in May 1978, recorded at the Bottom Line in NYC’s Greenwich Village, on Blue Sky Records, a label created by Steve Paul, formerly of The Scene. The album featured Sylvain Mizrahi and Johnny Thunders as guest musicians. Johansen continued to tour with his solo project and released four more albums, In Style, 1979; Here Comes the Night, 1981; Live it Up, 1982; and Sweet Revenge, 1984.
During the later 1980s, Johansen, ever-evolving, decided to try to liberate himself from the expectations of his New York Dolls perceived persona, and, on a whim, created the persona Buster Poindexter. The success of this act led him to be invited to appear in multiple films: Scrooged,[23] Freejack, and Let it Ride, among others. He also formed a band called David Johansen and the Harry Smiths, named after the eccentric ethnomusicologist, performing jump blues, Delta blues, and some original songs.
Sylvain Sylvain, the corkscrew-haired half-pint, looks set to deliver soon with his band the Criminals. He was laid up for a while after a bad car crash which meant he had to have a long metal rod inserted in his leg, but now he’s back and gigging.
Sylvain formed his own band, the Criminals, then cut a solo album for RCA, while also working with Johansen. He later became a taxicab driver in New York. During this period, in the early 1990s, Sylvain moved to Los Angeles and recorded one album Sleep Baby Doll, on Fishhead Records. His band, for that record, consisted of Brian Keats on drums, Dave Vanian‘s Phantom Chords, Speediejohn Carlucci (who had played with the Fuzztones), and Olivier Le Baron on lead guitar. Guest appearances by Frank Infante of Blondie and Derwood Andrews of Generation X were also included on the record. It has been re-released as New York A Go Go.
Jerry & Johnny
When Johnny and Jerry went back to New York they formed a band called the Heartbreakers with Richard Hell, who’d just quit Television. Then they got in Walter Lure from the Demons and proceeded to build a reputation as New York’s hottest rock ‘n’ roll band. Hell couldn’t cut it with them so he left and Billy Rath came in on bass.
The group had been in Britain since they were invited to play on the Pistols’ ill-fated Anarchy tour last year.
If the spirit of the New York Dolls still exists it’s in The Heartbreakers, who display the same reckless energy and flash. The playing is much tighter, problems of the past are gone and the new songs are all catchy, rock ‘n’ roll killers. One of the best live acts around and we’re so lucky to have them in Britain for so long. They’re also the first ex-Dolls to get a record out. Blimey, it’s been about three years between Too Much Too Soon and Chinese Rocks, the Heartbreakers’ smasheroo of a single.
Arthur Kane
The least has been heard from the mysterious Arthur Kane, who appears to have conquered his juicing and now has a band called LOK. He also fronted a band called Killer Kane for a while in Los Angeles.
The band broke up after they offered up two excellent albums. After reuniting, the New York Dolls recruited new musicians to tour and record. They released three more albums—One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This (2006), Cause I Sez So (2009) and Dancing Backward in High Heels (2011). Following a 2011 British tour with Alice Cooper, the Dolls disbanded again. Over the years, all of the founding members have died.
Anyhow, that’s the story of the Dolls. Perhaps the great rock legend of all time. There will never be another group like The New York Dolls. Amen!
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