“They were trashy. They seemed genuine”: New York Dolls singer David Johansen dead at 75

New York Dolls singer David Johansen died on 28 February at his home in New York City.

It had been revealed earlier this year that Johansen had stage 4 cancer and a brain tumour.

The Dolls’ self-titled debut album, released in 1973, was an inspiration to countless punk and hard rock bands.

One famous fan is rocker Joan Jett, who recently recalled the impact of seeing the Dolls perform live when she was in her early teens.

“They were trashy,” Jett told The Guardian. “The music seemed really connected to the musicians playing it. They seemed genuine.

“At that point I was trying to learn how to play guitar. I hadn’t decided I was going to form a rock band, but seeing bands like them, I could relate.

“And soon after that I did leave for California, and started thinking that if I wanted to play rock’n’roll there must be other girls like me who wanted to play it too.

“And if the New York Dolls could do it, I could do it.”

Many famous rock’n’roll bands came out of New York City in the 1970s, including Kiss, Ramones, Talking Heads and Blondie. But none was more influential than the New York Dolls.

A wild bunch of misfits, cross-dressers and junkies, the Dolls came on like a sloppier and more screwed-up version of The Rolling Stones, playing street-tough songs full of bad attitude, with echoes of early glam rock stars such as David Bowie and Marc Bolan, mixed with the teen-angst drama of ’60s girl-group pop.

And they looked as sleazy as they sounded, David Johansen like a low-rent Mick Jagger, the rest of them like drag queens and hookers.

The Dolls’ first album would inspire so many bands in the years that followed, from the Ramones and the Sex Pistols to Hanoi Rocks and Guns N’ Roses.

But by 1977, the year in which punk revolutionised rock music, the Dolls had already self-destructed.

The heavy drug culture within the band claimed the life of one member before that debut album was even recorded.

In London, during a 1972 tour, drummer Billy Murcia died at the age of 21 following a drug overdose.

Among the drummers who subsequently auditioned for the Dolls was Peter Criss, who later became a star in Kiss.

But it was Jerry Nolan, a childhood friend of Criss, who joined the Dolls alongside Johansen, lead guitarist Johnny Thunders, bassist Arthur ‘Killer’ Kane, and rhythm guitarist and pianist Sylvain Sylvain.

The producer for that first album was an odd choice.

Todd Rundgren, a smart-ass singer-songwriter, had been hailed as a pop-rock genius after scoring a hit in 1972 with his fancy double album Something/Anything?

But Rundgren was shrewd enough to keep it simple with the Dolls.

The whole album was cut inside eight days, and it was perfect in its imperfection: raw rock’n’roll, all cheap thrills, from a band that thrived on the energy, danger and decadence of New York City street life.

The opening track Personality Crisis, with Thunders’ gnarly riff and Johansen howling and sneering, was the sound of punk rock before it happened.

New York Dolls - Personality Crisis - YouTube

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In songs such as Trash and Looking For A Kiss, garage-rock grit mixed with Spector-inspired pop.

In Lonely Planet Boy, acoustic strumming and Johansen’s drowsy vocal recalled the Stones of Exile On Main St.

And to finish, there was the snotty glam rock anthem Jet Boy.

The album polarised opinion.

In Creem magazine’s 1973 readers’ poll, the Dolls were voted the best new group of the year, and the worst.

Another great record followed in 1974’s Too Much Too Soon, but this, like the debut, sold next to nothing, and after Thunders and Nolan quit in 1975, the band eventually split in ’76.

It was after the deaths of Thunders, in 1991, Nolan in 1992, and Kane in 2004, that Johansen and Sylvain steered a new version of the Dolls through three more albums. And with this, a legendary rock’n’roll band could finally bow out in style.