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 dwelling in New York Metropolis, Jeff Kilgour, a household spokesperson, informed The Related Press.
Johnson’s well being standing had been up to date by his stepdaughter, Leah Hennessey, in January, as a part of a fundraiser with the Candy Reduction Musicians Fund. Hennessy stated Johansen had been identified with stage 4 most cancers throughout the pandemic and in addition had a mind tumour. A fall a number of weeks earlier had left him bedridden and requiring around-the-clock care.
“That is the worst ache I’ve ever skilled in my whole life. I’ve by no means been one to ask for assist however that is an emergency,” Johansen stated in an accompanying assertion.
Johansen’s loss of life ends a singular profession as a quintessential New York Metropolis artist, with turns that additionally included a latest stint as a deejay on a Sirius XM present and a few performing roles, most notably because the cigar-chomping cab driver with rotting enamel (the Ghost of Christmas Previous) in 1988’s Scrooged starring Invoice Murray.
Johansen’s vibrant life was captured in 2023’s Character Disaster, co-directed by Martin Scorcese and David Tedeschi, and government produced by Ron Howard and Brian Glazer.
The title of the documentary got here from a handful of tolerating songs from the Dolls, a band that was described by main New York Metropolis rock critic Robert Christgau as mixing “early-’60s popsong savvy with late-’60s fast-metal anarchy.”
A handful of the band’s songs grew to become touchstones for punk, different and rock bands to know — variations of Character Disaster could be recorded by Scott Weiland, Sonic Youth and Teenage Fanclub, whereas Weapons ‘n’ Roses included Human Being on their The Spaghetti Incident covers album.
The band, risky off stage and sometimes leaving destruction of their wake, additionally favoured heels, make-up and ladies’s clothes. Solely Johansen amongst them may very well be remotely described as androgynous, resembling Mick Jagger and — to his bandmates — Butch from Our Gang (the Little Rascals).
“I needed to go jail [once] dressed like Liza Minnelli,” Johansen quipped to a British discuss present, captured in Character Disaster.
Johansen was the final to affix 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 preferred the identical music as we did, and he had the identical dramatic impact when he walked right into a room as we did,” stated Sylvain. “The ladies would stare and the fellows would glare.”
Improbably, regardless of Johansen’s subsequent additional afield stints as Poindexter in addition to albums of Americana music with backup group Harry Smiths, the three residing Dolls on the time reunited for a 2004 Meltdown Pageant lineup curated by superfan Morrissey.
“England at all times obtained the Dolls, and that present was bordering on euphoria,” Johansen informed Mojo journal years later. A model of the Dolls piloted by Johansen and Sylvain would go on to report three extra studio albums.
‘Brats from the outer boroughs’
Johansen was born to a Norwegian father and Irish mom within the New York Metropolis borough Staten Island on Jan. 9, 1950, the oldest of six youngsters.
“Most people in my household sing, dance, are at all times in performs,” he informed the Related Press within the late Nineteen Eighties. “I used to be the least inclined in that path. I am the one who took it up as a occupation.”
However he grew up entranced by music heard on the radio and from report outlets — blues, doo-wop, R&B and early rock — and performed in bands as a teen. By 1971, when the New York Dolls started to rehearse, he was eking out a residing in underground outfitters and theatre teams.
The unique lineup coalesced from acquaintances and highschool mates from the outer New York Metropolis boroughs – guitarists Johnny Thunders (John Gezale), Sylvain (Ronald Mizrahi), drummer Billy Murcia and bass participant Arthur (Killer) Kane.
Quickly after debuting to paying prospects in early 1972, they had been making the largest splash of an underground New York band for the reason that Velvet Underground within the mid-Sixties.
“They introduced a way of enjoyable and self-awareness to rock and roll, at a time when maybe issues had been getting a bit extra critical than they wanted to be,” stated Lenny Kaye, rock journalist and Patti Smith Group guitarist, within the 2014 documentary Trying For Johnny: The Legend of Johnny Thunders.
David Bowie in September 1972 famously attended a Dolls present at certainly one of their essential haunts, the Mercer Arts Centre, housed in a dilapidated lodge that will partially collapse months later, killing 4 folks.
Additionally they gained discover within the British music press, with Johansen essentially the most voluble within the band; he as soon as described their proclivities as “trysexual.”
“It wasn’t like we’d discuss what we had been going to sound like or what we had been going to appear like or something, we simply kinda did it,” Johansen informed Mojo a long time later.
However throughout a tour in November 1972, Murcia — described because the least doubtless member of the band to have interaction in self-destructive behaviour — died of an unintended overdose.
With Jerry Nolan as drummer, the band would debut on disc with a self-titled launch produced by Todd Rundgren in 1973.
“It takes brats from the outer boroughs to seize the oppressive pleasure Manhattan holds for a half-formed human being the way in which these guys do,” Christgau, who wrote in Village Voice and CREEM, stated in doling out a uncommon A-plus overview.
Future Good Morning in America movie critic Joel Siegel, then a reporter for New York’s CBS tv affiliate, was extra bemused, describing a band live performance on the time as “at all times belligerent, hostile and positively loud.”
Conflicts with band mates
The next 12 months noticed the discharge of Too A lot Too Quickly, however neither album offered massively, and the band was paired on the highway with any variety of acts, together with odd matches with Canadian bands Rush and Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
Character conflicts arose and each Thunders and Nolan had been hooked on heroin, with Johansen and Kane stated to be heavy drinkers.
British music and vogue impresario Malcolm McLaren, who would information the Intercourse Pistols, briefly bolstered the Dolls’ enthusiasm for a number of months, although his selection of crimson leather-based fits for the band raised eyebrows.
The ultimate present of the unique lineup was in late 1976, and fewer than two years later, Johansen was releasing the primary of 4 solo albums that featured contributions from Joe Perry, Ian Hunter, Nona Hendryx and Patti Scialfa.
Solo profession
The solo profession noticed him open for the Who however did not result in industrial success. Tiring of life on the highway, by the mid-Nineteen Eighties he was dabbling incognito in New York golf equipment as Poindexter, with a repertoire of songs, normally a long time outdated, that jumped genres.
The track that will launch him to a wider viewers in 1987 was really solely a handful of years outdated — Sizzling Sizzling Sizzling, initially recorded by Caribbean artist, Arrow.
Johansen then promoted the primary studio album as Poindexter with a sequence of appearances with the Saturday Evening Stay home band and a duet with SNL visitor host Sigourney Weaver on Child, It is Chilly Outdoors.
4 albums of Poindexter materials had been recorded in 10 years, although it typically felt like he had created a monster. Sizzling Sizzling Sizzling, he stated in Character Disaster, grew to become the “bane of my existence.”
Put up-Scrooged performing roles did not make as a lot affect for Johansen, as he appeared in industrial flops Mr. Nanny with Hulk Hogan, Freejack — each he and Jagger had supporting roles — and Let It Experience.
The 21s century noticed him bounce from ardour tasks musically, with the Dolls reunited with Rundgren as producer on 2009’s Trigger I Sez So.
Within the years earlier than his loss of life, he was sharing his eclectic music information on the Sirius radio present David Johansen’s Mansion of Enjoyable.
Johansen was the final surviving member of the unique New York Dolls lineup.
Thunders died of a heroin overdose in 1991, with Nolan following months later after a chronic sickness. Kane died three weeks after the 2004 reunion of leukemia, with Sylvan dying aged 69 in 2021 from most cancers.
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