Remembering David Johansen, R.I.P.

Former New York Dolls front man and solo artist David Johansen passed away this week after a lengthy battle with various health issues. “David Johansen passed away peacefully at home, holding the hands of his wife Mara Hennessey and daughter Leah, in the sunlight surrounded by music and flowers,” his family posted on the Sweet Relief fundraising website. “After a decade of profoundly compromised health he died of natural causes at the age of 75.” A unique and charismatic performer, Johansen never quite received the commercial success his music would seem to demand, but his star continues to shine as young generation of rockers discover the infectious and energetic sound of the first two New York Dolls albums…

Born in Staten Island in 1950, Johansen was, in many ways, the quintessential New Yorker – brash, bold, and loud while performing, but with a reputation as friendly and engaging off stage. Johansen began performing in the late ‘60s, singing with a local band called the Vagabond Missionaries. Johansen later hooked up with guitarists Johnny Thunders and Rick Rivets, bassist Arthur Kane, and drummer Billy Murcia, forming the New York Dolls in 1971. Rivets was later replaced by Sylvain Sylvain, going on to form proto-punk outfit the Brats. The band members weren’t necessarily serious about the Dolls, but after developing a unique musical vision that placed them firmly on the ramshackle side of the Rolling Stones, the Dolls began to developing a loyal following via raucous performances at Max’s Kansas City and the Mercer Arts Center.

The New York Dolls

The Dolls were dismissed by record labels at the time as a less-talented version of the Stones; the band’s frequent onstage vulgarity and tongue-in-cheek penchant for cross-dressing ruffles some corporate feathers, to be sure. Critics first noticed the Dolls after they opened for the Faces in England in 1972, the band subsequently touring the U.K. Tragically, Murcia overdosed on alcohol and Quaaludes during the tour, the Dolls subsequently bringing in drummer Jerry Nolan, who would later join Thunders in the Heartbreakers. Thanks to support from rock critic and Mercury Records A&R man Paul Nelson, the band received a label deal and it was arranged for musician/producer Todd Rundgren to produce the band’s self-titled 1973 debut.

With original songs penned mostly by Johansen with either Thunders or Sylvain, tunes like “Personality Crisis,” “Trash,” and “Jet Boy” created a blueprint for punk rock to follow. A lively cover of Bo Diddley’s “Pills” was provided a similar proto-punk makeover. Given a meager budget to work with, the Dolls nevertheless delivered a rock ‘n’ roll classic; The New York Dolls album was recorded for a mere $17,000 (the bulk of which was probably Rundgren’s fee). The album was deemed a commercial failure, though, peaking at #116 on the Billboard album chart, but its econo-production costs meant that it likely still made money on its 100,000+ sales. Although it has been reported that the album has only moved around 500k copies to date, it’s a steady-seller year-to-year and has since become regarded as one of the most important debut albums of all time, influencing bands on both sides of the ocean like Kiss, the Ramones, the Smiths, the Sex Pistols, the Replacements, and the Damned among many others. Mercury Records must have seen some light at the end of the tunnel, as they approved a second Dolls album.

Recorded and released in 1974 with veteran producer George “Shadow” Morton (The Shangri-Las, Janis Ian, Vanilla Fudge) at the helm, Too Much Too Soon offered a mix of band originals (“Babylon,” “Who Are the Mystery Girls?,” “Chatterbox”) largely written by Johansen and Thunders, and inspired R&B covers like “Stranded In the Jungle,” “Don’t Start Me Talkin’,” and “(There’s Gonna Be A) Showdown.” Although Morton’s polished production smoothed out the band’s raw edges somewhat, critics like Dave Marsh and Robert Christgau were firmly in the Dolls’ corner; sadly, Too Much Too Soon sold less than 100k copies, but likely turned a profit as Mercury had the band lined up to record a third album. A U.S. tour in support of Too Much Too Soon turned into a disaster, with cancelled shows and increased drug and alcohol use by the band creating tensions. Subsequently dropped by Mercury, Thunders and Nolan left in 1975 to form the Heartbreakers, with Johansen and Sylvain carrying on for another year with substitute players before breaking up.

David Johansen In Style

Johansen launched his solo career with a self-titled debut album in 1978; produced by NYC ‘guy at all the best parties’ Richard Robinson along with Johansen, it was released by the CBS-distributed Blue Sky Records label associated with blues-rock guitarist Johnny Winter and his manager, Manhattan club owner Steve Paul. The album included musical guests like Dolls’ guitarist Sylvain, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry, singer Nona Hendryx, violinist Scarlet Rivera, and Rascals’ keyboardist Felix Cavaliere. Johansen’s critically-acclaimed sophomore effort, In Style, followed a year later; produced by former Bowie guitarist Mick Ronson, it featured guest musicians like Ian Hunter (Mott the Hoople) and Dan Hartman (Edgar Winter Group) as well as Johansen’s old friend Sylvain.

In Style didn’t sell particularly well, but the album yielded lasting songs like “Melody,” “Swaheto Woman,” and “She Knew She was Falling in Love.” Given another bite of the apple by Blue Sky, Johansen recruited South African musician Blondie Chaplin (who had played with the Beach Boys and Rick Danko of the Band) to produce Here Comes the Night. Released in 1981, Here Comes the Night saw Johansen working closely with Chaplin to craft a more commercial sound but, when the album peaked at #180 on the Billboard chart, Blue Sky cut him loose after releasing Live It Up in 1982. The energetic and entertaining live set displayed a portion of Johansen’s enormous onstage charisma on original songs like “Frenchette,” “Melody,” “Funky But Chic” and the Dolls’ tracks “Personality Crisis” and “Stranded In the Jungle,” the album scoring a Top 30 hit with a medley of the Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out of this Place,” “Don’t Bring Me Down,” and “It’s My Life.”

Johansen signed with Passport Records for 1984’s overlooked Sweet Revenge LP which, like virtually all of the singer’s previous albums, received widespread critical acclaim along with modest sales. Johansen had already cooked up his third act, however – the pseudonymous ‘Buster Poindexter’ – a sort of R&B revue bandleader backed by the Uptown Horns. Performing an upbeat mix of pop, swing, jump blues, and novelty tunes, Johansen scored a Top 40 hit LP with 1987’s Buster Poindexter and its single “Hot Hot Hot.” Johansen appeared frequently on Saturday Night Live as part of the house band, and a video for “Hot Hot Hot” received heavy airplay on the MTV cable network. Johansen released four albums under the ‘Buster Poindexter’ persona circa 1987-1997, each exploring a different musical style.

Coaxed by longtime Dolls fan Morrissey of the Smiths to reunite for the 2004 Meltdown Festival in London, the performance by the surviving members of the band – Johansen, Sylvain, and Kane – led to a live album and DVD. Following Kane’s unexpected death of leukemia a few weeks after the festival, Johansen and Sylvain recruited guitarist Steve Conte, bassist Sami Yaffa (Hanoi Rocks), drummer Brian Delaney, and keyboardist Brian Koonin to record the 2006 album One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This, which was followed by several festival appearances. This Dolls line-up also recorded 2009’s Cause I Sez So; 2011’s Dancing Backwards In High Heels proved to be the band’s swansong.

David Johansen & the Harry Smiths

Johansen channeled his longstanding love of blues and folk music with the Harry Smiths, a band formed with multi-instrumentalists Brian Koonin, Larry Saltzman, and Kermit Driscoll along with percussionist Joey Baron. Named after music historian Harry Smith, whose 1952 compilation of 1920s and ‘30s country and blues music, The Anthology of American Folk Music, inspired many an aspiring musician in the 1950s and ‘60s, Johansen and the Harry Smiths released two albums – 2000’s David Johansen & the Harry Smiths and 2002’s Shaker – comprised of whip-smart covers of timeless tunes by legends like Lightnin’ Hopkins, Furry Lewis, Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Sonny Boy Williams, songs that Johansen’s aging voice was more than world-weary enough to sing convincingly.

Over the years, Johansen also dabbled in acting, his expressive face and over-the-top personality leading to roles in the 1988 Bill Murray film Scrooged (as the ‘Ghost of Christmas Past’), Mr. Nanny, Freejack, and Car 54, Where Are You? as well as TV shows like Miami Vice, Oz, and Bill Murray’s Netflix special A Very Murray Christmas. Award-winning filmmaker (and fellow New Yorker) Martin Scorsese directed a documentary film on Johansen for the Showtime cable network, Personality Crisis: One Night Only, which was released in April 2023. Johansen also contributed songs to several compilation albums over the years, including 1984’s A Diamond Hidden In the Mouth of A Corpse, 1994’s September Songs – The Music of Kurt Weill, 2003’s Stormy Weather: The Music of Harold Arlen, and 2005’s Jim White Presents Music From Searching For the Wrong-Eyed Jesus. He also hosted a weekly show for Sirius satellite radio called David Johansen’s Mansion of Fun.

After reading about the New York Dolls in Creem magazine – where they were honored with awards as both the “Best New Group of the Year” and “Worst New Group of the Year” in a reader’s poll – I quickly latched onto the first Dolls LP. While in high school, I’d be invited to parties at a former girlfriend’s house, knowing that I’d show up with a stack of records and, plied with a six-pack of beer, would gladly play DJ all night. As my classmates paired up and disappeared up a hill for extracurricular activities, I’d slap on the New York Dolls album…I got all the way through side one once before somebody came down the hill and demanded that I change the record to something like Billy Joel. I remained a steadfast Dolls fan ever since, and I’ve seen initial dismissal of the New York Dolls as low-rent clones of the Rolling Stones give way to acceptance as one of the most groundbreaking bands in rock ‘n’ roll history.

David Johansen may never have gotten rich, or even received anything more than a modicum of commercial success, but his work with the Dolls and his underrated solo albums continue to find new converts to this day. His music has influenced a heck of a lot of people, which is more than you can say about many of those that came before and after the Dolls. Johansen is a legend and his death makes the world of rock music far less interesting. R.I.P.