Music	Babylon Regained by Donny Kutzbach

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The New York Dolls recording "Dance Like a Monkey"

When uptown comes downtown

Better take her for a ride…

—from “Private World”

They created hard-charged music from stories of down-and out desperation while embodying equal parts city chic urban sleaze. They knew about these things, they lived them. They changed they face of rock and roll, and not just by wearing too much eyeliner and lipstick.

A band like the New York Dolls only comes around once and burns short but ever so bright. Piecing together R&B, street-corner doowop, Spector’s girl groups, 1960s garage and psych rock and tarted up like a bunch of really ugly Lower East Side transvestites, the infamous Dolls were the gunpowder of the punk revolution. Their music directly seeded the birthing of the Ramones and the CBGBs scene in New York City as well as the Sex Pistols and Clash in London.

Hard rock and metal are in debt, too. Kiss pulled their costumed bombast from the Dolls’ stage show and garb. Early on Aerosmith desperately wanted to be the Dolls, aping their style and lifestyle, and years later Guns ’N’ Roses covered their music. Every poodle-permed, heavily made-up glam metal band since has copped the Dolls’ style.

No band, however, has ever come close to equaling the trashy magic and wasted majesty of the New York Dolls. The Dolls had the right mix of booze and pills and drugs, but there was the other chemistry, too.

There was Johnny Thunders’ perfectly imperfect guitar slinging. Jerry Nolan—who replaced original drummer Billy Murcia after a fatal night of partying—mastered a signature tom-tom pounding backbeat. Arthur “Killer” Kane looked like Karloff’s Frankenstein in drag behind his rumbling bass. Add Sylvain Sylvain’s sense of style and ear for a melody. Then top it off with David Johansen’s gravelly voxed pouting and pomping.

They burst onto the New York City scene in late 1971 playing homeless shelters and dive bars while attracting a fan base of junkies and prostitutes. There were other downtown fans, though. As Ira Robbins wrote in Trouser Press, “The Dolls singlehandedly began the local New York scene that later spawned the Ramones, Blondie, Television, Talking Heads and others.”

Two studio albums on Mercury Records (see sidebar) stand like a compass indicating where rock and roll would head, but were hardly hits in their time. By 1975, the band was dropped by the label and turned to new management in the form of London clothier/shop owner Malcolm McLaren, already formulating the Monkees-like invention of the Sex Pistols, who recast them as cod communists in red leather suits. The band began to dissolve at that point, with Thunders and Nolan splitting to start the Heartbreakers. Sylvain and Johansen continued on as the Dolls with revolving lineups before heading into solo careers.

Flash-forward about 30 years. While Nolan and Thunders died within months of one another in the early 1990s, the remaining three Dolls did what no one would have ever expected. At the behest of lifelong fan Morrissey—a revered music icon himself—the Dolls reformed to headline the 2004 Meltdown Fest in London. As quickly as they had reassembled, they dissolved again; the three resurrected Dolls sadly wouldn’t last. At the reunion gig, Kane was suffering fatigue and within a week was diagnosed with leukemia, which took his life not even a month later.

Johansen and Sylvain persevered, however, and insisted there would be more shows and a new album. I caught the Dolls at SXSW 2005 and it was magnetizing. There stood David Johansen, having lost little of his voice and none of his charisma, with his partner-in-crime Sylvain Sylvain joyfully strumming away. As promised, 2006 saw the release of One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This (Roadrunner), which bore all the marks of the classic Dolls’ swagger.

The New York Dolls headline Little Steven’s Underground Garage A Go-Go with the Supersuckers, the Chesterfield Kings and the Charms this Saturday, November 18 at 8pm at the Town Ballroom.

New York Dolls Discography

Too Much Too Soon (Mercury, 1974)—The sometimes maligned second album is a dark, punk-foreshadowing powder keg of disillusion and abandon. Produced by the legendary Shadow Morton, it has moments (“Babylon,” “Who Are the Mystery Girls”) that surpass the band’s debut.

Red Patent Leather (Castle US, reissue)—This show from New York City in 1975 is more than a fan-only curio. Not only is it the final live document of the original band but it also proves a dizzyingly great set that includes a set of charged-up R&B and old rock covers, Dolls classics and a few that never made it to other records.

One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This (Roadrunner, 2006)—David and Syl adding one more to the Dolls’ legacy that delivers all the sleaze and sass of this legendary name brand

4 Non Dolls

After the mascara and heels, some highlights from the solo years (Buster Poindexter notwithstanding!):

Johnny Thunders, So Alone (Sire)—While Thunders was on one long, sad vacation of junkie doom throughout his career, he managed a few great records. This one is his masterpiece from the gutter. The stained grandeur of wrenchingly beautiful ballad “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory” and the furious punk stab of “London Boys” highlight it. Thunders’ guests here include Steve Marriott and Phil Lynott, all currently playing together at that great gig in the sky.

David Johansen, David Johansen (1978, out of print)—With a clutch of songs left from the Dolls, Johansen cut this often overlooked gem. Flanked by the likes of the Rascals’ Felix Cavaliere, Aerosmith’s Joe Perry and old foil Sylvain, Johansen poured his all into this slightly slick but honest-to goodness rock record.

Sylvain Sylvain, Sylvain Sylvain (1980, out of print)—Imbued with doowop and power pop, Sylvain’s debut on his own is a cool affair of saucy, streetwise rock and roll. This record reminds the world that Syl was behind many songs that energized the Dolls.

David Johansen and the Harry Smiths, David Johansen and the Harry Smiths (Chesky, 2000)—Following his success as an actor and his self-reinvention as cha-chaing partymeister Buster Poindexter, Johansen went back—way back—to pre-rock-and-roll forms of the folk and blues tradition with a wonderfully gritty collection of songs, some culled from the famed anthology where Johansen’s band here got its name.