January 15, 2021
As a child of the 1960s, I was raised by The Rolling Stones' sounds, but they didn't roll my stone in the 1970s. A new band came upon me from New York, called innocently enough The New York Dolls. What I look for in an artist or band is the music, but I need their visuals, and even more important, their sense of culture. The Dolls, for me, brought early black rock n' roll (or rhythm n' blues), cabaret theater, cross-dressing, no-gender preference, and brilliant observational songs. The center of the world for The Dolls is New York City. There are thousands of stories in New York, but The New York Dolls focus on a fraction of the town that never sleeps as they turn into a pre-punk Damon Runyon of the early 1970s.
I came upon them in an article in the New Musical Express in 1972. It was an interview, and at the time, no music was recorded. Still, the small photograph of them in the paper with the article intrigued me. They mentioned they like the early Kinks and the blues. The one picture of them dressed in what I thought was girl clothes made me a fan. Over the months, I read reviews of their live show in The Village Voice, and again, I thought of New York on the same level as the Land of Oz. Also, The Dolls represented technicolor in a very black and white city landscape. They stood out in all of their street portraits against the landscape of the Big Apple.
When I bought their album in 1973, I was struck by the band's Dead End Kids' imagery. They were the Bowery Boys but dressed more outrageously. The Todd Rundgren produced album sounded raw at the time. I have to admire Rundgren for not messing with their music or sound, just gave it a sonic platform for them to do their magic. I was totally seduced by the sound and vision. Within that album, I lived in their world, and David Johansen, with the generous assistance of the late Johnny Thunders, Sylvain Sylvain, Arthur Kane, and their second (at the time) magnificent drummer Jerry Nolan. The Dolls were indeed a band, with one voice, filtered through the lyrics (mostly) by Johansen. I have read that he was influenced by Ray Davies's talent for observational songs. David had the ability to articulate the world in front of him with joy, desire, and biting wit.
Their second album, "In Too Much Too Soon," produced by the legendary Shadow Morton, the philosopher behind The Shangri-Las and The Vanilla Fudge, added a sense of drama to the cocktail mix supplied by the Dolls. The production sound is eccentric compared to Todd's work with the first album, and that's perfectly fine. The brilliance of "Human Being," "Babylon," "Who Are The Mystery Girls?" and their superb version of "(There's Gonna Be A ) Showdown" imagines the taste of the egg creams and pizza off the streets of Manhattan.
When I think of Rock n' Roll, the definition or not n that goes with that phrase has to be The New York Dolls. The original lineup made only two albums and some live material (that, of course, is essential). Still, the magic that they made together as a team is a remarkable and beautiful thing. It's tragic that young men like Billy Doll, Thunders, Kane, Nolan, and the very recent passing of Sylvain Sylvain, leave the planet at any age in these horrific times that is the 20th and 21st-century. As long as their music exists, as well as photos and video documentation, I'm a happy man.
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