New York Dolls: Johansen Looks Back

"We might as well been called the Tehran Dolls."

When I came to New York in fall 1972 to work for CBS Records, there was so much happening at the world's most major label, or collection of labels, it took a while to notice that in the city itself, not much was happening. It was a time between scenes: the Greenwich Village folk scene had passed, the uptown clubs were passé, not much local going on. Except for a one-band scene of its own: the New York Dolls.

The Dolls best known formation was ringleader and singer David Johansen; bassist Arthur Kane; drummer Billy Murcia (died Nov. 6, 1972, London, replaced by Jerry Nolan); and guitarists Johnny Thunders and Sylvain Sylvain. The Dolls played everywhere in the city in 1972: Coventry in Queens; Kenny's Castaways, then on the upper east side; Max's Kansas City; and especially Tuesday nights at the Oscar Wilde room in Mercer Arts Center in the Broadway Central Hotel. The city was crumbling, and so was the hotel, which collapsed around 5 pm on Aug. 3, 1973, killing four and injuring dozens.

The Dolls were signed to Mercury Records by esteemed music journalist turned-A&R exec Paul Nelson. The Dolls had top-of-the-line management: Steve Leber, David Krebs, and Marty Thau. Their debut album in 1973 was produced by Todd Rundgren: Probably a "Personality Crisis" in that pairing.

Their second, the prophetic In Too Much, Too Soon, (1974) by George "Shadow" Morton, a seemingly natural fit since the Dolls covered Morton's best-known act, the Shangri-Las of "Leader of the Pack" and whose "Give Him a Great Big Kiss," is part of the Dolls repertory. Both albums flopped, Nelson, the band's most vociferous advocate at both Mercury and respected member of the music press, lost his job. I think the title In Too Much Too Soon imagines them featured in the movie Too Much, Too Soon, (1958) based on the sordid biography of fast-living Diana Barrymore (Dorothy Malone), daughter of actor John Barrymore (Errol Flynn).

Johansen, of course, survived the brief life of the New York Dolls to become one of the city's most beloved entertainers, both as a solo artist and as the suave lounge singer Buster Poindexter, actor, and man about town. Though the theatrical, cross-dressing, platform shoes-wearing Dolls were mostly gone by 1975, the musical fumes they left behind got inhaled by enough people to fuel the nascent punk scene.

I had interviewed Johansen a few times as both a soloist and as Buster. In 1997 and 1998, I was working on a book celebrating the 50 or so years of Mercury Records, commissioned by CEO/chairman Danny Goldberg. When the book was finished, just a few months late, it was too late: in 1998, Mercury had been swallowed by Universal Music Group, Danny was replaced, the Mercury label discontinued.

I interviewed Johansen (invariably spelled JoHansen in early press iterations) for the Mercury book. We met at one of the Chinese-Latin luncheonettes that used to line Eighth Avenue in Chelsea, where Johansen brought his perspective and his sardonic wit to tell the tale of the New York Dolls. It was a given that the Dolls music did not travel well. "We decided to call ourselves the New York Dolls, which was really a stupid idea,” he said. “It was probably my idea. Because it really regionalizes you. New York was the most hated place on the planet. Why didn't we call ourselves the Tehran Dolls, right?"

WR: YOU WERE YOUNG AND THE TOAST OF THE TOWN. WHAT WAS THAT LIKE?

DJ: There was nothing happening then. We came along and created a scene around us. It wasn't like we were conscious of creating anything. People just gravitated to it. All these people who had this rock and roll ethic who didn’t have any place to go to practice it. MacDougal Street was all boarded up, Bleecker Street, it was tough, no place to play, no events. When I was a young kid, like 13, you could go to MacDougal Street in the afternoon and see the Lovin' Spoonful playing, the Blues Magoos, acts all day, in coffee bars. If you were a kid and 13, Cafe Wha. . . it was a great way to get into rock and roll. I used to come over on the Staten Island Ferry and live, man.

WHEN DID YOU STOP TAKING THE FERRY?

I was about 17 and moved to the East Village to do that rock and roll thing. I had a couple of bands going all the time. I fell in with Charles Ludlum's Ridiculous Theater Company, I was like a spear-carrier [an extra in a show]. And I got this kind of education in The Show. They were very arch and I was definitely into that, because most of the bands, 1969-1970, not too many of them made a show. Janis Joplin made a show. I really loved her. But most of them had that kind of communal kind of image. If you were flashy, you were uncool or something.   

I used to practically go to the Fillmore every night, although I rarely paid. I could sleep through Blue Cheer, I felt so comfortable in there. It was very womblike.

WHEN DID YOU GO ABOUT FORMING A BAND?

I had this idea: I wanted to have a band with a Little Richard kind of thing going, with some flash. I met these guys, Johnny Thunders and Billy Murcia and Arthur Kane, they were trying to start a band, I had seen them around. There was a Mod bar on Bleecker Street called Nobody's. People used to dress like Rod Stewart and go there, [wearing] Granny Takes a Trip clothes, platform shoes. I would go over there once in awhile, there were a lot of chicks there.

I always was like a limousine liberal: I've always dug sleazy scenes, and then like, proper scenes. I had that gift, I guess. I could hang out at a bar in the Bowery, and then go to Le Cirque, you know what I mean? I have an appetite for all types.

THE EARLY VERSION OF THE DOLLS HAD A REHEARSAL SPACE AT A BICYCLE SHOP CALLED RUSTY'S.

He would lock us in there, and then let us out, so we couldn't steal anything. So we rehearsed there. I had written a few songs before I met them. I wasn't a very good guitar player, but I could play chords, so I could like write a song. I had "Lookin' for a Kiss" and "Bad Girl," and "Vietnamese Baby." John [Johnny Thunders] had some songs he was working on, so we did that, and we did some covers.

At that time I was really into Archie Bell and the Drells. I was like a WNJR [New Jersey-based r&b station] kid. WNJR would have a blues show where they'd play Little Walter, and that shit would drive me crazy. I would hear Little Walter and something would happen to me, I didn't know what it was. It was just this great feeling.

BO DIDDLEY'S "PILLS" MUST HAVE COME OUT OF YOUR RECORD COLLECTION.

That was just an excellent song for the Dolls. We could have written it. It was on the [Diddley] album, "The Originator." He did it as a calypso, kinda. We did it as it began to be called "punk."

We had a gig at a welfare hotel across from Rusty's. It was Christmas, the band didn't show up, so we played. We were terrible, but people were so hard up for a party, that they made us feel great. And we had these r&b songs in our repertoire: We had [Otis Redding's] "Don't Mess With Cupid," played a couple of loft parties.

HOW DID YOU GET TO PLAY THE MERCER ARTS CENTER?

Eric Emerson, he had a band, the Magic Tramps, that was kind of like a 60s band, they had a violin, it was like It's a Beautiful Day. But he would get up there with his tattoos and his lederhosen, he was pretty outrageous. He had a gig at the Mercer Arts Center, so he said I want you guys to come and open for me.

They offered us a week in that place. We got the Oscar Wilde Room, it held like 100 people. We started playing there, Tuesday at midnight or some ridiculous time. These denizens of the dark started arriving, checking us out. Then we moved into another theater in the arts center, which held like 350, we'd play there. . . there'd be nights when there'd be five A&R people, and some record company presidents, there'd be these people trying to see what the commotion was about. And they'd go, like, "these children are demented." Which I didn't really get. We really wanted to make a record deal.

The Bowery Boys Go to Hollywood?

HOW DID THE GUITARS WORK BETWEEN SYLVAIN AND JOHNNY? I just liked Sylvain. He plugged in his guitar, he could really play, he had finesse. He could do bing-bing-bings, harmonics, stuff like that, cool little tricks. Whereas John [Johnny Thunders] had his own bag of tricks, like he had that rogue elephant in heat kind of thing. When they played together, it really made something nice. These guys made a nice pastiche, especially to play with Arthur.

ARTHUR'S BASS PLAYING WAS, FOR LACK OF A BETTER WORD, DISTINCTIVE? Arthur is what made the Dolls sound like the Dolls. So many bands try to sound like the Dolls. But the trick was Arthur. Arthur has this way of playing bass, I've never heard anything like it. He couldn't breathe and play at the same time, so he'd take a really deep breath and (huge inhale), play as fast and hard and long as he could, stop, take a breath and start again. I realized that later on, when I had bands and I had to do Dolls songs. Not because I didn’t want to, it was part of my shtick. But the bass could never get it.

WE'VE TALKED BEFORE ABOUT YOUR IDEA THAT THE DOLLS WERE JUST A RAMSHACKLE RHYTHM & BLUES BAND.

It had to sound like a junkwagon. You know when its really rhythmic, and the cowbells are ringing and it's going down a bumpy street, it sounds great. That's what this sounded like, the total way those different elements fit together, these different guitars and the bass. Without the bass, it would be a different band.

BEFORE YOU GOT SIGNED TO MERCURY, OTHER LABELS WERE INTERESTED, BUT ALWAYS GOT COLD FEET.

All these record companies came around, and didn't sign us. There was a bidding war the managers wanted to have. Something like $250,000, which was a lot of money in those days. It's a lot of money these days. I think people came close, would pull up, and come back, pull up, and pull back. Paul Nelson was always there, trying to get Irwin [Steinberg] and Charlie Fach, whoever, to go for it. The older guys didn't get it. As far as we sounded, when I listen to those records now, I say, whoa! In those days, I thought we sounded pretty good, especially when we were On, but what did I know? But I could imagine the sound of the band, certainly nobody else sounded like that. Other bands sounded as bad, in a different way. Iggy Pop for example. He [The Stooges] had that record, "well it's 1969 okay..." Which was a great record, but a lot of that music on that album is unlistenable. But the Dolls were playing music. We weren't playing noise for noise-sake. We were really an r&b-based band. Which I thought we sounded like, but other people would say, oh yeah, sure, right.

MERCURY HAD ROD STEWART AS A SOLO ARTIST. HOW DID HE FACTOR IN YOUR DOOMED TRIP TO ENGLAND?

Rod Stewart wanted us to go on tour with him in England. So anyway, sure, England, that's where they have all the cool clothes. Some English guy had done some big story about us in Melody Maker, a cover piece? They took that stuff seriously over there. It legitimizes you. We went to England, did a whole bunch of gigs, and while we're there, Billy died. From misadventure.

DO YOU KNOW HOW IT HAPPENED?

He's like in the hotel. Somebody calls him up and it's like a wrong number. But he starts talking to them anyway. And they say they're having a party, so he goes to this party, drunk, and takes all these pills, and, he didn’t live. At this point, the company's about to sign us, there's this bidding war, and it's obvious, we're like degenerates. We came back and started up again, with Jerry Nolan (as drummer). I don’t remember what happened, but Paul Nelson kept on pushing for us. He really got it. He got the roots of the band, he really got the big picture of it. It was such a pleasure.

We spent a lot of time with Paul. We'd have lunch. We'd always go to the same restaurant, La Strada. And he'd eat veal piccata, and Coca-Cola. Never a vegetable. I think my lunch of choice at the time was bottle of whiskey, no glass. So he kept chipping at them, and they signed us. And he probably got fired because of it. Because we turned into like, such a monster!

WHAT WAS THE MONSTER?

When we were in the East Village, we were totally normal, you know what I mean? And we didn't know anything about polite society. When you took us out of there and put us in polite society, it was like "The Bowery Boys Go to Hollywood" or something. It wasn't like we were trying to be uncouth or anything like that. We thought we were nice. But apparently we weren't. It was hard for me to say exactly what the problem was.

YOU GUYS EVEN GOT KICKED OUT OF THE WHISKY AU GO GO IN LOS ANGELES IN 1973, WHICH HAD PROBABLY SEEN SOME BAD ROCK STAR BEHAVIOR.

We weren't trying to do anything but play as good as we could, and make a show. Get dressed up, give you something to look at. For us to say, "fuck you" to the audience was almost like a term of endearment, but that didn’t translate . . . So we made two records with Mercury, and working on material for a third record, and the band broke up.

WHY?

We got sick of looking at each other. Schlepping all over the place.