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.

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