“I not only accept loss forever; I am made of loss.” — David Johansen, by way of Paul Nelson’s imagination for the Village Voice (1975)
One of the things that always stood out about the New York Dolls and their eternal frontman David Johansen was the manner in which they accepted defeat—precipitating its arrival, wearing failure’s destruction (often self-destruction), and the weight of loss as a badge of honor. Even when his loss was motivated by a broken high heel, as it was for Paul Nelson’s 1975 tall tale, fateful, existential ennui, and almost-made-it world-weariness were all a part of everything that Johansen committed to song and his band’s hammy, glammy theater; at least as much as his joie de vivre, his swaggering soulfulness, and his all-encompassing, encyclopedic knowledge of music.
Like The Stooges, The Velvet Underground, and Suicide, New York Dolls and David Johansen—who passed away on Friday at the age of 75—were messily innovative proto-punks whose best songs found a balance in un-balance, merging street-savvy poetry with trashy noise and the occasional doo-wop street urchin’s call. The early Dolls’ “Personality Crisis” and “Looking for a Kiss,” a solo Johansen’s “Funky, but Chic” and the apt-titled “Wreckless Crazy”—even his nom-de-lounge-lizard Buster Poindexter’s self-penned “Cannibal” and “My First Sin,” and latter-day reunited Dolls tracks such as “Maimed Happiness” and “I’m So Fabulous”—all are vividly odic, stridently clamorous, and as sloppily glamorous as the gender-bent band were on the cover of their 1973 Todd Rundgren–produced eponymous debut album. In relation to my loss theory, none of these songs made top selling charts, won the heart of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame voters, or found their tattered rags hung in museum exhibitions.
Scene from Personality Crisis: One Night Only. Photo courtesy of Showtime
So be it. At least every punk rocker and hair metal band—not to mention Morrissey and Marty Scorsese—got inspired by David Johansen and the New York Dolls. “I listened to the Dolls when I was making Mean Streets,” said Scorsese in a statement for the release of his co-directed 2023 documentary on Johansen, Personality Crisis: One Night Only. “Then and now, David’s music captures the energy and excitement of New York City.”
“All hallow,” wrote Morrissey—the one-time president of the UK New York Dolls Fan Club—in holy, honorific response to Johansen’s passing.
“David Johansen was a survivor,” wrote music biz veteran Bob Lefsetz on Saturday night. “I won't say he reinvented himself as much as Bowie or Madonna, then again Johansen was forced to, because nothing he seemed to do broke through, rained down cash.”
There was a time after Johansen first left the Dolls where, as a solo act, he was everywhere, playing every and any gig with a mix of fervor, funk, and determination. If you didn’t catch him and his flashily roughhousing ensemble (which still featured his old Dolls buddy Sylvain Sylvain) on their own and headlining clubs and theaters of various size, you would catch Johansen & Co. after the 1978 release of his eponymous solo debut as an opening act for Patti Smith, Cheap Trick, Lou Reed, Blondie, or Ian Hunter & Mick Ronson. Without any exaggeration, in my eighth-grade entry into freshman year of high school, I witnessed the sheer soul-driven miracle of Johansen in a live setting (always better than his albums, as no recording could capture his sass, smarts, and energy) at least a dozen times between David Johansen and 1979’s In Style.
Several years later, I could swear I caught Johansen and his band opening for The Who in some stadium somewhere, still maintaining the elan of intimacy that made him a master of small stages, while lifting his showbiz-ness to the next level—and Johansen was nothing if he wasn’t commanding as an entertainer. Often compared to Mick Jagger, Johansen was actually closer to Louis Prima, Otis Redding, and Elaine Stritch in his on-stage heft as a vocalist, storyteller, and all-around performer.
“I listened to the Dolls when I was making Mean Streets. Then and now, David’s music captures the energy and excitement of New York City.” — Martin Scorsese
When he decided to try his hand at a mix of cabaret, jump blues, and lounge jazz on stage at a bar (was it Tramps?) under the moniker Buster Poindexter (with drummer Tony Machine doing any number of tricks with his sticks), Johansen happily wore his heart and his schmaltz on his sleeve for the sake of swinging. Funnily enough, when Johansen-as-Poindexter had his one huge hit with “Hot Hot Hot” and I had to take my mom to see him in the round at my town’s in-the-round music fair, he called his smash “the bane of my life” and eventually left Buster behind. That’s how you know that loss was Johansen’s best friend—when you get what you thought you wanted, only to cast it aside.
In the mid-2000s, when he and Sylvain revived the New York Dolls and recorded the lost, frantic classic One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This in a tiny New York studio, I interviewed him and found Johansen’s enthusiasm for the majestic mess that he made for himself over the decades infectious. Johansen knew that chaos, cool, pomp-and-circumstance, and flighty, vérité prose was his master, and had forever been so, since he and the Dolls started their drama for a Christmas Eve 1971 gig at a homeless shelter on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
So often we express sorrow on having missed someone of individual inventive greatness and originality when they pass on, and go backward to capture that glory. I’ll go back through my albums and my memory banks, for sure, now that David Johansen—along with all of the rest of the original Dolls—is gone. But of all the artists whose presence I’ve been graced with, and allowed to witness often and up-close, I will truly miss David Johansen most.
This time the loss is all ours. FL
