New York Dolls - Reading, UK, Summer 2004
By: Toby L
2004: it's a year that will be revered as the annum of the comeback, the twelve-month window in which we ungrudgingly, lovingly, perhaps overly shamelessly, welcomed back one and all a prior-prevalent, fallen star or tragically departed, legendary act. Pixies. Morrissey. Gang Of Four. Welcome home. We've missed you.
And New York Dolls. The seminal punk band that history books seem to signify as the true forefathers of not just the scene, but the genre itself. Only around at their time were MC5 with a rivalling case; another lambasting soul-rock fusion which turned heads and annihilated decibel laws. Oh, but the Dolls. They dressed up like women. Pranced about the stage without an inhibition in the world. And provided new meaning to photo-shoots conducted in toilets. While making decadent drug indulgence a pre-requisite for any NYC/London urchin-musos of notoriety in the '70s.
Shame they didn't make a penny (or cent). Bands like them never do. It was just too much, too soon. Only acts of severe artistic relevance and reverence in times to come will shock. The rest seem to swallow and follow.
And the Dolls in the 00s are a very strange thing. For one, unlike most acts that reform, the two legendary mainstays - singer David Johansen; guitarist Syl Sylvain - remain intact, continuing to front the line-up. Sadly, the rest couldn't quite make it. Original bassist Arthur Kane signed up for the reformation, but sadly passed away following just a couple of shows, a bout of leukaemia claiming him. He was just 55. It's a tale hardly foreign to the unit - prior members Johnny Thunders, Billy Murcia and Jerry Nolan all died either during their spell in the band, or not ages afterwards.
It leaves Johansen and Sylvain in a surreal headspace, you'd imagine; over thirty years after having created one of the most revered and influential cult bands in modern times, how can its spirit remain so fervent after so much trauma and tragedy? Indeed, at times during discussion with the pair, it seems as if nothing has actually changed. As if we're still in the same calamity-strewn days of the band's inauguration. Just seeing their reaction to already outdated technology is a sign - they could be flung into any aeon or situation, and still retain their cool.
'Uh-oh, I erased the content on one of those yesterday,' points Syl cautiously to your reporter's mini-disc recorder, just as we begin conversing. Even behind sunglasses and a bandana Syl isn't able to conceal nerves that some random fiddling might result in a repeat of the incident. 'Some guy interviewed us and I started playing around and deleted the interview. He was a bit distraught. So keep me away from that.'
Syl and rockfeedback are sitting in a mammoth, white tent with distractions abound. A typical British festival experience. It's one of the band's last high-profile, outdoor appearances of the year and thousands earlier congregate for a set that takes in many-a-chestnut - the hammering crash of 'Jet Boy', sing-along Joplin classic 'Piece Of My Heart', and still-elegiac chaos of 'Trash'. The masses are hysterical. So, it's been a good day. The comforted grin on Sylvain is enough of a clue.
But we're not left alone for long. Suddenly, movement is exerted in our peripheral vision; Johansen, smoking calmly, slithers over and sits beside his band-mate. His sheer presence is quite overwhelming; a behemoth of matted, straggly hair and permanently pouting features, he drawls every syllable with the slurred pace of a world championship darts-player. Somehow, we fancy him.
The being stirs to utter his first words. 'Oh dear,' he grumbles playfully, peering at the mini-disc player. 'You better be careful with that machine; we messed one up just like it yesterday...'
Two warnings in mind, we subtly shift our equipment and begin probing. Why return, boys?
David engages head-on. 'I think the music, now, it sounds like the world is ready for it. At the time, it was new music... Every new idea starts out as hearsay, and ends up as superstition.'
'It's nice that people are responding to rock 'n' roll again,' nods Syl to David's left. 'And there is a big difference between rock, and rock 'n' roll. We were really blues-based when we first started; our influences with The Shangri-Las, and what have you; and, as David said yesterday in that lost interview, everyone brought something into the Dolls. But, basically, in us, things haven't changed that much.'
What differences can be defined, however?
Syl is quick to return. 'We were a hard pill to swallow then, and we're now a lot easier to swallow.'
Why?
'The culture's changed,' blurts David without hesitation. 'We were musicians' musicians. A certain, literate type of person got into us, and then they did their thing - like The Clash, who were directly inspired by it. We appealed to those kinds of people - free thinkers, if that's what you want to call them - more-so than the masses. So now that that has been remarked upon and brought up, people think, 'Oh, it must be good.'
Is there not some resentment to be found in that, however: the fact that, despite being hailed a classic band, you weren't able to initially crossover upon your first forming?
'No,' shakes David. 'Because we were so f**ked up back then, we didn't know what was going on.'
Sylv is slightly more considerate. 'Well, we did cross over, but we were always that hard pill to swallow. We were running the horserace and we were number-one, because we were such a real thing. David's lyrics graced every New York Dolls' song with such intellect - I mean, he dared you to have sex with Frankenstein.'
Faced with such a real-life circumstance, some would say there's not much choice.
'Exactly,' sniggers David, eyes peering intensely. 'We're all Frankies.'
Clearly, despite years of being managed by Pistols nutcase Malcolm McLaren (enough to merit a kamikaze mission in itself), member departures and releasing two albums - inclusive of a quite monumental, eponymous debut - greatly overlooked by a mainstream vote, the outfit can't resist the desire to affirmatively take the piss.
But what about those more serious factors - of consistent, frustrating false-starts and friends being lost along the way - does the band reckon that the plight of a true artist is to undergo torturous conditions in order to exhibit a relevant message?
'The famous lyric is, 'I want to party and rock 'n' roll all night long.' I mean, come on - how intellectual is that,' questions Syl. 'What happened with us, what we did really meant something, and when people heard it, it spoke to them. It was not just a song; it was a whole lifestyle. That's what's making us live today. Besides, David says we have a future again. We just played a show with The White Stripes, and their manager told us that the average age of the audience was around twelve years old - and the audience loved us.'
'Yeah,' laughs Johansen. 'Twelve-year-olds dig us in Ireland.'
Watch out for the legal ramifications there...
'Oh yeah,' nods Sylvain quite knowledgeably. 'They can dig us, but we can't dig them; we know.'
David is taken away to memories of recent shows, astounded by the reaction. 'People have been singing all the songs,' he dreamily reminds.
'And that's the most beautiful thing,' smiles Syl. 'After all said and done, the reaction from the audience and the relationship with the musicians - that's what it's all about. If the audience out there today had fed us more, they'd have got even more. It's an incredible give and take situation.'
How does it feel playing these songs with all the history in mind, et al?
'It's funny,' David ponders, 'because when the Dolls came out, 'Downbeat Magazine' (a once foremost jazz-specialist publication)...
Sylv: '... It was The Bible of the time...'
'... Gave us four stars for both albums we released. They wrote big think-pieces not about the strangeness of the music, but the uniqueness in how it was constructed, and how it appealed to a jazz-writer... I'd love to find these articles again... Maybe on the Internet...'
'They took our music and studied it as if it was like jazz,' states Syl, evidently baffled by the thought. 'And we were the first rock 'n' roll band ever reviewed in it.'
'Anyway,' continues David, still in reach of his eventual point. 'At that time, I knew how unique what we were doing sounded. And not just how we sounded, but how we arranged things.
'But, for myself, over the years, the reputation of the Dolls, it started to seep in subconsciously, even though I hadn't listened our music for some time.
'So when we were asked to do that Morrissey-Meltdown thing earlier this year (which initially spawned the idea of their re-emergence), the first thing I did was sit down and transcribe the lyrics, and the thing I got was, 'These f**king lyrics are good. How the f**k did I write that?'
'Then we started playing, to rehearse, and I began to realise that each one of these songs is a unique, little jewel - it's not like bang-bang-fall-to-the-floor on every song; 'Babylon' has a different beat to 'Private World', which has a different beat to 'Personality Crisis'. So there's a myriad of beats and musical sounds that were revolutionary for that time; and the things that the guys do on the guitars... Some people would consider them as noises... But when Gershwin wrote 'Rhapsody In Blue', he said, 'I hear the sounds in the subway, and this and that,' and ours were akin to that notion, in the sense that it described us at the time. So I've come to have a very huge appreciation for this music that's even bigger than I had at the time, because I'm now more sophisticated as a musician - I'm able to find even more meaning in it.'
'We never had any mutual decisions in this band,' goes on Syl of the band's ethic. 'For instance, we never had a round-table meeting where we said, 'Let's get into drag.' Like everything else, with that, we just got into it.'
'To be fair, with drag, we were into it when we met,' outlines Johansen. 'That's how we met. We saw each other around and started talking, and we were all into music. So we thought we'd start a band, essentially.'
'And we learned everything onstage,' explains Syl, 'conversely to bands who practice, practice, practice and then come out - we didn't know how to f**king play, but we went onstage. We knew the basics and then we'd develop it publicly.'
So how does it feel revisiting a repertoire, a legacy, with years of studied accomplishment now in the bag?
Syl winces at the term 'accomplishment'. 'I haven't improved. So I'm still there.'
'Oh, he's a dedicated musician,' defends David. 'Sylvain's songs that we wrote together are some of my favourite songs - 'Trash' and 'Puss 'N' Boots'... I mean, 'Puss 'N' Boots' is a demented little song... We were roommates in the Dolls - we travelled everywhere... We were practically the same guy. We were there while the other guy had a girl, and we didn't have any secrets. What we had was a kinship that's indestructible, like with your brother. You can't get rid of your f**king brother.
'For me, I just have this tremendous appreciation for Syl, and working together again so closely is a real pleasure. It's enriching my life.'
'We've got a real love thing,' concedes Syl. 'When Johnny (Thunders) left, everyone was like, 'Uh, who's gonna take Johnny's place?' No-one. No-one could take anyone's place; we had to progress from that moment. If you don't work on the basis of living in a moment, you can't be a part of time, or write a song of an era.'
'Also, at the time of the end of the Dolls,' highlights David, 'Syl and I had written the lion's share of the material; we were just hitting our stride at that point.'
What about having started this reforming with another original member - Arthur Kane - that has since departed: is it not somewhat harrowing that your re-emergence has progressed to a stage where he's no longer involved?
Johansen withdraws into the warming cushion of yesteryear.
'Arthur... I could write a book on Arthur,' he opens. 'He was one of the most unique people. And unbelievable. He was on another planet. Not that he wouldn't be charming and converse with mere mortals - he wasn't beyond talking to people. He was just almost like a physicist, the way he thought.
'His ideas about pop culture were so brilliant and ahead of their time. He knew about the cult of celebrity and all that crap way before it concerned the rest of us. He knew about the beast, about feeding the celebrity beast, with all the magazines around now. We didn't have it originally. When we were kids, we could give an interview with a magazine and it wasn't going to get picked up by the wire services, or end up in 'Cosmopolitan'. Whereas now, anything you say to anyone is going to be everywhere. In those days, it was different. You'd say one thing to one person, and another thing to another person. It's a different world. So, Courtney Love might speak to 'Skankrock' magazine, and the next week it's in 'Vanity Fair', or something. Arthur predicted all that. He saw it coming. I didn't know what he meant. He was a visionary.
'When he got back together with us, a lot of it happening was the contingent on him joining us, because he was so important to it. When I was onstage, I'd be goofing around with Syl, doing the posing with John, but Arthur was back there, and he knew when we were right and he'd be there giving the feel of, 'It's working,' or, 'Oh, it's not happening tonight.' He knew when it was good. So, to lose him, especially after he'd rehabilitated himself with the booze and everything, was really a tragedy. I was so looking forward to spending time with this really non-judgemental, brilliantly perverse... I could go on with the adjectives... character, who's just wonderful.'
'These are all acts of God,' philosophises Sylvain of the band's various circumstances, both good and sad. 'And New York Dolls have been an act of God since the very, very beginning.'
David provides warranted praise to Kane's successor. 'Sammy Yaffa of Hanoi Rocks, who's with us now - his 'White Album' was the 'New York Dolls', and he knows the drill. Not only is it his playing; it's his personality and the chemistry that are there.'
All too quickly, we experience another peripheral sighting - this time of the band's press-officer, violently flailing limbs in a bid for us to wrap up proceedings - thus provoking a final prompt. Johansen, Sylvain: why this over anything else?
David claims the closer. 'There's two kinds of musicians. When we were kids, if people got into music, it was usually because they'd had a difficult adolescence, childhood, or were always in trouble, or whatever. But, for others, it almost became a career-opportunity - 'I'll either be a dentist, or a rock-star.' And that's when they started making this music called rock. When we made music, we made rock 'n' roll, because it rocked, then it rolled. It wasn't like there was just a machine keeping the beat. It had pushes and pulls. And those people; some of them were very successful; and the ones that weren't decided, 'Oh, well, I will become a dentist, then.'
'But the ones that were like us - through whatever Syl does, or whatever I do - we've stuck with it in our lives, because there's nothing else for us to do. It's the way we express ourselves. It's the way we interpret our lives. It's the way we make sense of the universe.'
If only more things in life made as much palpable sense as the New York Dolls and their enduring legend. In the rush and race of the 21st Century, they and their message couldn't prove any more pertinent. Even now, they gleam with the fury of want for better. Punk isn't dead. It's just grown up a little.
Artists in this article: New York Dolls