New York Dolls - Rock'n'roll Revival, Glam Omens

Compared to the experimentalism of the late '60s, the early '70s were at once more important and less significant. Base-level rock is in fact something that belongs to the early '70s, embodied in works like those made at the time by Neil Young, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bruce Springsteen. Here lies the founding importance of the 1970-1973 period. In the period before it (1967-1970), rather than medium-rock, what had instead been pursued were nearly all of what would become the future rock subgenres (country-rock, acid-rock, noise-rock, jazz-rock, southern-rock, blues-rock, progressive-rock, soul-rock). In short, everything had spun around in every direction around something still called rock without ever really grasping it head-on. It's no coincidence that, in the early '70s, compared to the chaos of the '60s, things become ordered with respect to the subgenre each artist pursued. And it's no longer country-rock (Buffalo Springfield), blues-rock (Cream) etc., but country (Flying Burrito Brothers), hard rock (Black Sabbath), kosmische musik (Tangerine Dream). All the more so since it's the very same protagonists of the late '60s who, in the early '70s, define their position more sharply.

In the early '70s, progressive dominated the old continent (though it's worth noting the case of the London T. Rex, whose “Electric Warrior” from 1971 marks a parallel path to the New York Dolls). In America, on one side, more popular, the country-revival (both in its singer-songwriter and band forms), on the other, more dissident, hard rock. Hard-rock then essentially split into a white or hedonistic hard-rock (Aerosmith, Kiss, ZZ Top), a direct descendant of rhythm and blues, and a Black or garage hard rock, derived from a reworking of rock'n'roll through the distortions of Velvet Underrgound (Stooges, Blue Cheer). In between, a whole gradation of tones (call them MC5, Blue Oyster Cult or Alice Cooper).

The historical role of the New York Dolls (New York, 1971-1977) was relatively similar to that of their idols, the Rolling Stones. Just as the Stones had injected new, catastrophic lifeblood into the English blues-revival of their time, so the New York Dolls did the same for a hard rock scene — by then in America at its second generation — that was artistically running dry (despite, or precisely because of, the sales of Aerosmith and Alice Cooper). Soon after, it would be AC/DC on one side and the Ramones on the other who would upend the harder side of rock. For the moment, the path taken by the New York Dolls consisted neither of inventing a new genre (hard-core: as the Ramones did), nor of refounding an old one (hard rock: as AC/DC did). The New York Dolls rekindled hard-rock through a musical operation of rock'n'roll revival (a style truly in decline at the time) and, at the level of image, through glam, a movement of which they were the forerunners (somewhere between Alice Cooper on one side and David Bowie on the other).

The New York Dolls of the time dressed in ways not so different from how Marilyn Manson does today. But back then almost all of rock was made up of cross-dressers or masked figures, wigged and made-up: from Kiss to Alice Cooper to David Bowie to Lou Reed to Peter Gabriel. Even the trashy look of the Ramones could be called a kind of costume.

The New York Dolls have as much to do with punk as Little Richard might. Punk is — in the words of the Sex Pistols — first and foremost an attitude. The New York Dolls' attitude was nothing more, nothing less than "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll"; a gospel they followed to the letter, incidentally. The New York Dolls expressed rock'n'roll content in rock'n'roll forms in a pseudo-intellectual, post-'68 era, introverted to the point of reactionism. That's where the jolt they delivered to the system should be sought. Points of contact with punk can objectively be found only, on one hand, in a budding underground black humor (already new wave; though one should also recall the experiences of Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult): a black humor that, incidentally, leans more toward horror than existential dread; on the other hand, in surface elements such as the singer's voice — at times genuinely punk in its unpleasant, self-flagellating vomiting (though, incidentally, the voice of Iggy Stooge or the Van Morrison of Them was also proto-punk at times). The same symphonic instrumentation (harmonica, synthesizer, sax, horns, keyboards etc.) of the New York Dolls is the opposite of punk minimalism. And then the New York Dolls' anticipations (like their singer's voice) are more exaggerations of the past (in this case, the reference is Mick Jagger) than preludes to the future. Finally, on a theoretical level, one should be wary of using terms like "proto". One must try to show what things are or are not. Otherwise, one shouldn't complain about those who lump everything into "proto". In that case, one could seriously argue that Beethoven is "proto-metal".

It's no coincidence that the New York Dolls' greatest influence would be on the Cramps (also, as it happens, from New York): a band that wasn't punk, but voodobilly. If anything, if they really must have anticipated something, the New York Dolls anticipated rockabilly for the age of goth.

The New York Dolls' music is loud and played at high volumes not to destroy — as in punk — but to feel life coursing through you — as in rock'n'roll and hard rock. If you're going to die, you die of an overdose, not of anorexia. Pessimism, disgust, passivity, indifference are contingent connotations, not cosmic ones. And anyway, sex, drugs and rock'n'roll fix and heal everything. As in rock'n'roll and hard-rock, so too with the New York Dolls it's not that there are no values — as in punk — but rather that these are values normally considered subversive and negative by society. Were there a new society, a neo-hippie world made of sex and getting high, the New York Dolls wouldn't hesitate a moment to move there. If the New York Dolls die, it's because that world doesn't exist. Punks, on the other hand, die because they reject outright any possible or eventual world. The former reject one kind of life for another, the latter reject life as such.

Naturally, the New York Dolls would become the reference point for all the faithful of rock'n'roll (a glam rock'n'roll) and above all of its lifestyle: The Dictators, Twisted Sister, The Runaways, Plasmatics, Mötley Crüe, W.A.S.P..

The New York Dolls formed in New York in 1971. By then the city had just lived through the era of Silver Apples, Velvet Underground, Blood Sweet & Tears, Mamas & The Papas; still to come was the era of Blue Oyster Cult, Kiss ('73) and Ramones ('74). After the New York Dolls' time, New York would see Richard Hell, Patti Smith, Television, Suicide, Talking Heads, Blondie, Mink De Ville, Dead Boys and, above all, the Mumps – little known, yet the most direct disciples of the New York Dolls.

1973 saw the release of the Stooges' "Raw Power", a band not from New York but who drew heavily on the East Coast metropolis; 1975 brought the Dictators' "Go Girl Crazy". Between these two fixed points lies the trajectory of the New York Dolls, a generation caught between the two, a style halfway between the earnestness of the former and the sarcasm of the latter, between self-destruction and glam.

New York's underground was an iceberg of hard music (as shown by the relocation to this city, and to its famous CBGB, of bands not originally from New York: from Michigan's Stooges to Cleveland's Dead Boys): the New York Dolls were its first and most striking peak, built in no small part on their drag-queen personas and their lives as penniless Rolling Stones.

The New York Dolls were simply (or not so simply) a hard rock band who happened to be doing it in a city and at a time when hard rock was already heading down the punk road. But by the time punk actually arrived, the New York Dolls had already broken up, and their music differed from punk (or rather, hardcore) as much as their look differed from that of the Ramones (as much as a miniskirt differs from ripped jeans). The Ramones debuted at CBGB in August '74, and it was in December of the following year that the magazine "Punk" was born in New York. But to get a sense of how far the movement's echo really carried, consider that the Ramones sold no more than the New York Dolls. In 1975 and '76, nobody yet knew what punk was, and it was still possible to lump the Ramones and the New York Dolls together. The Ramones and the New York Dolls themselves only found out what punk was after the Sex Pistols and their year, 1977. Consider that the Ramones' 1976 debut peaked at number 111 on the Pop Albums chart. After the Sex Pistols (number 106 on Pop Albums) and 1977, the Ramones' 1978 album [released in November '77, to be precise] ("Rocket To Russia") would sell more than twice as much (and reach number 49).

However acclaimed and talked about, the New York Dolls simply didn't sell: they broke up after two albums because Mercury Records was no longer willing to fund them, and no other interested labels existed. In '73-'74, the times still weren't ripe for such violent music; or it wasn't the right city (though it soon would be); or there weren't yet any suitable independent labels (you'd have to wait until '77 for the DIY boom – "do it yourself" – in both music and magazines). Hard to say.

The great singer-songwriter Todd Rundgren (twenty-five in '73 and already on his fourth album, a testament to his great versatility and to the good faith behind the whole operation), who produced their first album, was certainly no fit financial backer.

Before splitting up (effectively in '75, formally in '77), the New York Dolls also turned to a twenty-eight-year-old Englishman, Malcolm McLaren, who thought it best to parade them around New York in red leather outfits plastered with hammer-and-sickle symbols. When McLaren returned to London in May '75, he would draw heavily on what he had learned and heard from the New York Dolls (and, truth be told, above all from the Ramones) to found the Sex Pistols, who by November '76 were already in the recording studio.

The very young members of the New York Dolls all came from backgrounds marked by deprivation, the slums, the underworld. Theirs was a brutal, cynical world where all that mattered was saving your own skin or selling it in the craziest way possible. Rock 'n' roll – perhaps the only value within that indecipherable magma – served as an anchor, a fixed point; even though it was in turn a spur to plunge back into the vortex – of sex, drugs, immorality, indifference, ignorance – more irredeemable than before. It's the same story as the Rolling Stones, only with far less money and far less artistry. The city is violently and hallucinatorily transfigured in the New York Dolls' music, in a process reminiscent of Black Sabbath. The new world that emerges from this transfiguration is anything but positive. One could conclude that these transfigurations serve not to escape the abyss of one's social condition, but to objectify its contradictions and its irredeemability: “Something must have happened over Manhattan/ Who can expound all the children this time/ could they ever, could they ever/ expect such a Frankenstein, Frankenstein” (from "Frankenstein").

Technically, all the members of the New York Dolls were formidable, original performers.

Johnny Thunders (Florida, 1952 – Louisiana, 1991) is the quintessential rocker. Because the rocker isn't just a guitarist, but also a songwriter. The rocker as a wandering chansonier (or folk-singer) of an age of disvalues and nihilism; in the metropolis rather than on the prairie. Marc Bolan (1947-1977) of T. Rex is Thunders' European counterpart. At twenty, Thunders was already a seasoned sessionman. His time with the New York Dolls occupied him from age 19 to 23. In 1975, still in New York, he formed the Heartbreakers (with Jerry Nolan and Richard Hell). The Heartbreakers (without Hell) also had a stint in London – in '76 – and played, through McLaren, with the Sex Pistols. In the year of punk, 1977, "L.A.M.F." came out under the name Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers (echoed by "Blank Generation" under the name Richard Hell & The Voidoids). In '78, '84, '85 and '88 came Thunders' solo albums, set amid a flood of high-tension live records. From '78 until '91, when Thunders was "fated" to die of an overdose, he would write no more than 20 new songs.

David Johansen (NY, 1950) is a singer of great technique and inspiration. If Thunders' idol is Keith Richards, his is Jagger. The New York Dolls are essentially Johansen. It's his voice that – in the best moments – elevates the band from revivalist outfit to a catalyst for feelings and moods. It's the scream of that voice, always on the edge and always caught between morbidity and death, between sadism and masochism, between hedonism and nihilism, that gives the whole operation meaning and character. Here, perhaps, one can grasp the connecting link between the old generations and the new wave (that is, the age of depression). After lingering with Syl Sylvain in the New York Dolls until '77 – even though the band had effectively been dead since '75 with the departure of Thunders and Nolan – Johansen released "David Johansen" (1978), a logical continuation of his work with the New York Dolls. In '79 and '81 – in the midst of the dark and synth era – he carried on with the same approach, if with less conviction. In '84 came the conversion to synth-pop; in '87, a return to rhythm and blues roots, a path he has continued down to today's folk-blues.

Sylvain Sylvain (Cairo, 1953) is the other, very young, guitarist of the New York Dolls. He accompanied Johansen on his early solo work, before embarking in the '80s on a failed solo career.

Jerry Nolan (NY, 1946 – 1992), who together with Arthur "Killer" Kane (who died of leukemia in Los Angeles on July 13, 2004) formed the New York Dolls' tight and powerful rhythm section, would instead follow Thunders from '75 right up until his death, which, as it happens, came almost at the same time as his own.

The New York Dolls (1973) 11 brani, 42 minuti, No. 116 Pop Albums.

David Johansen: Harmonica, Gong, Vocals

Johnny Thunders: Guitar, Vocals

Sylvain Sylvain: Guitar, Piano, Guitar (Rhythm), Vocals

Arthur Kane: Bass

Jerry Nolan: Drums

Buddy Bowser: Saxophone

Dave Hansen: Harmonica, Gong, Vocals

Todd Rundgren: Piano, Keyboards, Moog Synthesizer, Producer

“Personality Crisis” (Johansen/Thunders) [- 3:43] is the most unhinged and conventional rock n' roll on the record (dominated by a Little Richard-style piano).

“Looking For A Kiss” (Johansen/Thunders) [- 3:20] reveals – alongside a slackening of pace – a knack for conjuring morbid, gothic atmospheres. You can already hear the Cramps in their great revival.

“Vietnamese Baby” (Johansen) [- 3:39] matches the excellent construction and appeal of the previous track. A powerful rock n' roll number, though not especially fast (like the Rolling Stones' rhythm and blues), carried along by a voice of enormous talent, flexibility and character (like Mick Jagger's). The ending is dominated by a synthesizer massacre, screams and riffs. These two tracks are the pillars of the album. They are songs capable of founding new wave – from the rock n' roll side of things.

“Lonely Planet Boy” (Johansen/Thunders) [- 4:10] is a transitional ballad that finds meaning only in the surface of its own form.

“Frankenstein” (Johansen/Sylvain) [- 6:00] is the absolute masterpiece of the album (of which, however, or precisely for that reason, it certainly doesn't represent the prevailing spirit) and of the New York Dolls. A constant, unstoppable, mesmerizing crescendo. A current justified solely by Johansen's dramatic performance, who, regardless of what he's saying (a tale somewhere between horror and the most naive hedonism), reaches toward horizons of desolation, weltschmerz, lament, fatality. This is new wave. The breathtaking ending leaves nothing undestroyed. Formally, Blue Oyster Cult would arrive at the same results 15 years later with “The Siege And The Investiture Of Barion Von Frankestein's Castle At Weisseria”. But remember that the shared reference point remains the Kinks of “Village Green Preservation Society” (1968).

“Trash” (Johansen/Sylvain) [- 3:09] and “Subway Train” (Johansen/Thunders) [- 4:22] are surf-music, albeit overrun with electronic effects (especially the former) or buoyed by an utterly dejected pathos (the latter; though it's a pathos that's not new wave but Beach Boys-revival).

“Bad Girl” (Johansen/Thunders) [- 3:05] is, in a particularly heavy version, the quintessence of street-level, hooligan garage-rock running from the Stooges to AC/DC. “Pills” (Diddley) [- 2:49], a cover of the father of them all (and of the Rolling Stones first and foremost), speaks for itself. In the 1950s it was Bo Diddley who gave rock n' roll rhythm to the Chicago blues of the '30s and '40s; and this is the – ferocious – tribute the sons pay to their father.

“Private World” (Johansen/Kane) [- 3:40] is a re-arrangement of the legendary “Louie Louie” (a 1963 song by Richard Berry, taken to success by the Kingsmen, that would go on to influence everyone from the Kinks to Motorhead, by way of the Beach Boys, the Stooges and Black Flag). “Jet Boy” (Johansen/Thunders) [- 4:40] shows how the importance of the New York Dolls' whole operation was entirely formal. Aside from the frontal assault of “Personality Crisis”, the new-wave manifestos of “Looking For A Kiss” and “Vietnamese Baby”, and the total masterpiece of “Frankenstein” – 4 tracks out of 11: and that's no small thing, given their stature too! – the rest of this album, too lionized (by critics) or too overlooked (by the public), finds its meaning nowhere else.

Too Much Too Soon (1974) 10 tracks, minutes, No. 167 Pop Albums

David Johansen: Gong, Vocals

Johnny Thunders: Guitar, Vocals

Sylvain Sylvain: Bass, Guitar, Piano

Jerry Nolan: Percussion, Drums

Killer Kane: Bass

Peter Jordan: Bass

Alex Spyropoulos: Piano

George Morton: Producer

Shadow Morton: Producer

The album is split between band originals and obscure R&B and rock & roll covers: "Stranded in the Jungle" (Johnson/Smith) [- 3:49] a 1958 track by the Cadets (an L.A. R&B and doo wop group); "(There's Gonna Be A) Showdown" (Gamble/Huff) [- 3:37] a Sixties track by Archie Bell (Texan disco-soul singer); "Bad Detective" (Lewis) [- 3:37] a late R&B and rock & roll track by Leiber & Stoller; "Don't Start Me Talkin'" (Williamson) [- 3:12] written by the father of Chicago blues (1899-1965).

The cover material doesn't dilute the sense of the New York Dolls' revivalist operation, but actually amplifies it, since that operation is entirely formal. Needless to say, their interpretations on one hand produce essentially new songs, while on the other hand they irrefutably prove that the New York Dolls are a revival band, uninterested in what they're saying but rather in how they say it (the exact opposite of punk bands). Ultimately, this proves that the New York Dolls are first and foremost true rockers, and as such are thorough connoisseurs of the whole musical heritage behind them (R&B and rock & roll, genres later nearly forgotten by the bands of the 80s and 90s).

Thirty-two years later, surprisingly, the New York Dolls reunited and released a new album, One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This (2006). Johnny Thunders (guitar), Jerry Nolan (drums) and Arthur Kane (bass) were no longer around, having passed away, so alongside David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain came Sam Yaffa (Hanoi Rocks) and a handful of special guests, from Michael Stipe (R.E.M.) to Bo Diddley and Iggy Pop.

The album, however, does nothing more than showcase some good old solid craftsmanship, between the driving rhythm of opener "We're All In Love" and the wild "Dance Like A Monkey", and the new anthem "Punishing World". The rest is decidedly forgettable.

We can let it slide for Billy Murcia, poor guy, who died at just 18, over three decades ago, because of two groupies with little sense; we can let it slide for Johnny Thunders, who's become a legend unto himself by now; let's even make peace with the fact that Jerry Nolan caught up with his Heartbreakers band-leader just in time for their first gig in the afterlife — but now that original bassist Arthur "Killer" Kane is gone too, having succumbed to an unforgiving illness in 2004, are David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain enough on their own to still justify calling Cause I Sez So a New York Dolls record? For some, evidently yes, although, despite the presence of Todd Rundgren behind the glass and a re-recording of a track, "Trash", dating back to the sessions of their legendary debut, we would rather judge it as the work of a standalone band. A band of willing sixty-somethings doing what they can to keep the torch of the most instinctive, visceral rock'n'roll burning. With mixed results.

So while the title track raises hopes with its sharp, thunderous opening, it soon slides into an 80s street-glam sound that our heroes can rightfully claim biological paternity over; "Exorcism Of Despair", closing the record, harks back to the wild sound of their two Seventies albums, though arthritically slowed down into hard rock mode. "Nobody Got No Bizness" rises above the average, with its electric stomp/jungle groove in a Diddley-Stones vein, even though the legendary Johansen embarrassingly shows all his limitations on "Muddy Bones" and on two dreadful ballads, "Better Than" and "Lonely So Long".

It works better when they do things more suited to their age, like the raspy blues of "Ridiculous" and the mariachi crooning of "Temptation To Exist". As for the rest: "Drowning" has a nice darky, Eastern-tinged arpeggio, but it's already worn out its welcome by the first chorus, and the re-recording of "Trash", turned on this occasion into holiday-resort reggae, only sharpens the nostalgia for the original version.

This is old-age rock, take it or leave it. Here's to a hundred more days like this, anyway. And cheers to you too, dolls.

Contributions by Simone Coacci (“Cause I Sez So”)

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