New York Dolls

New York, 1971. Everything is set for rock'n'roll's first great con job. All the precedents are already there, waiting to be sent into orbit once and for all: the alienated apathy of the Velvet Underground and the pure exploration of the great suburban underground era, the sex-obsessed depravities of the Stooges and the dynamite jolts of MC5, the lascivious rage of the Rolling Stones, the Martian-feminine moves of David Bowie, the brazenness of Marc Bolan. The protagonists of this extraordinary act are just as ready to turn all of it into a sum greater than its parts, one that will forever be etched into the annals of popular music.

First a half-baked idea between a couple of college buddies, Billy Murcia and Sylvain Sylvain, then a tangled, cursed (and even tragic) revolving door of characters and musicians, the band — which took its name from one of New York's first "doll hospitals" — eventually coalesced around Johnny Thunders, initially a clumsy, half-hearted bassist who then became (thanks to some technical and behavioural coaching from Sylvain) a ferocious, Hendrix-esque lead guitarist. Then there was David Johansen, a singer who stuffed his vowels with amphetamines and crumpled up his consonants with over-the-top emphasis; and the machine-gun rhythm section, bassist "Killer" Kane and new drummer Jerry Nolan, who replaced the "cursed" Billy Murcia. These, ladies and gentlemen, were the first, legendary New York Dolls.

From their earliest shows and first recordings, the five of them carried themselves like hookers, in boots with vertiginous necklines, platform heels, long dresses somewhere between vamp and underworld diva, heavy lipstick and thick makeup, big teased hair — needless to say, in every colour imaginable — miles removed from any notion of good taste. What set them apart from what came before was their brazenness and the relentless, ambiguous yet utterly explicit fusion of several dimensions at once: lyrics, arrangements, stage poses, raucous enthusiasm, terrifying impetuousness. Glam, barely born and still as it was then understood (promiscuity, androgyny, myth-making, an assortment of clichés), was already in a kind of overdose-level frenzy. But even that wasn't enough: this new name had to be branded for good with a major work that would capture all of it before it was too late.

When, in 1973, the five cross-dressers went into the studio to record their self-titled debut album, they changed the history of rock. Backing them in production was Todd Rundgren in his golden period (one of the many who would take the lesson to heart in years to come), though the band retained ample freedom to perform and shape the material themselves.

What came out of those sessions is genuinely shocking. The finished record throws the most jarring side of hard rock heard up to that point into a blender. What erupts from the grooves has something unsettling about it, as if a discourse had finally been uncovered and brought to completion, as if the source of so much youthful unease had at last been laid bare.

Side A's opening anthem — probably the track that will stand as their masterpiece — "Personality Crisis", is blindingly obvious in its intent: a furious proclamation with all the intensity of the Rolling Stones, screaming a thoroughly filthy perversion from the rooftops. With the gunfire bursts of "Vietnamese Baby" and the warlike drive of "Looking For A Kiss" (a lewd sermon squaring off against bites of distorted guitar), the first side is a monolith of unrelenting, disjointed violence, interrupted only by the effeminate "Lonely Planet Boy", the flip side of the coin and the album's sole concession to prettiness (sung folksinger-style, with distant effects reminiscent of "Sunday Morning" and velvety sax that turn it into a sexual proposition no less provocative than the rest). Either way, the sonic devastation of "Frankenstein" pushes things to the extreme with a dynamite-fuse crescendo of tremors growing ever denser with spasmodic tension — an unstoppable, murky, venomous, thundering dirge.

The second side, with its sly trading of violence for deception and malevolent seduction, is even more enjoyable. Everything is spot on, not a single comma out of place in these one-act plays that tackle any subject and any harmonic idea head-on (even the deliberately banal ones). "Trash" is an explosion of beat-pop choruses cranked up to the nth degree, with a swaggering rhythm and arrogant guitars, all carried forward like some obscene war dance, growing ever more over the top. "Subway Train", thanks especially to the tender, sulky counter-melody of Thunders' guitar, is the record's most deranged corner. "Private World" plays the calypso card (with cowbells and Fats Domino-style piano), where the guitar — increasingly pornographic and "phallic" — pushes out of the sonic magma and "sings", while the vocals and choruses do little more than mumble a debauched motto.

The crown for most demonic rock'n'roll cut on the record goes to "Bad Girl", the fiercest dialogue between screams and guitar slashes, an unsettling cross between Bob Dylan's self-regenerating songwriting, the garage bullets of the Sonics, and the satanic catharsis of the Stooges. Bo Diddley's "Pills" softens things into something more singable and choral (foreshadowing the second album), yet the final effect is if anything even more disturbing. "Jet Boy" is the anthem that closes the circle: a rolling riff, a stentorian, relentless drumbeat, terraces of handclaps; it's a wall-of-sound hard rock number that, right at the close and for the first and only time on the record, opens up into an instrumental jam built entirely on blistering speed.

Snubbed and hugely underrated by critics for years (who allowed themselves to dismiss them as the dim-witted American brothers of the Rolling Stones, a bit like the Monkees were to the Beatles), to the point that their adventure came to an end not long after, with the distinctly inferior "Too Much Too Soon" (an emblematic title), this record is, above all, the firstborn child of "it's better to burn out than to fade away". Not really a con job, because this certificate of androgynous, erotic rock, this endless embrace with the listener, is made and played with real soul. It lives. It uncovers the first casus belli of punk rock, and one of the fundamental themes of the modern age: sex. A degree thesis on the revolution in morals and manners, delivered with rage, swagger, and a heroism all its own.

And it will live on in other people's lives; its influences are countless: such seminal reach can only be compared to that of "Velvet Underground & Nico". The obvious glam and neo-glam, the obvious punk, from the sacred triad of Sex Pistols–Clash–Ramones to the urges of Biafra's Dead Kennedys, and countless others besides, but also new wave (New York's and beyond), and street-level hard rock, from Guns N'Roses to Jane's Addiction, right through to lascivious hard rock (first and foremost the Runaways). Then there are indirect influences, as if that weren't enough, that surface on later, more attentive listens: "Trash" throws the door wide open to power-pop; in "Frankenstein" you can even catch flashes of noise-rock; "Subway Train" echoes pop-core a full decade early; "Jet Boy" already carries almost the breathless urgency of early Nick Cave. Todd Rundgren comes across more as an intimidated presence than anything else, but in an ideal image he links, transforms and reconciles the deus ex machina Andy Warhol (Velvet Underground) with the puppet-master Malcolm McLaren (Sex Pistols): so it goes with history's endless cycles and returns.

Such significance would come at a steep price: once the band split up, only Thunders' Heartbreakers would manage to carry the discourse forward with "L.A.M.F.", before scattering again, once more caught out by "too much too soon". His solo records are only dignified attempts to keep him afloat, before his death by overdose. Johansen's stylistic ventures have nothing to do with the parent band. With Nolan also gone, the survivors would revive the New York Dolls saga in more recent times with two reunion albums ("One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This", 2006, and "Cause I Sez So", 2009), which stand mainly as the definitive rehabilitation and consecration of a genuine legend.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

08/01/2011