If there ever was a rock star that exemplified the famous Shakespeare line from Hamlet “To thine own self be true,” it would have to be David Johansen. He passed away on Friday, February 28th in New York City.
Born in Staten Island to a librarian mother and an opera-singing insurance salesman father, he made his bones in a grimy and electrifying version of NYC that these days has taken on almost mythological proportions. It was the perfect environment for the beatnik punk who not only had zero tolerance for staying in his lane but used his time to build a foundation that allowed him to use multiple genres of music and art to explore the follies, tragedies, and tiny victories that define the human experience.
By the time he joined Johnny Thunders, Arthur Kane, Sylvain Sylvain, and Billy Murcia in the New York Dolls in 1971, he had already worked in Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company, sharing the stage with Mercer favorites like Candy Darling and Black Eyed Susan. Inspired by the theater company’s edgy humor, penchant for drug use, and gender-bending melodrama, he alchemized all of these elements and brought them to the chaos and off-the-rails reckless enthusiasm that defined the Dolls’ live shows. It took years, maybe decades, for the rest of the world to give them some level of validation, but the geeky and freaky misfit kids always got it. But who needs validation anyway? In tough, macho New York City, these guys dressed in women’s clothing, wore makeup and high heels, and gave not one single, solitary fuck what anyone thought about it. And for all of the artistic and theatrical influences they possessed, they were probably one of the least pretentious bands in rock n’ roll history. The idea was a simple one: let’s have a party for anyone and everyone, and who cares if you’re gay, straight, black, white, whatever. Come on in and dance. Everybody’s welcome.
After the Dolls inevitably imploded under the weight of drug abuse and the inability to be understood by anyone in America outside of the East Coast, Johansen found other ways to live his best creative life. More out of endless curiosity than a need for financial survival, he began writing and performing as his lounge-lizard alternate personality, showbiz maniac Buster Poindexter. Though the albums explored a variety of styles such as blues, salsa, and merengue music, Poindexter was perhaps best known for the hit song “Hot Hot Hot,” a song he called “the bane of my life” during an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air. Whenever he found himself too close to the mainstream, he always managed to find his way to the back alleys of the fringe. It was during this era that he began acting in films, most famously in his pal Bill Murray’s Scrooged as the cab driving and wise cracking Ghost of Christmas Past.
In 2000, he indulged his love for country and blues with the band David Johansen and the Harry Smiths, inspired by the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings reissue of Harry Everett Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. It wouldn’t be long though before pop star Morrissey, a Dolls fan from way back who headed up their original UK fan club, invited the surviving members of the Dolls to reunite for the Meltdown Festival in June of 2004. The reunion yielded three albums that may not have captured the raw energy of their earlier recordings but gave a more focused and joyful rendering of all the punk rock, blues, and girl group ingredients that made them an influence on so many bands through the years. It was in the middle of this particular era that I saw them at the long-since-shuttered Mississippi Nights in St. Louis, headlining Little Steven’s Underground Garage Rock Tour. There were a lot of great bands on the bill that night—Chesterfield Kings, Supersuckers, The Charm—but you bet I hustled to the front of that stage when the Dolls kicked off their set. It was somewhat surreal seeing David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain right there in the flesh, furiously kicking out jams like “Trash,” “Personality Crisis,” and “Jetboy.” Unquestionably one of the finest performances I ever saw at the beloved Nights, and I’ll never forget it for as long as I live.
If you’re not familiar with David or the Dolls, I’d recommend Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi’s fabulous documentary Personality Crisis: One Night Only (currently available on DVD, or to stream via Paramount + With Showtime or various video on-demand services), capturing Johansen relaxing at home and performing at his Café Carlyle residency. It not only features his trademark warm-and-gruffy bellow on a number of his classic songs, but it also features him talking gently and laughing about his own storied history and how it created the legend he became. | Jim Ousley
