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| The New York Dolls
 When Morrissey persuaded The New York Dolls to re-form for the Meltdown festival, there were only three original members still alive. Their first drummer, Billy Murcia, drowned in the bath, aged 19. The magnetically beautiful guitarist Johnny Thunders died of an overdose in 1991, leaving bosom-buddy Jerry Nolan bereft; depression turned into illness and he died of a stroke the next year.
But David Johansen, Sylvain Sylvain and Arthur Kane recruited new members and, after the first concert sold out quickly, agreed to a second one. Johansen says playing together three decades on, "Was really beautiful. It was emotionally rewarding. There were a lot of old geezers there and kids as well. The DVD gives a good idea of what it was like," he adds.
For bassist Arthur Kane the reunion was a dream come true, but he left England feeling tired and died three weeks later - just two hours after being diagnosed with leukemia.
Johansen acknowledges that The New York Dolls took elements from The Rolling Stones and '60s girl groups, "Everyone loves The Ronettes. I love that era and still listen to those great records. It probably seeped into my subconscious and was coming out of my pores, but I don't know how conscious I was of it at the time."
One of the most stunning things about The New York Dolls in the early '70s was their glam, drag-queen get up. Was this bravery or just part of the revolution of the time? Johansen recalls, "We were in the East Village and it was a hotbed of revolution. There were liberation movements sprouting - women's lib, gay lib, vegetarian lib and also lots of theatre and new ideas. We were kinda the rock'n'roll band of that scene. There were a lot of people who came to our shows and met each other and went on to do great things, so it was a sort of networking scene. We were all really passionate about rock'n'roll and how it should be presented and that was our raison d'etre. Everything that came out of that, as far as how we looked visually and the effect we had on the world goes, that was just a by-product of what we set out to do."
33 years after their second album was released, 'One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This' has finally been recorded. After the Meltdown gigs, the band were invited to play festivals in England, where Johansen found, "Everybody in the fields singing along with all our songs and I really hadn't been cognisant that we were so well-known. I knew there were a lot of t-shirts around but I didn't know how into it people were."
They kept accepting dates without any future plans and, during a US ballroom tour, they came up with a few new songs. They recorded them, were pleased with the result and went to South By Southwest. They were then signed by Roadrunner Records in the backstage/kitchen of a barbecue restaurant.
Johansen recalls, "We locked ourselves into a room and banged out about 17 songs in a month. I sit around with the guys and when there's something cooking that blows my skirt up, I put words to it."
The album is a refreshing dose of good rock'n'roll, produced by Jack Douglas who engineered their first record. There are guest appearances from Bo Diddley, Iggy Pop and REM's Michael Stipe who sings glorious harmonies on Dancing On The Lip Of A Volcano, which Johansen describes as "A pagan love song. It's an ode to the ferocity of nature."
He adds that Fishnets And Cigarettes is "Kind of like My Favourite Things," that he's happy with the record and believes the deceased members would be proud too. "I think we did a good job."
Johansen is also surprised by the diversity of groups citing The New York Dolls as a major influence, but says it gives him drive as an artist, "Maybe sometimes you can come into somebody's life through a record and they're kind of looking at the landscape and finding it's like a wasteland. Then all of a sudden, you bring in this element of possibility in their life and that's a good thing to do. A lot of the people who dug The New York Dolls made bands and that's gratifying."
Suzy Ramone
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'One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This' is out now through Roadrunner. |
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