New York Dolls

Thu 6th Oct, 2011 in Features

New York, New York. It’s a magnet for people involved in almost any activity because for many it is the centre of the universe. Most importantly, it is still a melting pot for the arts from Soho to Long Island City to Williamsburg and the Lower East Side and all stops in between.

Australia is going to hook up to the energy that pulses through the city that never sleeps by hosting The Boroughs Festival. This is a cornucopia of fashion, skate, film, art and some amazing music, headlined by a band named after the Big Apple itself, The New York Dolls. David Johansen, lead singer of said band, caught up with Fasterlouder from his home in the big city. As you read, please imagine Johansen speaking through a haze of cigarette smoke and speaking like someone out of a Martin Scorsese film.

Thanks for calling, David. You and Sylvain Sylvain have probably had the Dolls back together now longer than your rise to fame in the 70s. Can you tell me a little bit how this came about with a little help from your UK’s biggest fan, Morrissey?
Well Morrissey called me and he was like, I want you to do this gig [Meltdown Festival 2004]. I said to him “Noooo, I don’t want to do that I got too much shit going on. He tells me that Syl wants to do it and Arthur [“Killer” Kane, the Doll’s original bass player] wants to make it happen and I said I don’t think so, man. I had to go through this thing where I was castigating myself for dismissing things out of hand; it is a bad habit that I had picked up. I was actively trying to go against that knee-jerk type reaction and I told Morrissey I would think about it for a couple of days. I thought about it and I said to myself it might really be a lot of fun so when he called back I told him I would do it. That was the process for me. I don’t think it was a hard one for the others and they were probably thinking, Oh no, not Johansen again [laughs].

Arthur passed on just 22 days after the reunion concert and his preparation for the concerts was well documented. What were your thoughts about his reaction to the reunion?
Arthur was mystical so I imagine he was having a good time.

You are heading out to The Boroughs Festival here in Australia, inspired by the heart and soul of the city that you are from; do you know much about the event?
Ahhhh, not really that much, but if they are really going to make it like the city, they are going to have to have a lot of drag queens [laughter].

Well it all depends where you are in the City doesn’t it?
Yeah, that would be right, but hey, they are all over.

The Dolls have now been touring off and on since 2004, just going back in time a bit to your formative years, what was it like doing a gig outside of NYC where people might not blink at a band dressed in drag, say, in Cleveland?
I can remember vaguely some of the gigs we did even out on Long Island just outside of NYC and it would be like bedlam. People would be freaking out and fights would start and it would be crazy. We were in our element at shows in NYC and we had a good time playing at places like the Waldorf back in the 70s, like when we did the Halloween Ball at the Waldorf. That was a hell of a lot of fun from what I recall.

Believe it or not, I had actually won two tickets to that event from a Long Island Radio station, but being of a tender teen age, my parents decided that I was NOT going to NYC at midnight to see men in drag play rock and roll at the Waldorf.
Well, they probably made the right choice. [laughs]

*So The Dolls have now been together, at least you and Syl, for the last seven to eight years and the renaissance of a band that inspired many has resulted in some interesting tours and your new album. Before we talk about the recent tour you have been on, tell me how you and Syl put together your latest release, Walking Backward In High Heels?*”
Syl and I hooked up and it was like “Whattayagot” and we said lets record these songs and we went in and recorded them and that, as you hear it, is the way it came out. It’s not like we are trying to do anything except what we do so we don’t really question what we are doing. About all we did was filter these songs down from 20 to 12. Other than that we don’t really know what we have until we hear it, it’s not like we are going for something. We are just going for what we are and who we are when we record the songs.”

So what was the recording process like, David?
We made the record in 3 weeks in Newcastle in England. We had this producer Jason Hill [from band Louis XIV], who is a musician and he was very cool. He was on the tour that led up to the recording dates and he was playing bass in the band. We went in and he asked us what we had and we said nothing really and we just started recording. It’s not like we went out into the woodshed and started writing songs. It was a great experience because we just started putting the record together in the studio.

That was the first time I had had that experience because most of the times you had the songs written or thrashed out to a degree. This was a more interesting journey for me when I think about it now. When you have a song and it is almost finished and you record it you have really nowhere to go. Creating these songs in the studio, we could go so many different ways. I dug it. We worked every day and it was a really intensive time and I think the record has some really groovy songs on it.”