Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube
    Nostalgia Central
    • Home
    • Blog
      • Lists
    • Television
      • TV by Decade
        • TV – 1950s
        • TV – 1960s
        • TV – 1970s
        • TV – 1980s
        • TV – 1990s
      • Comedy
      • Drama
      • Kids TV
      • Variety
      • News & Sport
      • Advertisements
    • Music
      • Music by Decade
        • Music – 1950s
        • Music – 1960s
        • Music – 1970s
        • Music – 1980s
        • Music – 1990s
      • Artists – A to K
        • Artists – A
        • Artists – B
        • Artists – C
        • Artists – D
        • Artists – E
        • Artists – F
        • Artists – G
        • Artists – H
        • Artists – I
        • Artists – J
        • Artists – K
      • Artists – L to Z
        • Artists – L
        • Artists – M
        • Artists – N
        • Artists – O
        • Artists – P
        • Artists – Q
        • Artists – R
        • Artists – S
        • Artists – T
        • Artists – U
        • Artists – V
        • Artists – W
        • Artists – X
        • Artists – Y
        • Artists – Z
      • Artists – 0 to 9
      • Genres
      • Music on Film & TV
      • One-Hit Wonders
      • Playlists
      • Online Radio
    • Movies
      • Movies by Decade
        • Movies – 1950s
        • Movies – 1960s
        • Movies – 1970s
        • Movies – 1980s
        • Movies – 1990s
      • Movies – 0 to 9
      • Movies – A to K
        • Movies – A
        • Movies – B
        • Movies – C
        • Movies – D
        • Movies – E
        • Movies – F
        • Movies – G
        • Movies – H
        • Movies – I
        • Movies – J
        • Movies – K
      • Movies – L to Z
        • Movies – L
        • Movies – M
        • Movies – N
        • Movies – O
        • Movies – P
        • Movies – Q
        • Movies – R
        • Movies – S
        • Movies – T
        • Movies – U
        • Movies – V
        • Movies – W
        • Movies – X
        • Movies – Y
        • Movies – Z
    • Pop Culture
      • Fads
      • Toys & Games
      • Fashion
      • Decor
      • Food & Drink
      • People
      • Technology
      • Transport
    • Social History
      • 1950s Year by Year
      • 1960s Year by Year
      • 1970s Year by Year
      • 1980s Year by Year
      • 1990s Year by Year
      • Events
    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Music»Artists - L to Z»Artists - N
    Artists - N 6 Mins Read

    New York Dolls, The

    Share
    Facebook Twitter Pinterest WhatsApp Reddit Email

    Arthur Kane and his best friend, George Fedorcik formed a band at high school in New York. Fedorcik adopted the alias Rick Rivets and he and Kane approached a young hip-looking guy they kept bumping into and asked if he wanted to be in a band. The guy was called Johnny Genzale and he was to become Johnny Thunders courtesy of a 20 cent DC comic book.

    Rehearsals began with drummer Billy Murcia and Mick Jagger-like singer David Johansen, and The New York Dolls made their debut on Christmas Eve 1971.

    When Rivets began missing rehearsals he was replaced by the guitarist Sylvain Sylvain (real name, Ronald Mizrahi) who had previously played with Murcia in a trio called The Box.

    From the beginning The Dolls were determined to be outrageous and wild, adopting platform boots, jumpsuits, hot pants and leather long before the general populace caught up.

    In June 1972 the flamboyant Dolls went down a storm at the Mercer Arts Center near Broadway, and began a Tuesday night 17-week residency at the venue’s Oscar Wilde Room, which attracted scenemakers like Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, John Cale and Roy Hollingworth, the New York correspondent of the British music weekly, Melody Maker.

    To capitalise on their resulting high profile in the UK, The Dolls travelled to London to support Rod Stewart and The Faces at Wembley Pool (now the Arena). They divided the crowd but went on to play further British concerts with Argent and Roxy Music until the accidental death on 6 November 1972 of the drummer, Billy Murcia.

    Murcia suffocated on black coffee poured down his throat by a girlfriend attempting to keep him awake after a drink and drugs binge (and not, as widely believed, from a drug overdose). The official verdict ruled that death was from drowning in a domestic bath while under the influence of alcohol and methaqualone.

    newyorkdolls_01

    The band had been on the verge of signing to a British label but went back to New York – though they resumed gigging in December 1972 with Jerry Nolan as drummer.

    The following March they finally signed a two album deal with Mercury Records and began recording their eponymous debut, with Todd Rundgren producing. The band were often at loggerheads with Rundgren, who nevertheless managed to capture the sass and swagger of Trash, Personality Crisis, Looking For A Kiss and Frankenstein.

    Released in July 1973, New York Dolls was a proto-punk revelation, a way cool schlock of visceral rock & roll which combined the more essential moments of The MC5, The Pretty Things and The Shangri-La’s.

    The Rolling Stones were another obvious reference point, with Johansen a dead-ringer for Mick Jagger both in vocal style and mascara’d looks – Inevitably, Johnny Thunders was the glam-punk Keith Richards.

    The Dolls trashy transvestite attire also borrowed heavily from The Stones circa 1966, although being American they had taken it to almost cartoon-ish proportions.

    Kane made headlines when his jealous girlfriend Connie Gripp attacked him with a knife before a trip to Los Angeles. Peter Jordan, a roadie, deputised for him, although Kane toured with the band anyway to stay away from trouble. In November they visited Britain again and appeared on The Old Grey Whistle Test, attracting the disapproval of presenter Bob Harris but lighting the slow-burning fuse of punk.

    Dolls’ songs like Personality Crisis, Trash and Jet Boy were seminal squalls of guitar abuse, making up in attitude what they lacked in musical ability, but meanwhile – back in America – the Dolls album had only sold 110,000 copies.

    Mercury agreed to pay The Shangri-La’s producer George ‘Shadow’ Morton $10,000 to produce the follow-up LP, Too Much Too Soon in 1974 – which included the single Who Are The Mystery Girls? and a cover of The Cadets’ Stranded In The Jungle.

    Photographer and film-maker Bob Gruen devised a black & white newsreel featuring The Dolls as a gangster gang called the Lipstick Killers, and the group burst through the screen to play their legendary St Valentine Day’s Massacre Concert at the Academy of Music in New York on 15 February.

    Three months later the American rock magazine Creem voted them both the best and worst group of the year, but a three-month-long tour sent Thunders and Nolan into a heroin dependency spiral from which neither ever truly recovered. Kane was drinking heavily and stayed in New York while the group soldiered on for the last few dates.

    At the end of 1974, British entrepreneur Malcolm McLaren took over their management and dressed them as red flag-waving communists – the ultimate threat to the American way of life – but by then their bassist was in rehab. He returned for an ill-fated trip to Florida that effectively did for The Dolls.

    Thunders was the first to leave, departing in 1975 to form The Heartbreakers, while Johansen and Sylvain subsequently sacked Kane before finally calling it a day the following Christmas.

    Johansen and Sylvain both went solo. Johansen also pursued a film career of sorts, appearing in Married To The Mob (1988), Scrooged and The Fisher King (1991).

    Thunders and Nolan joined forces in The Heartbreakers and Kane stayed in Florida, drafting Blackie Goozeman (who later adopted the pseudonym ‘Lawless’ as frontman with the heavy metal shock rockers W.A.S.P) to form Killer Kane. When that group broke up in 1977, Kane teamed up with Rick Rivets in The Corpse Grinders, who wore chalky makeup years before Rob Zombie, and recorded one album for the label Fan Club French.

    In 1989, Arthur Kane fell from a window and smashed both his knees. He was later mugged and beaten up badly during the LA riots and spent several months in hospital.

    Johnny Thunders died under suspicious circumstances in a New Orleans hotel room on 23 April 1991. He was 38.

    Jerry Nolan succumbed to a fatal stroke on 14 January 1992 while undergoing treatment in a New York hospital for bacterial meningitis and pneumonia. He was only 45.

    Kane developed leukaemia and died in Los Angeles on 13 July 2004 just hours after being admitted to Cedars-Sinai Hospital with what he thought was the flu. He was 55.

    Sylvain Sylvain passed away on 13 January 2021 after a 2½ year battle with cancer. He was 69.

    David Johansen
    Vocals
    Johnny Thunders
    Guitar
    Arthur “Killer” Kane
    Bass
    Billy Murcia
    Drums
    Rick Rivets
    Guitar
    Sylvain Sylvain 
    Guitar
    Jerry Nolan
    Drums
    Chris Robinson 
    Guitar
    Bobby Blain
    Keyboards
    Tommy Machine 
    Drums

    Videos

    Links

    New York Dolls bass player dies

    Related Posts

    • Nazz, The
      Nazz, The
      Guitarist Todd Rundgren formed The Nazz with bassist Carson Van Osten in 1967 after they had quit blues purists Woody's Truck…
    • Noeleen Batley
      Noeleen Batley
      Australian Noeleen Batley was born on Christmas Day 1944 and made her show business debut singing on a Sydney radio station…
    • Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
      Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
      Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds was originally formed in 1984 by two former members of the Australian band The Birthday…
    • Nina Simone
      Nina Simone
      Born in Tryon, North Carolina on 21 February 1933, Nina (real name Eunice Kathleen Waymon) attended the New York Juilliard…
    • Night Ranger
      Night Ranger
      Night Ranger were an okay hard rock band with a few good licks and a few bad hairdos who suddenly…
    • New Vaudeville Band, The
      New Vaudeville Band, The
      The 1966 UK #1 single Winchester Cathedral was actually recorded by a group of studio musicians assembled by writer, producer and…
    • Numbers, The
      Numbers, The
      The rise of Australian band The Numbers seemed meteoric to the casual observer. One minute nobody had heard of them,…
    • Nina Hagen
      Nina Hagen
      Nina Hagen was born in the Eastern section of Berlin on 11 March 1955 to actress Eva Marie Hagen and…

    Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest WhatsApp Reddit Email
    Previous ArticleJimi Hendrix
    Next Article Billy Fury

    Comments are closed.

    Follow us
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • YouTube
    • Instagram
    You May Also Like
    • Tamagotchis
      Already hugely popular in Japan, Bandai’s Tamagotchis […]
    • Helloween
      During the 1980s, Helloween were the most successful heavy metal […]
    • Saturday Starship, The
      1 9 8 4 – 1 9 8 5 (UK) Tiswas was replaced in 1981 by The […]
    • Starcrash (1978)
      Starcrash is an Italian-made Star Wars knock-off, and it’s […]
    • Captain Pugwash
      1 9 5 7 – 1 9 6 6 (UK) 1 9 7 4 – 1 9 7 5 (UK) 58 x […]
    • Music Man, The (1962)
      When conman “Professor” Harold Hill (Robert Preston) […]
    Twitter Feed
    Please note


    Nostalgia Central covers the period 1950 to 1999 and contains some words and references which reflect the attitudes of those times and which may be considered culturally sensitive, offensive or inappropriate today.
    Popular Tags
    1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1975 1976 Action Figures Amicus Arcade games Australia Beach movies Beatles Blaxploitation Board games Britpop Canada Crime Disney Doo-Wop Elvis Presley Girl groups Glam Goth Hammer Heavy Metal Irwin Allen Labels Merseybeat Mod revival Motown New Romantic New Wave NWOBHM Oi! One-hit wonders Power Pop Pub rock Punk Radio Scotland Ska Soul music Sport Surf music
    Search Nostalgia Central
    Copyright © 1998, 2022 Nostalgia Central
    • About Nostalgia Central
    • Contact
    • FAQ

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.