In the early 1970s, David Johansen lived in a shabby apartment off New York’s Union Square Park. His daily errands would often take him past a Polish dance hall, popular with local salsa bands, and one day he decided to check it out as a potential venue for his own band, the just-formed New York Dolls.
“I said to the guy, ‘Do you rent this room out for shows?’ And he said, ‘Sure.’ We settled on $175 for a night the following month, and I gave him a $50 down payment,” Johansen recently told The Denver Post, advancing his band’s show at the Gothic Theatre on Tuesday. “I made posters, put them up all over the city, and the show was a hit. And that was the first rock show in the room that later became Irving Plaza.”
Irving Plaza, now known as the Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza, is one of New York’s finest rock rooms. And whether Johansen is telling the truth about being the first rock band to play the legendary venue, it wouldn’t really surprise anybody if they were. After all, the New York Dolls were punk before punk itself actually existed.
The Dolls came together in 1971 celebrating the druggy and sexual crossroads of the Rolling Stones and David Bowie. They were virtually broken up by the time the Sex Pistols formed in 1975, but now, more than three decades later, the Dolls are back at the old rock ‘n’ roll game, touring a reunion show that is as bittersweet as it is thrilling.
While Johansen and founding guitarist Syl Sylvain are fronting this “reunited” band, the group is missing those who have passed throughout the years, including guitarist Johnny Thunders, bassman Arthur Kane and drummers Billy Murcia and Jerry Nolan. Oddly, the whole reunion idea was jump-started by British singer Morrissey, who was once the president of the Dolls’ U.K. fan club.
“We just got together to do a show, and it led to another show — some artsy festival Morrissey was curating in London,” Johansen said. “We went into it thinking that it was all we were going to do. But then all the festivals came along, and I guess we did that for a year, and it was like, ‘I guess we’re a band.’ So we made a record.”
The band’s recent shows have been more about the music than the people playing it. At Austin’s South by Southwest Music Festival a few years back, it was great to see Johansen back on stage — even if he gives Keith Richards a run for his money in the faded, skinny, aging rocker category. But it was much better to see and hear “Personality Crisis” rage out three decades after it was written.
The band influenced all the punks, of course, including the Ramones, the Sex Pistols and the Clash — but their seed was spread into the rock/metal world, too, encouraging people as varied as Gene Simmons and Axl Rose to pick up a guitar and write music.
“When we were kids, we decided in our own way that we were going to live the artist’s life,” Johansen said. “And that when you’re an artist, you want to inspire people. And so the fact that people have been inspired by us is gratifying, but it’s not surprising, because that’s what we set out to do.
“So many people are coerced into liking what they like. Certain people among them ignore those external pressures and look for something they relate to, and they have an inclination to live an artist’s life, too.”
Johansen never put down his guitar during the band’s break, he said. The 58-year-old swears he’s been playing music consistently since he was 17, so getting back together with Sylvain (and their newer bandmates) and playing a bunch of old songs hasn’t been so difficult.
“It was more like falling off a bicycle,” Johansen said. “You never forgot how to fall off a bicycle. We get together and play. We’re not trying to re-create anything from the past. We are who we are. It was like, ‘Here’s where we’re at. Let’s do it.’ And that was the attitude we had when we went into make the record. People ask me if we were trying to re-create the 1970s, and I told them, ‘No, we just played.’ ”
The new record is a sore spot for some fans and critics. Like the Stooges, the Dolls chose to record a new record to fully commemorate their comeback celebration. Like the Stooges, the new record tarnished a lot of material that had come before. “One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This” is one of those records that never should have been written. Yes, the Dolls only have two real studio records to their name. But that’s how it was meant to be.
Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com
New York Dolls
Punk rock. 8 p.m. Tuesday, Gothic Theatre, with We Are the Fury. $20.
