A Rock ‘n’ Roll Resurrection

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

The occupational hazards of rock ‘n’ roll are well-documented. It’s not a good plan, rocking ‘n’ rolling: Planes tend to drop from the sky; bathrooms become minefields. And even within a milieu so fraught with mishap, the New York City rock scene of the 1970s stands out as especially dangerous. Sid Vicious tried to come over here and run with the natives, and look what happened to him.The folks who survived should probably get medals.


Every band in the crowd that invented New York City punk rock has a legitimate claim as an antecedent of something. This is due, at least in part, to the fact that each band was so different; what the Ramones started is very different from what Television did. But the Ramones’ first gig at CBGB was in August 1974, by which time the New York Dolls had been together for three raucous years.


If there was a New York bridge between what the Velvet Underground did and what came later, it is the Dolls. Without the Dolls, we’d be left listening to guys from Detroit.


They were trashy and out of control, all crazy high heels and smudged lipstick and epic benders. Guitarist Johnny Thunders would fall over on stage. Baby-faced Sylvain Sylvain would trip and topple in his heels. David Johansen, one of the most natural and exciting performers in the world, would thrust, preen, and pout like a phantasmagoric Frankenstein-monster version of Mick Jagger.


Over in the corner, towering in front of his amplifier, standing dead still and drunk out of his mind, would be the bassist, Arthur “Killer” Kane. Apparently he couldn’t play bass and breathe at the same time, so he’d take a deep breath, and then unleash a flurry of notes – his signature style. And it’s his bizarre journey that director Greg Whiteley and producer Ed Cunningham have chosen to record in a new documentary, “New York Doll.”


After spending their last tour dragged around by Malcolm McLaren as a kind of horrible prelude to the Sex Pistols, the band broke up in 1975. Jerry Nolan and Johnny Thunders formed the Heartbreakers, which may or may not have been the best rock ‘n’ roll band in the world for the short time it was together, but it was certainly a kind of summer camp for heroin addicts. Mr. Sylvain continued to play. Mr. Johansen started getting movie roles and concocted his alter ego, Buster Poindexter. Arthur set the controls for rock bottom.


He moved to Los Angeles and tried to start a couple of bands, one called Killer Kane and another (with Mr. Nolan), called Idols.He moved briefly back to New York to start Corpse Grinders. All the while, he smoked weed and drank with a fervor. Eventually he ended up back in Los Angeles with his wife, Barbara, scraping by. She worked at Pet Depot for a while. They acted as extras in movies. Arthur was incredibly sad about “living a life that most people don’t get a chance to live on earth …and then losing that, losing that because of our bad behavior.”


When Arthur saw Mr. Johansen on television, acting as the cab driver in “Scrooged,” he freaked out. Barbara says it hurt him so much that he “drank a quart of peppermint schnapps,” and when he came home “he ripped all my clothes off, he started beating me with the cat furniture, and I left him, and that’s when he jumped out the kitchen window.”


After you’ve beaten the wife up with the cat furniture and jumped three stories out of the kitchen window, it’s pretty clear that your next stop is AA.


In the movie, Mr. Kane tells the story of how, leafing idly through the Bible one day and watching television, he found a card for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in TV Guide. He sent it in for the Book of Mormon. The first thing that knocked him out about the Mormons was that the church sent over two blond girls to deliver his book. They taught him about the religion, and it’s pretty clear that Mr. Kane was thinking to himself,”When was the last time two California blondes came knocking on the door?”


Eventually, he prays: “It was like a trip, an LSD trip from the Lord.” Mr. Kane went on to work in the Family Research Center in Los Angeles, and it really seems as if he’s got it together. He’d been “demoted from rock star to schlep on the bus,” but he has a structure, and he’s no longer beating people up with the cat furniture.


This is when the movie takes a truly bizarre turn. Barbara Kane reads a prayer out of the Book of Mormon: “Whoso believeth in Christ, doubting nothing whatsoever, he shall ask the Father in the name of Christ, it shall be granted to him.” Suddenly the filmmakers are rolling screen text, and the picture is fading to black, with only the words “it shall be granted to him” left on screen. All Mr. Kane ever wanted was to get the Dolls back together.


In a truly surreal juxtaposition, we then fade in on Morrissey, who was the president of the Dolls fan club and is organizing the Morrissey Meltdown Festival in England where the Dolls played on June 16, 2004. The reunion is triumphant, and Mr. Kane is the cutest, saddest man you can imagine. Puppy happy with the trip, knocked out by his hotel room, overjoyed and nervous to reunite with the band and get another shot at the high point of his life.


The New York Sun

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