David Johansen and the origins of the New York Dolls: the lost interview

Three years ago, in the middle of the research for my book Talkin 'Greenwich Village: The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of America's Bohemian Music CapitalI absolutely wanted to talk to David Johansen. Not that he was one of the folksinger linked to the Manhattan district I was writing about, but because his first great band, the New York Dolls, had made a name and a reputation proudly trash at the Mercer Arts Center, a space with various rooms there in the Village.

In their original incarnation, the New York Dolls lasted only a few years, but Johansen then had a career (such as Buster Poindexter, Blues singer, actor) more varied than he could imagine in the early 1970s. In the 2000s he stood up the band with guitarist Sylvain Sylvain (died in 2021), making new records and concerts. Proud of the Dolls and the influence they exercised on many punk groups that came later, on an afternoon of June 2022 he told me about the band and the place he occupied in the scene of Downtown New York and the Mercer Arts Center (which did not last long, given that the building collapsed in 1973). Some extracts from our interview have been included in my book, here is the bulk of the chat.

How did you live music before the New York Dolls?
When I was a child, we are talking about the 1950s, my mother's sister took me to a restaurant in the Greenwich Village. For me it was an absurd, noisy and colorful place, with the waiters who danced limbo. There I had the first taste of the typical ferment of the village. Then I started going to MacDougal Street where there were these places that did not serve alcohol, but cafes and things like that, stuff for teenagers. I often went to the Night Owl (A club on West Third Street, editor's note) where I saw Lovin 'Spoonful, Blues Magos, Lothar and the Hand People. I wanted to be in a band, so I tried to understand how a concert sets, the amplifiers, the guitars. I also went to the Café au Go Go, where I met Van Morrison. I had no problems to enter the dressing room safely and talk to Van.

With one of your first groups you played at Café Wha?, One of the few village clubs still in business.
We wore our stuff from Staten Island and went to WHA? For the afternoon concerts, where they played one band after another. Our group was called Vagabond Missionaries. We did a couple of original songs, but also Boogaloo Down Broadway by Fantastic Johnny C, genre things, Wilson Pikett type pieces, stuff like Mustang Sally that was fashionable in those days. We were not particularly good, but we compensated with the enthusiasm. However, the band did not evolve as I wanted to. The others did not commit themselves to the bottom, while I was in my period nothing-to-mundo-mi-Pò-firm.

At that point, however, the scene was in decline and it would have been for a long time.
Someone who worked for the mayor had the idea of ​​establishing these draconian rules on performances, the cabaret law. I read the other day that finally, now, you can dance in the bars. After 60 years, but does it seem to you?

Where did you live then?
My first apartment was on the third road, the Hells Angels district. It was on the seventh floor, without lift, it came 40 dollars a month. The Dolls were formed in winter (of 1971-72, NDA), we tried in a shop in the Upper West Side of a guy who rented bicycles used to people who went to the park. We kept there two amplifiers and a few pieces of the battery: we transformed it into a rehearsal room, it cost very little.

How was your androgynous look born?
We already dressed like this, is the reason why we met and founded the band. We saw ourselves in St. Mark's Place or in other places, we observed us thinking: “Who knows if that type sounds the guitar”. So in the end we got together. We were all dressed more or less in that way, maybe a little more hippie. I was crazy in love with Janis Joplin, but we were New York hippie.

You had a famous golden suit.
We had many clothes. We spent them and then we gave them to others. It was a continuous change. Those who came to Mercer lived mostly in East or West Village, we were like the neighborhood band and I would say that we represented it with our extreme looks. Once we had to play at Café au go go and I arrived in the afternoon. While I went down the stairs with John (Johnny Thunders, NDA) A huge guy who wanted to kill me because, apparently, I had imprisoned it from the stage. He said I had looked at him in such a way that he was fired. He was in his hand in a nice big knife. We were at the top of the stairs, at the road level: John pushed him off the ramp and we never saw him again.

How was the band's music born?
I already had a couple of songs when I met the boys and we started working on it. I had a notebook with notes: when I felt Johnny or Syl playing a riff or anything else, I started writing. In the end we managed to put a little song together. At the time of Vietnamese baby I was still trying to learn to write. I played the guitar, but in a decidedly rudimentary way. And for the text I had only one thing in mind: what a horror.

What do you remember of the Mercer Arts Center, where the Dolls made themselves known and made a reputation?
He was in the old Broadway Central Hotel, who had entrance to Broadway. Someone had taken what I think was a large ballroom and had renovated it in order to make it a modern place. There was a room dedicated to cabaret, two theaters, the Oscar Wilde Room, which was the smallest, and the O'Casey. I had met a guy at Max's Kansas City, Eric Emerson. It was in a group called Magic Tramps. He wore the Lederhosen and played a kind of Gypsy Rock'n'roll. He said to me: «We have to make a concert in this new place. Do you want to open for us? ». I told him yes, we were at the beginning, we took every type of engagement, we were certainly not splash. Our first concert was in a dormitory for homelessness, so it was a step forward for us.

We went there and performed. Then, just when we got off the stage, a guy greater than us came to me and asked me: “Do you want to play again, after this band will have finished?”. And so we did. The reaction was very good: people danced, seemed to be at a party. Afterwards I went to his office and that type told me we would become big. It was very encouraging, he said it while counting the $ 30 or how much it was that paid us. He offered us to keep a concert a week in the Oscar Wilde Room, every Tuesday at midnight. We started playing there and a scene agglomerated around us. They were there filmmakers who could get in touch with others who had a similar mentality. It was a lively scene. There was a dance floor and a kind of steps. To reach the other rooms you had to cross the area for the cabaret. They wanted to keep the room open more hours they could, to make money.

Then what happened?
We give the o'csey. The agreement with the public was excellent and we didn't have to do too much road to get there. The subway passed under the building: he felt, but not when we played. Perhaps those in the meter instead felt us. To many, probably, what we did seemed only casino. But for others it was sublime. I guess it's a matter of taste. We were at the beginning and we were learning the trade.

Did they turn a lot of drugs and alcohol at Mercer?
If I had arrived there naive like a child I would probably have noticed it, but I didn't particularly notice it. It was like entering a ice cream shop and seeing that many are eating ice cream. People were made of grass and acids, but did not turn a lot of heroin. Those who do heroin does not want to dance.

Did you also show Bette Midler?
He had a story with Jerry Nolan, our drummer, and probably came to see him yes. Bowie showed up with her entourage: she arrived with one of those spiders from Mars style costumes.

What do you remember for the recording of the first Dolls with Todd Rundgren?
Nobody wanted to produce it because we had the reputation of being crazy means. Then someone said: “Todd will produce it.” Todd was like that guy who recorded bluesmen in cotton fields, Lomax. He recorded music as he was, was folk art, not made to be inserted in a market vein. It's like that: if you like it, that's fine. It is not something you go to think if it will like. It was certainly a relief to know that we would do things in our own way. We had our sound and we had to play the songs as they came to us. And that's how it went. It was like writing pages of a diary or something.

Legend has it that you devastated the Camerino of the Bottom Line, one of the most important clubs in the Village, when you played in 1974.
We were probably a source of trouble for them, but I wouldn't say that we devastated the dressing room. There was a kind of brawl: Arthur (Kane, the bassist, NDA) He pulled me a bottle perhaps by Seltz aiming at the neck. I dodged it by lowering me and a mirror went shattered. I imagine that with “devastating” they meant this. They told us that we would never play there again. But in the end I am the person who has played us several times ever, with my various projects.

From Rolling Stone Us.