The Death of a Doll: David Johansen 1950-2025

It’s early 1979 and I am on my bike frantically peddling the 3.9 miles from my house to Tower Records on Watt Ave. I am after a copy of a record I’ve never heard, based on one lyric line – “Fuck this and fuck that; Fuck it all and fuck her fucking brat.” I buy a copy of the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks… and peddle even more frantically home, where I drop needle and hear a voice that will change my life.

After one of the greatest album intros ever and some mumbling, Sex Pistols singer Johnny Rotten snarls and spits “I don’t wanna holiday in the sun…” and I am hooked. I’ve never heard such anger in my life, not on a record, not in music. I feel connected to something other than myself. It’s the first time “art” hit me and it hit me hard.

I need to know more, more about this band, more about punk rock, because I need to feel more – or feel free to feel more than whatever you are expected to feel as a child, feelings that feel fake once the hormones start to dance. So, I hop on my bike and peddle to Tower Book, two doors down from the Watt Ave record store. I hit the magazine rack and buy anything that has a mention of the Sex Pistols or punk rock.

Prior to that day, I hadn’t seen a music mag other than Rolling Stone, which was then obsessing over “adult” rock & roll like Jackson Browne and Rickie Lee Jones, not exactly what this teenage troublemaker wanted or needed. I go to the counter with a nice stack of magazines that, until then, I’d never heard of: NME, Sounds, New York Rocker, Trouser Press, and something called Creem. I peddled home.

In my room, slurping Pepsi from a bottle using a Red Vine as a straw, Sex Pistols blaring out of the speakers, I read about the Pistols, the Clash, Buzzcocks, Wire – all these strange names from the other side of the Atlantic. I also read about the inspiration for the Sex Pistol and punk rock in general: Velvet Underground, The Stooges, and New York Dolls.

Back on my bike, back in Tower Records, I’m wandering the store looking for punk rock and its roots. I’m sent to the imports section, which was an amazing place! All the strange records done by artists I’ve never heard of, wrapped loosely with cellophane, I have no idea what to do. So, I look at record covers and prices, eventually landing on a cheap Slaughter & the Dogs 12”.

Cruising through the alphabet, I stumble on the Stooges and VU, records only available as imports and at twice the prices of a domestic album. But no New York Dolls, so I head to the regular rock albums and BAM! there’s the Dolls’ first and second albums and they are cheap! Only $3.78 a pop! I buy the records and peddle home.

Needle in the groove, glorious distortion coating a classic rock & roll riff and then another great voice. Raspy, excited, obnoxious, and full of snotty attitude. I just found my third favorite singer (after Johnny Rotten and Ozzie). And the music! It’s like the Rolling Stones if they weren’t so fucking uptight. Then the intro to “Looking for a Kiss,” that tuff riff, and the singer even more there than ever. Oh and “Frankenstein” (“Something must have happened over Manhattan…”). Song after great song, no pulled punches, no compromise, no commercialism, just raw, real rock and roll. The album ends with “Jet Boy,” another classic.

I rip the plastic off of Too Much, Too Soon, the Dolls’ second album. Needle dropped, the singer whistles and yells, “C’mon boys!” Oh boy! This is as good as the first record and sleazier! I’m cruising through the album and landing on songs that will become all-timers: “It’s Too Late” (“But how she ever gonna love you when she can't parlez vous your Francais…”), “Puss ‘n Boots,” “Chatterbox”…

Too Much, Too Soon ends with “Human Being,” a raucous five minutes of attitude (“If you don’t like it, go find yourself a saint”), an anthem for every boy or girl who never fit in. “I’m a fucking human being, man!” “Human Being” is one of my favorite songs ever, another song that sealed itself in my soul and made me feel part of something.

A long time ago, I wrote that the very best career album opener and closer in rock & roll is the first song on New York Dolls – “Personality Crisis” – and the last song on Too Much, Too Soon – “Human Being.” Not only are the two songs great sonic bookends, but thematically, wow! “Personality Crisis” is a plea against insecurity and the futility of trying to fit in. By the time “Human Being” hits, the message is “Fuck you all, I am who I am who I am and nothing is going to change me.”

While the Dolls were a collective, the main man, the focus, and the cross-dressing, cocksure, flamboyant, strutting leader of it all was David Johansen, one of the best frontmen ever. But he was more than that to me. While Johnny Rotten gave me permission to be angry, Johansen told me that I could just be myself. Didn’t matter how weird I was or how fucked-up: I’m me and that is good enough.

And the wonderful thing about Johnansen and the Dolls’ message was that it didn’t come with an ideology. It wasn’t dogmatic or preachy. It was “Fuck them, be you!” It was also confusing to the point of clarity. In the Dolls you had five tough guys from New York City, with every trait of the stereotypical New York guy. They were loud, tough, macho, and confrontational. But they also dressed in women's clothing and were very flamboyant. The Dolls played biker bars and gay bars, bath houses and rock clubs. Were they straight or gay or bi…or did it fucking matter? Ah, and that is where there’s clarity:

We are human beings and anything else – gay, straight, man, woman, Black, White - it shouldn’t fucking matter. Yeah, politically it does, socially it does, but on a human level, in the space where we want to be – where freaks like us desperately want to be – it doesn’t fucking matter. And that is why I love David Johansen, well, that and those two fantastic albums.

David Johansen died yesterday. He was taken down by cancer and our medical system. He died at home, but had to spend his final days begging for cash to pay his medical bills. I feel sorrow over David’s death but deep anger over his demise. He was a human being. He deserved better.

Thank you, David. You were the right person to come into my life at the right time…and I am not alone. Your music is great, your performances are some the best, but the message and the attitude and the relentless allegiance to being who you were – a human being – for that, my man, I love you.