Johnny's Still Dead

Johnny Thunders died in a New Orleans flophouse in 1991. Jerry Nolan died a year later in New York City. Arthur Kane died last July. And poor Billy Murcia died way back in 1972, just before the New York Dolls recorded their first record, before their fame and spectacular flameout. Four of six Dolls dead, but the two-thirds super-majority of mortality in the band didn't stop 55-year-old frontman David Johansen and 56-year-old rhythm guitarist Sylvain Sylvain from "reuniting" the Dolls at Irving Plaza Saturday night for an evening of nostalgia and combovers.

The obvious: the songs are still great - really great - but the idea of David Jo and Sylvain fronting a four-piece band reminded me of seeing Gerry and the Pacemakers at an amusement park years ago, a porky old Merseysider belting out classics with his band of 20-something Stratocaster slingers. It was a light amusement fit for the midway, like Sylvain's atrocious one-liners at Irving Plaza, sounding so much like Joe Pesci playing Sylvain in some glam nightmare film fantasy.

The crowd was packed with three basic types: bridge and tunnel veterans like myself who wore the grooves out on Jet Boy while sneaking into Max's Kansas City to see the Heartbreakers; old punks and glamsters still "living the life" and looking like a band of walking dead boy Stiv Bators-like grandfathers with dyed black Keith Richards hair and wrinkled leather; and the youngsters in awe of the greatness and in search of the soul font of New York rock, including Avril Lavigne, who shimmied up front with her posse.

Johansen has always had an intuitive sense of the comic, the absurd, the laughable. Preening about the stage in a sleeveless t-shirt and feather boa, loose skin flapping from his great-uncle chicken arms, he regularly let loose the big trademark grin of the familiar goofball from Staten Island. C'mon boys, this is all just a lark. (But a lark taken seriously by the Beatlemania-like opening acts The Chelsea Smiles and She Wolves, who channeled long-dead punk gods and played their Les Pauls with the total, feedback-laced digital precision of tribute bands everywhere). Ridiculous, of course, but little more so than five guys from New York in drag playing hard-core rock 30 years ago. And the songs - Jet Boy, Human Being, Pills were the best, even with faux Thunders riffs played by a guy in a ruffled red shirt.

The night before, the brilliant artist and I listened to two older acts who carried far more authenticity into the spring New York City night. That's because Bob Dylan never stopped being Dylan, and Merle Haggard never left the road. Neither is a nostalgia act. During a thoroughly professional evening at the Beacon, Haggard and his little nine-piece, the Strangers (combined age: well over 500 years) and Dylan played material much older than the Dolls'. And while Haggard's set could have been an Austin City Limits staple from any time in the last quarter century - all singin' Telecasters and lapsteel - Dylan, as usual, couldn't leave well enough alone. Playing electric piano and harmonica, and eschewing the guitar, he galloped through a dozens songs and four decades with strange and iconoclastic choices.

One thing: In his mid-60s, Dylan's singing style continues to evolve. The low, groaning croak he developed for his last few studio records has largely disappeared. Now he sings more mid-range, with a bit more of the late-finish, upturn drive of early Dylan enunciation. But there's a twist, of course; he finishes those vocal climbs in a new, thin falsetto. "How does it feeeeel?" ends in a flute-like falsetto, older, gentler, more aware of irony and less of anger. And of course, given the catalogue, the set list was - to say the least - original:

To Be Alone With You, Hazel, Cry A While, Shelter From The Storm, Cold Irons Bound, Chimes Of Freedom, Highway 61 Revisited, Love Sick, Watching The River Flow, Not Dark Yet, Summer Days, Mr. Tambourine Man, Things Have Changed, Like A Rolling Stone

Of those, I enjoyed the rolling lilt of the recent Not Dark Yet the highlight of the set - long, slow, unblinking, and very well performed. More than four decades down the line, Dylan is still delivering a unique story - one that began in New York. A couple of lines from Not Dark Yet were still ringing like smoke rings in my mind the next day at the Met, where we repaired to see the wonderful Diane Arbus retrospective. In reviewing the carefully and meticulously curated exhibit, Jason said last week, "You need to have an iron hand to make something out of nothing, and you need to have a fearless heart to presume that some other person might care not only about what you make but also about the meaning of what you've made."  I think that's right, and my artist and I - a couple of bridge and tunnel kids still, enjoying a weekend of music, and food, and art - were entranced by the the dark, brooding black and white Arbus visions. And those photos told her story; amid the circus freaks and mentally handicapped children and the society set was the photographer's own story, a journey to find something that may or may not have been there.

Diane Arbus killed herself in 1971 in New York City. The Dolls were just forming. Billy Murcia was the drummer and Johnny Thunders was 19. Bob Dylan left Greenwich Village as fame and the burden of expectations grew to preclude privacy. Funny how the echoes continue. Oh yeah, those Dylan lyrics:

I was born here and I'll die here against my will
I know it looks like I'm moving, but I'm standing still

Comments

[johnny m]

Well, I have to take your word for the Dylan show, since by the time I decided we should go, tickets were going from $300+ a pair on the 'net. Next time.

I did see the Dolls show Saturday, and yeah, wasn't that a crazy mix in the audience? Tho we missed Avril, since we wouldn't know her by sight if we fell on her naked. And the opening acts--hey, the Chelsea Smiles or whatever they were called...ya think they know how hysterical they are? I broke up about twenty times during that set, laughed out loud and couldn't help myself. Figures they have a major label debut coming out. Big label cluelessness strikes again. God bless the boys in the band, hope they don't get ripped off and can survive. (watch, they'll sell millions....)

We loved the Dolls set and I was glad to finally see what's left of the band. I saw David J in the late 70s about four or five times and loved that first solo LP to death. In the Dolls' heyday, I was a student from upstate living at Hofstra, and not hip enough to know about them or the scene in Manhattan. Didn't have the money to buy a train ticket 98% of the time, either, another in the series of regrets most of us build up by middle age.

I've been grappling with depression off and on for a chunk of my life, and recently I've been kicking the meds so I can stop sleepwalking. Not a picnic, and it's hard to make it through the week sometimes (it's wreaked havoc on what was left of my own musical impulses, too, but that's the way the DNA crumbles). But I've gotta say, for an hour or two Saturday night, David and Syl reminded me there was another time, another attitude, days that were somehow better than the right-wing weirdfest we're living through, and I laughed and bounced around and loved every minute of it. I only wish I could figure out a way to put the fun they projected into a time-release capsule and take a dose to feel that good every day. Now, that would be livin', brother. Maybe I'll get there yet.

Life's a bitch sometimes, but it beats the hell out of the alternative, that's for sure.

[Tom K]

Today's Post (the second page of page 6; that is, page 13) has her in LA this weekend. Could be that was Friday night, and she flew East for Saturday. People do that. Or, it could be that you or your source is wrong, and she wasn't there.

Since it seems this has begun an internet rumor, I think the responsible thing for you to do, as a journalist, is to call her publicist, and clarify if you're giving out bad information. Or, you could just rely on your readers to treat this "fact" the way I regard most of the "facts" in your political postings . . .

[Tom K]

Theoretically, I guess it's also possible the Post is wrong. That seems pretty far-fetched, though.

[Tom K]

Bob Dylan and the Dolls are not a natural match, in my mind. In fact, I think glam is one of the few movements Dylan hasn't seriously taken up. (Or did I just blink, and miss his transit through that phase?)

I've never seen Dylan and likely never will. Not because I don't like him (I don't) or his music (I do, even if it isn't always exactly music); it's just that, by the time I was going to see live music, he seemed to epitomize the "already over" 60's movement. I'd go see him before the Grateful Dead, since I actually enjoy much of his work, but attend a concert? Nah. I'm sure he's evolving, and all that, but I can't keep up with his many manifestations well enough to appreciate the ways in which they demonstrate growth.

The Dolls, on the other hand, was a show I couldn't miss. (Well, I did miss 'em this summer at the Little Steven thing, but that's another story.) Where Dylan has spent the last 40 years as a meandering minstrel frustrating his fans with his refusal to be who they wanted, the Dolls have spent the 30 years since their brief fame . . . doing what?

Mostly dying, I guess, but as individuals, not as a group. As a group, they died before I'd ever heard of them and, until recently, they've been, visually, no more than a bizzare memory to be briefly glimpsed in clips from Don Kirschner's Rock Concert. But then there's the songs.

I suspect pop songs are mostly what we bring to them, which is why nostalgia acts are always popular with aging fans, and typically incomprehensible to anyone else. I image it would be that way with the Dolls show. I loved it, but I'd love to see a high school band take a run through that set. (Might even prefer it.) I thought some of the numbers wolked great: Pills, Frankenstein, Trash. Others were pretty damn good: Bad Girl, Human Being, Jet Boy. And some were just awful: Subway Train, Private World. Hard to know why (though with Subway Train, a favorite of mine, I'm sure no one was gonna do a version I liked, absent a junkie resurrection.)

Quoth Dylan: "I know it looks like I'm moving, but I'm standing still." Enigmatic, vague, the sort of important-sounding thing Dylan specializes in. Quoth the Dolls, regretting a lost lover: "At least I'm moving". Direct, even obvious. I'll take it.

[Tom W.]

TK, you say this - "Dylan has spent the last 40 years as a meandering minstrel frustrating his fans with his refusal to be who they wanted..." Maybe that's true of his original Village-based pure folkie fans of the very early 60s, but it ain't true of me - Dylan's done wonderful work in every decade of my life, working a long and wide trench of American music. I love the guy, although sure, he's all over the place. You think of him as an elitist; in fact, he's a minstrel, and has been working on the road almost non-stop these past 20 years.

Funnily enough, I think there's a very strong link between the Dolls and Dylan, or more accurately, between Johansen and Dylan. And that's American roots music, particularly the blues, and very specifically the work of Big Bill Broonzy and Sonny Boy Williamson. Both musicians - one coming up in Greenwich Village exactly a decade after the other - revered this music, played it, emulated it, and took it to different levels and in different directions.

[Tom K]

*I think there's a very strong link between the Dolls and Dylan, or more accurately, between Johansen and Dylan*

If you can even suggest that the Dolls=Johansen without blanching, I respectfully submit you should be brought up on charges.

*You think of him as an elitist; in fact, he's a minstrel, and has been working on the road almost non-stop these past 20 years.*

OK, so he's an elitist minstrel. Minstrel in that he roams around playing music; elitist in that he plays what he damn well pleases, how he damn well pleases, rather than what he well knows the audience is hoping to hear.

BTW, I respect him playing what and how he chooses. I've just seen no indication that the choices he's made have yielded anything that I'd find especially entertaining.

[Matt]

thanks for these reviews.

I've never seen Dylan, and don't know whether I'll be able to, but that sounds like an amazing set list.

"Not Dark Yet" is pure poetry.

[dave]

anybody out there know if dylan ever performs
"can you please crawl out your window"?
i have 2 versions from mid 1960s: a bootleg
mostly acoustic(i believe from great white wonder)
and a rather disappointing version with the band
from biograph. are there any other versions
available?

[forked tongue]

There are at least three versions out there, the one with the Hawks and two with the Highway 61-era band. I wouldn't describe any of them as "mostly acoustic," but one of them is softer and lighter, with a lot of glockenspiel. The other, which is more organ-heavy, a lot like the sound of "Positively 4th Street," was released as a single at the time but went nowhere. And no, he has never played it live, don't think.

[BigSteve]

Tom K writes:
> Bob Dylan and the Dolls are not a natural match, in my mind. In fact, I think glam is one of the few movements Dylan hasn't seriously taken up. (Or did I just blink, and miss his transit through that phase?)

Yes you did. Around the time of the Street Legal album Dylan toured wearing heavy makeup and wearing spangly white suits. Ok maybe he looked more like Neil Diamond in theose suits, but remember that Mick Ronson played in his band on the Hard Rain live album. Ronson has legit glam credentials.

[Tom K]

Thanks, BigSteve, for filling me in. I guess I ahould've figured.

[dave]

forked tongue-thanks for the information;
i appreciate it.
do you possibly know if the glockenspiel
version (does it sort of end suddenly and
and have a recurring 4-note upwardly melodic
riff?) has been officially released and hopefully
remastered?