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
