David Johansen, whose flamboyant style turned glam-punk progenitors the New York Dolls into ’70s underground rock sensations and who later had an improbable second act as faux lounge singer Buster Poindexter, died yesterday (Feb. 28) in New York after a years-long battle with cancer. He was 75.
In recent weeks, Johansen went public with a stage four cancer diagnosis, a brain tumor and a fall the day after Thanksgiving that left him with a broken back in two places. He was rendered “completely bedridden and incapacitated, relying on around the clock care,” according to a statement from his family in tandem with the launch of a fundraising campaign.
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In 1971, Johansen united with guitarists Johnny Thunders and Sylvain Sylvain, bassist Arthur “Killer” Kane and drummer Billy Murcia to form the New York Dolls. Their first show was on Christmas Eve that year at a homeless shelter at the Endicott Hotel, and they soon became mainstays at New York’s Mercer Arts Center. Their 1973 self-titled debut, produced by Todd Rundgren, became one of the most influential of the pre-punk era despite being a major label-released commercial failure.
“The Dolls ruled the roost in New York City,” Dictators co-founder Andy Shernoff told SPIN. “Every band was trying to imitate the Dolls. But no band looked as good as the Dolls, or was as hip as the Dolls, or had as good songs as the Dolls, or even played as well as the Dolls. They were exciting and charismatic. There were a lot of glam bands in England making great records — the Sweet, Roxy Music, Slade, Suzy Quatro. The New York Dolls brought that excitement to the local New York scene and inspired so many people to start bands, myself included. I know they inspired the Ramones.”
Asked by SPIN in 2009 if he regretted any of his more flamboyant fashion choices, he replied, “I don’t think I have enough dignity to respond to that question. I mean, if you showed me a picture or something, I’d probably say ‘ugh.’ But I’ve got a pretty good sense of humor about these things.”
After the Dolls imploded in 1976, Johansen found success as a solo artist two years later with the campy rocker “Funky but Chic” and, eventually as Poindexter thanks to the still-ubiquitous 1987 conga-line generator “Hot Hot Hot.” He also made a memorable cameo as the Ghost of Christmas Past in the 1988 Bill Murray film Scrooged.
“You know, it’s interesting that Caribbean music is identified with the Buster thing,” he told SPIN. “The majority of music that we played for the first couple of years was jump blues. We did a Latin record. ‘Hot Hot Hot’ was just this song that I had heard in, like, Tortola or some place. But it’s a great song. Everybody’s just sick of it because it was used to death. But, man, that Buster stuff was a great gig. I got to sit down and smoke cigarettes and drink.”
Breaking a 28-year hiatus, the Dolls reunited in 2004 at the behest of über-fan Morrissey and subsequently released three new studio albums, the last of which was 2011’s Dancing Backward in High Heels.
“No way the 2006 and 2009 ‘reunion’ albums recorded by the two surviving original Dolls could sound, much less feel, like the ramshackle proto-punk quintet that inspired hair metal, the Smiths and yo’ mama,” SPIN wrote in a review of the latter. “Featuring Farfisa, sax, strings, anything but loud guitar, Dancing Backwards doesn’t even try, and that’s its virtue.”
“It’s my experience that different people recognize me for different reasons,” Johansen told SPIN. “Like, some people will say, ‘Oh, there’s that guy who sang ‘Hot Hot Hot.’’ Or, ‘There’s that guy with the Dolls.’ This one time I was getting gas and there were two kids working there. They thought they were out of earshot, and the one kid says, ‘Who’s that guy?’ And the other says, ‘That’s that guy from the ’80s.’”
Johansen was most recently the subject of the 2023 Martin Scorsese documentary Personality Crisis, which chronicled his life as a teen in New York in the 1960s before he rose to fame with the Dolls.
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
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