Wails From the Crypt: The New York Dolls [January 1974]

My very first non-audition (i.e. written while on staff) piece in The Magazine Formerly Known as Stereo Review.

Enjoy.

If you were an adolescent in the Chicago area around the winter of 1965, then chances are your favorite band was the Shadows of Knight. The Shadows were five suburban kids who became, for a variety of reasons, the absolute kings of the teen-band circuit. First off, they were pretty good musicians, and they could imitate the heavier British Invasion stuff of that era (Stones, Yardbirds, etc.) better than anyone else in the area. Second. they had what we used to call charisma; they were all moody types who could fake being English on a visual level, and they had the lifestyle down pat. (There were lots of stories circulating about lead singer Jim Sohns' being busted before a concert for...ahem...well, let's say activities involving an underage teenage fan and leave it at that.) Eventually, they got a national hit with their cover of Them's "Gloria," which they had already made into the Chicago Teenage National Anthem, and then they promptly faded into obscurity, leaving behind a couple of entertaining albums and some very nice memories. I bring all this up because somewhere, I suspect, at this very moment, they are having a quiet laugh about the rise of their most obvious spiritual heirs -- the New York Dolls.

My first exposure to the Dolls, not counting Ed McCormack's feature spread on them in the lamented Metropolitan Review (lamented because when they folded a few weeks later they owed me lotsa bucks) came rather late, by New York standards anyway. In fact, all through the summer of '72, I deliberately put off seeing them. This was largely because of the "New Stones" hype they were receiving; after all, the genuine article had just been in town, having put on one of the greatest rock-and-roll shows I've ever witnessed, and I was in no mood to be charitable. Nonetheless, by the time I finaly got around to them, they had become the undisputed rock darlings of the city, the first New York band since the Velvet Underground (or the Blues Project, or the Rascals -- anyway, it had been a long time) with a legitimate local following.

So the first night I was to catch them at their home-town stomping grounds (the now defunct Mercer Arts Center) I allowed myself to anticipate something really great. There was drama in the air -- the Dolls had just returned from a triumphant English tour (without benefit of recording contract!) where their original drummer had died in a tragic if trendy drug mishap, representatives of almost all the major record companies were in the audience, and there was, in general, a definite feeling of Event in the Making. Finally, the Dolls rushed on stage looking fabulous, there was a quick "Hello, New York!", the band hit into Chuck Berry's "Back in the USA"(a terrific choice), and then...nothing. They couldn't even play the song, and if you can't play Chuck Berry then you sure can't rock-and-roll, as David Bowie recently proved so vividly with "Around and Around." The rest of the set was a total fiasco, equipment breaking down all over, the band ragged and on the verge of hysteria. I left early, and when some fellow critics told me the next day that the second set had been far better, I merely curled my lip. Having been in garage bands myself, I felt that I had seen quite enough.

To be fair, I did go back on a few other occasions, and yes, they were infinitely more together, but I was still bothered by the blatantly second-hand nature of the whole business. Every move they made, musically and visually, was shamelessly and completely derivative of the Stones. Lead singer David Johansen looked, as one writer put it, like Jagger's skinny kid sister, and guitarist Johnny Thunders was a younger, chubbier version of Keith. During a typical performance you could actually sit there picking out where they had gotten their moves; oh yes, Mick did that step on Shindig in '65, and let's see now, Keith vamped the drummer like that on the last tour, and so on. Of course, on that level it was fun, but not to be taken seriously.

Slowly, though, I began to realize that with the Stones so remote and distant, and with Exile on Main Street such a generally depresssing work to contend with, just about any version of them, even a surrogate, was desperately needed. If you were born too late to have been at the Crawdaddy Club in 1963, then the Dolls at Mercer in '72 might be a reasonable alternative. I confess their music was growing on me as well -- granted that their rhythm section can at best be described as adequate (and to be honest, it's not that much worse than Creedence's) and Johansen has a voice like a frog, there was that undeniable energy, and the guitarists were really terrific in the classic (if currently unfashionable) twin rhythm-lead manner. The last time I saw them I was quite charmed.

Well, their debut record has been out for a while now, and I'm a believer -- almost. Of course, I'm disappointed that they didn't have the guts to have Shel Talmy produce them in a two-track mono studio, but Todd Rundgren has done right by them, and the album as a whole has an appropriately anarchic clang to it. More important, the material has finally made sense to me. Underneath the urban chauvinism and the drag posturing, there turns out to be a quirky sort of intelligence at work; Johansen's songs, a mildy silly amalgam of early-Sixties girl group r&b and British story rock circa '66, are actually rather touching.

But the question remains: Is the Dolls' "Trash" a better song and performance than the Shangri-Las' "Give Him a Great Big Kiss"? In other words, do the Dolls transcend their sources the way the Stones ultimately transcended Chuck Berry, or are they merely another nice temporary noise? I have a feeling only The Shadows know, and it looks (so far) like they ain't telling.

I hadn't read that in decades, and I was afraid it was going to be stupid, but no -- it kinda holds up.

And it's gotta go in that forthcoming book of my Greatest Hits that's (hopefully) gonna come out this year. 😎