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In Reply to: Oh, brother posted by J on March 29, 2007 at 15:35:33:
I knew you knew more about the Dolls than I did, but the idea that they didn't play the instruments--Johnny Thunders didn't play guitar--is just ludicrous.
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Yeah, I'm sorry I didn't respond earlier...I was out all day yesterday & it figures, the first I see of the thread is when it's gotten to a point where I couldn't help but call that BS for what it is.My take on the Dolls is a little different than a lot of people who like them: it's not that I don't like those records, I just don't know that they ever quite captured some of the qualities that stand out for a lot of people. I mean, here are guys whose natural inclination is to play sloppy, and worry less about precision than energy, which was pretty much unheard of at the time outside of a couple of exceptions, mostly from Detroit. There's a flow that comes out in live performance that can be difficult to recreate in a recording studio, at least when you're talking about this sort of act. The reaction of many was that they simply did not know how to play their instruments, which is of course ignorant. Jerry Nolan was probably the most accomplished instrumentalist, but Johnny Thunders (who took more than a couple of cues from Dick Dale) remains one of the most influential stylists of the era. Actually, he probably bears a good measure of responsibility for the look of the hair metal bands, most of whom were directly influenced by Hanoi Rocks. There was one band that managed to get it right, and that was Gun N' Roses, who actually sounded & played like people who'd heard a New York Dolls record or two.
Over time I've come to appreciate the second album more than the first, but I think the 1st one has the stronger songs. Just doesn't flow as well. But what I like even better is what happened after the band broke up. Thunders & Nolan formed the Heartbreakers with Richard Hell, who'd just left Television (and soon left to form the Voidoids because Thunders was more interested in simple lyrical topics than Hell's poetry & stuff like 'Love Comes In Spurts'). David Johansen formed the David Johansen Group, which Sylvain Sylvain did some work with. And Sylvain put out a couple of records of his own. (Prior to this, though, after Thunders & Nolan quit, the Dolls played without them for awhile, replacing Thunders with a guy we'd later come to know as Blackie Lawless from W*A*S*P*)
The Heartbreakers (this was years before Tom Petty used that name) made one record, L.A.M.F., and broke up in England amidst the messes they made of their lives & careers with heroin addiction. The original version of it never really got off the ground; I think it was considered to be a poor production, wasn't promoted properly, maybe the record company folded, something, I don't remember exactly. It was a rare item for years. It's one of the greatest rock'n'roll albums I've ever heard, way better than either of the Dolls' albums to my ears. Thunders remixed it in 1984, creating the L.A.M.F. Revisited album, which has a very different feel, but I still think it's a good rec. It was just done with more of a slick 80s production mentality in mind. Not that it was made to sound overly commercial, but certainly more so than the raw, demo-like sound of the original. Either version is ESSENTIAL.
After the Heartbreakers broke up, Thunders made a great solo album called So Alone. It's as least as good as either Dolls album. Great tunes, and a cover of Daddy Rollin' Stone with Phil Lynott & Steve Marriott each taking a verse. This rec's essential too, but not quite the rock and roll powerhouse the Heartbreakers turned out with L.A.M.F.
The first David Johansen Group record is ESSENTIAL. Again, better to my ears than either of the two Dolls records. Every song is a hit. Johansen followed it up with a relatively decent couple of recs, collaborating with Blondie Chaplin (after he left the Beach Boys) on one, Here Comes The Night, that yielded a fantastic ballad called Heart Of Gold (not the Neil Young song). Then, after a minor live release from 1978 (that was fleshed out into an essential full-length CD 15 years later), he released a live rec that yielded a hit, a medley of Animals songs that was big in the early days of MTV. Not long after that he gave up on rock and roll and started the Buster Poindexter thing.
Sylvain Sylvain's lyrics are pretty lame, but I also like his first solo record more than either Dolls rec. Great cover of Ain't Got No Home (Clarence 'Frogman' Henry, I believe). ESSENTIAL. After that he did a couple of decent recs, Syl Sylvain & the Teardrops, though nothing in the league of the first album, which was on RCA.
Thunders would re-form the Heartbreakers for 'rent party' gigs to fuel their drug habits from time to time. One is documented on 1979's Live At Max's, which is as good as the David Johansen Group's Live At The Bottom Line; another is 1982's Stations Of The Cross. But after that his solo work was pretty much spotty & his rep as either putting on the best show you've ever seen, or the worst, started to catch up with him (even as the Replacements, whose first album included 'Johnny's Gonna Die,' seized that title from him). We all know what Johansen did with the Buster persona; and three albums later he did a Latin record with that outfit. After that, he started a blues project called the Harry Smiths (both albums are excellent, and the first is certainly ESSENTIAL).
And then Morrissey put the band back together for a performance in the UK three years ago, which were successful, yielding a live DVD...and then Arthur Kane died, all of which is documented in the biographical "New York Doll" DVD. And Johansen & Thunders decided to keep the reunited band together. I saw them three years ago, and they were good, but Iggy & the reunited Stooges followed them, which would probably blunt anyone's impact. Last summer they released a new record? I had NO expectations. I didn't think it was possible they could come up with anything that I'd think was good at all. I was stunned. Really good rec, AT LEAST as good as either of the first two Dolls recs. HIGHLY recommended.
Of my recommendations, if you had to choose only two, I'd say the first David Jo record, & the Heartbreakers' L.A.M.F. One? L.A.M.F. all the way.
I have a Dolls bio, but if you haven't read Please Kill Me, what are you waiting for?
Glad you took this plunge. Most will disagree with me on the post-Dolls recs being better than the Mercury platters, but then some think the Dolls were manufactured & played to a tape.
I like Johnny's remix job on "Revisited," but I always thought it was a little too polished for the music. "The Lost '77 Mixes" is a lot rawer and, to me, more reminiscent of the band's live sound. It was compiled from the best of over 200 takes by producer Speedy Keane. If you don't already have it, check it out. It's well worth having.
One thing always leads to another, and I'm already on the hunt for those LPs.
BTW, I like the production of the second Dolls album better--I've never cared for Todd Rundgren's music or production--but I haven't decided which one I actually like better. "Private World" from the first album just knocks me out.
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It's interesting, because there are so many similarities to Aerosmith, who is one of my absolute least favorite acts ever, though even I can hear a tune or two in there somewhere. There wasn't a rivalry, for the most part, and I don't think there ever really has been, yet you could construct one if you wanted to. Oh, and my enjoyment of the Dolls is not based on their being unknown & therefore cool, as opposed to massively popular & therefore uncool, or some other such nonsense.One interesting link here, though, is Bebe Buell, who dated Johnny Thunders, had kids with Steven Tyler, and raised them with Todd Rundgren.
Who I'm also not a fan of, and whose name I might well look at, in a production capacity, as bringing in a sensibility I'd be more likely to dislike than like. However, while I would agree in a general sense that the knob-twiddling on Too Much Too Soon probably works better than that on the first rec, I would not heap any scorn on Rundgren for his work on the first rec. Actually, if anything, I think he did a pretty good job. Might there have been a better choice? I don't know. A more interesting choice? Perhaps John Cale or David Bowie, or someone else who had some experience with people trying to get the sorts of sounds guys like Thunders & Sylvain were interested getting. On the Kirshner show, Thunders is playing a Vox teardrop through an Orange amp, an unusual combination. The MC5 had used Orange...so had Black Sabbath, though, among others. But the MC5 were the ones back in 1966 having to talk engineers into letting them capture tones that sounded like noise to most people. Their early singles, included on the great Big Bang anthology, give a better example of this than the live & crappy-sounding Kick Out The Jams, or most of their later records. The Stooges had done this sort of thing; of course, others had to, but not quite with the same mindset. But Rundgren hadn't worked with bands like the Stooges, and his resume shows that he'd worked primarily with acts that were far more commercial. Plenty of damn good acts, but not a lot that, like the Dolls, would later be considered influential among what were for many years bands that were considered far more obscure & underground, than mainstream and/or popular.
Also interesting is to cherry-pick a few Stones songs from roughly the same period, say Goat's Head Soup up through Some Girls, and play some of them alongside some of these other records, especially the first David Jo rec, and Thunders' So Alone. Along with moments from the Stooges' Raw Power, a Saints track or two, and the Flamin' Groovies. Heck, that'd make a dandy of a comp. Maybe I'll try to get in touch with ya...
I just grabbed the first Johansen LP from Ebay.
I'll be looking for "Please Kill Me," too. Local library should have a copy.
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