MONDO PROFUNDO: DAVID JOHANSEN SINGS BASSO

MONDO PROFUNDO: DAVID JOHANSEN SINGS BASSO

Bill Holdship

David Johansen should have been a superstar.

Imagine...

It’s 1981, and New York’s Mercer Arts Center is a hallowed rock landmark in the tradition of the Cavern, the Marquee and Sun studios. The New York Dolls are not only one of the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll bands. They’re also one of the world’s most popular. The Ramones, Clash and Sex Pistols all regularly paid homage to the band at the beginning of their careers. No longer simply referred to as “America’s answer to the Rolling Stones,” the Dolls became as popular as the Stones several years ago when Mick Jagger finally admitted: “That Johansen guy may not be able to sing, but he’s certainly on top of what’s going down in the world of pop culture right now. I, guess we’re all poseurs after all.” Jagger’s bride seemed damaged, but Keith Richards still occasionally joins Johnny Thunders on his New Standells superstar tours, the dynamic duo having been good friends since they met at an international convention of blood change victims.

Syl Sylvain caused quite a media splash recently when he wed Liza Minnelli, his

co-star in Bob Fosse’s decadent Cabaret sequel, the loving couple joining Eddie Van Halen and Valerie Bertinelli onstage at Madison Square Garden for a double ring ceremony billed as “Marriage of the Show Biz Clones.” Still, it’s David Johansen—the Dolls’ outrageous singer—who is best known outside rock ’n’ roll circles. It was Johansen’s state-of-the-art bohemian look and attitude that took the Dolls to the top of the rock ’n’ roll heap. And it was Johansen’s lyrics that took the band’s most recent LP, My Iranian Love Doll, to the top of the charts, knocking out all other “punk” competition because—as everyone knows —these bands may have an understanding of the decay, but they lack the Dolls’ passion and sense of humor.

The Dolls’ concerts have become mammoth countercultural events, as hordes of their loyal fans—both male and female “dolls” (since sex makes little difference at this late date in time) —come out of hiding for a night of delightful decadence. Sure, it’s tasteless trash, but so is American life and culture at best, and at least this is fun! And so they gather—a generation of jaded, mutated rock ’n’ roll romantics, all linked together by the Dolls’ dark yet optimistic battle cry: “GOTTA GET SOME LOVIN’BEFORE THE PLANET IS GONE...!“

But back to “reality.”

It’s 1981, and there hardly seems to be a prevailing popular youth culture in this couptry, let alone anything that resembles a real counterculture. (Rock? Roll? Revolution? You gotta be kidding!) The charts are dominated by bands that try to out-bland each other or macho morons strutting and singing about the size of their sex organs. Both John Lennon and Elvis Presley should have been enough to change the mind of anyone aspiring to be something as foolish as a rock ’n’ roll “hero.” And the New York Dolls are nothing more than a fond memory to the cult fortunate enough to experience the band during thjeir prime.

Syl Sylvain currently makes cute poprock records that almost no one ever hears. The last time I saw Johnny Thunders play with the Heartbreakers (Are they still together? Does anyone really care?), he had a difficult time standing up, let alone playing a guitar. Today, David Johansen remains the most famous former member of the New York Dolls. Already a media figure when the rock press first picked up on the early New York “punk” rock scene, Johansen has recorded three solo albums since the Dolls’ demise, each one more of a commercial—or at least conventional—bid to get In Style, the title of his second release.

Johansen’s first album received a great deal of critical praise, while his second demonstrated that he is still one Of the most dynamic vocalists in rock right now. There’s no question that Johansen is better today in a strictly musical sense: the Dolls could be called primitive at best. Still, it might be argued that Johansen has forsaken a lot of the cutting edge found in his earlier compositions to gain commercial acceptance.

Here Comes The Night, his most recent effort, may well be the worst example of this situation yet. As Tom Carson (who was ambivalent about the album) recently described it in the Village Voice: “The substance of Here Comes The Night really is trash—trash in the commercial, not the cool sense.” Still, few people have been able to sell “trash” of all varieties to an audience as well as Johansen, and maybe the disappointment with his current direction has more to do with who he is than what he chooses to perform. David Johansen— like Lou Reed and his post-Velvet Underground work—is clearly a man with a spectre hanging over his career: the ghost of the New York Dolls. This was evident during Johansen’s recent Detroit performance where a good percentage of the audience wore New York Dolls t-shirts or buttons, and the biggest response was for the songs he originally performed with the band.

So when one finally gets to talk to Johansen, one of the first logical questions is: Do you feel at all slighted that the Dolls weren’t more popular during their brief existence?

Do you really think the Sex Pistols made more money than the Dolls?

“Do I feel slighted that the Velvet Underground beat us out?” Johansen wisecracks in a gravelly voice that could have Tom Waits runnin’ scared. “No, seriously, do you really think the Sex Pistols made more money than the Dolls? Actually, if they did, it’s because there are more kids available for that kind of music now. When the Dolls started out, it was like ‘Hey, look at this. Those guys are crazy.’ Most kids then just wanted to grow up and get an alligator shirt. So when we started, it was like ‘Hey, what is this supposed to be?’ It’s more marketable today because there was a small group of people that got into the Dolls, and then a year later they passed their Dolls albums onto their little sister and then she passed them onto her friends. And it just grew from there. It was a groove sort of thing. A stylistic overview. And that indirectly evolved into the Sex Pistols or the punk thing, I guess.”

And what does the man himself see as the difference between David Johansen, solo artist, and David Johansen, flamboyant leader of the Dolls?

“The Dolls were a group. So if I was writing for the Dolls, the songs were naturally somewhat personal, but I was also writing them to represent the group. I don’t have to do that now—write to represent a group or other people. It’s just me. Whereas with the Dolls, I had perimeters that made me write with the band’s attitude or image in mind. I don’t have those perimeters anymore. Like ‘Heart Of Gold’ on the new album is almost a country type of thing. I could never have done a song like that with the Dolls.”

Other than his original compostiions, what Johansen especially likes to sing these days are Motown classics or similar types of soul songs. “Melody” on his In Style LP borrowed the riff from the Four Tops’ “Bernadette” as a tribute to that group. Tonight, Johansen covered “Bernadette” during his show, as well as the Foundations’ “Build Me Up Buttercup.”

“I loved the Four Tops,” he explains. “I loved people who had voices I could identify with. The Four Tops would come out and go ‘BERNADETTE!!’ and I’d say, ‘Hey, I can sing like that! BERNADETTE!!’ I can’t sing like.. .lemme see, who would be a good example? I wish I could sing like Frankie Valli when he was singing songs like ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry,’ but I can’t do that. I’m not putting down that kind of singing. There’s just a certain kind of basso sound that goes well with my voice, so that’s what I liked the best. I’m not saying that I didn’t dig the Four Seasons, but I could sing along with the Four Tops. That’s the difference.”

Johansen collaborated with former Beach Boys guitarist Blondie Chaplin on Here Comes The Night, and Chaplin has joined Johansen for the tour. The pair met through a mutual friend in Costa Mesa three years ago, but Johansen isn’t sure that the collaboration was a result of moving in similar musical directions.

“I don’t know. It’s hard for me to talk about music in those sort of intellectual terms. I just meet the guys I record with halfway, and we work together from there. I can put my finger on it afterwards. ‘That was a great thing we just did.’ But I don’t do that ahead of time. ‘That would be a great thing to do.’ We just do it, and then if it’s good, 1 realize it. That happened with a lot of songs for the new record. We only put eleven of them on, so it’s like we got the best ones. A lot of the others might be more applicable for Robbie Dupree or someone like that. Well, Robbie Dupree if he had a song with dummy lyrics. So we do a lot of kinds of music, and there’s not one specific musical direction.”

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Throughout Johansen’s work with and without the Dolls, there seems to be a recurring image of a guy who wants and believes in love, but obstacles of reality keep getting in his way. Does Johansen consider himself a romantic?

“Well, I’m a romantic guy. I don’t really know what it is to be a romantic. (He starts to sing Wliat 1 Like About You”). I like to consider myself the fifth Romantic. No, I mean it’s really hard to talk about myself in those terms. Everyone’s got different ideas about that sort of stuff. I don’t put down other people because they have different ideas...well, I guess I do.. But I wouldn’t execute them if I was king. So I can’t say I consider myself a romantic. I consider myself a person, and that might include being romantic.”

I point out the song “You, Fool, You” on the new LP which includes the lyrics: “I keep hoping to turn you around. Why go solo when there’s someone else around?” Couldn’t that be conceived qs a message to romantics looking for love?

“Well, that’s one of my messages, if I have a succinct set of messages on that album. It’s just a real song about real life with some information. You know, don’t sit around and pull your pud. Get out and boogie if you ever want to meet anybody and strike up a chord. It’s like this., Before I was in the Dolls, I useta hang around Max’s Kansas City and places like that, and there were a lot of artists and people like that hanging around. One day this guy—1 don’t know what he was, he was probably a fuckin’ dressmaker or something—said something real profound to me. He said ‘What do you do?’ And I said, i’m a rock ’n’ roll singer.’ He said, ‘Who do you sing with?’ And I said, i don’t sing with anyone because I’m waiting to get a band together.’

And the guy said, ‘Well, fuck you, man. Get out there and sing. Don’t sit at this fucking table doing nothing. Sing with anybody. You can’t wait for someone to come to you or until the time is ideal. You’ve gotta go for it now.’ And that’s the same sort of thing ‘You, Fool, You’ is about.”

Another recurring theme in Johansen’s songs seems to be rock ’n’ roll as a means of escaping from reality, a supreme example being the lyric “I can’t get the kind of love that I need, so let’s just dance, and I’ll forget” from “Frenchette.” Johansen disagrees with this interpretation.

“I think facing the music and dancing is a reality iri itself. 1 don’t think it’s an escape from reality. Is having a good time an escape from reality? No, it is reality. So I don’t see my music or show as an escape from reality. I mean, there’s really a lot of shit going on, but I don’t see getting away from, that as an escape. It’s just another realm of reality. Like on the new album— ‘People howling and people crying, but there’s going to be a party tonight.’ That’s real.”

But couldn’t that be interpreted as people are howling because they’re miserable, but we’re going to have a party to have fun and escape from those harsh realities?

“Well, what are we supposed to do?” He sounds impatient.

I’m asking you.

“It’s not an escape from reality. It is reality. Losing your job is reality, but' so is haying a party.”

Johansen informed me earlier that he never reads magazines. “I just look at the pictures,” he said. “If you read the copy, you’ll have deformed children.” Having no real desire to rub him the wrong way, I decide to end this with two quick questions.

Do you look back fondly on your years with the Dolls?

“Yes. Because that’s where I started. I don’t have any bad feelings about it. I was inexperienced when I began with the Dolls, and it gave me experience onstage.”

And, finally, is there any possibility that the Dolls might someday get back together for a one-time reunion?

“If and when there’s peace on earth. If they stop fighting in the Middle East and Beirut, and if they cool out in China and Russia, and when everyone’s nice to each other, then the Dolls might get back together.”

Oh, well. Life always seems better in my, fantasies. So.. .um.. .let’s just dance...