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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Summary.
Johnny Thunders and his cohorts
of tranvestites, the New York Dolls, played furious and catchy rock'n'roll on
their debut album, New York Dolls (1973).
Their trash aesthetic descended from the Rolling Stones and the Velvet
Underground, but their frantic pace descended from the rockers of the 1950s
and from the surf bands of the early 1960s, while their anthemic melodies came
from the Who and the Animals. But what made them dangerous was the fire power
(all instruments were played like automatic weapons)
and the attitude (not exactly consistent with the prevailing mood of
re-alignment).
Thunders went on to form the Heartbreakers (1), who were, basically, an updated version of the New York Dolls for the
punk generation. The songs on L.A.M.F. (1977) were slogans, and the
album as a whole was a personal diary.
Full bio.
(Translated by Giorgio Curcetti)
Johnny Thunders (born John Genzale) is one of the most important figures of 1970s' rock'n'roll
reinassance which would lead to punk-rock.
Besides being a link between the
Velvet Underground's decadent rock,
the outrageous rock of the
Stooges,
il glam-rock di Marc Bolan's
glam-rock and finally hardcore punk-rock,
Thunders updated for a new age the
character of the desperate loner/loser, so typical of the American culture,
and which would have served as a moral prototype for the following decade.
Haunted, like many other rock heroes, by the very same
damned stance which he had built for himself, Thunders was forced to remain coherent with his isolation
until his death.
Revaluating the hard'n'dirty rock of the 1960s, the one still drenched in Merseybeat, and inaugurating rock music for homosexuals, Thunders contributed in a
fundamental manner to the emancipation of decadent rock from the
stereotypes of hystrionics for their own sake.
The New York Dolls were the transvestite band par excellence.
They formed in New York in 1971 (when
Johnny Thunders' Actress met the singer David Johansen) in New York most
dubious clubs.
The band mimicked and amplified the look and sound of the Rolling Stones,
with Johansen imitating Mick
Jagger's outrageous posturing. But their power was of another order of magnitude: Jerry Nolan's
rhythmical vehemence was the sonic equivalent of an epilectic fit, Arthur "Killer" Kane spewed out
glooming notes from his bass, Bo Diddley-style, and Syl Sylvain duelled to the sound of heavy metal
sword-like guitars with the stony sarcasm of Johnny Thunders' guitar. Their rhythm and blues was
dissected by neurotic charges … la Stooges and by a precise intent to destroy in the style of the
MC5.
The songs attacked with elementary and pressing rhythms, augmented by anthemic choruses and by a
savage and ferocious playing spirit. Their first album,
New York Dolls (Mercury, 1973), lines up a terrifying
set of supersonic riffs, of epilectic distortions, and shouted howls. One side all impetus and propulsion,
worked up and arresting (Thrash, with Mersey-beat backing vocals, Bad Girl, the giddy rock and roll of Subway
Train, the tribal Private World, Jet Boy, with an electrifying solo and hand-clapping rhythms) and one side
all poison and perversion, tormented and screeching (the epilectic Personality Crisis, the martial Looking
for a Kiss, the poisonous ballad Vietnamese Baby) constitute on the whole the most depraved and
gripping depiction of the delinquential New York underground, are eight fired-up masterpieces which do
away with years of sonic rubbish and create a bridge between underground and punk. Truculent and
outrageous, the five transvestites bring back the sixties' gutar based sound, epidermic riffs and savage
distortions, tribal rhythms and epic choruses.
Forever urban outsiders, the New York Dolls could claim to have invented a debauched New York which
was a blueprint for the violent New York of punk.
Their animal magnetism spreaded in clubs and inspired a new generation of rebellious teenagers; but the
group split up after the mediocre
Too Much Too Soon (Mercury, 1974),
which was mostly devoted to
covers.
The singer, David Johansen, typical figure of the debauched hooliganism of the Lower East Side, gave
with his album David Johansen (Blue Sky, 1978) maybe the last gem of decadent rock, an
album which continues the suburban saga of his old band with
Girls, Funky But Chic, Frenchette, Donna, Cool Metro,
all played in a powerful bar-band style. After two more commercial albums,
elevated only by the long anthem
Flamingo Road on In Style (1979), and by the heavy metal of
My Obsession on Here
Comes the Night (1981), Johansen converted himself to synth-pop on Sweet Revenge (Passport, 1984),
which displays the parody rap King of Babylon and the warring anthem Heard the News, Johansen will
end up singing swing, calypso, rhythm and blues and cabaret under the nostalgia banner and the
pseudonym Buster Pointdexter (RCA, 1987), augmented by the arrangements of Joe Delia and a
surprising latin crooning.
In the meantime Thunders had formed the Heartbreakers, with Nolan on drums and the young
Richard Hell
on bass (replaced by Billy Rath), with Walter Lure as a perfect lead guitarist-vocalist foil for Thunders,
who created successfully a breathless rock and roll record which, from urban violence, projects frenzy and
the wildest instincts. Although more directly autobiographical and more sentimental, the album L.A.M.F.
(Track, 1977) which stands for "Like A MotherFucker", doesn't renounce to the New York Dolls sadistic and
desperate attitude, and the impact of the songs is still dazzling: an avalanche of progressively beastly
sounds. The clou is represented by the melodic slogans sang chorally all at once at the end of their sonic
excursions: Born to Lose (the self-portrait) and Richard Hell's Chinese Rocks, menacing and boastful. The method
consists in an epilectic frenzy which opens up in epic choruses like the ones in
Get Off The Phone, All By Myself, One Track Mind.
And the fillers are dizzy means for raging dances
(Baby Talk,
I Wanna Be Loved)
(I Love You).
The vehemence of this record is the most direct testimonial of
the spirit which animated the New York clubs on the eve of the punk era. Those riffs and those elementary
choruses, thrown at a crazy speed on the general noise of the instruments, announced a deep revolution
in the way to conceive rock (concision, absence of virtuosisms, pounding drumming).
The album came
out in an horrible version, the original masters would eventually brought out on the album
L.A.M.F. – the lost ’77 mixes
(Jungle, 2017).
Unfortunately the Heartbreakers would never release another normal album and, after having recorded the
subdued So Alone (Real, 1978) to his name (which contains
Great Big Kiss, Leave Me Alone, You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory),
Thunders disappeared, brought to his knees by heroin and lack of
recognition. In the following years his discography was augmented by albums recorded live which
recycled ad infinitum old material. The E.P.
In Cold Blood (New Rose, 1983) contains two new classics,
Diary Of A Lover and In Cold Blood.
New Too Much Junkie Business (ROIR, 1983), recorded half in studio and half live,
contains again Diary Of A Lover and In Cold Blood, besides
Too Much Junkie Business and So Alone.
The EP Diary Of A Lover (PVC, 1984) duplicates
Diary Of A Lover and In Cold Blood and adds Endless Party.
Que Sera Sera (Jungle, 1985) duplicates Endless Party and adds
at least
Little Bit Of Whore.
Hurt Me (New Rose, 1984)
is an acoustic album, maybe Thunders' most sincere, graced over all by the scream of pain of
Hurt Me.
Copy Cats (Restless, 1988)
is a compilation of covers and
Gang War (Zodiac, 1990)
an album recorded with
MC5's guitarist Wayne Kramer.
Sono dischi in cui Thunders sfoga la sua passione per i Rolling Stones, e
che lo riportano su un piano piu` umano, senza travestimenti.
Il caos discografico verra` dileguato grazie al doppio antologico
Born Too Loose (Jungle, 1999) che raccoglie tutti i classici.
These are records on which
Thunders vents his passion for the Rolling Stones, and that bring him back on a more human plane, with
no tricks or masks.
The chaos of his discography will be partially relieved by the double-album anthology
Born Too Loose (Jungle, 1999), which gathers all his classics.
Johnny Thunders died in April 1991 at the age of 38 of a drug overdose
in a New Orleans hotel (but the family claims he was killed). Nolan died
of a stroke in January 1992.
The two surviving New York Dolls reformed the band and released One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This (2006), mostly a Johansen album,
the equally competent but dejavu
Cause I Sez So (2009), and the not even competent
Dancing Backward in High Heels (2011).
Sylvain died in 2020.
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