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Brian Young - Why the Dolls were cool | Pistols vs The Dolls | Discography
The New York Dolls made Gary Glitter look presentable. Wearing dishevelled wigs, smudged lipstick, stilted platforms, painfully tight lurex pants and crimpoline dresses they combined Iggy's anarchy, Lou Reeds brutality and street sense and invoked the three minute pop song with the excitement it was originally conceived. With this sort of attitude they raised hackles everywhere. Formed in 1972 they quickly made an impact .They may have had a fat lipped jagger look-alike and a junked up guitarist and all the while the band looking like brickies in drag but nothing could compare to the mascara massacre of songs like Bad Girl, Frankenstein and the spiteful Vietnamese Baby. The Dolls were outrageous. Thunders falling off stage, shooting up when shoved back on stage, Sylvain Sylvain toppling off his stack heels, Johansson spitting at the audience before spit was taken as a complimentary greeting. Their first drummer died from an overdose in London in 1972 after one too many night of excess leaving Jerry Nolan to step on drums and later punk history with The Heartbreakers. As like so many USA bands we took them to heart with them playing at Wembley Stadium with The Faces and appearing on the Old Grey Whistle Test music programme to the obvious distaste of it presenter Bob Harris. Courted by the record companies but unsure of their saleability outside New York they in all reality imploded and their second album Too Much Too Soon is aptly titled. By 1974 they had nowhere to go. However they met up with an old friend whose shop in London they visited when they came over to England in 1972 to buy clothes who went by the name of Malcolm McClaren. Somehow he took over managing the band and dressed them in red leather and communist chic which in reactionary conservative America killed them stone dead. If that didn't then what did was the realization that here was a band with two strung out junkies which meant they couldn't play too far from their dealers! They split up but not before Malcolm headed back to England with a head full of ideas and Sylvain's magical white Gibson les Paul. The scene was set, though not to be realised for a couple of years.
Picks Jet Boy, Subway Train, Looking For A Kiss and the magical Who Are The Mystery Girls as covered by Slaughter & The Dogs. The Dolls influenced everyone from The Ramones to Richard Hell, if not stylistically, then that music could still be fun, anarchic and sleazy. The Dolls would split and two of its members would form The Heartbreakers and move to London as an essential part of the punk scene there, but that's another story. Muchos grassy arse to the Stud Brothers |
