New York Dolls singer lives without a plan

British singer Morrissey asked the band to reunite
for one show in 2004.

By JOHN BENSON

VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT

Planning is for suckers.

At least that’s the prevailing sentiment of New York Dolls singer David Johansen, who continually over the past few decades has approached life with a wait-and-see attitude.

“Just philosophically, if you can call it that, it’s sort of like more interesting to fall into things and see what happens than to make some kind of grand design and try to steer your life in that direction,” said David Johansen, calling from New York City. “It’s kind of more interesting just to see which way it goes.”

In a nutshell, that’s how Johansen created his ’80s jazz-lounge stage persona Buster Poindexter, who is known for the hit single (and subsequently annoying cruise line theme song) “Hot Hot Hot.”

“That’s the thing I was going to do for four Mondays at this little bar called Tramps,” Johansen said. “And then it just kind of snowballed, and some guy talked us into making a record. It was just like something I was doing for a goof.”

While talked about for decades, the New York Dolls reunion wasn’t a goof for Johansen and his former band mates, guitarist Sylvain Sylvain and bassist Arthur Kane. Instead, it was more like a twist of fate.

When famed British singer Morrissey, who had been the president of the New York Dolls fan club back in the ’70s, asked the outfit to reunite for one show in 2004, the group did so to great acclaim. While Kane died shortly after the reunion, the band agreed to just play a few summer European festival dates.

“So we did that and that turned into a year of just playing all of the time,” Johansen said. “And then we just said one day, ‘Well, we’re playing all of the time, we might as well make a record.’ But it wasn’t like we had a plan to get together and keep going.”

But keep going is what the band did. After 32 years, the New York Dolls followed up its second album, 1974’s “Too Much Too Soon,” with the 2006 release of studio album “One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This.” Now there is talk of a concert album being released in the spring.

The New York Dolls return to Cleveland for a Wednesday show at the Beachland Ballroom. One question that remains is why didn’t the reunion happen years ago?

“I was doing something else,” Johansen said. “And if somebody says to you tomorrow I want you to change your life completely and be like some other job, like a bus driver, and you wouldn’t want to be that, you might say you’ll be a bus driver for one day. Then you drive the bus and say, ‘Oh man, this is kind of great.’ So it was kind of like that.”

Invariably, that’s some bus. Punk rock architects that ventured into sleaze and glam rock, the New York Dolls created a unique blend of visual art and in-your-face music. While Johansen is more comfortable talking about what keeps the band together now, he eschews addressing how big of an influence the Dolls played on the punk scene.

Again, he’s living in the present and looking forward to seeing what life has in store.

“To me, it’s like a new thing, but it’s hard to explain,” Johansen said. “It’s a new band yet it has all of this kind of mythology around it. You know how like people interpret history and rumors and put it all together as factual or ‘I read it on the Internet so it must be true,’ it kind of has all of this stuff buzzing around it.”

He added, “But I have no idea. I’ve never even thought about [our legacy]. I think we’re musicians, and we like to go out and play. I don’t really think about this stuff.”