The Tragedy Of New York Dolls Singer David Johansen Explained

Music is constantly evolving, all thanks to artists who push the boundaries and take the risks that come with creating something entirely new and ground-breaking. When it comes time to ask the very complicated question of who really created the punk rock genre, there are a lot of names that get mentioned — including David Johansen and the New York Dolls.

Throughout his storied and varied career, though, Johansen retained a surprising attitude about the whole thing. In an interview with Uncut, he was asked about how he felt about paving the way for the arguably more popular and profitable bands who were inspired by the Dolls' sound. "I don't take any hubristic pride in any of that," he said. "I hear it from other people but it just goes through me. ... we had to create things." That sounds surprisingly modest for someone who was at the head of a group that's now credited for helping shape the sound of New York's 1970s-era music scene. And Johansen has been nothing but candid about some of the struggles they faced — especially those they felt they were unable to overcome.

It's easy to think that those with the sort of powerful personalities who leave their mark on an entire genre might be able to look back with no regrets at a life that many of us just dream of living. But Johansen's story includes loss, addictions, feelings of being misunderstood and pigeonholed, and catastrophic health struggles. 

David Johansen had often said that he and the original members of the band that would become the New York Dolls gravitated to each other after noticing how they all stood out from the crowd on the city streets. Everything started to gel, and even though they had a massive following, you might argue that record labels' failure to step up and sign them is one of the most questionable decisions in music industry history. In the early 1970s, the Dolls were being compared to Velvet Underground when it came time to talk about sheer force of personality, but they couldn't find anyone who was willing to give them a record deal.

Being consistently overlooked stung, and Johansen spoke about it to Rolling Stone way back in 1972. "All the record companies have been to see us. They think we're too outrageous. They know we're real and we'll stop at nothing, and it scares the s*** outta them." While they were lauded for being stellar performers, how well that would transfer to a record remained to be seen — and when they were booked to tour alongside Rod Stewart and the Faces in hopes of getting some clout, the tour ended in tragedy. 

It worked, though ... kind of. The Dolls got their contract and were in the process of signing it when drummer Billy Murcia died. His drowning death was attributed to drugs and alcohol, and it came just as the Dolls were seemingly poised for success.

When David Johansen spoke with High Times in 1981, he stressed that while he considered himself a singer, he didn't think he was a star: "This is my life's work. This is what I do for a living. I think anybody who considers himself a rock 'n' roll star is in a lot of trouble."

And that goes a long way to explaining some of the things that Sylvain Sylvain said in a 2018 interview with The Quietus. He was pretty straightforward about how walking through the streets of New York dressed for a show was terrifying: "You took your life in your hands just getting to the gig," he explained. "I'll never forget the catcalls. ... When I finally got there, I was so relieved," he later added.

Sylvain also said that for Johansen, that was just a part of what he faced, and he revealed that even once they got to the show and got ready to perform, the singer faced an uphill battle. When asked about making a 100% commitment to the band, Sylvain made some surprising comments: "I feel like with Johansen it was more of an act, though you wouldn't believe it. ... With David, poor guy, there's a struggle there. I could see sometimes he was so reluctant to go onstage, and you had to pump him up. I used to hear his girlfriend telling him: 'David, they're all here to see you.'" That's pretty eye-opening: Performers might make what they do seem effortless, but it's not always easy.

The New York Dolls' 1973 album was produced by the iconic songwriter, artist, and producer Todd Rundgren, and it's ranked at number 301 in Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. That's a wildly impressive showing. But unfortunately for anyone who would have loved to get a behind-the-scenes look at the album's production from the Dolls themselves, David Johansen was honest about the fact that he didn't remember any of it at all.

He didn't get into too many details on just why his memory was so fuzzy, but when he spoke with NPR's Terry Gross, he said that he was too preoccupied with re-learning his own songs to remember much about actually making the album. "I have memories, but God, they're vague, you know?" he said. "I mean, I remember the first time we made a record with Todd Rundgren. And the only thing I remember is the lights on the control board. I thought they were really pretty."

Johansen suggested that the problem was that even though he'd clearly written and performed the songs countless times before, it had been long enough that it was no longer second nature. "I had to kind of sit down and listen to the music, and write the words down and learn them," he explained, saying that although it all came back, it was still a challenge to have to face doing.

It's a sad fact that so much in life is about the bottom line, and success is all too often measured in money. When it comes to that bottom line, there are plenty of people who argue that the New York Dolls just weren't successful. Did that hurt to hear? According to what David Johansen told Mojo, it absolutely did, and it had always left him feeling as though much of what they had been trying to do and achieve was misunderstood.

"When we were in the Dolls, we were certainly not shooting for commercial success; we were in on the ground floor of this revolution that was going on, and it was the opposite of commercial," he explained. "It wasn't supposed to be commercial. But people can't wrap their head around that; it's an idea that's alien to most people. ... But there's a lot more to life than [money]."

In an interview with NPR, Johansen spoke a bit about how it was more important to him to build a connection with the audience, the way that they had when they were starting out. He described the Dolls as "the band, basically, of the East Village," connecting with the artistic, avant-garde community there. That, Johansen said, was more important than any traditional commercial success could be.

In a 2006 interview with The Guardian, Sylvain Sylvain spoke about how addiction was the driving force behind the breakup of the New York Dolls. "Heroin destroyed everything for the Dolls," he said. "Heroin and needles killed my band." And he wasn't the only one to speak out about the difficulties of working with bandmates who were dealing with addiction.

David Johansen spoke with High Times in 1981, not long after the Dolls called it quits. When he was asked about the band's drug use, Johansen observed, "Drugs are many things to many people. If drugs are your life, drugs are your life." He went on to say that drugs can turn life one-dimensional, and in a later interview with NPR, he blamed addiction for creating an atmosphere in which there was only one thing that could happen to the band, which was to split.

"Factions in the group were, you know, more interested in drugs than in playing music," he explained, going on to add that it simply wasn't something that he felt he could handle anymore. At the same time, though, Johansen had been incredibly realistic about what his bandmates had been going through. And in an interview with Louder Sound, he acknowledged that heroin addiction left little room in a life for anything else. "I don't think anyone would want that existence unless they had no choice," he added.

The New York Dolls had a famously short run, getting together in 1971 and officially calling it quits in 1977. David Johansen spoke at length about just what was behind the breakup, noting that when it happened, it was inevitable. Although he often said that the drug use and addiction issues that some of the band members were dealing with was one of the major factors in the split, there were other things at play, too. Sylvain Sylvain made no secret of the fact that he believed Johansen wanted to concentrate on and be known for independent projects, and that might go hand in hand with what Johansen himself told CL Tampa.

"Our prospects were nil, so we just split up," he said. "If someone had been looking after us, so to speak, they would've said, 'Boys, go back to your respective corners and come back in three months.' ... Instead, we just went, 'That's enough of this.'"

Sylvain, too, acknowledged the idea that they were faced with a success that was non-traditional. In an interview with The Quietus, he suggested that the non-traditional success was too difficult for Johansen to deal with, which in turn helped lead to the end of the Dolls. Johansen, he said, had come to see the band as a grind and was desperate to do anything else.

David Johansen was famously not only the face of the New York Dolls, but he was also known as alter ego Buster Poindexter. In an interview with Uncut, Johansen shared the motivation behind the creation of the lounge singer persona and explained that he wanted the chance to do something entirely separate from himself. To sing things for no other reason besides the fact that he liked them and to give him the chance to be someone else.

"I was free, I didn't have to do anything I didn't want to," he said. "When I did the Johansen thing — and I think about this after the fact — I came to resent it, this side of me with no shadows. Buster is more integrated."

Buster Poindexter was around for four albums made over the course of a decade. And although it had started as a way for Johansen to simply have fun with what he was doing, he's said that he felt it ended up being taken away from him, too. After initially only performing the occasional show at a Gramercy Park bar, Johansen went mainstream with Buster and felt that he lost the safety and the freedom he had afforded him. Once his songs started getting radio play, he explained, "That was the end. Oh my God, don't tell me I have to keep doing this? So that was that, and I went on to do the Harry Smiths to free myself."

David Johansen — both with the Dolls and as Buster Poindexter — was famously famous without achieving massive chart-topping success. The one exception to that was "Hot Hot Hot," which nearly broke into the top of the Billboard charts and has remained the defining song of his career. 

Musicians hating the songs that they're most well-known for isn't unusual. Even Frank Sinatra wasn't shy about saying just how much he hated "Strangers In The Night." For Johansen, his hate was directed toward "Hot Hot Hot,"and he didn't pull punches when he talked about it.

According to what he told Mojo, he'd heard the song when he was in the Caribbean and thought it would be a fun cover for Buster Poindexter. When it took off, he explained, "I went to my nephew's wedding and they made me sing it — it's excruciating!" Johansen regularly described it as "the bane of my existence," and he explained why, too. In his interview with Mojo, he said he felt that the song had come to define his career and his music in a way that overshadowed his other endeavors: "It hardly describes what the rest of the music is all about, but you put this thing out there and then people make it what they want it to be for them, and you can't expect anything else."

When Sylvain Sylvain died in 2021, David Johansen became the last surviving member of the New York Dolls. Sylvain's death was one more loss in a long list of losses: Billy Murcia died in 1972, Johnny Thunders in 1991, Jerry Nolan in 1992, Arthur Kane in 2004, and Rick Rivets in 2019.

Grief is something that can be catastrophic and deeply personal, and in 2011, Louder Sound asked Johansen about Kane's death. It had some as a shock: The New York Dolls reunited in 2004, and just a few weeks later, Kane was hospitalized with an undiagnosed illness. He died just hours after being diagnosed with leukemia, and Johansen described it: "It was apocalyptic, devastating. He was a lovely dude. He'd gone through his horrifying alcoholism for twenty years and there's hardly been any contact between us during that time, but we'd just started to reestablish a beautiful friendship. He'd stopped drinking and was refreshing to be around again."

When Johansen was interviewed by Uncut, he was asked what it was like to be the last surviving bandmember. While he said that they had all grown apart in the years since the Dolls and had all had their own projects and their own lives, he also added, "I don't really like to think about it too much."

It's easy to assume that a ground-breaking, trend-setting musician is set for life, but countless have died penniless. There is, after all, a long history of musicians being severely mistreated by their record labels, and in February of 2025, David Johansen's stepdaughter went public with news that he had been diagnosed with cancer around a decade prior. In addition, she revealed that he had also been diagnosed with a brain tumor, and that the family had gotten to a point where they had felt they had no choice but to reveal the diagnosis and ask for help. 

In a crowdfunding campaign on Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, Leah Hennessey wrote that although the family preferred to keep things like health concerns private, "we feel compelled to share this now, due to the increasingly severe financial burden our family is facing." Johansen's family organized a fundraiser to try to defray some of the costs of his ongoing treatments and partnered with the non-profit organization, which was established to help musicians with emergency financial assistance. In an interview with People, Hennessey revealed how much the support and messages from fans meant to Johansen. "He's very, very sick, but he's reading all the messages and he's getting in touch with people he hasn't talked to in many years," she said, and added how much they appreciated those who had donated. "It's really making me cry because almost all of the donations are under $100," she later added. "It's the kind of money that people are happy to spend on a musician they love."

In addition to a diagnosis of cancer and a subsequent diagnosis of a brain tumor, David Johansen suffered a fall on Thanksgiving of 2024 and broke his back in two places. According to what his stepdaughter, Leah Hennessey, told People, he had been bedridden since the fall and it had only made his other health issues worse.

Johansen died on February 28, 2025, about a month after his family went public with his Stage 4 cancer diagnosis. Tributes poured in from musicians including Debbie Harry, Dee Snider, John Taylor of Duran Duran, Paul Stanley, Billy Idol, Axl Rose, and Nikki Sixx. Johansen was lauded not only for his influence on the music scene, but for being an artist who always made it a point to be true to himself. Way back in 2011, Louder Sound asked Johansen what he wanted his epitaph to say. He replied, "One word: 'Fabulous.'"

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).