IT IS 1970 in New York. Five guys are bored with the music they hear, the fashion they see on the streets, and the pace of life. They decide to join forces as a rock’n’roll band, inject some mischief into music, and most of all, be themselves and live their lives as they want to. They are the New York Dolls.
Forty years later guitarist Syl Sylvain is still linving by that ‘you are an individual, live your life to the full’ principles, but the Dolls story is also one of excess, and today he is older and wiser.
“If you want to live long you make good stuff happen and surround yourself with positive stuff and you will be around for a long time,” Syl tells me during our Wednesday evening conversation.
So why were the Dolls bored in 1970? What made them want to shake things up?
“We’d taken a Little Rascals approach to show business,” says Syl Sylvain. “It was really boring for us. It was stadium rock and songs were operas and 20 minutes long, not two/three minute sexy songs. We said ‘Hey man we’re bored sh**tless. Let’s put on a show!’ So we took our knowledge of the blues and fashion and tried to jazz it up ourselves and hoped it would last a couple of weeks.”
While the band owed a huge debt musically and sartorially to the Rolling Stones, the Dolls took it to new, never before seen extremes, taking rock into new territory in the process. Their loose, swaggering, attitude filled blues-rock - best heard on their eponymous 1973 debut album - was punk punk four or five years before there was such a thing, while their extreme image of five macho men as drag queens was genuinely shocking.
“Maybe it was to shock the audience but we were more original then that,” says Syl. “We were art kids and the gallery was us. We were a walking talking art gallery. We took everything we had onto the stage with us. We wanted to express ourselves in our lives, our music, and in our everyday. Hopefully you get to live life and be who you are. We made that choice and lived our life and our art.”
There was considerable resistance to the Dolls in their native USA. Although their fist album sold 100,000 copies, and they were, according to music journalist Jon Savage “the toast of New York”, outside the Big Apple, they were considered freaks.
“We got into trouble for it,” sighs Syl. “We had nobody to copy as there was nobody like us. We were thrown out of schools, considered gay, and non-conformist but we were benevolent. We were misunderstood, just like Frankenstein in our song. We were who we were.”
The knowledge that they were outsiders made the Dolls more determined to pursue an individual path and because of that they opened up new routes musically and in lifestyle terms. Perhaps more than The Stooges, the New York Dolls were the original punks.
“We started this whole thing,” he declares. “Once we started we realised there were other people as bored as we were and there were not many places to play, so we had to be creative in finding clubs and ballrooms to perform in. It was very 1970s. It was due for a change. We started in 1970 and before that you had to be The Beatles or the Rolling Stones to get a record contract. It took us three years to get a record deal but when we did it opened up doors for everybody in New York who became new wave and punk and it wasn’t just music. Shops opened up and neighbourhoods started to happen and it wasn’t only in New York, it happened in every city, especially in England.”
The key track on New York Dolls is ‘Trash’, a shuddering, wild, enervating song. More than any other track on the album, it shows why the Dolls are the link between glam rock and punk.
“I wrote that and David wrote the lyrics,” says Syl. “I love Eddie Coughran. He wrote great riffs like in ‘C’Mon Everybody [Syl begins to hum the riff to the song]. You can do that riff for any Ramones’ song and any song in the punk movement but it was all Eddie Coughran. You put it through a Les Paul Junior and a Marshall Amp and you get punk music. I also like the ‘Oohs’ and ‘Aahs’ of the girl groups and we threw that flavour in there and David had great lyrics.”
The Dolls have resurrected the track and re-recorded it as a reggae number for their new album ‘Cause I Sez So, which has been enjoying positive reviews in the music press. Why take this ‘Caribbean’ approach to this iconic song?
“I’m a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn, I wouldn’t know anything about reggae,” laughs Syl. “We’d call it ‘Island’. We were on Kauai, off Hawaii, to record our new album. We were on top of a cliff and watching the whales do their thing and I saw a cruise ship in the distance moving slowly. I knew there would be a lounge band on board and I imagined they’d be playing ‘Trash’.
“I always knew it was a late Sixties romantic song but I think the first time we did it not everybody caught it, but when David put his voice on it, it was beautiful and I think people will see it’s a love song now. During shows we play the original version and when David comes to the part ‘How do you call your lover boy?’ we go into ‘Island’.”
‘Cause I Sez So was produced by Todd Rundgren who also produced the Dolls’ 1973 debut. However the band were not eactly raewady to go when the time to record a the new album came around.
“Atco, which is part of Warner Brothers, asked us ‘Are you ready?’ and said we were going to record the album in Hawaii. We hadn’t written one song yet but we said ‘Of course we’re ready!’” laughs Syl. “We recorded the album between January 3 and February 3 and we wanted to get out of New York and the sleet and the cold to Hawaii, where it’s beautiful every day.
“When we first got there we got together and wrote songs on Todd’s veranda and the second week we rehearsed them and David did his lyrics, and the third week we recorded them. There are hardly any overdubs. Everything was done live. It’s a live album. On February 3 it was back to the grind of New York.”
The Dolls originally ceased to exist in the mid-1970s and it was not until 2004 that they re-formed, following an appeal from long time Dolls’ fan and former president of the British New York Dolls fan club Morrissey.
“I see him as a beautiful human being that saw this beautiful thing that was no longer that thing,” says Syl. “The people who get the New York Dolls wanted that band and Morrissey wanted to see that just to happen once for the Meltdown festival he curated. He never thought in his whole life that it would happen. He’s a beautiful guy, man!”
When the Dolls started out in 1970 they were Syl Sylvain, David Johansen, Johnny Thunders, Arthur Harold Kane, Billy Murcia, and later Jerry Nolan. Murcia died in 1972. Thunders died from drugs in 1991. Nolan passed away in 1992 following a stroke. Kane died from leukaemia just weeks after the 2004 reunion concert.
Today the Dolls are David Johansen, Syl Sylvain, Steve Conte, Sami Yaffa, and Brian Delaney. It’s a source of sadness to Syl and David that their former comrades are no longer with them physically, but on-stage, they are never far away.
“We never wanted to replace anybody and the new guys are new New York Dolls,” says Syl. “Johnny, Jerry, Arthur, and Billy are still with us everytime we get on stage. If I had to do it all over again I wouldn’t change nothing except I would take out the heroin. That’s the only thing. You can’t f**k with that s**t. It gets you by the balls and it doesn’t let go. It’s no fun. It’s a drag. It gives you a big ego but it destroys you.”
Syl is enjoying being a New York Doll again and promises Galway a great show when the band play the Róisín Dubh as part of the Galway Arts Festival.
“It’s a rock’n’roll show so don’t be surprised if people get naked,” he laughs. “Our audience is just amazing. It’s all colours, creeds, genders, and ages. We bring them all together. You will get punk kids and girls who love long hair bands and they will end up going home together after our gigs. It’s beautiful.”
The New York Dolls play the Róisín Dubh on Friday July 17 at 8pm. For tickets contact the Festival Box Office, Merchants Road, 091 - 566577. Tickets are also available through www.galwayartsfestival.com
