Josef’s Jukebox — ‘New York Dolls’ by The New York Dolls
“I don’t really like to sit around the house listening to my own records. They’re not that good”. One reads David Johansen’s speech and thinks ‘what a curious proclamation’. Was he simply espousing the truth about a band whose discography received wholesale rejection by the corporate establishment? Or yet more wily sass from Staten Island’s greatest musical antagonist? I would plump for the latter. For the Dolls’ debut is unique in the canon of contemporary pop and, like Johansen’s statement, filled with contrarianism. Glamorous yet filthy; feminine yet masculine; a type of proto-punk wholly relatable yet so foreign to the modern ear. A sonic niche that only one record continues to fill. In ’71, Johansen (joined by guitarists Johnny Thunders & Sylvain Sylvain, bassist Arthur ‘Killer’ ...