New York Dolls

Things came full circle after I watched the video of the New York Dolls at Manchester Move festival recorded over the summer.

It’s one of the most joyous, outrageously rock ‘n’n roll performances I can remember by a band who can’t believe they’re still alive and still playing. (Sadly Arthur Kane died shortly afterwards.)

Personality Crisis (and yes it is my favourite New York Dolls song, although I also find it hard to resist Pills with it’s line “The rock ‘n’roll nurse is making it worse”) was just inspirational. David Johanson seemed to be wearing some form of apron and Sylvain was wearing a denim suit with massive turn ups and a cap….lots of pointing, at each other, at the crowd, at stray seagulls, mouthing along to the words and frantic guitar rifferama. So far so Status Quo. What elevated it to genius though was the part where the other guitarist let go of his guitar to wolf whistle (as the song needed it) and then when everyone threw their hands up to go “woooh”. Again the song demanded it.

It was full circle for me though because it brought me right back to where I’d first seen them. Aged 17 around 1981 I used to lurk and loiter (and occasionally buy something) in the Record Peddler on Swan Street in Manchester. Videos were then the cutting edge of technology and the owner had amassed a stack of Bowie, Pistols and other live performances and promos. And that is when I first saw The Dolls (I think it was the Old Grey Whistle Test footage) doing Jet Boy. I was quite anti guitar heroics then, but forgot all principles at the sight of Sylvain wrestling with this semi acoustic that dwarfed him and yet still finding time to pull ridiculous poses. A risky business given the height of his heels….and with all that satin and nylon under the studio lights the band could have spontaneously combusted. The vision is so fresh though, and as that video got rewound several times that day, the story should really end with me searching out their records and turning into a Morrissey figure of Doll adulation. I didn’t though…I expect I just bought another single by The Fall.