FEATURE:
Personality Crisis
New York Dolls’ Sensational Eponymous Debut at Fifty
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A classic case…
PHOTO CREDIT: P. Felix/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
of a genius debut album selling poorly but being met with critical acclaim – or the other way around in some cases -, the New York Dolls’ eponymous album was released on 27th July, 1973. Recorded at The Record Plant in New York, there is something very loyal to the city. Hailing from New York City, they gained huge local respect and re by playing shows through Lower Manhattan in the lead-up to cutting their debut album. There was reticence from record labels to push ahead signing and recording New York Dolls due to their outlandish and excessive lifestyle. The vulgarity and outrage they stirred from the stage. That was part of the deal. They were a genuine Rock band who were stirring things up! Also, as there was a lot of homophobia in New York City (and the wider world) in the early-1970s, concerns were raised. Maybe they inspired David Bowie to an extent (who developed his Ziggy Stardust persona more or less around the same time as the release of New York Dolls), the band donned an extravagant and eye-catching wardrobe, high heels, eccentric hats, satin, makeup, spandex, and dresses whilst performing. Perhaps there was a fear they would be ostracised and attacked releasing an album. No doubt their stage performances inspired artists both in the U.S. and U.K. They were a terrific cult band who were so different to everything around them. Whilst a lot of Rock from the 1960s and 1970s (and beyond) was very male-driven and sexual, there was this androgynous aspect to New York Dolls which stood them about. The fact the band dragged up for the album cover of their debut is part shock value - but also sent a message that they would not be censored or discriminated against!
Recording their phenomenal debut album with Todd Rundgren – who, renowned for his sophisticated Pop tastes was not overly keen on New York Dolls’ sound -, he got down their live sound on the debut. Although there would have been disagreements whilst recording, the partnership did yield a classic. New York Dolls is so impactful and enduring, as it talks about urban youth, teen alienation, adolescent romance, and authenticity. The band - David Johansen, Arthur ‘Killer’ Kane, Jerry Nolan, Sylvain Sylvain and Johnny Thunders – created this vital album. Reappraised as one of the most important debuts ever, it certainly ignited Punk Rock and more beside. Defining and shaping New York music with their distinct sound, many consider New York Dolls to be a better Glam/Rock album that anything that followed from David Bowie or Marc Bolan (T.Rex). I want to round off with a couple of reviews for the mighty New York Dolls. Writing in 1973, this is what Rolling Stone had to say:
“THE ALBUM COVER hits with a stark black and white photo, title scrawled in lipstick red aross the top. The boys appear on a white satin couch with a strange combination of high pop-star drag and ruthless street arrogance. There’s lipstick, eyeshadow and platform boots, but there’s also some sinister slipstream flowing here. Remember the earliest Stones’s publicity photos? What was scruffy and outrageous then looks so commonplace now — in ten years will this photo seem as quaint?
But the Dolls are a lot more than just another visually weird band. In much the same way that the Stones and the Who began as symbols of and for their club audiences, the Dolls, in their series of legendary gigs at the Mercer Arts Center came to be the forefront of a new creature/clan. Somebody once described them as “the mutant children of the hydrogen age”: boys and girls of indeterminate gender, males with earrings and flashing orange hair, females with ducktails and black leather, interchangeable clothes, makeups and postures, maybe gay, maybe not — and what’s it to ya, mothafuckah? (Wistful lost children with battery acid veins and goldbrick road dreams … how hard it is to be outrageous these days …)
Interesting sociologically, but it could get pretty deadly on a music level, if it weren’t for the Dolls’s street sense. They don’t take their movie any more seriously than they take anyone else’s, and they play it with a refreshing and sardonic sense of humor.
In fall of last year the Dolls Toured England, where their first drummer died of chemical complications. They returned to the US and added friend Jerry Nolan, who seemed to spark a tightening-up and surprising musical growth. The band attracted a lot of record company interest, but most executives went away mumbling and snarling — with the exception of Paul Nelson, who kept coming back. In time a contract was signed and work began, with whiz-kid producer Todd Rundgren at the board. At first the combination seemed not only bizarre but unworkable: Todd, ace of complex board work and over-dubbing sessions versus the driving but basic dead-end kids of the Seventies. But strangely enough, the compromise between live raunch and studio cleanness and complexity seems to work about 90% of the time.
Generally, the Dolls’s live sound is the traditional two-guitar, bass and drums, with occasional harmonies behind lead vocals, and for the most part, it is maintained here. As is often the case with first albums, the group got too hung up with the toys of the studio — a few lead lines are all but buried in overdubs, some vocal choruses are just a bit too rich — but on the whole, it’s mostly straightforward power rock.
Lead singer David Jo Hansen wrote most of the lyrics, and his keen sense of the absurd comes through on the opening cut, “Personality Crisis,” a driving rocker. “With all the cards of fate mother nature sends, your mirror’s always jammed up with all your friends…. You got so much personality, you’re flashing on a friend of a friend of a friend …” The cut is a jumping companion piece to classics like “20th Century Fox” and “Cool Calm and Collected.” After finishing the screaming end of the take David sauntered into the control booth at the Record Plant. “Was that ludicrous enough?” he asked earnestly.
“Looking for a Kiss” is many people’s favorite Dolls song. It’s another full-power rocker with contemporary slice-of-urban-life lyrics: “I did not come here lookin’ for no fix — ah, uh-uh, no! — I been out all night in the rain babe — just looking for a kiss.” Guitarists Johnny Thunders and Sylvain Sylvain (he’s the one with the roller skates and clown rouge on the cover shot) lay down a suitably harmonic-cacophonic city sound behind David’s sincere plea — “I mean a fix ain’t a kiss!”
“Vietnamese Baby” is a love song, and Todd’s magic fingers turn the drums into occasional bursts of machine gun fire. “Now that it’s over baby — whatcha gonna do?” “Lonely Planet Boy” is a comparatively acoustic ballad with a great late-night smoggy city feel, as close as the Dolls get to being ethereal. David’s voice is almost a whisper over the Ice Dog saxophone of Buddy Bowser. Although just a taste too busy, the cut has a mood of drifting solitude that’s just right at the end of a strange sad night when the manholes have been trying to bite you.
“Frankenstein (Orig.)” — it was written before Edgar Winter’s — is the album’s “bad acid” song. It builds an air of oppressive and droning inevitability, helped along by Todd’s droog-ing on the Moog. In an interview David explained, “The song is about how kids come to Manhattan from all over, they’re kind of like whipped dogs, they’re very repressed. Their bodies and brains are disoriented from each other … it’s a love song.”
“Trash” has an infectious rhythm riff, and uses Stones and Beach Boys quotes as well as old R&B lines: “How you call your loverboy? Trash!” It’s a nonsensical, good-rocking ass-shaker. Probably the most easily accessible song here is “Bad Girl” (“A new bad girl moved on my block/I gave her my keys, said don’t bother to knock”). The guitar break by Johnny is short, catchy and effective. Nobody takes any long solos anywhere; what counts is the song, words and music and the arrangements are lean and mean, put together with craftsmen’s ears.
“Subway Train” is a personal favorite. The charging guitar phrase that keeps running throughout has all the metal banshee mania of the Seventh Avenue IRT, and the riff is equally relentless. “I seen enough drama just riding on a subway train,” David sings, and if you’ve ever been there you know just what he means.
“Private World” is another favorite, about your own fantasy retreat from it all (“Shut the door!”) — with an oddly familiar and infectious riff, and nice honky-tonked piano by Todd and Syl. The album closes with “Jet Boy,” mostly words on a swooping riff; Marvel Comics meets the Lower East Side. Throughout, the rhythm of drummer Jerry Nolan and bassist bad Arthur Kane is solid and pulsing, the guitars fast and slashing, the structures simple but effective”.
If it shocked and stunned back in 1973, it lost none of its impact and brilliance years later. Like any cult album, the sales were not terrific. Critics could identify this band who would instantly change the music world. You only need to hear the opening track, Personality Crisis, to tell that New York Dolls mean business! AllMusic sat down with New York Dolls’ debut and noted the following:
“When the New York Dolls released their debut album in 1973, they managed to be named both "Best New Band" and "Worst Band" in Creem Magazine's annual reader's poll, and it usually takes something special to polarize an audience like that. And the Dolls were inarguably special -- decades after its release, New York Dolls still sounds thoroughly unique, a gritty, big-city amalgam of Stones-style R&B, hard rock guitars, lyrics that merge pulp storytelling with girl group attitude, and a sloppy but brilliant attack that would inspire punk rock (without the punks ever getting its joyous slop quite right). Much was made of the Dolls' sexual ambiguity in the day, but with the passage of time, it's a misfit swagger that communicates most strongly in these songs, and David Johansen's vocals suggest the product of an emotional melting pot who just wants to find some lovin' before Manhattan is gone, preferably from a woman who would prefer him over a fix.
If the lyrics sometimes recall Hubert Selby, Jr. if he'd had a playful side, the music is big, raucous hard rock, basic but with a strongly distinct personality -- the noisy snarl of Johnny Thunders' lead guitar quickly became a touchstone, and if he didn't have a lot of tricks in his arsenal, he sure knew when and how to apply them, and the way he locked in with Syl Sylvain's rhythm work was genius -- and the Dolls made their downtown decadence sound both ominous and funny at the same time. The Dolls were smart enough to know that a band needs a great drummer, and if there's something likably clumsy about Arthur Kane's bass work, Jerry Nolan's superb, elemental drumming holds the pieces in place with no-nonsense precision at all times. "Lonely Planet Boy" proved the Dolls could dial down their amps and sound very much like themselves, "Pills" was a superbly chosen cover that seemed like an original once they were done with it, and "Personality Crisis," "Trash," and "Jet Boy" were downtown rock & roll masterpieces no other band could have created. And while New York Dolls clearly came from a very specific time and place, this album still sounds fresh and hasn't dated in the least -- this is one of rock's greatest debut albums, and a raucous statement of purpose that's still bold and thoroughly engaging”.
A blazing and seismic debut album from the New York Dolls, this eponymous album definitely inspired bands like Kiss, Ramones, Sex Pistols, The Damned, Mötley Crüe, Guns N' Roses, and The Smiths. Its impact and influence can still be heard in new bands. I am not sure whether there are anniversary plans ahead of 27th July. If there is no reissue of New York Dolls, at least people need to dig it out and let this incredible album do its work. It may have been recorded in New York City by a New York City band, but this landmark and hugely influential debut album was very much…
FOR the world!