David Johansen, the wiry, gravelly-voiced singer and last surviving member of the glam and protopunk band New York Dolls who later performed as his campy, pompadoured alter ego Buster Poindexter, has died aged 75.
Johansen died on Friday at his home in New York City, according to Rolling Stone, citing a family spokesperson.
It was revealed in early 2025 that he had stage 4 cancer and a brain tumour.
New York Dolls were forerunners of punk and the band’s style – teased hair, women’s clothes and lots of make-up – inspired the glam movement that took up residence in heavy metal a decade later in bands such as Faster Pussycat and Motley Crue.
“When you’re an artist the main thing you want to do is inspire people, so if you succeed in doing that it’s pretty gratifying,” Johansen told The Knoxville News-Sentinel in 2011.
Rolling Stone once called the Dolls “the mutant children of the hydrogen age”, and Vogue called them the “darlings of downtown style, tarted-up toughs in boas and heels”.
The band never found commercial success and were torn by internal strife and drug addictions, breaking up after two albums by the middle of the decade.
In 2004 former Smiths frontman and Dolls admirer Morrissey convinced Johansen and other surviving members to regroup for the Meltdown Festival in England, leading to three more studio albums.
In the 1980s Johansen assumed the persona of Buster Poindexter, a pompadour-styled lounge lizard who had a hit with the kitschy party single Hot, Hot, Hot in 1987.
He also appeared in such films as Candy Mountain, Let It Ride and Married To The Mob, and had a memorable turn as the Ghost of Christmas Past in Bill Murray-led hit Scrooged.
Johansen was in 2023 the subject of Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi’s documentary Personality Crisis: One Night Only, which mixed footage of his two-night stand at the Cafe Carlyle in January 2020 with flashbacks through his wildly varied career and intimate interviews.
“I used to think about my voice like: ‘What’s it gonna sound like? What’s it going to be when I do this song?’ And I’d get myself into a knot about it,” he said. “At some point in my life, I decided: ‘Just sing the (expletive) song. With whatever you got.’ To me, I go on stage and whatever mood I’m in I just claw my way out of it, essentially.”
He is survived by his wife Mara Hennessey and a stepdaughter Leah Hennessey. – AP
