Some people, this writer included, have been waiting twenty years for this gig. It's an event that seemed inconceivable when as a teenager the New York Dolls were my favourite band, no question). One of the first things I did upon moving to London was go and see Johnny Thunders at Dingwalls. LAUNCH still has the bootleg somewhere, me shouting at the end of every song. It was a revelation hearing those songs but something - or more pertinently someone's voice - was missing.
Wednesday, before the show. Sitting outside the NFT bar. Glen Matlock's two feet away chatting to a friend of a friend (of a friend of a friend). A quick straw poll reveals that curiosity has been the draw - no one's a longterm fan. Inside, it's the same - either Smiths devotees or Libertines fans here to cheer on Gary Powell. Bump into Ray Zell from Marionette (if you have to ask…). Thank God. Someone else who's feeling as nervous/excited as I am.
They're here. This is really happening. That voice is drawling "When I say I'm in love…" and they're off into "Looking For A Kiss". First impression: something's missing. It's not just Johnny's absence, it's his sense of chaos, the way his guitar lines would just spiral and spill off, sounding like the whole thing was on the edge of falling apart. That was the essence of the Dolls, of course. That air of sleazy abandon, the feeling of surrendering to utter, unthinking hedonism, of self-indulgence and self-obsession. Plus it's not loud enough. Turn up the guitars!
But still, they look amazing. Johansen's stick thin and beautiful, exactly as ragged and f*cked up as he ever was. Sylvain's every inch the grubby street hustler in leather jacket and flat cap. Arthur Kane's static at the back, bald but cool. On Friday, the crowd adopt him as their favourite, with football chants of "Arthur Kane, Arthur Kane, Arthur Kane" springing up. Johansen and Sylvain repeat a running gag on both nights about them being former lovers, with Johansen insisting "that was not sex". It's cheap but endearing, exactly the kind of strung-out banter you want from your idols.
The songs, oh those songs. Forget Iggy, forget MC5, here is where punk really started. It's also where the Sixties died, two years in the next decade. There's "Looking For A Kiss", subverting the start to the Shangri Las' "Give Him A Great Big Kiss", dragging their innocent exuberance into the gutter. There's "Subway Train" , wired and wide awake, riding the late night gauntlet on the hunt for some relief, chemical or otherwise. There's Bo Diddley's "Pills", always their song rather than his (Sylvain: "I always thought the line was "there's a rock'n'roll nurse giving me too much head").
And there's soul. "Take Another Little Piece Of My Heart", these battered transvestite wannabes, parading mascara stained sensitivity alongside that backstreet swagger (Johansen: "Two months ago, I looked like a bearded folk singer. Now I'm one of the Scissor Sisters"). "Out In The Streets", the Shangri Las finding romance in gangs and streetlife, the Dolls magnifying it tenfold. That's what bands like Guns N'Roses never understood. They took the image and what they imagined was the attitude but replaced the pathos and downtrodden glory with mawkish sentimentality. They missed the point entirely.
On Wednesday, the band are too quiet but the audience go berserk. Two days later – (yeah, he went twice – sharp Reviews Ed) - the guitars have been cranked-up but the crowd is strangely placid. On both nights, the venue's not rock'n'roll enough. You want to lose it like you did back then, live out the songs in the sweat of a moshpit. Some people have been tutting that this is just the start of a comeback, quoting Johnny Thunders' "You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory" (both nights touchingly run into "Lonely Planet Boy"), but we say bring it on.
Book the 100 Club, rebuild the Marquee, the best rock'n'roll band in the history of the world have just come back from the dead.
