Not because Johansen whodiedFeb.
Excerpts of our interview were included in my book, but heres the bulk of our conversation.
It was this wild place to me.
David Johansen with the New York Dolls in 1974.Chris Walter/WireImage/Getty
A loud and colorful restaurant.
Waiters doing the limbo.
I got a taste of the excitement that was available in the Village.
Then I started going to MacDougal Street when they used to have these places that didnt serve alcohol.
Coffee concoctions, stuff like that.
for afternoon shows, one band after another.
That was with the Vagabond Missionaries.
It was mostly Wilson Pickett-throw in stuff that was popular in those days, like Mustang Sally.
We were not very good.
But we made up for it inenthusiasm.
The band was just not moving along as I wanted them to move along.
They werent committed to show business, you know what I mean?
But I was in this nothing is gonna hold me down era.
I just read the other day that you might dance in a bar now.
After 60 years, right?
Where were you living by then?My first apartment was on 3rd Street.
The Hells Angels block.
$40 a month.
A guy who used to rent used bikes for people to go in the park.
In the winter we had two amps and some drums in there.
We made it like a rehearsal room and it was really cheap.
So then eventually we did get together.
We were all pretty much dressed like that.
Maybe a bit more hippie.
I fell in love with Janis Joplin.
I was crazy about her.
What an Amazing Man
You famously had a gold jumpsuit.We had so many clothes.
We used to rotate them and give them away to other people.
It was constantly changing.
We were representing, I guess.
Wild styles of dress.
Apparently I had been looking at him in such a way that he became pregnant.
He had a pretty big knife.
We were at the top of the stairs, street level.
John pushed him down the stairs.
And that was the last we saw of him.
Eventually we had a bunch of songs.
With Vietnamese Baby, I was trying to learn how to write.
I played very rudimentary guitar.
Lyrically, thats where my head was.
I was thinking, What a horror [the war was].
There was a cabaret room.
There were two theaters, the Oscar Wilde Room, which was the smaller one, and the OCasey.
I knew this guy from Maxs Kansas City named Eric Emerson.
He used to play with this band called the Magic Tramps.
Gypsy rock & roll kind of music.
He said, Im playing at this new place.
Do you want to come and play before we play?
And I said yeah.
We were just starting up and trying to get any gig we could get.
Our first gig was in a welfare hotel.
So this was a step up.
It was just when we came off the stage.
And I said, Yeah, sure.
So we did that.
And there was definitely a good reaction.
It was like a party.
Afterwards I went into his office and he said, You boys are gonna be big!
He was very encouraging as he counted out the 30 dollars or whatever we got.
He offered us our own weekly gig in the Oscar Wilde Room and we started playing there.
We started doing that and the scene kind came about around us.
There was a lot of people who were filmmakers and people into doing stuff.
They could web link with other like-minded people.
So it was a very groovy scene.
It had a dance floor and a bleachers kind of thing.
Youd have to walk through the cabaret to get to the other rooms.
They wanted to keep it going as many hours as they could so they could make their money.
What happened next?Then we graduated to the OCasey and started playing in there.
The vibe with the audience was so good.
We could really express ourselves.
And also, you didnt have to travel to get to the gig.
The subway went through the building.
You could feel it, but not when we were playing.
The subway could probably hearus.
To a lot of people it probably sounded like a racket.
But to other people, it was sublime.
Its all a matter of taste, I guess.
We were just starting out and learning the craft.
Its like when youre in an ice cream parlor and there are a lot of people eating ice cream.
People were into pot and acid.
There wasnt a big heroin scene there.
People who do heroin dont want to dance.
Bette Midler was around as well?She had a thing with [Dolls drummer] Jerry Nolan.
She probably came by to see him.
Bowie showed up with his entourage.
He came in in one of those Spiders from Mars getups.
If anything, it was unstressful knowing we were just gonna do what we do.
We werent going to worry about having it be something else.
We sound like we sound and we should the play the songs that are naturally coming out of us.
And thats what we did.
Like a diary entry or something.
But I dont think wetrashedit.
It was some kind of intramural brouhaha going on.
I ducked it and it smashed the mirror.
I guess they call that trashing.
They said we would never play there again.
And I wound up being the person who played there the most!
In my various guises.
