New York City — Sad news to report as we learn of the passing of New York Dolls frontman and co-founder David Johansen.

Johansen was instrumental in the New York city early punk rock movement along with the earliest wave of glam rock.

The singer disclosed earlier this year that he was battling Stage-Four cancer and had been struggling with related health issues for nearly a decade.

Johansen was the last surviving member of the original quintet who launched their brash style and sound in 1971.

The band’s guitarists Sylvain Sylvain and Johnny Thunders passed away in 2021 and 1991, while bassist Arthur ‘Killer’ Kane died in 2004 and drummer Billy Murcia died early (1972) just a year after the band’s formation.

The following is from Rolling Stone; “The death of the singer who also moonlighted as “Buster Poindexter” and, as an actor, appeared in films like Scrooged and Let It Ride, was confirmed Saturday by a spokesperson for Johansen, who said in a statement to Rolling Stone, “David Johansen died at home in NYC on Friday afternoon holding hands with his wife Mara Hennessey and daughter Leah, surrounded my music, flowers, and love. He was 75 years old and died of natural causes after nearly a decade of illness.”

Johansen’s death comes less than a month after he revealed he was battling Stage Four cancer and a brain tumor, and had been bedridden and incapacitated following a fall in November where he broke his back in two places. A fund was launched by Johansen’s family to raise money for his around-the-clock care. 

The New York City-born Johansen was best known for his work in the pioneering punk group the New York Dolls, with whom — during the band’s initial run in the first half of the Seventies — he recorded a pair of influential glam punk albums, 1973’s New York Dolls and 1974’s Too Much Too Soon, with Johansen co-writing the bulk of the albums with guitarist Johnny Thunders, who died in 1991.

Johansen started singing professionally when he fronted the Staten Island group the Vagabond Missionaries in the late Sixties, but didn’t find any real success until late 1971 when he teamed up with guitarists Johnny Thunders and Rick Rivets, bassist Arthur “Killer” Kane, and drummer Billy Murcia to form the New York Dolls. (Sylvain Sylvain replaced Rivets after just a few months.) Heavy metal and prog rock was ascendant at the time, but they concocted a completely unique sound that fused together glam rock and proto-punk with attitude and a fashion sense borrowed from Sixties girl groups. The New York rock scene had never seen anything quite like them, and they quickly became regulars at the Mercer Arts Center, a trendy downtown club frequented by Andy Warhol and David Bowie.

Read more at Rolling Stone.

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