It was not unexpected, but this does not make the news less sad. Not surprisingly, it is Morrissey who has announced this morning that David Johansen is dead: during his teens, when he was still Steven, he was the most committed fan of the New York Dolls and in 2004, as the director of Meltdown, Morrissey managed to organize the reunion and the comeback of the three surviving original New York Dolls (singer David Johansen, guitarist and pianist Sylvain Sylvain and bassist Arthur Kane) shortly before Kane's death.
February is a short and bitter month, as the Italian proverb "Febbraio corto e amaro" says; but it is also Carnival month, and, to me, David Johansen will be forever linked with Carnival because it was during this period, when I was a child, that I discovered him, at the time of the huge hit Hot hot hot. Rai Radio Due aired this song every day and it was under the pseudonym of Buster Poindexter that I discovered the talented, witty and extremely funny David Johansen. At the time of the New York Dolls I was very far from being born and, when I was a kid, I just knew that Morrissey was a big fan of a rock-proto-punk band called the New York Dolls, whose members wore female clothes and makeup: I figured them like a punk-rock version of the Bandiera Sisters - "le Sorelle Bandiera" - that I liked very much, but, as I discovered many years later, they were completely different and much better. When David Johansen started a new chapter of his music career under the namd of Buster Poindexter, I did not know that he was the former frontman of Morrissey's beloved New York Dolls.
(To be continued...)
(C) Vera da Pozzo
(C) Italy is Mine
(C) Italy is Mine and It owes Me a Living
(C) Vera da Pozzo
(C) Italy is Mine
(C) Italy is Mine and It owes Me a Living
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