Remembering New York Dolls Frontman David Johansen

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Speaker 2 This is Fresh Air.

Speaker 3 I'm Dave Davies. David Johansson, a founding member of the legendary 1970s band the New York Dolls, died last week.
He was 75.

Speaker 3 The New York Dolls never sold many records, but the band had lasting influence, paving the way for punk rock.

Speaker 3 He also performed in his persona Buster Poindexter, a pompadour-wearing lounge lizard, and he played the blues with his band David Johansson and the Harry Smiths.

Speaker 3 Johansson was the subject of a 2022 Showtime documentary, co-directed by Martin Scorsese and David Tadeschi, called Personality Crisis. One Night Only.

Speaker 3 Much of the documentary is built around Johansson's 2020 performance as Buster Poindexter at the Cafe Carlisle in New York City.

Speaker 3 The film also featured newly discovered and archival interviews with him and others. Here's a clip from the documentary with English singer and songwriter Morrissey.

Speaker 3 He says he was obsessed with the New York dolls as a teenager because they brought a sense of danger to rock. Their music was loud and rough, but more than that.

Speaker 4 So here were boys who were calling themselves dolls, and they looked like prostitutes, male prostitutes,

Speaker 4 which at the time, you have to remember it was a long time ago and all of that kind of thing was really taboo.

Speaker 3 English singer Morrissey from the Showtime documentary about the New York Dolls. Terry Gross spoke to David Johansson in 2004.

Speaker 3 The surviving members of the band had just reunited at Morrissey's request for a festival in England.

Speaker 3 Their performance was recorded on a CD and DVD titled The Return of the New York Dolls, live from Royal Festival Hall. Terry's interview starts with a track from the album called Looking for a Kiss.

Speaker 3 The dolls used to play this one in the 1970s. It was written by David Johansson, who also sings lead.

Speaker 3 When I say I'm in love, you best believe I'm in love, LUV.

Speaker 3 I always saw you just before the dawn.

Speaker 5 All the other kids are just dragging along.

Speaker 5 I couldn't believe the way you seemed to be.

Speaker 5 Shiver in the place they used to say to me. I could go off every wasting time, but I gotta have my fun.

Speaker 5 I gotta get some fun.

Speaker 5 I gotta keep on moving. Can't stop the loots out, y'all.

Speaker 5 This is never done.

Speaker 5 Listen, when I tell you, got no time for this.

Speaker 5 I just gotta busy, can't afford to miss.

Speaker 5 If there's one reason, I'm telling you this. I feel fire.

Speaker 5 I've been looking for a kiss.

Speaker 6 So, when you were on stage, you know, with the Reunited and the new version of the dolls, and you were doing the old dolls songs. Did you have any

Speaker 6 flashbacks to things that you had totally forgotten about? Like, did memories

Speaker 6 surface of things that were really interesting that you had completely forgotten about until you were back in that setting again?

Speaker 4 Well, I have memories, but God, they're vague. You know?

Speaker 4 I mean, I remember the first time we made a record with Todd Rundgren, and the only thing I remember is the lights on the control board. I thought they were really pretty.

Speaker 4 And that's really the only memory I have of it.

Speaker 6 Any historian would want to know all about that.

Speaker 4 Of making that first record.

Speaker 4 You know, people think I'm kidding when they ask, well, what was it like making that first record? Because it, you know, it kind of became this benchmark kind of record.

Speaker 4 That's really the only memory I have of it.

Speaker 4 But,

Speaker 4 you know, the thing that struck me was I had to kind of sit down and listen to the music and write the words down and learn them.

Speaker 5 Oh, you had to relearn your own songs?

Speaker 4 Yeah, because you know, I hadn't sung them in God knows how long, you know.

Speaker 4 I mean, it wasn't like I had to relearn them from scratch because they kind of come back to you, but I had to have some kind of thing to look at.

Speaker 4 And, you know, I find that when I write something, it goes into my head better than if I just try to memorize it. So I was writing, for example, like Human Being,

Speaker 4 and I was thinking, God, how did I write that song? This is great.

Speaker 4 I mean, it really holds up, you know, it's kind of like a declaration that I think is timeless. So there's a lot of

Speaker 4 stuff like that in the songs, which

Speaker 4 let me explain something to you. There was a time, you know, when we started the dolls and we were really

Speaker 4 such a gang and it was like us against the world and we were really trying to evolve music into something new and it was

Speaker 4 you know very kind of almost militant to us and then over the years you know in the history books you know like the

Speaker 4 the rolling stone complete encyclopedia of rock and roll or something you know you look in the appendix and see where your name is

Speaker 4 See what they say about you. It's not like you buy the book.
And would always say, you know, they were trashy, they were flashy, they were drug addicts, they were drag queens, you know.

Speaker 4 And that whole kind of trashy, blah, blah, blah thing, I think over the years kind of

Speaker 4 settled in my mind as, oh yeah, that's what it was, you know. And then by going back to it and

Speaker 4 deconstructing it and then putting it back together again, I realized that, you know, it really is art.

Speaker 4 And that some critic at one time had come up with this catch-all phrase that as you know once somebody says it then everybody just looks it up and they say it because nobody does right nobody has an original idea in spite of the fact that you don't remember a whole lot about parts of the early days of the dolls do you remember writing the song personality crisis

Speaker 4 well

Speaker 4 you know I don't remember exactly sitting down and writing the words, but I remember where I got the

Speaker 4 the name because

Speaker 4 I was kind of like an acolyte in Charles Ludlam's ridiculous theater when I was a kid. When this is when I was you know seventeen, eighteen, nineteen

Speaker 6 and uh and let's just describe what Charles Ludlam's theater was. It he used to dress and drag a lot as the leading lady and these like Greta Garbo kind of roles.
And

Speaker 4 yeah, but it was so much more than that. It was um really

Speaker 4 very intelligent stuff that he used to do and he used to combine a lot of genres of uh you know classical playwriting and you know like Moliere he would put in with

Speaker 4 something kitschy that was present you know present day stuff and he would put he would make this melange of ideas that were just so they would come out so original and brilliant that you know people throw the word genius around but he was actually a genius he was one of the most intelligent

Speaker 4 people I think I've ever met. But I think one day we were at a rehearsal or something and he just said,

Speaker 4 Oh, God, I'm having a personality crisis. And I just thought, oh, that's really good.
And I wrote it down, you know, personality crisis. And that's really all I remember about

Speaker 4 writing a song. And the song came from that.

Speaker 6 Well, why don't we hear personality crisis as performed by the New York Dolls at the Meltdown Festival over the summer? So this is from The Return of the New York Dolls.

Speaker 6 You're my sister. I'm your mother.

Speaker 6 We can't take it this way.

Speaker 6 Offending one another's space.

Speaker 6 Hope the Lord got right there. The whole two is God all straight.

Speaker 6 All about that personality crisis. Got it while you was hot.
Come on. Talk to us

Speaker 6 first station. Hide the darkness of God.

Speaker 6 What you got?

Speaker 6 Personality.

Speaker 6 In the liner notes for the DVD and the CD,

Speaker 6 you write about Arthur Kane. This was his last performance.
He was the bass player of the band.

Speaker 6 And it was Arthur Kane who knocked on your door and recruited you to be in the dolls when the band was being formed.

Speaker 6 He died just a few weeks after the concert. Did you even know he was sick?

Speaker 4 No, and neither did he.

Speaker 4 You know, he had had this incredible life, Arthur, and he was just this really brilliant

Speaker 4 guy who had this incredible insight into

Speaker 4 reality that

Speaker 4 was just

Speaker 4 one step to the left of probably the most radical people I had ever met at that point. And I don't even mean politics.
I just mean the way he saw things. And

Speaker 4 they were always spot on. And he was just

Speaker 4 so brilliant to me. And then he kind of

Speaker 4 he had come from this family that was just like hell on earth. And

Speaker 4 he got a taste for the booze and went through like a lot of years of just being drunk all the time. And

Speaker 4 he would, he got I remember he got to this point where you would just say hi, author, and he would just say, Woof.

Speaker 4 His only word became woof.

Speaker 4 Anyway, he went through all this stuff. I mean, I can't begin to tell you in his life.
He fell out a window, he did this, he got hit by a car, he did this, he did that.

Speaker 4 And then he came out the other side and

Speaker 4 he got involved with like, you know, the Mormons and became the librarian at the family history

Speaker 4 office at the Mormon Tabernacle. And

Speaker 4 he was like this Mormon, but with this

Speaker 4 really kind of demented

Speaker 4 outlook on life.

Speaker 4 So he wasn't, you know, like a proselytizer.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 he just was

Speaker 4 so wonderful. And

Speaker 4 he had this very high voice. and he was six foot five or something

Speaker 6 let's talk about how he did recruit you for the band he knocked on your door in your apartment in Manhattan you were what around 19 or something yeah what did he tell you about this new band

Speaker 4 well there was a guy who lived in my building who I used to kind of you know jam with and

Speaker 4 strum guitars and he was this Colombian guy who played bongos and we used to just sit around and play music and he knew Billy Mercia who was the original drummer in the dolls, and

Speaker 4 told these guys who were looking for a singer, that I was a singer. And he thought I was a pretty good singer.
And so

Speaker 4 one day, Arthur was just at my door with Billy, and Arthur was about three feet taller than Billy, and he just said,

Speaker 4 I hear you're a singer.

Speaker 4 And I said, yeah. And I invited them in, and we started talking, and they said they had a band, and they were looking for a singer.
And I was looking for a band.

Speaker 4 And we just really that day, actually, we left my apartment and went like four blocks up the street to Johnny Thunder's apartment where there was some drums and guitars and stuff and started to play.

Speaker 4 And we were a band, essentially.

Speaker 6 What were some of the things that you knew you didn't want to be about, the kind of music that you thought had dead ended?

Speaker 5 Oh,

Speaker 4 you know, at that time there was like these

Speaker 4 interminable drum solos and

Speaker 4 you know what happens when the drum solo stops. It's the worst.
It's then the bass takes a solo

Speaker 4 and stuff like that, you know. And we just wanted to kind of have some really wham-bam songs.
And I mean, for me, the whole thing was like

Speaker 4 if you have to compare it to something like a Little Richard kind of...

Speaker 4 presentation and I can remember when I was really young and I would go to the Murray the Kay shows, you know, and I saw Mitch Ryder.

Speaker 4 And, you know, these shows had 30 acts and everybody would come out and do two or three minutes. And Mitch Ryder would come out and do a med medley of his three big hits.

Speaker 4 He would come out and like kind of like a tuxedo. And

Speaker 4 within 45 seconds, he was half naked and sweating like a pig. And we just wanted to make an explosion, you know, of excitement.

Speaker 4 So that's what was missing. You know, rock and roll had become very kind of

Speaker 4 pedantic and meandering and it was looking for something, but it was like an actor in search of a play or something, you know.

Speaker 6 Now on the album cover of the New York, of the album, The New York Dolls, you're all dressed in this kind of trashy drag with a lot of eye makeup and lipstick. You're wearing a buffonte wig.

Speaker 6 I assume it's a wig.

Speaker 4 No, it wasn't a wig.

Speaker 5 It wasn't a wig?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 6 It teased your hair for it? It was very very technical.

Speaker 4 Yeah, well, somebody teased it.

Speaker 6 Somebody teased it, right? And you're wearing what looks like capri pants and high-heeled clogs and open cardigan revealing your bare chest.

Speaker 6 And you're staring at yourself in the mirror of a makeup compact.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 6 And the band's name is written in lipstick. Right.

Speaker 6 For those of us who didn't get to see you on stage, how did that compare with how you actually looked on stage?

Speaker 4 Well, that was probably, you know, I mean,

Speaker 4 I think, you know, to the average civilian, it probably didn't look any different. But to us, we were like dressing up a little bit more, make it a little special

Speaker 4 for the record cover, you know.

Speaker 4 You know, Sylvain was in the rag trade with Billy. They had this little sweater company

Speaker 4 called Truth.

Speaker 4 Well, they sold it to this company called Truth and Soul. They used to make these poor boy sweaters.
They had a loom.

Speaker 4 And through that, they knew a lot of people who actually are very kind of famous designers now, but who were just getting started. And I think it was like

Speaker 4 Betsy Johnson and

Speaker 4 these women that she used to work with. They had a store in St.
Mark's Place and they knew a photographer and they knew a makeup guy and they knew this and that.

Speaker 4 You know, we didn't know anything about that. So I think they helped to facilitate that photo session.

Speaker 6 What inspired your interest in or willingness to be in a kind of drag for performances? I mean, you mentioned you had been with

Speaker 6 Charles Lutham's Ridiculous Theater and drag was often a part of their performances in theater.

Speaker 6 So where did you see it fitting into your music?

Speaker 4 Well, you know,

Speaker 4 we were, you know, the hotbed of

Speaker 4 revolution at that time was, you know, St. Mark's Place and 2nd Avenue.
And

Speaker 4 through that, you know, there were so many artists there and,

Speaker 4 you know. actors and people who are doing these plays like the ridiculous people and there was you know filmmakers and poets and painters and

Speaker 4 we were the band

Speaker 4 of that crowd. I mean, it wasn't like we were the band of even New York City, you know, we were the band basically of the East Village, you know.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 it wasn't so much like a sexual thing, because, you know, like sexuality refers to like

Speaker 4 biological aspects. It was more like a gender thing, you know, and

Speaker 4 gender is like,

Speaker 4 you know, like the cultural differences that grow up around the biological differences. So

Speaker 4 instead of like male and female, like gender is really masculine and feminine, right?

Speaker 4 I think the trick for us that w at the time was to decide which characteristics were sex and which were gender, you know? And

Speaker 4 you know, because m there's certain things males do and there's certain things females do. I mean

Speaker 4 the universe didn't make two sexes for nothing.

Speaker 6 Did a lot of people early on assume that you were gay because of the way you dressed in performance or because of the

Speaker 5 I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 4 I mean, it was obviously we weren't gay. I mean, you know, I, but maybe to some people it was.
You know, you know how some people, I mean, to some people, everybody's gay.

Speaker 5 You know, like

Speaker 4 you could say, like,

Speaker 4 you could be talking to somebody and go, oh, that Hitler. And they go, gay.

Speaker 4 So, I mean,

Speaker 4 some people just think everybody's gay, but I don't know. We were like these kind of street kids from

Speaker 4 St. Mark's place, you know, and

Speaker 4 we just had this idea that, you know,

Speaker 4 at the time, masculine meant strong and assertive, feminine meant weak and demure.

Speaker 4 And this was a time of like redefinition of the roles, you know, it was overdue, and it was just part of evolution, I think, you know, and everything

Speaker 4 kind of transcends and

Speaker 4 goes beyond what went before. And otherwise, what's the use of doing anything, you know?

Speaker 3 David Johansson, co-founder of the 1970s band the New York Dolls, speaking with Terry Gross in 2004. He died last week at the age of 75.

Speaker 3 Johansson is the subject of a 2022 documentary co-directed by Martin Scorsese on Showtime titled Personality Crisis One Night Only.

Speaker 3 Later, film critic Justin Chang reviews Mickey 17, a futuristic action comedy by Bong Joon Hobe, starring Robert Pattinson.

Speaker 3 Here's David Johansson performing in his lounge lizard persona, Buster Poindexter, from the documentary. We'll continue our conversation after a break.
I'm Dave Davies, and this is Fresh Air.

Speaker 5 I woke up early one day and turned on my TV.

Speaker 5 You see that taking it over

Speaker 5 when I was asleep

Speaker 5 well they were bringing down doors they were purging and a burning people

Speaker 5 just like me

Speaker 5 well I fixed a drink I switched around a channel but that was all I could say

Speaker 5 Well, it's such a boring feeling when you find that you fall into a totalitarian state.

Speaker 5 You all know what's left. It don't seem right.

Speaker 5 You just don't feel so great.

Speaker 5 Well, the trees were all camping and the Mexicans was laughing down at the detention center. They didn't seem to care that they were there.

Speaker 5 I couldn't find one dissenter.

Speaker 5 Under the field commuter, I was infamous.

Speaker 5 I couldn't see her getting any better.

Speaker 5 I couldn't call her one.

Speaker 5 I wish I had a gun. I couldn't even send a letter.

Speaker 5 Oh, it's such a boring feeling when you find that you're falling. You were touched.

Speaker 5 You don't know what's left. It don't shit right.

Speaker 5 You just don't feel so great.

Speaker 5 When they came to visit me, I'd hope they would forgive me. I tried paying dead.

Speaker 5 I finished my drink, assessed the situation, put the covers up over my head. I quit.

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Speaker 6 The band was originally so used to performing like in Manhattan in the village, where people like knew the band, the people who came were a part of the same like arts subculture that the band was a part of.

Speaker 6 But when you went on the road in America, did you start playing in places where people weren't kindred spirits in the same way and they didn't necessarily get what you were doing?

Speaker 6 They didn't know how to react to it?

Speaker 4 Yes and no. I mean, it's very interesting.
Like, you know, there were like Rust Belt places, you know, like Detroit and Cleveland and places like that.

Speaker 4 People would go crazy for us and they would come to the shows all dressed up, you know, and Chicago. And, you know, we were really well received in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
And

Speaker 4 we used to play a lot in Florida, you know, Miami. And we used to play in Atlanta and be very well accepted.
And

Speaker 4 then we used to also, you know, we were, we were friends with

Speaker 4 Leonard Skynyrd at the time.

Speaker 4 We were kind of kindred spirits. And we used to, we would go on tours of like

Speaker 4 state fairs and like tertiary markets in Missouri together. And

Speaker 4 we would have a great time, you know. I know in Memphis I got arrested on stage one night for allegedly,

Speaker 4 you know, it was like the Alice Tully Hall of Memphis. I mean, it was this nice clean room.
And there had been articles in the newspaper that we were coming to

Speaker 4 Pied Piper all the children to

Speaker 4 the end of the world or whatever. And we thought it was funny when we read it, but I actually got arrested on stage and

Speaker 4 went to the Huscow in Memphis, which is.

Speaker 4 I was dressed like Liza Minelli at the time, so it wasn't the most relaxing night I ever had.

Speaker 6 How do people respond to you in prison?

Speaker 4 In jail? Yeah.

Speaker 4 I just like hit under these like Lysol smelling like army blankets, and then this guy woke up and he went like oh damn you're David Johansen and I was like quiet quiet quiet and then he woke up this bear and the bear was growling and I was like oh my god my knees were like you know rattling under these covers but I got bailed out at like dawn what were the charges

Speaker 4 inciting a riot the cops you know the cops wanted to mess the thing up and they started beating on kids and Of course they got up and danced.

Speaker 4 And I stopped the music and I started explaining to this officer that this child he was

Speaker 4 abusing may be

Speaker 4 the mayor's kid or a nephew or something, and his job would

Speaker 4 be in jeopardy. And then they just threw me in cuffs and dragged me away for inciting a riot.
I may not have used the exact same language.

Speaker 6 I understand.

Speaker 6 Why did the New York dolls break up?

Speaker 4 Inertia. I don't know.
You know, I think we got to a point where I like to think, you know, it was a project that we finished, but there was like factions in the group that were

Speaker 4 more interested in

Speaker 4 drugs than in playing music. And it just bec kind of became, for me, I mean, I can only speak for myself, you know.
For me, it became untenable.

Speaker 6 What did you think when you saw the Sex Pistols, the Ramones?

Speaker 6 Your band, the Dolls, preceded punk, but it was certainly influential in a lot of punk bands and had the same sensibility in a lot of ways. So

Speaker 6 when you saw that sensibility just really become

Speaker 6 so popular,

Speaker 5 what did you think?

Speaker 4 I thought every new idea begins as heresy and winds up as superstition.

Speaker 4 I think I never saw the Sex Pistols, but I saw the Ramones because they used to rehearse down the hall from

Speaker 4 me. I forget what band if I was in the Dolls or in

Speaker 4 my next band, but

Speaker 4 I remember

Speaker 4 Joey Ramon came to the room I was rehearsing and, you know, they have these buildings in New York with a hundred bands playing at once. It's like it would drive a monk insane.

Speaker 4 And he came by and said he wanted me to come down the hall and hear his band. And I went down the hall to hear his band.
And I probably said, you know, you're a nice guy. Why don't you just give up?

Speaker 4 You know. I told the talking heads they should give up.

Speaker 4 I mean, I would be the worst A ⁇ R man in the history of show business because I tell all these bands who, when they're beginning, that, You're a good kid, why don't you get a real job and a house, you know?

Speaker 4 So, I don't know. What do I know? I didn't think anything about it being influenced by me or anything like that.
It was just probably I had a headache and the music was really loud.

Speaker 3 David Johansson, who co-founded the 1970s band, the New York Dolls, speaking with Terry Gross in 2004. He died last week.
He was the last surviving member of the band. We'll hear more after a break.

Speaker 3 This is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 6 I want to skip ahead to the 80s and 90s when you performed a lot as Buster Poindexter. And,

Speaker 6 you know, the New York dolls were so into a kind of pre-punk sensibility and were

Speaker 6 very high energy and

Speaker 5 very raw.

Speaker 6 And, you know, Buster Poindexter is much more of a kind of lounge, more Vegas-oriented kind of persona. You know, instead of

Speaker 6 in drag on the cover, you know, the bust of Poindexter character is in a tuxedo.

Speaker 4 It's all drag, Terry.

Speaker 6 Well, that's the thing. No, no, but that's exactly the thing.

Speaker 4 No, I mean, Birkenstocks are drag.

Speaker 5 Exactly. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 6 Everyone is like,

Speaker 4 everybody is saying something with their clothes, you know.

Speaker 6 So have you always felt like you were standing back and knowing that?

Speaker 6 That any kind of drag that you were putting on, any kind of outfit or whatever you were putting on for performance, was always that, that you always knew it was some kind of drag or another?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 You know, the thing with Poindex is there was a little club, like a saloon, an Irish bar around the corner from my house. I was living in Gramacy Park.

Speaker 4 It was two blocks from my house, and it was kind of like my watering hole. And they would have bands there like Joe Turner or Charles Brown or Big Maybelline and they would do residencies there.

Speaker 4 So they would play like three or four nights a week for a month, say, you know, and there was a room upstairs where they would live. Monday night, the back room was dark.

Speaker 4 So I had decided I was going to do this little like Road Barrel House kind of Roadhouse show

Speaker 4 where I could just sing whatever songs I wanted to sing. And I was going to do it for four Mondays.

Speaker 4 And I went in there and I figured I'd use a pseudonym so people wouldn't be coming in screaming for, you know, funky butt chic.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 I went in to do that and I just picked whatever songs.

Speaker 4 I had been listening to a lot of jump blues at the time, but I also did, you know, like the seven deadly virtues from Camelot and, you know, whatever, just whatever songs I wanted to sing.

Speaker 4 And by the end of four weeks, I started doing weekends and it just kind of organically built into this. It started out as a three-piece band and wound up as like a 15-piece band.

Speaker 4 So I think by the time it got to the national

Speaker 4 awareness, it did have this kind of Vegas-y

Speaker 4 kind of

Speaker 4 idea to it. But it started off more kind of like the Louis Prima days in the 50s of Vegas.
You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 6 Right, right, right. Well, that image was encouraged, like on the cover of the Busted Poindexter album, you're drinking a martini.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 6 Tuxedo with your pinky ribbon.

Speaker 4 And then I was back on. See, I was walking to work.
I was making a nice living. And then we had a hit, and, you know, we all went to hell because we had to go back on the road.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 6 I want to play something from the Buster Poindexter era.

Speaker 4 Don't play hot, hot, hot.

Speaker 6 No, no, I wasn't going to. I was going to play.
Oh, thank God.

Speaker 6 Were you really tired of it?

Speaker 4 It's the bane of my life.

Speaker 5 Oh.

Speaker 6 I was going to play Bad Boy.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 6 Tell me why you recorded this. This is a cover.

Speaker 4 Well, I don't know. It's just a good song.
It was written by Lil Armstrong.

Speaker 4 I always liked it ever since I was a kid.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Okay.
Well, let's hear it. This is from the Buster Poindexter album.

Speaker 5 into day,

Speaker 5 you know that old hot blazing sun,

Speaker 5 it ain't gonna hurt my head

Speaker 5 because you always gonna find me

Speaker 5 right there in the shade.

Speaker 5 I can see all the folks, I can see they are

Speaker 5 laughing at me.

Speaker 5 Cause

Speaker 6 That's Bad Boy from David Johansson's album, Buster Poindexter. David Johansson is my guest, and his first band, The New York Dolls,

Speaker 6 has a reunion concert that was just released on CD and DVD.

Speaker 6 It seems to me that you've had so many different characters you've inhabited

Speaker 6 as a performer.

Speaker 6 And I'm wondering how much you think your career as an actor has come into play in your career as a musician, you know, because before you were even in the New York Dolls, you were with the ridiculous theater company in New York.

Speaker 6 And over the years, you've been in a lot of movies as well.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I guess, you know, there's a lot of...

Speaker 4 kind of acting involved.

Speaker 4 I have this friend, Elliot Murphy, who's a singer. He lives in Paris now.

Speaker 4 I remember when I started doing Buster Poindexter, he used to say to me, David, you know, Buster Poindexter is so much more like you than David Johansen is, you know, if you get what I'm saying.

Speaker 5 In other words,

Speaker 4 with Buster, I really kind of went on stage and really didn't edit myself.

Speaker 4 just kind of said whatever came to my mind and didn't have many filters. Whereas prior to that,

Speaker 4 in the period of my,

Speaker 4 I guess you would call it solo career, although, you know, you're always in a band, so it's never really a solo career. But I had the David Johansson group or band, or whatever it was called.

Speaker 4 And we used to open for a lot of bands and hockey rinks, you know. And

Speaker 4 you kind of go out there. At that point, I was going out there and kind of

Speaker 4 presenting this, what I thought, like, ideal picture of myself. You know what I mean? Just

Speaker 4 this

Speaker 4 pleasant fellow, you know? Whereas Buster was really kind of more warts and all, you know, and I think by doing that,

Speaker 4 it

Speaker 4 helped me to be

Speaker 4 myself more, you know, whereas so now

Speaker 4 when I go on stage, I'm not like biting my nails. Like, oh, what am I going to do? What are we,

Speaker 4 how am I going to be? Blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 4 I just don't even think about it because I'm just going to go out there and essentially be whoever I am at that moment. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 6 You once said back in the Buster Points Extra era: Buster can have this great life in the public eye and take the rap for everything, and then David can go home.

Speaker 5 Exactly.

Speaker 4 You know, it's funny because my mother, when Buster came out, she said, you know, this is the most genius idea you've ever come up with.

Speaker 5 This is great.

Speaker 4 And I think that was her idea that, you know, Buster can take the rap, and politicians should do it.

Speaker 6 Now, you have a show on Sirius, which is one of the satellite radio stations.

Speaker 5 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 Who are you as a DJ? Are you just yourself, or do you have a...

Speaker 4 I have a show called The Mansion of Fun.

Speaker 5 Uh-huh.

Speaker 4 And I'm kind of like Sri Rama Poindexter Johansen. And

Speaker 4 I'm very I'm very taken with Sri Ramakrishna lately because

Speaker 4 I read in a a biography of his and thought, man, that guy knew how to live. And uh

Speaker 4 he called the planet the mansion of fun.

Speaker 4 So I've named my show after that. And uh I play a really diverse

Speaker 5 uh

Speaker 4 bunch of music. You know, I play salsa, opera, blues, uh rock and roll, um you know, you name it.
I play a lot of Nino Rota music. I play, you know, whatever tickles my fancy.

Speaker 4 So it's really completely free form, and

Speaker 4 I speak a lot of kind of

Speaker 4 Ken Wilbur-type

Speaker 4 forward-thinking philosophy.

Speaker 6 Well, David Johansson, great to talk with you. Thank you so much.

Speaker 4 Thank you, Terry.

Speaker 3 David Johansson, co-founder of the 1970s band The New York Dolls, speaking with Terry Gross in 2004. He died last week.
He was 75.

Speaker 3 He was the subject of a Showtime documentary, co-directed by Martin Scorsese, titled Personality Crisis One Night Only.

Speaker 3 Here's David Johansson performing in his lounge lizard persona, Buster Poindexter, from that documentary.

Speaker 4 Tonight I'm going to do songs that I wrote or co-wrote, I guess from when I was a teenager. All the way up to now.
And the one thing I could say, the unifying

Speaker 4 thing of my existence is that there's always been plenty of music.

Speaker 5 Feeling a great sadness today.

Speaker 5 I don't wanna

Speaker 5 shush it or shoo it away. It belongs to the whole world, the boys and girls.

Speaker 5 It ain't just mine.

Speaker 5 Like joy and love, it's always there. I don't know how I tune in or why that I care, but I can't pretend it don't feel like the end.

Speaker 5 And everything is fine.

Speaker 5 I feel exiled from the divine.

Speaker 5 Me and these sad friends of mine, we're just waiting down here,

Speaker 5 drinking beer

Speaker 5 and losing time.

Speaker 5 Well, I hear plenty of music,

Speaker 5 I see superfluous beauty everywhere.

Speaker 5 Why should I care?

Speaker 2 What does it matter

Speaker 5 to me?

Speaker 5 The myth of life

Speaker 5 is a song.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 In nature's you,

Speaker 3 Coming up, film critic Justin Chang reviews Mickey 17, the new film by Bong Joon-Ho. This is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 3 In the futuristic action comedy Mickey 17, Robert Pattinson plays a space traveler who's repeatedly killed and resurrected for scientific research purposes as part of an expedition to a distant planet.

Speaker 3 It's the first movie from South Korean writer-director Bong Joon-ho after his Oscar-winning film Parasite. Mickey 17 opens in theaters this week.
Our film critic Justin Chang has this review.

Speaker 2 There's long been a current of topical anger running through the work of the brilliant South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho.

Speaker 2 Parasite was a domestic thriller and an indictment of economic inequality. The host was a terrific monster movie, with much to say about environmental decay and government inaction.

Speaker 2 And then there are Bong's Hollywood movies, like Snow Piercer, which took on class rage and climate change, and Okja, which paints such a grim picture of industrialized meat production that reportedly many of its viewers went vegetarian.

Speaker 2 Now comes Bong's new movie, Mickey 17,

Speaker 2 an outlandish, otherworldly farce that also paints in broadly satirical strokes.

Speaker 2 The movie, adapted from a novel by Edward Ashton, begins in the year 2054, on a faraway planet called Niffelheim, where a human colony is being established.

Speaker 2 Robert Pattinson plays Mickey Barnes, a good-natured screw-up who's been hired as an expendable, a human guinea pig.

Speaker 2 His job is to repeatedly die and live again, to ensure that Niffelheim is safe for human habitation. And so he's exposed to radiation, viruses, and toxins, leading to painful and protracted deaths.

Speaker 2 His body is dumped in the incinerator, and then, through the wonders of human printing technology, a whole new Mickey is regenerated and implanted with all his past memories. Live, die, repeat.

Speaker 2 That's all Mickey knows anymore.

Speaker 2 Why would anyone sign up for such a grueling ordeal? It's complicated.

Speaker 2 Let's just say that Mickey owes someone back on Earth a lot of money, and he decided it'd be best to flee the planet, and die multiple reversible deaths, rather than a single permanent one.

Speaker 2 As the movie opens, 16 previous Mickeys have already bitten the dust, and so it's Mickey 17 who introduces us to Nifelheim, a planet covered by ice and snow.

Speaker 2 During a dangerous scouting mission, a colleague, Jennifer, is killed. Mickey ironically survives.
Later, back at their compound, another colleague, played by Ana Maria Bartolome,

Speaker 2 asks Mickey a question he's been asked many times before.

Speaker 5 What's it like?

Speaker 5 Dying.

Speaker 5 It's terrible. Dying.

Speaker 4 I hate it.

Speaker 4 No matter how many times I go through it,

Speaker 2 it's scary

Speaker 2 still

Speaker 4 every time

Speaker 5 that you're here

Speaker 4 and Jennifer isn't

Speaker 5 out there

Speaker 4 the entire universe

Speaker 5 She's nowhere.

Speaker 2 While you could see the premise as a metaphor for human cloning, Bong is less concerned with ethical implications than narrative possibilities.

Speaker 2 He surrounds Mickey with supporting characters who underscore his weird existential loneliness. Stephen Young pops up as a backstabbing friend who treats Mickey like garbage.

Speaker 2 Mickey does have a loving and supportive girlfriend, a very good Naomi Aki, who's happy to to be with him, or any version of him.

Speaker 2 As we eventually learn, the Mickeys are not all strictly identical, and Pattinson has fun underscoring the differences.

Speaker 2 While most of the Mickeys are lovable goofballs, at least one turns out to be dangerously unhinged.

Speaker 2 Pattinson has always been an adventurous actor, and this is one of his most inventive performances, marked by a Gumby-like physicality, a Steve Bouchemi edge to his voice, and a deep core of melancholy.

Speaker 2 The subtler depths of Pattinson's performance aren't always matched elsewhere in Mickey 17.

Speaker 2 Not that subtlety is really the goal here. Bong is a giddy maximalist among genre filmmakers.
He embraces high drama, low comedy, and sudden bursts of violence.

Speaker 2 And he likes to juggle a lot of moving parts. His talents are formidable, but they aren't always well served by the shift to a big Hollywood canvas.

Speaker 2 Like Snow Piercer and Okja before it, Mickey 17 can be a bustling, unwieldy contraption of a movie.

Speaker 2 It has not one but two over-the-top villains, the tyrannical leader of the Niffelheim Colony, played by Mark Ruffalo, and his diabolical wife, played by Tony Collette.

Speaker 2 They have fun leering and sneering up a storm, and Ruffalo's mannered vocal delivery makes it clear that he's lampooning a certain U.S. president.

Speaker 2 Some of this satire does land, but it also wears awfully thin.

Speaker 2 Even so, Bong is one of the few filmmakers who can work at this scale, with elaborate production design and intricate visual effects, and still retain his artistic signature.

Speaker 2 Some of the most memorable characters in Mickey 17 are the native inhabitants of Niffelheim, which look like giant white roly polybugs, with armadillo-like shells.

Speaker 2 They're creepy at first glance, and it's no surprise that the human characters, short-sighted colonizers that they are, are bent on wiping them out. Leave it to Bong to flip the equation.

Speaker 2 He gives each of these slimy CGI critters a soul. It's a rare action filmmaker who can make you say aw instead of yuck.

Speaker 2 Even amid multiple Mickeys, Bong's talent remains one of a kind.

Speaker 3 Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed Bong Joon-ho's new movie, Mickey 17.

Speaker 3 On Monday show, Terry speaks with comic Bill Burr about his anger issues, which are hilarious on stage but not so much in real life, and how therapy, mushrooms, and becoming a father have helped.

Speaker 3 Terry says the interview was a wild ride and she really enjoyed it. Burr has a new Hulu comedy special and is the star of the new Broadway revival of Glen Gary Glen Ross.
I hope you can join us.

Speaker 3 Our senior producer today is Thea Challener. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.

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