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Arts & Entertainment

A Living 'Doll' Comes to Larchmont

Singer David Johansen plays the Watercolor Cafe

When you speak to David Johansen, the toughest part is deciding what to ask him first. After all, he is the lead singer of The New York Dolls, perhaps the most important band of the 1970s. A witty, rocking, cacophonous bunch of mascaraed hooligans, whose stripped-down songs and Dead End Kids demeanor lit the fuse for the punk rock explosion.

In the wake of the Dolls demise, Johansen also made several brilliant solo albums. Then, there's his memorable acting, displayed in everything from the Bill Murray vehicle "Scrooged" to Nickelodeon's "Pete And Pete."  And, oh yeah, he was once  known as Buster Poindexter, a man who not only recorded the wedding reception staple "Hot Hot Hot," but also possessed what still may be the highest pompadour ever built by human hands.

Since he's playing stripped-down at The Watercolor Cafe on Tuesday, this turns out to be the best place to begin.

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"Whenever I've been doing a certain kind of music for a while," Johansen said, "I always get an inkling, after a while, to do something else entirely. The Dolls, who reconvened in 2004, are a great band. I love singing with them. But there are certain songs that, if I sang with them, might cause a vibe and energy disruption. Hence my playing with just guitarist Brian Koonin, where I can explore all my different sides without worrying that a big crowd might get restless. Old things I've written. Obscure covers. Blues songs. Stuff like that."

It must be noted that all of this is uttered in that one-in-a-generation voice. A booming, rheumy, rattling sound, tempered by, oh, 100,000 Lucky Strikes, and always conveying good humor, a love of language and a trace of world weariness.

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I wonder about some of those songs, recently referenced.

"Well, I've got some new tunes that I haven't committed to tape yet. There's 'Maimed Happiness' and something called  'Temptation To Exist.' These are the kind of songs I can sing sitting down, with Brian accompanying me. I'll probably play a little harp here and there, too. It's a nice change from playing with a band."

Ah yes, the band. Although The New York Dolls have accrued a mythic quality over the years and number among their fans Pretender Chrissie Hynde, The Strokes and rock God Morrissey (at whose behest the band re-formed in '04), the guys from New Yawk have still not been admitted to that questionable venue, The Rock And Roll Hall of Fame.

Detached and bemused as he is about most things ("Maybe there's some Zen in there, but I'm basically an existentialist"), Johansen only cares about getting in for one reason: his comrade in arms, founding Dolls member and killer guitarist, Sylvain Sylvain, would really like it.

"I'm sort of torn, because I don't know if it means anything. It's all such a big corporate thing. I guess they have some cool people in there. I think (R&B giant) Little Willie John is in there, right? But Syl has an ache, a real ache to get in. So, I'd like it for him. But all that stuff is outside my head, you know? Not inside."

For those of us who grew up with Johansen's point of view, which helped to shape our own, this philosophical outlook is not a shock. This is, after all, a guy who can write a ballad as bereft as "Donna," which seems to limn the end of a band, a marriage and everything else that matters in life, and who can then pen a rocker as profoundly nutty as "Bohemian Love Pad," whose message seems to be, better a bad party than no party at all. On the Dolls first album, Johansen sings about having a "Personality Crisis." It's absolutely real, he seems to say. And yet, it ain't no big thing. In other words,  he has it straight, this yin and yang business.

That matter-of-fact approach served Johansen, Syl and the rest of the new Dolls well, when they recorded their most recent album, the stunning return to form that is "Cause I Sez So."

"We were all set up to record on Hawaii at Todd Rundgren's place," said Johansen, referring to the great solo artist and producer of the Dolls debut in 1973. "Problem was, we got there five days early. And Todd wasn't happy about that. But, the weather was horrible in New York, you know? It was January. So we couldn't wait to get to Todd's place."

Unfortunately, confides the singer, there was another problem in addition to showing up early at Rundgren's: David and the guys had no songs written.

"Well," said Johansen, as always, on the verge of cracking up, "I had a couple of ideas on my laptop. I played some stuff for Todd, who then stared at me and said, 'That's all you've got?' Somehow I wasn't worried. We had a month to do the record. We wrote the songs in a week, rehearsed them for a week, recorded them in a week and then had a week for overdubbing. As usual, when you don't over-think stuff, it comes out well. The weather was crazy, it was rainy and stormy, then suddenly sunny and mild, often in the same day. So, we got a chance to hang out in Hawaii, too."

Johansen says The New York Dolls are hoping to make a new album this fall (That will make five, officially, if you're counting) and he's got solo dates and band gigs in and around the recording. 

"In the meantime," he said, sounding like Staten Island's answer to the Dalai Lama, "I'm going to play these folk gigs for a while. I'm sure, that like everything I've done, this is then going to turn into something else eventually. That's certain. But what that 'something' is? Right now, I just don't know."

IF YOU GO:

David Johansen will be appearing at The Watercolor Cafe, 2094 Boston Post Rd., Larchmont, on Tuesday (July 20) at 8:00 pm. Tickets are $35. For more information call 914-834-2213 

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