A TRUE GEM... NOT A GEMETTE
It was a false start. Too much, too soon, when the populace was unprepared to embrace an ambisextrous rock and roll band that had the potential to be magnificent. Even you, open-minded CREEM reader, couldn't decide: in 73 they were voted Best New Group and Worst Group; the next year, they held claim to the latter title.
A TRUE GEM... NOT A GEMETTE
DAVID JOHANSEN
(Blue Sky)
It was a false start. Too much, too soon, when the populace was unprepared to embrace an ambisextrous rock and roll band that had the potential to be magnificent. Even you, open-minded CREEM reader, couldn't decide: in 73 they were voted Best New Group and Worst Group; the next year, they held claim to the latter title.
We were studying movies at NYU grad school in 72-73, and after evening screenings we'd go around the corner to the Mercer Arts Center to see the New York Dolls rehearsing for stardom. How could they fail? Npt only were they theoretically terrific—Manhattan decadence viewed and postured by outer borough and suburban ikids who knew Brill Building pop as well as their British forebearers—but they had panache, impudence, and this lead shouter who was like a Jagger molded out of Play-Dough. David Johansen looked and sounded so right, and wrote such acrid rock songs, that he seemed inevitable.