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Endless Party
A Review of Nina Antonia's
The New York Dolls : Too Much Too Soon
by Polly Burns
Okay, the first thing you notice about this book, when you see it on a lonely shelf in the bookstore, next to all the other music books, dressed in their sober blacks, is it's PINK. Perfect, smutty wasted second-hand rose, the color of young lust or a cigarette burn before it scabs over. On the spine it says The New York Dolls in a fancy Broadway font and TOO MUCH TOO SOON in skinny white all-caps. From the side, it looks like some trash romance novel, something about not-so-happy hookers or young girls that start out as would-be starlets, but in the end meet that fate. But what is it doing in Music?
"For certain kids, when you're fifteen, life sucks, then all of a sudden you get rock n roll and you realize life can be good." - David Johansen
Pick it up and look at it, the dudes on the front are smiling, sweetly at you, like a photograph of some friends you forgot you knew. The guy in the red leather chaps has a lopsided grin, the one next to him with the flower in his hair is all teeth and smile-lines, like a Jack-o-lantern. The downed-out mother in the leather jacket with one hand down the front of his pants has a dopey little half-smile. The big blonde next to him is struggling not to smile, but can't help it, like a middle school girl trying to be tough, but not quite pulling it off. And the
strange man in the white tuxedo kneeling at their feet is winking at you, his red lips an O, as if to say Hey, this book's for you, honey, and what a book it is!
Turn it over and you are gently assaulted by the headline Drugs, Drugs and More Drugs (BAM!) Sex, Sex and More Sex (POW!) Liquor, Liquor and More Liquor (KA-BLAM!) Death, Death and More Death... And Rock n Roll . Read further and you realize, Oh, this was a band!
For the uninitiated, the New York Dolls wasn't just a band, they were a scene, a look, a time in history, a way of life, the ONLY way to feel, man. They put out two albums and disintegrated into glitter and ash, were blown to other bands and other parts of the country like some scattered trash. But, at their core, they were five very fucked-up, complicated, occasionally cruel, and ultimately tragic little boys and human beings . This book is their story:
Once upon a time in a kingdom by the sea called New York, there were three immigrants' sons and two foreigners. Their names were Johnny Thunders (nee Volume, nee Genzale), Sylvain Sylvain (nee Mizrahi), David Johansen, and Billy Doll (nee Murcia). For many years they lived their lives as parallel lines, seeing each other at parties or concerts or in the park or not at all, having no idea how their destinies would all collide. This is where Miss Antonia begins her tale, introducing each one as he came into the world, not as debauched creatures who shunned sunlight and drank only alcohol, but as little boys. Nobody is born a rock star. "The New York Dolls," she writes, "may have looked like they stepped right out of Manhattan Babylon as fully formed transvestite hookers with street manners but they were not children of the inner city."
She takes ample but not excessive space detailing the early lives of the boys who would be Dolls. This is perhaps the most essential part of the book, as it informs you of the events which shaped the Dolls' personalities and later led them to rock n roll and to each other.
"I don't know if I've just seen the best band in the world, or the worst."
- Marty Thau on the New York Dolls
This book is delectably filled with quotes from the band members, from their managers, the people who witnessed their rise, and their fall, from their girlfriends, childhood friends and more. The above quotation, spoken to them by their then-future manager Marty Thau, pretty much sums them up. You see, the genius of the New York Dolls was their ability to bring rock n roll down to the dirtiest, nastiest, raunchiest, most common of it roots, yet somehow, either because of or in spite of this, elevate it. What was most delicious about the Dolls was how common they were, how they looked like the neighborhood no-goodniks somehow gone terribly wrong. Miss Antonia is sweetly colorful and liberal in her descriptions of the Dolls, drawing a lot from their quasi-feminine appearance. They are, she says "[to paraphrase one of their songs] Jet Boys, cartoon kids of the jet age", "pretty peacocks", "starlets", and later, "hardened rock n roll sluts."
The music, which is the reason why we're all here, isn't exactly given short-shrift, either. That which is so hard to describe and usually cheaply evoked is positively personified: we get guitars which "buck and whinny like wild ponies" or are "sharper than a tattooist's needle" an "ominous bass run and panic stricken drumming". The Dolls are given the literary treatment they deserve, every aspect of their existence is delineated in passionate and exuberant prose. You can really tell Miss Antonia is a fan, because she writes it like a fan would , like she can hear the music in her head and feel it coming out through her fingers.
It's not all pretty words, though- or, rather, though the words may be as pretty as the Dolls themselves were, what happened to them aint all that pretty at all. The tabloidian blurb on the back of the book doesn't lie, not one bit, and the reader is deluged in a fair amount of tragedy and sinisterism to balance all the prettiness and good humor . The New York Dolls' story is a sad one. The chapters which detail their finding of success and fortune are a virtual catalog of excesses. Mr. Excess himself, Iggy Pop, even makes a cameo, appearing just long enough to turn Johnny Thunders on to heroin. Excess is what drives the band to its ruin, that and a bit of subterfuge on the part of their management. It is a little-known fact that Aerosmith broke at the same time as the New York Dolls, and borrowed more than a little from their sense of style, and were actually managed by the same company for a while. But you can read about all that nastiness in the book...
Too Much Too Soon follows the decline and eventual destruction of the band and follows the members to their own declines, and in the case of Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan, deaths. Some parts of this book are hard to read, even if you have never heard a lick of their music and therefore cannot fathom the waste of all that vitality. The New York Dolls weren't a bunch of intellectuals, and they certainly didn't take rock n roll anyplace new through experimentation- hell!, they could barely play their instruments!- but, y'know, they made it fun and they made it young and tough and swaggering and vulnerable . This book captures all of that, lovingly, poignantly, heart-breakingly, sometimes. So just go out and read it, and if you've got the bucks, buy it. It is not all that expensive, and has lovely black and white photos. Better yet, buy the New York Dolls' records, that way when you read the book you'll know when to laugh- and when to cry.
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