David Johansen changed everything when he and his band the New York Dolls exploded onto the music scene in the rollicking 1970s. Thanks to a fiercely independent penchant for subversiveness, norm-breaking style and outrageous stage presence, Johansen is widely credited as a founding member of a genre which would later be known as punk, with acts ranging from fellow punk rockers The Clash and The Ramones to hair metal bands KISS and Guns N' Roses all influenced by the Dolls' unique creative presence.
Since then, Johansen continued his reputation as an unflinching and multifaceted artist, letting his passion for raw self-expression guide his way through what's become an iconic career — whether through performing as his alter-ego Buster Poindexter, acting, or a successful cabaret-style live act.
It's a rollercoaster of a story recounted in the new documentary Personality Crisis: One Night Only, named after the Dolls' classic 1973 song. Co-directed by Martin Scorsese, the Showtime film is filled to the brim with decades of memorable performances and jaw-dropping stories, all through the gaze of Johansen's singular and sardonic point of view.
Before the doc's April 14 premiere, the trailblazing icon spoke to GRAMMY.com about a career spent pushing the envelope, how the film came about and his very punk answer to what he thinks about punk itself.
You're one of the fathers of punk. Looking back at what you helped birth, what do you think about how it's grown up?
I don't really have any thoughts about that. It never occurred to me. What is punk? We had a rock and roll band with the Dolls and were playing to the best of our ability. We wrote some really good songs. I don't know what people were inspired by, but I met a lot of kids who were into being creative and were looking for something to use as a vehicle for their energy. I don't really know what "punk" means, though.
I know a lot of great rock and roll bands like The Clash were very inspired by what we were doing. But also years later, all of those hair metal bands said they wanted to be like the Dolls. So I guess we spawned alleged-punk and alleged-hair metal, like Cain and Abel for kids.
So many acts were influenced by you, from the Ramones to many others. Who were you musically influenced by when you first started performing and writing?
So many bands, I couldn't even list them all. If I hear something that I like, I grab onto it. If I hear something that doesn't interest me, it just goes through me.
What makes a person creative, whatever they have in them to put out, they get it from so many different sources. I was into so much stuff, whether the New York folk scene in the 60s, all of these bands that came out of MacDougal street like The Lovin' Spoonful or the Blues Magoos. I used to go see all of those bands as a kid.
I went to see Mitch Ryder at the Murray the K show, he totally blew my mind. He was inhuman. I was also a really big fan of Janis Joplin, I'd see her every chance I got; everytime she played in New York I'd go see her.
And that's just me, so everybody in the band had their own gang of influences. That adds up to some incalculable amount when you think about it. You put all of that together; those characters and what music we dug, it comes out to a big list of different inputs that went into the Dolls. That's pretty much what I suspect every band does.
Throughout your career, starting when you founded the Dolls, you were always a proponent of pure self expression. In the documentary, you said something that I think sums up your art and creative point of view: You wanted to bring the walls down and have a party. Why were you so passionate about beings so subversive?
I think it was because when I was coming around, I was involved in so many different things. Like going to a lot of protests and also being involved with (the '60s-era experimental genre) Ridiculous Theater. All my friends were a very different and diverse gaggle, so I just started thinking that way. So I wasn't trying, I just happened to think that way.
How did the documentary come together? What was the initial seed of the project?
Well, I'd perform at the Carlyle Hotel where usually I'd sing songs that I didn't write, which is part of the conceit of my [alter ego] Buster Poindexter, which is doing whatever I want to do. So one run came up and I didn't really have much enthusiasm to learn and interpret 20 brand new covers. Usually I'm ready, but that time I just didn't feel like it. So I decided I was going to do Buster Sings the Songbook of David Johansen, because I knew all of those songs by heart. So Mara, my wife, helped me put that show together and started to take notes about stories I'd tell over the years about my life and sing the songs I'd write.
From there, how did it go from stage to screen?
The run at the Carlyle was winding up, and it was a big success and we had so much fun. We wanted to make it last and take it to a theater or something like that, and started calling people to advise us. Mara happened to call Marty [Scorsese] to say she wanted him to see the show. So he came by and brought a lot of people who work with him.
When he saw the show, we went and sat with him at the Cafe after it closed and he said he wanted to film it. And then they started building it; getting old footage, getting Mara and I's daughter to interview me, and they put together this whole package.
Do you remember your first time meeting Martin Scorsese? You're both two unique New York figures. When did your paths cross, in the '70s?
Yeah, in the '70s. He's a New York guy who went to NYU and is an artist. He told me when we first met that he used a Dolls record when he was shooting Mean Streets to rile up his cast before filming a fight scene. I also did some tunes for Boardwalk Empire and I'd see him around at parties and restaurants. So we're cordial with each other.
The Dolls' performances always pushed the envelope. I'm thinking of a story where you were playing a show and every member of the band vomited during the set and kept on playing. How did that stage style form?
It's funny because where we come from, living in the East Village in New York, we did what we did, so a lot of it just kind of happened organically. It's not like we had a plan, "Let's do this, let's do that!" That wasn't our thing at all. Our thing was just to play music.
Some people would be upset about the way we we'd perform and I'd say "Go f— yourself" or something like that, and that became something a lot of other bands incorporated; having an attitude or something. For us, it was just the way we were and how we'd talk to other people and each other.
In the '70s, did you get a lot of pushback from critics, venues or even politicians, the way today that people, politicians or whoever try to be morally upstanding?
You name it! When we made a record and started going around, certain people were freaking out about it. But in New York, pretty much everybody got hip to it. To them it was like this grand theater thing. But a lot of people, it seems, take things literally.
If you hear something that really appeals to you and you want to dig it, you want to dig it. You don't want to just go halfway with it, you want to go all the way with it. For the rock and roll genre, it was a pretty big departure. But other bands were doing the same thing like the MC5 who had been around since the '60s. Iggy Pop was a wild man in the '60s. I don't know what it was about us. They just didn't get it. We used to gas the squares, is what I'm trying to say.
I found it interesting how you and the Dolls would cover songs from the '50s that may otherwise seem square. I'm thinking of tracks like "Stranded in the Jungle" by The Cadets or "Bad Boy" by the Jive Bombers, which you recorded as Buster Poindexter. Were these songs you grew up with and wanted to cover, or did you discover them later?
I had older brothers and sisters, so there were a lot of records in the house when I was a kid. It wasn't that I had to go out and find music, I came from a family that dug music. When I showed up the record player was on. I'd hear a song like "Pills" by Bo Diddley and would bring it to the band since it seemed simple enough to play. Or a song like "Don't Start Me To Talking," I'd bring that in for the band to play. I was a Shangri-La's fan, so we used to do that "Give Him a Great Big Kiss" song. I don't do anything I don't like, which is what it essentially boils down to.
You went from those wild performances all the way to cabaret-style shows. What era of your evolution has been most gratifying as an artist?
They all are, because as soon as something starts to bore me and it feels like you're punching a clock, it's time to move on. That's my motto.
I don't really have any kind of thing to protect, like a big money-making operation. That's what happens when people get stuck doing the same thing over and over again.
When you have an attitude, "I won't make as much money if I do this or that," that's kind of sad. I guess money is king, but I never fell into that belief. To me, there's so much music on this planet that I dig; I want to revel in it.