No Dogs in Space: New York Dolls Pt I

No Dogs in Space is back! Carolina and Marcus kick off Punk 2.0 with Part One of the New York Dolls, digging into the band’s early days and formation, breaking down the sound, style, and attitude that made them one of the greatest and most influential bands of all time.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Marcus Parks?

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• 0:45Marcus Parks?

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• 1:32Speaker 01

  Part of me thinks like we could just fucking start.

• 1:35Marcus Parks?

  You know what? Part of me thinks we could just start too, and just be like, goddamn it, hey, we're back.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, why don't we talk about being back? Because this is our first episode back.

• 1:43Marcus Parks?

  Yes, it is.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Okay. So why don't we talk about being back? Because this is our first episode back.

• 1:49Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, let's do that. Let's talk about this being our first episode back, our first episode in a year, something like that.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Yes, so much has happened.

• 1:57Marcus Parks?

  Has it?

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I mean, not to us, I mean, like other people, I'm sure, the world, current events, but yes, and we are back and we are doing, of course, what we always want to do, which is punk.

• 2:11Marcus Parks?

  Punk 2.0, ladies and gentlemen. We're fucking here. My name is Marcus Parks, this is No Dogs in Space, we are here for Punk 2.0. We're starting it off with a band that people have asked us to do oh so many times, and we've told the story in bits and pieces here and there, but we're finally gonna tell it in a massive four-part series, starting today.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  That's right. I'm Carolina Hidalgo, some call me Carolina Danger Hidalgo, certain doctor's offices know me as that, and I am also here with you today to talk about this. We are telling the story in four parts, and that is it, that is all I'm contractually obligated to do, or that I want to do.

• 2:50Marcus Parks?

  There's a possibility we might have a .5 here.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  We might.

• 2:54Marcus Parks?

  There's a possibility. It might be a replacements type of situation, because this story, the more I look into it, like this story just crosses with so many other amazing movements in New York City that were happening in the early 70s. There is so much meat to this story. There's a lot of meat on this bone.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  All right.

• 3:15Marcus Parks?

  So let's start chewing.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  I was about to say, like, let's do it now, let's go now.

• 3:17Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. Now, one can make the argument that this band was the greatest rock and roll group to ever exist. Not the best, definitely not the most talented, but the greatest.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:29Marcus Parks?

  They were a band who distilled the music and the attitude down to its very essence during not only their performances and their records, but also in the way they lived every hour of their lives, for better or worse. Created by five kids from each of the outer boroughs, that's Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx, all four are represented, this band rode the wave of chaos created by the decay of early 70s Manhattan. They absorbed and translated the city's dirt, sleaze, crime, trash, and utter insanity, as well as its art and culture into pure rock and roll. This band's body of work was a collage born of intuition and good taste, which combined

• 4:11Marcus Parks?

  the sonic screams of first-generation rock and roll guitarists like Bo Diddley and Eddie Cochran with the confidence and attitude of the 1960s girl pop groups.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  I love how you put that together.

• 4:23Marcus Parks?

  That's what this band is. And then finally, they just sprinkled the whole mixture with a dash of British glam.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, definitely.

• 4:30Marcus Parks?

  But even though their taste was impeccable, their actual talent was not on the same level. They were the archetype of the punk band that didn't give a fuck about precision. Hell, half the time their instruments weren't even in tune. You kids don't know how lucky you are with these electric guitar tuners, but that wasn't even close to the point. For this group, it was their energy and passion that inspired countless others in first New York City and then the world to think, if these assholes can do it, what the fuck am I waiting for?

• 5:03Speaker 01

  That's right. If those assholes could do it, anybody could do it.

• 5:06Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. These five New Yorkers had actually tapped into a vitality that they themselves couldn't keep up with, and as such, it's been said by the old New York scenesters that this group peaked before they even signed a record contract.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Oh my god, that is so hipster.

• 5:23Marcus Parks?

  So New York, yeah, no.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  I loved them before they started a band.

• 5:28Marcus Parks?

  You should have seen them in elementary school, they were awesome.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were cool then.

• 5:33Marcus Parks?

  Well, amongst that scene, though, this band started a revolution without even trying. It was expression as infection. It was DIY at its most fabulous, because if you know nothing about this band, their fashion sense was sickening, fierce, dusty, New York was gagged, mama.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Yes, I loved it, I loved it all.

• 5:51Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, and we're gonna be getting deep into the drag scene in New York City, starting next week. But these five men, dressed as women, or at least dressed highly femme.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  I would say highly femme.

• 6:01Marcus Parks?

  Highly femme, they did that because it was their instinct to do so. And by doing that, they personified the idea that in New York City, you can be whatever the fuck you want, and if you hit the same sweet spot these boys hit, you can have more fun than you ever thought possible. Now, while the band was indeed straight, they dressed, acted, and presented themselves to the world in a way that was far more drag than glam, at least in our opinion. But that's not to say that a feminine edge or drag elements were new in rock and roll. People forget that some of the earliest rock stars were extremely flamboyant. There's a good reason why in an episode of RuPaul's Drag Race, the drag queen Kennedy

• 6:41Marcus Parks?

  Davenport was able to surprise everyone by doing an excellent and filthy drag interpretation of the famously filthy Little Richard.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  I loved it so much, I can't even do it justice.

• 6:53Marcus Parks?

  It's one of the best snatch game performances ever. But where the British glam boys at the time were foppish poppin' Jays, this band...

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Excuse me, Frasier? What? I'm sorry, Niles? Foppish poppin' Jays?

• 7:07Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, I would describe the British glam...

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Are you David Bowie's father?

• 7:11Marcus Parks?

  ... ... ... ... ... ... ... But while the British boys were, I stand by it, foppish poppin' Jays, this band, as one author put it, "They took the glam out of glam rock and they made it seedier and far more threatening." To me, that means they made it more American, and I think this band really does represent what America's supposed to be in more ways than one. For example, two of the founding members of this band were first-generation immigrants from Egypt and Colombia, and in my opinion, one of the things that makes America special is natural-born shitheads collaborating with wild, imaginative immigrants to create something revolutionary.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Definitely. I mean, look at us. Look at us, shithead and imaginative.

• 8:01Marcus Parks?

  Okay, yeah, I guess I did kind of walk in and call the shithead there, yeah, yeah. But as it often goes here in America, the people who represent its purest ideals with the most intensity are the same people who get pushback from the cowards who are deathly afraid of what freedom actually means. And this band was certainly a victim of this paradox. See, while we look at the cover of this band's groundbreaking debut album, where the whole band is dressed in maximum drag and think, fuck yeah, I want to hear that record, these musicians could have been arrested for female impersonation in 1973 if that photo shoot had been done in the wrong state. And furthermore, the music contained in this record was certainly rock and roll, but it

• 8:45Marcus Parks?

  was also campy, and it was also feminine. All this put together coded this band's debut as gay to a lot of radio DJs who were also probably a little freaked out by their own sexual reaction to the luscious lips of lead singer David Johansson.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  That's right. In our own generation, we had a similar thing, not dressed in drag, but a lot of people thought the members of Hanson were girls.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  And there was a bit of confusion there as well.

• 9:12Marcus Parks?

  That there was, but it did nothing to stop "Mm Bop" from being played every 10 minutes on the radio. We came a long way.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  We have come a long way. "Mm Bop," really.

• 9:24Marcus Parks?

  And you know, sometimes it does feel like we're a million miles away from that sort of bullshit. Radio DJs freaking out over guys wearing makeup and dresses in a photo shoot is a far cry from where we are today, where the most popular show on MTV by far is an actual drag competition that's in, what, season 17?

• 9:44Speaker 01

  At least, and it's all over the world, too. UK, Australia, I mean, we've seen them all.

• 9:48Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, we had all, like, 11 seasons of All Stars. Tedious. It's gotten very tedious, but it's massive, it's huge. But as we all know, there are plenty of assholes today who want to bring the days of old back. These are people who either don't know the meaning of the kind of reckless abandon our band today represented, or they understand its power completely, and it scares them to their cowardly core. See, as one member of this band put it, "Every generation finds something intriguing about this band," and I think that's certainly true. So maybe in order to move into the future, we need to look into the past, and I think that every single one of us can find something inspiring about the total freedom, the aggressive

• 10:33Marcus Parks?

  rebellion, and the utter chaos that was the New York Dolls.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  You can hear all the chaos and the fun.

• 11:35Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, so much fucking fun. That's what this band was all about. So much fun. Produced by Todd Rundgren. Like, it's fucking such a good album.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  I know. Todd was part of the fun.

• 11:45Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, we're forced to talk about Todd Rundgren again against our will.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  I don't, I think he's fine. I have no problem with him. Well, let me read more about him. Anyway, let's, but first, let's get started on our sources, right? Our main book sources are, first of all, Too Much Too Soon: The Makeup Breakup of the New York Dolls by Nina Antonia, as well as There's No Bones in Ice Cream: Sylvain Sylvain's Story of the New York Dolls by Sylvain Sylvain with Dave Thompson.

• 12:13Marcus Parks?

  Because there's no bones in ice cream is one of the best rock bios that I've read in years.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Love it.

• 12:17Marcus Parks?

  So good.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. And also, we also use Johnny Thunders' In Cold Blood, the official biography by Nina Antonia again. And then there was Trash: The Complete New York Dolls by Chris Needs and Dick Porter. We use that for extra details. All of these books have different accounts of what's basically the same kind of story. And I have to say, I've worked really hard and done my best to read all of these books and check out plenty of interviews and articles online and make some hard and some not so hard editorial decisions on who's telling the truth. So we're gonna do the best we can here, and I will give the complete list of sources at the end of this series, as well as, we're gonna post it on our Instagram, NoDogsPod.

• 12:57Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, I would say, not since The Stooges have we had to make so many judgments on what is true and what is probably true.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 13:07Marcus Parks?

  And what might be true.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  We spent a whole afternoon talking about if Johnny Thunders lied about one thing. That's an afternoon. You're wondering how, why it took us so long to get here. Okay.

• 13:20Marcus Parks?

  What's the thing that Iggy Pop and Johnny Thunders share that makes the truth so difficult? We'll find out.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  It's heroin, Marcus.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Okay, so let's get started with the story of the New York Dolls from New York. And, except, well, actually, we're gonna start with Sylvain Sylvain, the guitarist and co-founder of the New York Dolls, who actually isn't originally from New York.

• 13:43Marcus Parks?

  Nope.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Sylvain was born Sylvain Mizrahi on Valentine's Day, 1951, in Cairo, Egypt. Yeah, he's Egyptian by birth, but his mother was of Syrian descent, and his father's family were from Turkey, but they all spoke French.

• 13:59Marcus Parks?

  Yes.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Now, I'm not sure why, but according to Sylvain, that was the primary language for many Jewish, Middle Eastern people at that time. And Sylvain, he spent his childhood in Cairo in a very upper-class, I would say downright wealthy family.

• 14:14Marcus Parks?

  Yes.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Nice penthouse apartment with a car and chauffeur, the works, everything. But Sylvain wasn't like, he wasn't a fancy kid. He wasn't a Richie Rich. All he cared about at that time, as a young boy, was going to the movies and watching Western American singing cowboy movies. We couldn't get him away from that. Like movies starring Roy Rogers, which apparently he was an actual singing cowboy.

• 14:41Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  For real.

• 14:42Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, we drive through the Roy Rogers Memorial Interchange every day between the office and home.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  I forget that I hold my breath and pray a minute every time we do that. So anyway, Sylvain, he loved watching the singing cowboys sit on their horses while playing their guitar and, I guess, fixing fences.

• 15:00Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. That's all cowboy is, trust me.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  I've never seen a singing cowboy movie. Well, actually, no, The Three Amigos.

• 15:08Marcus Parks?

  Yes.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  I mean, that's more Mexican-American-Canadian singing cowboy movie, but, you know, she'll be coming around the mountain when she comes.

• 15:17Marcus Parks?

  That's Randy Newman.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Okay, well, that's a singing Bush movie, but still. Okay, back to Sylvain, back to Sylvain. Pretty soon after a few cowboy movies, Sylvain is like, at this point, he's dying for a guitar, right? He's a little kid. He wants to play like his hero Roy Rogers. And after lots of begging and insisting and being really annoying about it, Sylvain's father finally gets him an oud.

• 15:41Marcus Parks?

  An oud?

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Yes, not a guitar.

• 15:42Marcus Parks?

  Oh, good.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  An oud. And Sylvain's dad is like a wealthy banker. It's not like he couldn't afford it, but hey, in Egypt, you get an oud.

• 15:50Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, yeah. You want a thing with strings that makes noise, you get an oud.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Yes, it's an Arabic type of guitar. It's totally not a guitar, but it's what Sylvain has got to work with, basically. Which is cool, but then, unfortunately, in 1956, Sylvain's singing cowboy dreams kinda washed away when an international conflict changed the course of five-year-old Sylvain's life forever. And that conflict was the Suez Canal Crisis.

• 16:23Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  It affected a lot of people.

• 16:25Marcus Parks?

  So many singing cowboy dreams were swept away by the Suez Canal Crisis.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  That's why there's a singing cowboy shortage to this day.

• 16:32Marcus Parks?

  The Suez Canal Crisis, it's extremely complicated, but basically, the Egyptian dictator, Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, which took ownership of the canal away from French and British interests. The French and British therefore planned military action to retake the canal and possibly depose Nasser in the process. This is when Israel got involved in the operation, because Nasser had been behind anti-Israeli blockades and raids, and Israel had every reason to want Nasser deposed. So, Israel led the attack against Egypt in 1956, but when the operation got bogged down, the coalition withdrew from Egypt after just a few months. With the coalition's withdrawal, Nasser could claim victory against the colonial powers.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  That's true. He won a political, like, war.

• 17:20Marcus Parks?

  Massive.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  They loved him for it.

• 17:22Marcus Parks?

  Massive, massive, massive political win for him. And this led to a massive increase in both Egyptian nationalism and, because Israel was involved, antisemitism all across Egypt. And since Sylvain's dad was working at a bank that used the British pound, this is how granular it all got, neither of these things were good news for the Mizrahi's family's future in Egypt.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, Sylvain's dad lost his job when the bank he was working at for 25 years was nationalized. So Sylvain's family, as well as other Jewish families and communities, they couldn't go out shopping or walking down the streets without being harassed or being called nasty names. Like, like you said, Marcus, like nationalism was taking over. It felt that dangerous to not be born and bred Egyptian at that time, or not be Jewish for that matter. And Sylvain and his family were Jewish. I mean, his grandfather was a rabbi.

• 18:14Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  That's, that's pretty Jewish.

• 18:16Marcus Parks?

  It's as Jewish as you get.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So soon, the money was running out, so Sylvain's parents, you know, they were very smart about this. They started making clothes in their living room to make ends meet. And these people were rich, at least until very recently, they were rich, but they were also very hardworking. So Sylvain's parents took out some books on sewing and started making shirts and pants on their dining room table. Their fancy rooms in their fancy apartment became like a workroom to make and sell clothes to just get by. Money was scarce, but then when food started becoming scarce, Sylvain's family decided it was time to leave Egypt for good. So after months of writing letters to every foreign embassy they could think of, they finally got one response from France.

• 19:01Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, because they could speak French.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, well, that actually did help, yes. And by Sylvain's eighth birthday, he and his family had settled in a small apartment on, I'm sorry about this, Rue Cadet in Paris.

• 19:14Marcus Parks?

  Rue Cadet!

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. It spells cadet, but it's Rue Cadet, so within, like, what, a little over a year, they went from living in a penthouse luxury apartment in Cairo to a single-room hotel with nothing but a bucket to wash in. The toilet was down the hall.

• 19:31Marcus Parks?

  Jesus.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  It was one of those. And there were four of them.

• 19:34Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  And then, they had a baby. There were five of them at some point.

• 19:38Marcus Parks?

  Jesus.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Yes, three kids, two adults, so.

• 19:40Marcus Parks?

  And this is all definitely germane to the New York Dolls story.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely, because Sylvain's, in his autobiography, he does say he remembers Rue Cadet as a crowded, smelly, rat-infested, gross-ass street, but there was the Folie Berger, right?

• 20:00Marcus Parks?

  Folie Berger!

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:02Marcus Parks?

  Berger!

• 20:03Speaker 01

  The Folie Berger, that's right. Little Sylvain lived right around the corner of Paris's most famous cabaret hall. Well, I think the most, the second most famous, because the Moulin Rouge.

• 20:16Marcus Parks?

  That's number one.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  That's number one. Okay, gotcha, gotcha. I've seen the movie, and we all know this. So, anyway, the Folie Berger was a sight to behold. It was. It was a sight to behold. I mean, Sylvain never went inside, because he was eight, nine years old, right? But he would stand at the door, like the side door where the truck would, like, pull up and unload dozens of costumes, feathers, sequins, in the most beautiful sentence. It was the first time Sylvain had ever been exposed to glitz and glamour. This is art. This is expression. This is full of sequins.

• 20:50Marcus Parks?

  My god.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Very shiny fabrics. Of course, a child would love this.

• 20:54Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Hell, I would love this.

• 20:55Marcus Parks?

  I would too.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  And this is important, because Sylvain said that when the New York Dolls were first starting, that was exactly what Sylvain was thinking of. The feathers and sequins in the Folie Berger!

• 21:08Speaker 01

  I said so confidently. Sylvain was mesmerized by the shiny fabrics and glitter. I mean, who isn't? But he ended up never going to the, God, Folie Berger. Because by the time he was like 10, 11 years old, Sylvain and his family left Paris for a better opportunity in America. Yes, finally Sylvain and his family touched down in New York City in 1962, and he immediately fell in love with it. Sylvain loved all of it. The feel and smell of the streets, the energy, the gunpowder volatility of it all.

• 21:42Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  It was raw and a bit gross, sure, but New York City had character. And Sylvain even said, "For the first time since I'd left Cairo, Egypt, I felt like I belonged somewhere."

• 21:54Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Because that's what it's supposed to be here. The feeling that wherever you come from, you belong.

• 22:00Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  That's New York. That's America.

• 22:03Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. Not only can you belong, but you can do anything.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 22:08Marcus Parks?

  Anything is possible. Now, when the Sylvain family finally landed in the outer boroughs, Syl quickly discovered the reason why so many members of the future punk scene who survived the chaos of Manhattan in the 70s. He discovered why those guys were from the outer boroughs. Why they were from Brooklyn and Queens. See, before his family settled in Queens, Syl first lived in Brooklyn, where violence and actual fistfights were a normal part of life for both genders. Syl said he actually knew a girl who hid razor blades in her beehive to slice up the hands of any girl who tried grabbing a fistful of hair during the scuffle.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  That's actually kinda smart.

• 22:46Marcus Parks?

  It's incredibly smart, but it's also wildly violent.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was in The Silence of the Lambs, you know, the sequel in the beginning of the movie with Julianne Moore.

• 22:56Marcus Parks?

  Really?

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, they're like, "Oh, watch out if you touch her head." Because it wasn't in the 1960s, though. It was a sequel that was poorly made.

• 23:04Marcus Parks?

  Yes, it was, except for the end when he ate Rayleigh Oates' brain.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  That was actually very cool.

• 23:09Marcus Parks?

  It's worth a whole movie.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  I wish that was the whole... Yeah, I was about to say that. Oh, my God, we have everything in common.

• 23:14Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. Now, Syl certainly had to deal with a fair amount of xenophobia and racism in Brooklyn and Queens. Trust me, Queens ain't the paradise that everyone thinks it is. But he found refuge in the incredible music that permeated the boroughs throughout the early 60s. Syl partly absorbed this music through the jukebox at the bowling alley across the street from his school. The songs that he heard on that jukebox would make up the musical DNA of not just Syl Sylvain, but every New York Doll. And while each of them would discover these songs in their own way, it was the bowling alley where Syl fell in love with the girl groups of the early 60s. Cannot be overstated how important these fantastic groups are

• 23:57Marcus Parks?

  to the New York Dolls and to punk in general. Now, in my opinion, the way that every member of the Dolls idolized these girl groups from a young age probably made them a lot more comfortable exploring their feminine sides later on. But even though their later penchant for women's clothing would make people assume they were gay, the band dressed the way they did mostly because the girls they liked responded to it positively. And their love for girl groups ran on much the same logic. For Syl, the songs that the girl groups sang had a sensual edge that he recognized before he even knew what sex was. This was the music that the girls in the bowling alley liked. And later, Syl would say that there was no piece of music sexier in this world

• 24:40Marcus Parks?

  than the isolated drum beat that kicks off the Ronnet's classic debut single, "Be My Baby."

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, you landed it perfectly.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Uh, where's my hairbrush?

• 25:46Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, maybe a Ronnie Spector series sometime in the future.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 25:50Marcus Parks?

  Sometime, somewhere, somehow. God, I love... I just... The girl groups, I love. It's one of my favorite genres out there. I love it. Now, one thing to keep in mind about the New York Dolls was that they were a young band. Most were just barely out of their teens when they started. So, like the Ramones, the Dolls formed their first connections to each other when they were still just kids. Syl Sylvain continued to adapt to Queens as the 60s continued. Dodging bullies, falling in love with damn near every British Invasion band that came along, and every once in a while, buying cough syrup for neighborhood heroin addicts at their request because he didn't know any better.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Wow, you really buried the lead with that one. He was doing all these... You romanticized all that.

• 26:34Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, falling in love with, listening to the kinks and buying cough syrup for heroin addicts.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Hey, kid.

• 26:42Marcus Parks?

  But when Syl reached junior high, he finally found a friend that he could not only vibe with, but this was a kid who was an immigrant, just like Syl. Their relationship did, however, begin in a very 1960s Queens manner.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, Queens, baby. Remember, I'm originally from Queens.

• 26:59Marcus Parks?

  I remember.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  I was born in Queens, unfortunately, or fortunately, I don't know. I moved from Queens after being born six weeks later. So I wasn't able to be raised in Queens like all these fun people. But this is interesting. This is really fun. Sylvain went to Van Wick Middle School where he had to deal, like you said, bullies, people picking on him. Sylvain Mizrahi, though, he did manage to make a friend, a best friend.

• 27:25Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  One day at school, an older kid went up to Sylvain at lunch and said, "You're gonna fight my brother today, or else. Be there. 3 P.M." What?

• 27:36Marcus Parks?

  No, it's just...

• 27:37Speaker 01

  "You're gonna fight my brother today, or else. Be there. 3 P.M."

• 27:43Marcus Parks?

  He's a Colombian immigrant. Why aren't you just doing your natural accent?

• 27:48Speaker 01

  I am not... I'm not gonna... Okay, okay, okay. You're gonna fight my brother. No, no, that one's southern Italian.

• 27:56Marcus Parks?

  No, you're southern.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Let me just do it the Carolino way. Can we do it the Carolino and say it the crazy Colombian way? Okay. "You're gonna fight my brother today." Okay. Older kid goes to Sylvain. "You're gonna fight my brother," right? And Sylvain thought, "Who was that guy? And where is 'be there'? Where is 'there'? And why do I have to fight someone I don't even know?" And Sylvain, you know, he was hesitant. He's a teenager. He's like 14 at this time. But he wasn't gonna punk out either.

• 28:23Marcus Parks?

  No.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? He's at that age.

• 28:25Marcus Parks?

  It's Queens.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  So at 3 P.M., Sylvain, who by then found out where "there" was, which was outside the school, also found out who he was gonna fight, which was that kid's younger brother, Billy. So Sylvain actually recognized him immediately. Like, "Oh, yeah, we have gym class together. We say hi sometimes." And obviously Sylvain didn't wanna fight Billy. And neither did Billy wanna fight Sylvain. Like, I think Billy was pushed by his older brother Alfonso because, I don't know, edification, hazing, toughening him up?

• 28:57Marcus Parks?

  It happens. I was thrown to many small fight clubs by my older brothers growing up. They like it. It's funny to them.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 29:05Marcus Parks?

  They just really enjoyed it. It's... Older kids really love making smaller kids fight each other. I can't explain it. But I'm just saying that I had the exact same experience in rural Texas as these kids had in Queens in 1960, in the 1960s. So let's just go ahead and say it's a universal human thing.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Okay. I just abused my dolls, like a good Sid from Toy Story. All right, so we're all a little different, but that's okay.

• 29:33Marcus Parks?

  I did that, too.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  And even though...

• 29:35Marcus Parks?

  I abused my action figures.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  And even though Sylvain didn't wanna fight, they were gonna fight. There was already a mob of kids around them in a circle chanting, "Fight, fight, fight."

• 29:45Marcus Parks?

  You had to fight.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  So since they didn't wanna lose face, Sylvain and Billy just started dancing around a fighting ring. They would kick up dirt and fake punches until, I think, one of them finally threw a punch and connected, and then they both somehow fell backwards. I'm not sure, but that seems right.

• 30:02Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. And once the crowd was satisfied, the boys helped each other up and said, "You wanna go? I'll walk you home." So they left. And that's how Sylvain met the original drummer of the New York Dolls, Billy Murcia.

• 30:15Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, Colombian immigrant.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. There's not a lot of information on Billy Murcia out there. It's actually kinda hard to find stuff about his life and what he was like and stuff. But I can say with confidence that the few people who have talked about Billy all said that he was friendly, kind, funny, very funny, very energetic, which is good for a drummer.

• 30:35Marcus Parks?

  He's a drummer.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  And most of all, a humble and happy kid.

• 30:39Marcus Parks?

  Yep. He had what we call the drummer's personality.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  So Billy Murcia, who is from Bogota, Colombia, and the same age as Sylvain at this time. He moved to America with his family just a year before. They moved to Jamaica, Queens. And that's actually where he and Sylvain would spend countless afternoons jamming together in Murcia's attic. Billy's parents were very supportive of all their kids' dreams. Even when Billy said, "Mom, Dad, I'm gonna be a drummer." And they said, "Great."

• 31:09Marcus Parks?

  It's a hard thing for a parent to say yes to.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. They're like, "Feel free to practice. It'll be loud." That was really kind of them.

• 31:16Marcus Parks?

  It was.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  But then again, Billy also didn't have a drum kit back then. Like, he just had one snare drum. And Sylvain had a simple acoustic guitar that Sylvain's family, his dad finally got him a real guitar.

• 31:29Marcus Parks?

  No more oud.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, the oud probably, he probably just chucked it off the passenger boat they were on on their way to Paris or something. Oh, there it goes. There it goes. But that guitar, actually, it lasted as long as the oud, I think, because before long, Sylvain got his hands on an electric guitar and a five-watt amp with a 12-inch speaker, which meant Sylvain and Billy became too loud for Billy's parents' household. So they moved their, what they call headquarters, to the basement parking garage of Sylvain's apartment building. They could play there all day with no one bothering them. So it was great.

• 32:12Marcus Parks?

  It's necessary. You truly don't know how bad two 14-year-olds who barely know how to play guitar and drum sound. It's awful.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 32:20Marcus Parks?

  I was one of those 14-year-olds. It's really bad.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  But their headquarters was also not that great. The fumes of the car mufflers. They're like, are you, are you dizzy too? The lack of heating, the stopping and moving over any time a car would enter the parking lot. Car, car, kinda thing. It wasn't sustainable. So eventually, they were able to move their headquarters all, one more time, to Billy Mercia's new house, which was bigger, lots of room for borders. That's what his parents would do for extra income. They would actually rent out rooms in their big house in Queens, which had a big-ass basement as well. And it was there that Sil and Billy would crank up that five-watt amp and play as hard

• 33:05Speaker 01

  and as loud as they could, fingers bleeding and all, to just one song, one song, over and over again. Wipeout.

• 33:15Marcus Parks?

  Specifically by The Ventures.

• 33:46Marcus Parks?

  Now, The New York Dolls would later become known as one of the most fashion-forward bands in history. But this was not an affectation that The Dolls cynically used to set themselves apart from the rest of the groups in New York. They weren't like, for example, Kiss, who we'll get into in the second episode.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  They were a jean jacket band when they started.

• 34:04Marcus Parks?

  They were.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Unless we forget.

• 34:07Marcus Parks?

  Well, instead, all the members of The Dolls had their eyes on fashion from a young age, because for them, fashion was another way to express themselves and, of course, if we're being honest, to attract girls. Billy Mercia and Sil Sylvain, following the more outlandish trends of 1966, would go down to Greenwich Village when they were still in high school just to hang out, wearing polka-dotted shirts, checkered pants, and beetle boots. They looked fucking ridiculous, because they would usually wear almost identical outfits.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Yes. I loved how they made their pants so tight that they would stick their pants, like, they would put them inside out, right? And then they would tailor it really, really tight and then put it right back on and you would have to peel it off.

• 34:49Marcus Parks?

  Well, before long, Billy and Sil were designing their own clothes when they couldn't find what they wanted in stores. This is fucking DIY in 1966. Billy's sister and her girlfriends helped them sew their designs, while Billy's mom gave in as well and knitted them, whatever they wanted knitting, because they were really big into knits. But Billy and Sil weren't the only fashion-forward kids at their high school. They noticed another kid out there that was of a similar style to themselves, although this kid was getting far more attention from the ladies.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Oh, was it Bob Seger?

• 35:22Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. He was putting on some night moves.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Oh, nice.

• 35:27Marcus Parks?

  With his jet-black hair, this kid, birth name Johnny Gonzalez, was about as Italian as they come. Queens through and through, in all the best and all of the worst ways. History, however, would know this kid better as Johnny Thunders, eventual lead guitarist for The New York Dolls and one of punk's greatest guitar heroes.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  That song, if it isn't obvious, is called Johnny Thunder.

• 36:48Marcus Parks?

  Yep.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  By The Kinks, 1968. Just one, just one thunder, though.

• 36:53Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, only one, yeah, singular thunder. It was Johnny, apparently, who thought to put the S on it. That was after he already went through Johnny Volume, not a good alias. Makes him sound like he runs a stereo store in Queens. Johnny Volume Stereos, come on! Now, Johnny Thunders was, to put it lightly, a complicated character. As Ivan, my former bandmate and Long Island native, put it, Johnny checked every box that Italian-Americans like my friend Ivan tried to avoid, like racism, domestic abuse, and surprisingly, considering the style of The New York Dolls, quite a bit of homophobia. But if you take Johnny Thunders out of The New York Dolls' equation, you take The New

• 37:37Marcus Parks?

  York Dolls out of rock and roll history completely. And it'd be a damn shame if the story of The Dolls went untold and their music went unheard, just because one of their members was a bad person who did and said shitty things.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, Johnny Thunders is a shithead.

• 37:53Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Who did and say and do bad shitty things. You're totally right.

• 37:58Marcus Parks?

  Very bad.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  But he, as you said, like, he is important to this story, so we will continue in the story on what he contributed.

• 38:04Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Because the thing is, what he contributed the most, as Sylvain, Sylvain said, like, what he lacked in, let's say, musical prowess, was, was that he had, well, some sort of talent. He had looks, charisma, that it factor that made him a rock star. And Marcus, you told me once that Johnny Thunders is like a siren. And I, and I get that. A siren, like, from the ancient Greek story, The Odyssey, you know? Bewitching, but dangerous.

• 38:33Marcus Parks?

  Very much so.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Bewitching.

• 38:35Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, whether, you know, you're gay, straight, man, woman, there is something captivating about Johnny Thunders, like, just about his look. And people talk about it again and again, like, you just saw him and you're drawn to him, for some reason or another. Who the fuck knows why? But his, and it's not just his style that made him so good. I think it was one other member of The New York Dolls, I can't remember who said it, but they said that Johnny's, Johnny Thunders' guitar sounded like a dinosaur screaming in the jungle. And I think that was such a brilliant way to put it.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  How anachronistic. Yes. So this, yeah, so this dinosaur bewitching siren, right? We would call him Johnny Thunders. A quick bio, he was born and raised in Queens. Queens, baby, by the way. He was an altar boy at their local Catholic church, very Italian-American kid, like you said, but as far as school went, he hated it and school hated him back.

• 39:34Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  He did terribly in school. He got expelled from a few of them, I think, at least more than two. And, but that was okay with Johnny, because he loved playing baseball and he was pretty good. His dream was to become a professional baseball player like his hero, Mickey Mantle.

• 39:50Marcus Parks?

  Ah, the Yankees, oh, you didn't go for the Mets?

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Exact, oh, no, no. Mickey Mantle, by the way, is not just a guy named after a bar. He's, he was, he famously played for the New York Yankees.

• 40:02Marcus Parks?

  Yes.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  And won seven World Series champions, oh, wait, championships, between 1952 and 1962. And he's a Libra. Okay, that's all I know about Mickey Mantle.

• 40:14Marcus Parks?

  All right, good.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  That's all that Wikipedia would tell you. But back to Johnny playing baseball as a kid. He would train every day, and according to him, Johnny was scouted by the Philadelphia Phillies, the Boston Red Sox, and the newly relocated L.A. Dodgers. I don't know if any of this is true, but I did hear that the kid could play.

• 40:32Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  But then came the day that Johnny quit baseball altogether during the Junior Baseball League tryouts. And there was supposedly a rule that the players needed a parent or a guardian to be present for these tryouts. But unfortunately for Johnny, he was raised by a single mother who worked two jobs just to make ends meet, so he couldn't have anyone come. His dad had left the family when Johnny was just a baby and just kinda sorta popped up in his life here and there. He was what you call a deadbeat father, right? So, but according to Sylvain's book, Johnny's dad was actually supposed to be there at the tryouts that day as his guardian, but his dad never showed up. So it must have been hard to deal with that kinda disappointment.

• 41:17Marcus Parks?

  Sure, yeah. They say that was sort of the beginning of Johnny Thunders', his sort of like fuck-it attitude. Like, I'm not gonna care about anything.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I quit, I quit, whatever.

• 41:26Marcus Parks?

  I quit, whatever, yeah.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  So, but lucky for Johnny...

• 41:29Marcus Parks?

  Birth of a shithead, they say.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Yes. Lucky for Johnny, though, he had an older sister, who, she took care of him when their mom was working. She doted on him, spoiled him rotten, they say. But most importantly, she introduced Johnny to her favorite music of all time. The girl pop groups of the early 1960s, they're all big fans. And that's when Johnny Thunders started getting, really getting into music. He would borrow his sister's records and listen to The Crystals, The Shifans, The Shangri-Las, and the Angels.

• 41:59Marcus Parks?

  Yeah!

• 42:00Speaker 01

  He loved The Angels.

• 42:01Marcus Parks?

  I loved Angels so much.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Maybe because it sounded like a baseball team.

• 42:04Marcus Parks?

  It was, the California Angels.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Oh, they are a baseball team. Well, these Angels, not the California Angels?

• 42:11Marcus Parks?

  Yep.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  Okay, they had a hit song at the ti, not the baseball team, The Angels from the 60s, they had a hit song at the time called "My Boyfriend's Back."

• 42:20Marcus Parks?

  And you're gonna be in trouble.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  He went away and you hung around and bothered me every night. And when I wouldn't go out with you, you said things that weren't very nice. My boyfriend's back and you're gonna be in trouble.

• 42:42Marcus Parks?

  If anybody in Los Angeles wants to start a girl group, I know how to play all these songs on drums. They're like my favorite things to play.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  That's great. I can't, uh, okay. All right.

• 42:54Marcus Parks?

  I'm just saying.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  There's one, you know what? Never mind. Go for it.

• 42:57Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:58Marcus Parks?

  Well, you gotta have a drummer.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You know, a girl group usually has girls, but who are we to discriminate?

• 43:04Marcus Parks?

  Hey, hey, I'm talking about the singers and it wouldn't be the first time I was the drummer in a group that was otherwise all female. The Angenues.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  That's right. I forgot you used to be a girl.

• 43:14Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. And also remember, I, I believe Iggy Pop played, uh, back, backing, uh, drums for, uh...

• 43:20Marcus Parks?

  The Iguanas.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I think they even played for some of these, uh, girl groups of the time as well. So that's really interesting.

• 43:26Marcus Parks?

  I think they played a show with the, well, uh, the band. We'll get to here in a second.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  We'll talk about it in a second. Okay. So after baseball, Johnny is getting pretty big into music and soon he's rocking out to not just 60s girl groups. He's rocking out to cool guys like Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran.

• 43:44Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Okay. The epitome of teen rebellion in a black leather jacket, you know, that it was the coolest thing ever back then. And Johnny thought so too, because Johnny, he's a very stylish guy, just like the rest of the New York Dolls. Best dressed, best hair, most likely to become a rock star. Those are all superlatives that his high school yearbook should have said.

• 44:04Marcus Parks?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  And of course, best shithead. Of course, we forgot about that one. So before school, Johnny Gonzalez, AKA Johnny Thunders, would get immaculately dressed and put on a Gene Vincent record like this song. I love this song, "Bebopalula."

• 44:19Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  So teenage Johnny is in and out of school at this point, but as fate would have it, he briefly had what?

• 45:38Marcus Parks?

  It just sounds like, like just teenage Johnny. It sounds like you're like about to start singing a song. Teenage Johnny about to sing a song. Teenage Johnny going to high school. Teenage Johnny playing baseball. His daddy don't show up. Teenage Johnny.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Oh my God, that's good. You should, you should be in a girl group.

• 45:54Marcus Parks?

  I should.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Holy crap.

• 45:55Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  Okay. Never get on a motorcycle though.

• 45:58Marcus Parks?

  All right.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Cause you know what happens.

• 46:00Marcus Parks?

  I do.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Okay. So...

• 46:03Speaker 01

  No, Johnny, no, no. And also, you know, uh, rest in peace Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent, by the way.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  You know, it was, it was a what? Car collision.

• 46:15Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. Live fast, uh, die young, which definitely the, that, that was the order of the day.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, unfortunately. Uh, so teenage Johnny, uh, he, you know, as fate would have it, he briefly attended Newtown High School, where Sylvain and Billy were also students.

• 46:30Marcus Parks?

  Ah.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're all roaming the halls together. Sylvain said when he first noticed Johnny Thunders in the hallways, he couldn't help but notice how incredibly good looking Johnny was.

• 46:41Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  He really was. Uh, Sylvain described him in his, oh, what? He really was. I know he's an asshole. He's a racist, tall shithead. Yes, but he was.

• 46:50Marcus Parks?

  I know. It's just, I, I, I saw all of that get erased by you, like just by how cute he was. You're just like, he really was. He was really cute.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  I know.

• 47:02Marcus Parks?

  He's a siren. That's what I'm saying.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  But you know, when I look at him now though, I'm just like, no, doesn't turn me on.

• 47:07Marcus Parks?

  Well, you, you...

• 47:08Speaker 01

  Panties still dry.

• 47:10Marcus Parks?

  Good.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  Okay. But Sylvain, on the other hand, thought he was incredibly good looking. He actually described him in his memoirs as having sculpted cheekbones.

• 47:18Marcus Parks?

  He does.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Uh, painstakingly, uh, how do you say this? Coughed hair?

• 47:24Marcus Parks?

  Coughed, coughed.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Coughed? Hair? Okay. Really fancy hair. He also noticed that Johnny was constantly surrounded by beautiful girls from school. So one day at the cafeteria at lunch, Sylvain went up to Johnny to see if he could play an instrument, you know, anything. Because if Johnny was in the band with Sylvain and Billy, maybe a lot of girls would hang out with them, you know? They, they would all hang out together. That was their master plan.

• 47:51Marcus Parks?

  It all comes back to girls, always.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, duh.

• 47:54Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  But when Sylvain asked...

• 47:56Marcus Parks?

  It's rock and roll, yeah.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Right. Why did I hang out at skate parks at 15? This is what we do.

• 48:03Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  But when Sylvain asked him, Johnny said he didn't know how to play anything, but then he thought about it again and asked Sylvain, "Wait, how many strings does a guitar have?" And Sylvain said, "Uh, six, six strings." "Okay, so how many strings does a bass guitar have?" "Um, four, yeah, four strings." And then Johnny said, "Okay, I'll be your bassist." That must be easier, right?

• 48:26Marcus Parks?

  It is. It really is.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  He should have stayed in school. And that's when Johnny...

• 48:31Marcus Parks?

  How much is a harp? Is it a six string or the four string? That's why I do the four string.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  How many strings in an ood?

• 48:38Marcus Parks?

  I think seven.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  Oh, never mind. Okay. So that's when Johnny started coming over to...

• 48:43Marcus Parks?

  Actually, I think it's four. Actually, I think it's three.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  What?

• 48:46Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Okay. Wait, is that Rob? Rob? Where is he? I feel like I'm blind. Eleven strings.

• 48:54Marcus Parks?

  Wow. Yeah. It's like a lute.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. So it would, it would take the entire band of the New York Dolls to play one instrument. Wait. Okay. So Johnny started coming over to the Mercia's basement and jamming with Sylvain and Billy. And soon realized that the bass actually isn't that much easier at all. So being the rock god that he wanted to be, Johnny switched to lead guitar and told Sylvain, "Your rhythm guitar, uh, sorry, sucks to be you, but these are rock god rules and, you know, I got the best hair." So they jammed together for maybe a few weeks until Johnny forgot or got bored or got kicked out of school, which I think is right because soon he enrolled into Quintanos, you know, the performing arts school, uh, in Manhattan.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  And, uh, he was soon in a band called Johnny and the J-Walkers.

• 49:42Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Then they changed it to The Rain, like R-E-I-G-N, rain. So not confusing. But Johnny's band, they didn't last long, but they did get to record a demo, which is on YouTube. Uh, here's their song by The Rain, recorded in the winter of 1967 called "Zippered Apart."

• 50:03Marcus Parks?

  And give them, give them a little bit of leeway here.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, why not? These are teenagers.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  So that's no Gene Vincent or my boyfriend's back, but you know what? It's a start.

• 50:50Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  And you gotta start somewhere and that's a pretty good start.

• 50:53Marcus Parks?

  And it's really not that far off from the first New York Dolls album. It's really not. It's not that many years. Maybe six?

• 51:01Speaker 01

  Holy crap.

• 51:02Marcus Parks?

  You know, like something like that. It's, it's a very short period of time.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  That's right. That's a good lesson to learn. If your first attempt sucks, just give it like six, seven more years and you'll be there.

• 51:12Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  Maybe. I hope.

• 51:14Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. We can only hope, but it, yeah, it does show you like that's stick-to-itiveness, as they call it. Now, you mentioned Quintanos. Like it took me a long time to realize Quintanos wasn't like the cool pizza joint where everyone hung out at.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Or like right next to the Quiznos.

• 51:30Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. Yeah. Now, it was a school. It was behind Carnegie Hall in Manhattan. It was a high school for models, musicians and actors, kids on the entertainment track.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  Like a performing arts school kind of thing.

• 51:40Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. Like I think, yeah, New York has more performing arts schools now. Yeah. Amongst others, the former students at Quintanos included, uh, Bernadette Peters.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 51:49Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. Co-star of The Jerk, uh, Patty Duke.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  She, she did more than that.

• 51:53Marcus Parks?

  I, well, I mean, I would say what...

• 51:54Speaker 01

  Annie Get Your Cuddin' and she won Tonys for Broadway.

• 51:57Marcus Parks?

  That was fantastic. I would say our...

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Grey's Anatomy, the two-part series.

• 52:01Marcus Parks?

  A two-part episode?

• 52:02Speaker 01

  Episode arc.

• 52:03Marcus Parks?

  She was really good on that. Yeah. With the, um, the limo episode. She was in that.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  Okay. We're getting too far off the beach.

• 52:11Marcus Parks?

  But still, I would say our listeners probably know her from The Jerk. Uh, Patty Duke went to Quintanos. She, uh, Patty Duke, of course, co-starred in the 1960s cult classic Valley of the Dolls with none other than Sharon Tate. But most impressively, Quintanos was also attended by a singer who was part of a girl group that was, above all other girl groups, the favorite of every New York Dolls. The Queens girl group, the most Queens girl group that ever existed. The singer who went to Quintanos was Mary Weiss and her group was the toughest of all, the Shangri-Las.

• 52:49Speaker 03

  Is she really going out with him? Well, there she is. Let's ask her. Betty, is that Jimmy's ring you're wearing? Mm-hmm.

• 52:58Speaker 03

  Gee, it must be great riding with him. Is he picking you up after school today?

• 53:04Speaker 03

  By the way, where'd you meet him? I met him at the candy store. He turned around and smiled at me. You get the picture? Yes, we see. That's when I fell for the leader of the pack.

• 53:21Speaker 03

  My folks were always putting him down. Down, down. They said he came from the wrong side of town. What'd you mean when you said that he came from the wrong side of town? They told me he was bad. But I knew he was dead. That's why I fell for the leader of the pack.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  That song was number one in the music charts in October 1964. They had three top 10 records and 11 top 10 hit songs in the two years they were a pop group.

• 54:03Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  And they're from Queens.

• 54:05Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  I know, it's very important to mention that. Queens, baby. And they met in high school, just like the New York Dolls. Uh, you know, Mary Weiss, uh, the lead vocalist, uh, you know, after the Shangri-Las, uh, after their hiatus and everything, she went on to work at an architecture firm. She worked in specializing in commercial interiors in a building in downtown Manhattan. But then unfortunately, her career ended when the building she had been working on was gutted due to the September 11th attacks in 2001.

• 54:31Marcus Parks?

  Fuck.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Because her building was just one block away from the World Trade Center. That's tragic. Here's leader of the pack.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  Maybe we can actually do a room room. If it's funny though, if it's not, then don't do it. Alright, cool.

• 54:45Marcus Parks?

  Oh my god, yeah, Mary Weiss is, she's a very interesting person. She talked quite a bit in the later years about the Shangri-Las, but she is this like, "Oh my god, don't ask me about the Shangri-Las." The very like-

• 54:58Speaker 01

  Right, sit down for three hours.

• 55:00Marcus Parks?

  Yes. It's exactly what it was. Uh, but yeah, god, I fucking love the Shangri-Las so much. But Quintanos could not hold Johnny Thunders' attention any more than Newtown High. And at age 16, he dropped out of high school to more or less hang out in Central Park by day and immerse himself in the rock scene of 1967 New York by night. Bouncing between the Action Club in Long Island and the newly opened Fillmore East, where at the time, friend of the show Alan Arkish was actually working as a ticket taker.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:32Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. Johnny saw phenomenal performances from British bands, specifically, I mean, of course, he saw The Kinks, but he also saw The Rolling Stones, who were reworking American blues into something harder, faster, and younger. But because Johnny and his friends were fearless and brazen, and because rock stars were far more apt to socialize with teenagers in the 60s and 70s, well, the 80s and the 90s and the 2000s, let's just say until COVID, Johnny actually ended up hanging out with a slew of musicians who are now legends.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  They were a lot more accessible that, back then.

• 56:07Marcus Parks?

  Far more.

• 56:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:08Marcus Parks?

  Thunders drank beer in Rod Stewart's hotel room at the Newport Jazz Festival. He met Janis Joplin in the MC5, and he even saved a cigarette packet as a souvenir when he tracked down Keith Richards in Manhattan and spent a night drinking with him at the bar on 13th and 5th.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  What is he, a private investigator?

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 56:29Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, you could find him. He just had, like, that's the funny thing about the New York Dolls is like, they were kinda male groupies before they were musicians.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:36Marcus Parks?

  Now, The Rolling Stones would cast a long shadow over the New York Dolls throughout their career. And Keith Richards would, of course, be a huge influence on many members of the band, including Johnny Thunders. Let's hear a little bit of Keith Richards in which Johnny Thunders definitely, he listened quite closely to the song, let's say.

• 57:43Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. Now Johnny had always been a hip kid, but it was his girlfriend, Janis Cifasso, who amplified Johnny's look and made it more feminine. Johnny began wearing high heels, teasing his hair, and wearing women's blouses with sparkling vests and cowboy scarves, complete with makeup. And this is 1967. But Johnny was not the only glam-adjacent artist whose girlfriend was the brains behind his more feminine look. Mark Bolan of T-Rex, David Bowie, Brian Eno, all of them had their feminine styles kick-started by their significant others.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  I mean, it was so easy just to be like, can I borrow your eyeliner? Or more likely, where is my eyeliner? I can't find my eyeliner.

• 58:26Marcus Parks?

  I mean, really, most guys just need a girl to say like, "No, it's hot, go for it." Like, if you hear a girl tell you that, especially like 17, don't do anything. Now Johnny was doing this in the late 60s, when most of America was still wrapping their heads around bell bottoms and long hair on boys. That was still freaking people out. But while Janis effectively created Johnny's look, she was also the inspiration for what was, without a doubt, Johnny's greatest song, which he wrote when he was just 19 years old. See, Johnny's romantic life was, and this is putting it very, very lightly, eternally fucked up. And his relationship with Janis was just as tumultuous as all of his others. Some of his relationships, you might even describe as illegal.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, downright wrong, I would say.

• 59:16Marcus Parks?

  Yes, yeah, wrong. Yeah, we could also say that.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 59:18Marcus Parks?

  But his relationships were doomed by what Johnny's biographer called a volatile neediness. And so, inspired by a throwaway line from one of Johnny's favorite TV shows, The Honeymooners.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  I love The Honeymooners.

• 59:30Marcus Parks?

  Honeymooners is fantastic.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  Actually, well, actually, I don't know if it holds up as well. We're more I love Lucy people.

• 59:36Marcus Parks?

  We are. Inspired by that line, Johnny wrote one of the greatest breakup songs in existence a full 10 years before he actually recorded it. See, while Johnny Thunders had the heart of a bastard, he also had the undeniable soul of a poet, as some bastards do. And when he accessed the part of himself that was connected to the universe at large, he was able to write gorgeous, heart-wrenching tunes like this one. You can't put your arms around a memory.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  Put some beeswax in my ears. I can't help, I'm gonna go towards that quaff. Is it quaff?

• 1:01:50Marcus Parks?

  Quaff, yes. The siren gets you again.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  Yes, it does. So we are in the New York quaff, everyone.

• 1:01:57Marcus Parks?

  Now, while Johnny Thunders was working out his style with the guidance of his girlfriend Janis, his fellow future New York Dolls, Billy Mercia and Syl Silvain, were about to put their own stamp on fashion in the late 1960s. See, after Billy and Syl had fleeting success playing in a three-piece band inspired by The Stooges and The Who, they called it The Pox. They put "Catch the Pox" on all of their flyers.

• 1:02:23Marcus Parks?

  Their band fell apart sometime in 1968 after their guitarist fucked off to San Francisco. So Billy and Syl put music on pause for a bit and got day jobs at the hippest clothing shops in Manhattan. Billy got a job at a shop on St. Mark's Place called Grizzly Furs that specialized in what else but used furs. While Syl got hired at an ultra-hip clothing store that also sold knickknacks, bongs, what have you, just above Midtown, called A Different Drummer. And there, Syl played shopboy to the likes of Brigitte Bardot and the ultra-cool Janis Joplin. Janis Joplin.

• 1:03:40Speaker 03

  Hey baby. Everybody over at the Amblot Ballroom in San Francisco, baby.

• 1:03:48Speaker 03

  Everybody's hop, hop, hop, hop, Amblot, but I know.

• 1:03:53Speaker 03

  I can tell you the feel. Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:00Speaker 03

  Try, try, try, feel it, baby. Try, try, try, try, easy, try.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  Oh, man, I rock the air tambourine so hard when I hear that song.

• 1:04:24Marcus Parks?

  That's how cool Janis Joplin was. Like, you could hear, like, she barely said three words in that clip we just played, and still you're like, god damn, she's cool. Now, the shop located across the street from a different drummer, the place where Syl worked, that shop would play a far more important part in our tale today. That shop was a bizarre New York City institution that probably wouldn't have existed anywhere else in the world. You don't think so?

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  Okay, so, yes, Sylvain's clothing store, or the store that he worked at, was across the street from the New York Doll Hospital.

• 1:05:03Marcus Parks?

  Yeah!

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  Because, yes, a doll does need a hospital.

• 1:05:07Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  And actually, there are several specialized repair and restoration shops known as Doll Care Centers. Okay, Marcus?

• 1:05:15Marcus Parks?

  Okay, but are they Doll Hospitals?

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  Yes, actually, they are. One of the earliest ones was in Sydney, Australia, that opened the original Doll Hospital in 1830.

• 1:05:25Marcus Parks?

  Oh.

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  Literally called the original Doll Hospital. So, yes, there are many Doll Hospitals, okay? This doll needs an enema, kinda thing, and everything. Okay, now, this Doll Hospital, the New York Doll Hospital, was opened in 1900 and closed in the year 2009. Actually, I remember that.

• 1:05:43Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, I remember when it closed, too.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, I remember where I was when I first heard. Anyway...

• 1:05:50Marcus Parks?

  Well, that's what they say. You become a real New Yorker when you're able to say, "I know it used to be there."

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  Oh, my god, you're right.

• 1:05:55Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  And then the next thing was, "It's not like it was before."

• 1:05:58Marcus Parks?

  Yep.

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Anyway, back to Sylvain, working right by the Doll Hospital. Every time he'd pass by that big neon sign that said "New York Doll Hospital" on the second floor of an old brownstone building, he thought to himself, "Man, that's a great band name." Sylvain even said in his autobiography, "I knew it was the greatest band name of all time."

• 1:06:23Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  All it needed was the greatest band, really. And this is 1968. So Sylvain held on to that name for almost three years, until the New York Dolls actually formed. But we're gonna get into that very soon.

• 1:06:38Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, and what did you say? Who did you say had that thing where if you have a real... The Coen Brothers. "If you have a really good idea, write it down and put it in a drawer, and someday you'll come across it again."

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:06:48Marcus Parks?

  And that's what Syl Sylvain did with it. It was like, "That's a great fucking band name. I just gotta find the band." Now, as I said earlier, Billy and Syl have been designing their own clothes since high school. So when Syl was fired from a different drummer for missing work, he and Billy started selling their own psychedelic sweaters and wool bikinis, which were apparently massive in the late 60s. It was a big deal. They were inspired by the bright colors traditionally worn in Billy's home country of Columbia. Before long, Billy and Syl were selling their clothes to the coolest shops in Manhattan, like Jumpin' Jack Flash, Granny Takes a Trip, and Betsy Bunky Ninis.

• 1:07:22Speaker 01

  What? Wait, what?

• 1:07:24Marcus Parks?

  Betsy Bunky Ninis is actually a very important clothing store in Manhattan. That one was...

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  Is that near the Yuvillea, or...?

• 1:07:31Marcus Parks?

  It was owned by legendary designer Betsy Johnson.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that's right. Okay, yeah.

• 1:07:36Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, Betsy Johnson. She's the one who designed the outfits for the Velvet Underground and had, in the process, married John Cale of the Velvet Underground.

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  In the process of the, what, designing their outfits? Was Betsy Johnson hemming Lou Reed's pants while she was walking down the aisle?

• 1:07:51Marcus Parks?

  No, no, I mean that she had met them to design their outfits, and then while she had designed their outfits throughout the year, she got to know John Cale, and eventually the two of them got married.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  You're telling me this like we didn't do a whole series on the Velvet Underground?

• 1:08:04Marcus Parks?

  You're the one who's being purposely obtuse about my writing.

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  I am very purposely obtuse. Put that on my tombstone. No, that is true. Lou Reed got mad at her because she didn't hem his pants right.

• 1:08:15Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  But then again, Lou Reed gets mad if you don't look at him right.

• 1:08:20Marcus Parks?

  And Betsy Johnson was also a judge on Drag Race.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  That's true. No, she's legendary.

• 1:08:26Marcus Parks?

  She is.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  And one thing John Cale said, even though their marriage didn't work out, was that "She was the hardest-working, most motivated, ambitious woman without being a total, complete bitch. Really nice person. But she worked her ass off every single day, and it paid off." And my hat's off to Betsy Johnson, by the way.

• 1:08:46Marcus Parks?

  Indeed, and Syl...

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  And her clothes are too expensive, though.

• 1:08:48Marcus Parks?

  Way too expensive. But Syl Sylvain and Billy Mercia, Betsy Johnson was the type of people that they were selling their clothes to. They were being taken very seriously in the fashion world. And eventually, Billy and Syl's fashion venture was successful enough to need a name. So they took a phrase from the movie poster for the ultra-cool satire Putney Swope and called it "Truth and Soul." Here's something from the soundtrack of that movie, just to kinda show you how fucking cool it was. These guys had taste. Putney says the boomin' sixth girl is got to have soul!

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  You can't eat in the air conditioner.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  Yes, that movie Putney Swo... Swope, sorry. Directed by Robert Downey Senior.

• 1:10:23Marcus Parks?

  Yep.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  Who dubbed the voice of a black man in this film as a satire. We haven't seen it yet, but apparently it is a Criterion Collection? You said the George Lucas Foundation actually restored this, and it is apparently a very important piece of art, of film. We haven't seen, I haven't seen it yet.

• 1:10:43Marcus Parks?

  Well, I know. I mean, it was sampled in a ton of hip-hop songs. Like, I mean, it was sampled as far back as, like, 1985, Putney Swope was. De La Soul sampled it, I think, in "Three is the Magic Number." It's a, you know, it's cool, it's what you call a cool movie.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  All right, we gotta watch it before we make any other opinions on it.

• 1:11:05Marcus Parks?

  I just know it's respected. Now, by 1970, Syl and Billy were earning $5,000 for every fashion line they put out.

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  $5,000.

• 1:11:16Marcus Parks?

  I mean, hey, it was serious money in Wayne's World time, but this is 1970. $5,000 is so much money in 1970.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  $5,000 today. I mean, like, give me $5,000. That's, wow!

• 1:11:27Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, but running a business at the age of 19 is a massive drag, especially during one of the most simultaneously exciting and terrifying times in American history to be young. 1960, 1970.

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good point. It's, oh, god, it's such a drag having a successful business as being an immigrant in this new country and actually succeeding. Oh, gosh, I should go get high and fuck off to Europe.

• 1:11:50Marcus Parks?

  And that's exactly what they did.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  Well, fuck.

• 1:11:54Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, it's a matter of you're an immigrant or successful or anything. Being 19, you don't wanna fill out order forms. You wanna go get high and party. That's what they did. And after making a particularly big sale, Billy cashed out his side of the business and headed to Amsterdam. And Syl followed a few months later in the summer of 1970, but not before stopping off in London for a purchase that would change Syl Sylvain's sound completely. See, even though they were into fashion, Syl was still a guitarist at heart. And in London, Syl bought a Marshall Stack amp, which, you know, today, I could literally get a Marshall Stack amp delivered to my doorstep by tomorrow. But in 1970,

• 1:12:37Marcus Parks?

  a Marshall Stack was an exceedingly expensive piece of equipment in America. In England, not so much. So, and Syl had wanted a Marshall Stack ever since he'd seen Hendrix using one a few years earlier. And as it turned out, it was an exceedingly wise purchase, because Syl's Marshall Stack that he paid to have shipped back to America, it would do wonders to beef up the New York Dolls' sound when they started playing the Clubs of New York in due time.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  Yes, but the Marshall amps weren't the only thing that would help the New York Dolls get to the next level. Because this is the time of the beginning of glam, right? Glam rock and pop and everything in between. And it was lucky, or let's say, serendipitous, that Sylvain was in London in 1970, when he got to watch a performance at the legendary Roundhouse venue, which we should talk about soon.

• 1:13:28Marcus Parks?

  We will.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  And he got to see one of the coolest shows ever, one of the masters of glam, Mark Bolan.

• 1:13:37Marcus Parks?

  Yeah!

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  That was Ryder White Swan, which I don't recommend. Released in March 1970 by Mark Bolan's band Tyrannosaurus Rex, who's just about to become T-Rex. Mostly because their manager, Tony Visconti.

• 1:14:48Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  Remember that name?

• 1:14:49Marcus Parks?

  Oh, yeah. Tony Visconti, he's the man who made Bowie.

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  Exactly. Tony Visconti was Mark Bolan's manager at the time and his producer. He was tired of writing out the tyrannosaurus part in their calendars and promotional stuff. It's annoying. Even the dinosaur goes by T-Rex. Right? So they changed it to T-Rex very soon after that. But anyway, Mark Bolan was essentially T-Rex. I mean, they were a duo. It was just Mark Bolan and a bongo drummer hippie named Steve Peregrin Took.

• 1:15:20Marcus Parks?

  God damn it.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  Not his real name. This song, this song Ryder White Swan is at the beginning of their glam period in 1970. But T-Rex did start, they actually started as a band in 1967 as a barefoot, cross-legged hippie duo writing songs about a wizard Mark Bolan met in the woods just outside of Paris, which is a real story according to Mark. Sometimes, sometimes he says it's real and sometimes he says, "Oh, you know, the media, they like to embellish things." By the way, it really, really happened.

• 1:15:55Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. Mark loved to play with the media and to tell really fucking bizarre stories about French wizards.

• 1:16:02Speaker 01

  Exactly. No, he would, and you know what? Who knows, who's to say that's not true?

• 1:16:07Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:08Speaker 01

  Actually, we are. It's not true. Anyway. I do believe Mark Bolan wrote his own version of Lord of the Rings.

• 1:16:14Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, without reading Lord of the Rings.

• 1:16:16Speaker 01

  I'm not kidding. Look it up. But by 1970, Mark had given up his whole Ravi Shankar-inspired hippie vibe and traded in his acoustic guitar for a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar. And in the following year, he released his biggest album, Electric Warrior.

• 1:16:35Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  Right? Which will definitely influence the New York Dolls in everything they do, especially with composing their music.

• 1:16:42Marcus Parks?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  But also his style, because Mark Bolan looked like a super hot rock star with white makeup and cosmic costumes. He was definitely like a ruffled shirt and velvet coat kinda guy, a very hot rock and roll Willy Wonka. Okay, hotter, much hotter.

• 1:17:01Marcus Parks?

  Much hotter.

• 1:17:01Speaker 01

  Yes. Also.

• 1:17:02Marcus Parks?

  He did look like Willy Wonka, though.

• 1:17:04Speaker 01

  But a hotter one.

• 1:17:05Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, yeah. Far hotter, yeah. Far more stylish Willy Wonka.

• 1:17:11Speaker 01

  Also, as a research note, by the way, Sylvain spoke about going to this concert in his autobiography. But it's also in Johnny Thunders's bio that he had gone to London with a press pass he had borrowed from a friend and saw T-Rex in 1969 at the Roundhouse where Steam Hammer opened, which is the same show that happened in 1970, and which inspired Johnny to find a band to join. But I'm not sure if that's correct. But then again, who cares? They all loved Mark Bolan the moment he went electric and they never looked back. Come on, check out this banger of a song. This song will make you have sex, even if you're alone.

• 1:18:39Speaker 01

  Okay, so Sylvain leaves London super inspired. Then he goes to Amsterdam and sees The Who in concert in 1970. But most importantly, actually, he found Billy Murcia. Billy was busking on the street where he, they actually ran into each other because Amsterdam, Amsterdam is actually not that big of a city.

• 1:19:01Marcus Parks?

  It's not.

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  So they, they, they ran into each other, they hugged, and then they just kept traveling around Europe together until they got busted, of course.

• 1:19:09Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  So they were back in London when the police raided the hostel they were staying at. The cops were looking for a couple of Americans who were illegally shipping hashish back to the States. The cops went to every person and asked them if they were American. That's pretty much how they were gonna bust them, right? And Sylvain stupidly said, "Yes."

• 1:19:28Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  Oh, God, why? And, and when they found a little hashish in his pocket, he spent a few days in jail. But Billy was smart and said, "No, no, señor. No, no, no entiendo inglés. ¿Qué es hashish?" Remember, Billy is Colombian.

• 1:19:46Marcus Parks?

  From Bogota.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  Yes, that's right. Anyway, after Sylvain got out of jail, they were escorted to the airport and placed on a flight back to New York City. So that was the end of their trip, but at least he got those Marshall amps.

• 1:19:58Marcus Parks?

  He did. And that was the most, it was, he got the Marshall amps, he saw T-Rex, he saw The Who. I mean, it was a hell of a few months. Now, it's around this time that the future lead guitarist of the New York Dolls, he decided that Johnny Gonzalez wasn't the coolest name in existence. He's right. It's a terrible name. Johnny replaced the Gonzalez with Thunders. Either after a comic book cowboy of the same name or after the classic we played earlier from The Kinks, put the S on it. And thus, he created one of the best rock and roll names in history. And with this new name bolstering his confidence, Johnny eventually hooked back up with Billy and Sil, and they all became regulars at a bar down in the village called Nobody's. The future Dolls had been drawn to Nobody's

• 1:20:41Marcus Parks?

  because by 1970, this had become one of the coolest rock and roll hangouts in New York City. Night after night, Johnny, Billy, and Sil would watch as rock royalty, like Rod Stewart, Jimmy Page, or Robert Plant would walk in and hold court with the ladies at the bar. One time, they said they even saw Iggy Pop there, although they said Iggy just sat there looking sad for a few hours. Nobody talked to him, and he just left alone.

• 1:21:07Speaker 01

  Oh, man, that is such an Iggy Pop story.

• 1:21:09Marcus Parks?

  I think I've read that story, like, I've read that story many times.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  We talked about that in The Stooges many years ago. Our first series was on The Stooges, and for a little while there, he was a bit of a joke.

• 1:21:20Marcus Parks?

  He was, yeah.

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  In the 70s.

• 1:21:22Marcus Parks?

  In the early 70s, before The Idiot, yeah.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, before he went to Berlin, you know, and, and did his David Bowie boot camp.

• 1:21:30Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:21:31Marcus Parks?

  But that's all to say that Nobody's was the first hangout spot for the band that would become The New York Dolls, a spot that would become part of their identity. It would also be where they would interact with one of their other future members for the first time.

• 1:21:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:21:44Marcus Parks?

  As a friend remembered it, Johnny Thunders was tripping on acid at Nobody's one night when a blonde, six-foot-tall monster came lumbering in wearing huge platform boots. And the first thing that Johnny's acid-addled brain had was that Frankenstein had just arrived. He's like, "He fucking knows I'm high, man. Frankenstein's here."

• 1:22:07Speaker 01

  Footsteps, footsteps.

• 1:22:10Marcus Parks?

  It was, of course, not Frankenstein.

• 1:22:12Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:22:12Marcus Parks?

  Rather, this lumbering, gentle giant on platforms was Arthur Killer Kane, future bassist of The New York Dolls. Now, Arthur represented the northernmost borough, the Bronx. He'd been a straight A student and a bit of a loner growing up, and he was so quiet that he was given the ironic nickname of Arthur Killer Kane. But after Arthur's mother died when he was 17, he began to rebel by drinking, smoking pot, and of course, sniffing glue. Eventually, though.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  Why, of course?

• 1:22:44Marcus Parks?

  Because that's what all these guys did.

• 1:22:47Marcus Parks?

  They all sniffed glue. It was big in the outer boroughs.

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:51Marcus Parks?

  Some of them even wrote songs about it.

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  Oh, that's right, that there's that one song called, what was it called?

• 1:22:57Marcus Parks?

  Now I want.

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  No, it's called Sniffing Glue.

• 1:23:01Marcus Parks?

  Eventually, though, Arthur picked up a guitar, and in order to avoid getting drafted into the Vietnam War, Arthur enrolled at Pratt College to study, of all things, and I think he just picked it at random, hotel management and food science. But it was while Arthur was at Pratt that he and his high school buddy George, better known now in New York rock history as Rick Rivets, they got really serious about their band, London Fog with two G's. I will say, again, it's important to keep in mind, as we listen to this clip, with London Fog, it's more about heart here than it is about talent. They're trying real hard.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  So, when they recorded this, was someone wearing a wire? Or, like, was this on purpose?

• 1:24:29Marcus Parks?

  I think it was, they were playing a live show and somebody was just standing in the audience with a little microphone.

• 1:24:34Speaker 01

  Oh, they did that with the Velvet Underground, too?

• 1:24:37Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  As we all know. Okay, very cool. Well, I mean, this song, obviously, London Fog, they're very garage band-inspired.

• 1:24:44Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:44Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:24:45Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, Trogs.

• 1:24:45Speaker 01

  Exactly. The London Fog with two G's, named after a jacket or, I believe, raincoat company.

• 1:24:51Marcus Parks?

  It probably had two G's because of the Trogs.

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  No, no, it's because it was a raincoat or a jacket company.

• 1:24:57Marcus Parks?

  But the jacket company doesn't have two G's.

• 1:25:00Speaker 01

  How do you know that?

• 1:25:01Marcus Parks?

  Because I know it.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  Rob?

• 1:25:05Speaker 01

  We need a tiebreaker.

• 1:25:06Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, yeah, London Fog isn't spelled with two G's.

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  I know that, but the raincoat company.

• 1:25:10Marcus Parks?

  And I know the raincoat company, the raincoat company doesn't have two G's. I think they had two G's because Trogs have two G's and they sound like the Trogs.

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  The Trogs, what's the song?

• 1:25:20Marcus Parks?

  Wild Thing.

• 1:25:21Speaker 01

  (singing) You made my heart sing.

• 1:25:25Marcus Parks?

  And A Girl Like You is also an incredible, underrated 60's garage classic.

• 1:25:30Speaker 01

  Gotcha.

• 1:25:30Marcus Parks?

  Nope, one G, London Fog.

• 1:25:33Speaker 01

  All right, they must have changed it since 1970. They must have been like, that's stupid. Okay, you're probably right, yeah, you're probably totally correct. All right, so they were named London Fog with two G's after the Trogs. They actually did manage to get some gigs downtown at the Bitter End and Café Wa. By the way, shout out to Forte, doorman of Café Wa for, I don't know how long, I've seen him 10 years, but hey, all power to you. But back to Arthur and his best friend and bandmate, Rick Rivets, or who they called Big George.

• 1:26:09Marcus Parks?

  Big George.

• 1:26:10Speaker 01

  Yes, I know, this is, this is a very Robin Hood kind of thing, right? Okay, so, these guys, they were very influenced, as I said, by garage bands, blues bands, rock bands, or all of the above, which is pretty much the Yardbirds.

• 1:26:25Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:26Speaker 01

  So here's a song, it's a Bo Diddley cover, but a great cover with Jeff Beck playing guitar, and it's called, "I'm a Man."

• 1:26:35Marcus Parks?

  Nobody in this era of time covered songs like the fucking Yardbirds.

• 1:27:20Marcus Parks?

  This is, it's just like The Rolling Stones, you know, it's blues, but it's faster and it's harder and it's louder, and these guys are paying attention.

• 1:27:30Speaker 01

  Oh, totally, yes, definitely, and of course, Arthur and Big George are very much paying attention. I mean, Rick Rivets, right, that's what he would like to go by, they got to see the Yardbirds live when they came to Long Island, New York, to a venue called Action House.

• 1:27:46Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:47Speaker 01

  Which is very self-explanatory, very, very cool venue. I believe Kiss started there. When they were a blue jean band. So Arthur even got to hang out with the Yardbirds that night that they saw the show, and they also made damn sure to check out what shoes and clothes the Yardbirds were wearing. Arthur took notes. Then afterwards, he would hit the thrift shops and get, you know, these used leather motorcycle jackets, Philly ruffled shirts, silk scarves to wear, and some bright red boots.

• 1:28:21Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, I want to, I want to look just like all them fopish poppin' jeans I just saw.

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  Marty Craig would be shaking in his grave right now. Yes, so, Arthur Kane also had, just like the rest of the New York Dolls, a very, very good sense of fashion, you could say, at the very least.

• 1:28:45Marcus Parks?

  Yes.

• 1:28:45Speaker 01

  Because he was very big into, like, fabrics, like velvet and satin and looking damn fashionable for the time. Even if he got shit for it, he didn't care. He loved how he looked, especially wearing his platform boots when he was already like six foot four, which is gigantic for that time.

• 1:29:03Marcus Parks?

  That's why Johnny thought he was Frankenstein.

• 1:29:04Speaker 01

  I know. And it wasn't long until Arthur got the, you know, going to Europe to go shopping bug, like the rest of the New York Dolls, they all did this on their own separately, by the way, but like Sylvain and Billy, and actually, even Johnny Thunders went for a bit, as we said, he got a press pass and everything. Arthur's trip, though, ended quite abruptly. When he, this happened for real, he bought a motorbike at an outdoor market in Amsterdam, he drove it around like an idiot, he got pulled over by the cops, and when the cops noticed that Arthur's visa was expired, and that the motorbike was actually stolen,

• 1:29:47Speaker 01

  Arthur was promptly escorted to the airport and put on a flight back to New York City. These guys have already a lot in common.

• 1:29:55Marcus Parks?

  Yes.

• 1:29:56Speaker 01

  So, funny enough, Arthur and Rick Rivets met Johnny Thunders in the most meet-cute way, the most meet-cute rock and roll shady-ass way, to be honest. You see, Arthur and Rick Rivets, after they got back from Europe, they got day jobs. Rick as a postal worker and Arthur as a telephone repairman, but it was just way too boring for them. So one night, I don't know why, but one night, they were riding in their van downtown in the West Village, I'm sorry.

• 1:30:31Marcus Parks?

  In the West Village.

• 1:30:32Speaker 01

  In the Upper West Side, okay. But one night, they were riding in their van downtown in the West, I can't say it right.

• 1:30:39Marcus Parks?

  I want to wipe your windows, I'm the viper.

• 1:30:41Speaker 01

  I know, where are you from, the Upper West Side? Okay, all right, I gotta stop this, I gotta stop this. Okay, so one night, I don't know why, but they were riding in their van downtown in the West Village on Bleecker Street when they saw a really nice motorcycle and decided to steal it.

• 1:30:59Marcus Parks?

  I think the reason why is that everyone in New York City in 1970 was like a low-grade criminal.

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  Everyone? Like, literally, like, everyone?

• 1:31:07Marcus Parks?

  Many, many.

• 1:31:08Speaker 01

  Yoko Ono, everyone?

• 1:31:09Marcus Parks?

  Let's say many.

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. Okay, okay, anyway, really?

• 1:31:16Speaker 01

  Okay, so they, okay, so Arthur and Rick Rivets, actual criminals, they decided to steal it, and instead of trying to hotwire it, they decided to pick it up and load it into their van, but the problem was the motorcycle was way too heavy for them, so they only got the front half of it into their battered Volkswagen van, like, just the butt was sticking out the whole time, and it took them like a half hour to even do that. They were also very drunk.

• 1:31:47Marcus Parks?

  Couple of fucking goons.

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  And they were also looking very suspicious in front of everyone on Bleecker Street.

• 1:31:53Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, they got platform shoes on.

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  And trying to steal someone's bike. And so, yes, they were looking very suspicious, everyone's kind of stopping, like, what's going on, especially Johnny Thunders, who happened to be on Bleecker Street right in front of them outside a pizza parlor. And that's when Arthur Kane and Rick Rivets saw Johnny and recognized him from the Fillmore and nobodies, so they forgot about their crime that they were committing, and they walked over to Johnny Thunders to see if he, they wanted to play music with them sometime. And according to Johnny Thunders, he was just enjoying some pizza when two large individuals just started walking towards him in a menacing way, which scared Johnny enough into thinking, like, should I run?

• 1:32:38Speaker 01

  Oh wait, I'm wearing platforms, like, that won't work, and it doesn't, I tested that theory, it does not work.

• 1:32:43Marcus Parks?

  No, it's bad.

• 1:32:44Speaker 01

  No. But as Arthur and his buddy got closer, Johnny recognized them and was like, all right, those are the two giant Frankensteins who hang out where I hang out, and soon, introductions were made, and they made arrangements to jam together sometime. I don't know what happened to that motorcycle, but maybe it was destiny. You know what I mean? Destiny, destiny.

• 1:33:09Marcus Parks?

  No escaping that for me, destiny!

• 1:33:13Speaker 01

  Very important.

• 1:33:14Marcus Parks?

  Very, very important. Now, after Arthur's relationship with his father disintegrated, he moved into the Mercia home, out in Queens, because as you said earlier, the Mercias ran a boarding house, and Syl Sylvain, Billy Mercia and Rick Rivets, they were already living in the Mercia house. And before long, Arthur, Syl, Billy, Rick, and Johnny were playing in the Mercia family basement in the earliest incarnation of the New York Dolls, taking turns as lead singer, shouting over the noise. Syl, however, took an extended trip to the UK in mid-1971 and stayed there until the end of the year, but the band that would become the New York Dolls continued while he was gone.

• 1:33:57Marcus Parks?

  While Syl wasn't looking, Billy Mercia kind of sort of stole Syl's idea for the name of their fledging band, and while Syl was gone, the group started calling themselves The Dolls. Partly, this name played into the way they were dressing, which was already inching towards drag, but it's important to note that the way these guys looked on stage is the way they dressed to go to the fucking bodega. I mean, that is what Syl Sylvain would say, he said, "It would take us five hours to get ready to go to the grocery store." And it was a hell of a courageous thing to do in 1971, and they were doing it simply because that's how they liked to dress.

• 1:34:32Speaker 01

  I would love to be like, so, are these grapes, like, ripe? Or, what do you think? And completely in drag like they're a Kathy and Kids in the Hall sketch.

• 1:34:44Marcus Parks?

  Now eventually Johnny Thunders got tired of commuting all the way to Queens for rehearsal from his apartment in Alphabet City in Manhattan. What, what neighborhood in Queens was the Mercia family house? I actually don't know.

• 1:34:55Speaker 01

  They were in Jamaica.

• 1:34:56Marcus Parks?

  They were Jamaica, okay. Yeah, yeah. Fuck. Yeah, Alphabet City, Jamaica. It's gonna take a while. So Arthur tracked down a rehearsal space around the corner from the Natural History Museum on 82nd and Columbus. And while today that area is quite posh, I mean, where in Manhattan isn't after all.

• 1:35:12Speaker 01

  It is like totally like you can't even afford to step on anyone's sidewalk at this point, yes.

• 1:35:19Marcus Parks?

  You can't even afford to park there. But back then, 82nd and Columbus was the site of Rusty's Bicycle Repair Shop, which was owned by a surly old New York character named Rusty.

• 1:35:30Speaker 01

  May he rest in peace.

• 1:35:32Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, he's definitely dead.

• 1:35:33Speaker 01

  I'm guessing he's dead.

• 1:35:35Marcus Parks?

  Rusty, however, didn't trust the bands that he rented this rehearsal space to. So to keep the dolls from stealing Rusty's bikes.

• 1:35:43Speaker 01

  And you know what? He had good reason to, by the way.

• 1:35:46Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, Rusty was like kinda on point with this one. He would lock the entire band inside his storeroom to rehearse while he left for the evening, and then he would come and unlock the door when their time was up. What if there was a fire? They would all burn to death in there.

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  You see, some of the guys already tried stealing, remember? And some of them were selling drugs. I think Johnny Thunders was selling Quaaludes, you know, I mean, and also, by the way, I don't believe any of the New York Dolls ever got away with their crimes, ever. So it was very adorable and cute. And that's on Rusty's head.

• 1:36:22Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:22Speaker 01

  On Rusty's beanie head.

• 1:36:23Marcus Parks?

  Like I said, low-grade criminals.

• 1:36:26Speaker 01

  Yes. So, back to the early lineup of the Dolls. At this point, they're the Dolls. So we got Billy Murcia on drums, Rick Rivets on rhythm guitar, since Sylvain is still, you know, in England, having no idea they've gone ahead and started a band without him, like you said. Arthur Killer Kane on bass guitar. So Johnny Thunders got lead guitar and even did some vocals for a lot of their songs at this time. And this is around October 1971, when Rick Rivets brings his cassette player to record a demo that they would call "The Actress Tapes," which is supposedly their first band name, but that's not true. They were already the Dolls by this point.

• 1:37:07Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:07Speaker 01

  Yes. So these songs, they recorded at a rehearsal at Rusty's Bike Shop. These were original songs, mostly written by Johnny Thunders. Like this one called "That's Poison."

• 1:38:26Speaker 01

  You know, maybe I'm gonna crash my boat into the rocks. No, I'm kidding. Cause honestly, it is not easy to start, and it is always good to just try and just get it out there, no matter how much it might suck, or, you know, or whatever. But it doesn't even suck that bad.

• 1:38:42Marcus Parks?

  It really doesn't. I have heard and played far worse.

• 1:38:46Speaker 01

  Exactly. Put it on the new whatever compilation, Carolina Dogle. It doesn't suck that bad.

• 1:38:52Marcus Parks?

  And as rough as that is, I mean, you can still hear, you said it in the break, you said, you can still hear Johnny Thunders in that. I agree completely. You can hear the, you can hear the signature Johnny Thunders guitar, of course, his voice, nobody sounds like him. It shows promise. And because Johnny Thunders obviously wasn't a strong singer just yet, as you just heard, he decided to focus on guitar. So the Dolls went searching for a real singer. And through a former tenant at the Mercia house, they found a guy who had moved to Manhattan from our final burrow of the evening, Staten Island. This guy's

• 1:39:31Marcus Parks?

  name was David Johansson. And once Johansson joined as one of the greatest frontmen of the 1970s, the song you just heard, "That's Poison," it became the classic New York Dolls track, "Subway Train."

• 1:40:49Marcus Parks?

  Yes! And that's where we'll pick back up next week with the story of David Johansson and the formation of the early 70s New York City scene that the Dolls helped create with David as their new lead singer.

• 1:41:02Speaker 01

  Yes. I mean, I'm very excited. I mean, this is just the beginning.

• 1:41:05Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, it really is. I mean, next week, we're gonna be getting into so many different avenues in New York City. We're gonna be getting into Jackie Curtis, gonna be getting back into Max's Kansas City one more time.

• 1:41:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:16Marcus Parks?

  You know, we're gonna be getting into, you know, the fucking, the Mercer Arts Center, you know, like, there's, and there's so many great characters, like Suicide shows up, you know, everybody's here. Andy Warhol shows up. Everyone is in the next episode. And then it's very sad for a bit. And then it gets fun again.

• 1:41:32Speaker 01

  It's really fun again, you know, like, like every rock and roll story of the 1970s, perhaps. But first of all, I would like to give a very big thank you to Patrick Fisher, our assistant researcher and co-producer of No Dogs in Space. And a thank you to Kelsey Netzer for all her help. And a big thank you to Rob Oakey for recording and editing this episode. He did a fucking fantastic job.

• 1:41:55Marcus Parks?

  Thank you, Rob.

• 1:41:56Speaker 01

  We have t-shirts in men's and women's sizes.

• 1:42:00Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, we got two different, two different designs.

• 1:42:03Speaker 01

  Three.

• 1:42:03Marcus Parks?

  Three, yeah. Oh, yeah. You can find those at lastpodcastmarch.com.

• 1:42:08Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:42:09Marcus Parks?

  And don't forget to follow us on Instagram at @NoDogsPod. Go check out the stuff we're doing on YouTube. Just type in "No Dogs in Space." And if you have, let's say, a band, if you play music.

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  If you just make sounds.

• 1:42:23Marcus Parks?

  If you just make sounds, send us an email at [email protected] and show us your shit. Show us your music.

• 1:42:30Speaker 01

  We'd be honored to play at the end of our episode. We play a band at the end of every episode. Just anybody like who, who just sends it to us on the email, and we check it out, and we love it. We loved promoting this stuff. And just keep throwing it out there because, I mean, even if it doesn't get on there, we love hearing new music. So thank you so much. Thank you so much for your submissions, really.

• 1:42:56Marcus Parks?

  And I also wanna say, like, to all the people that have sent us emails saying that, you know, they started a band because they listened to the show, you know, I met a fantastic fan in Portland who said that they had moved to Portland because they, they heard this and decided like, fuck it, I'm gonna go play some music. Fucking, I can't tell you how proud I am of that and how much that means.

• 1:43:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I've also heard, like, similar things where, like, they, they started, like, basement shows and, like, their whole neighborhood, like, created a scene and everything, like, thank you.

• 1:43:29Marcus Parks?

  Thank you.

• 1:43:29Speaker 01

  Thank you. I mean, we are humbled. Humbled and thank you.

• 1:43:32Marcus Parks?

  Very much so. And our band of the week for our return is a bunch of Krot Rock-inspired weirdos out of Durham, North Carolina.

• 1:43:40Speaker 01

  Which is our favorite kind of people.

• 1:43:41Marcus Parks?

  Yes, they're called Voidword. They have a manifesto. I love a band with a manifesto. And this is what they said about the track they submitted. "This track is number seven of what will eventually be 11 versions of 'The Plowman.' It is the first track from Voidword's debut, the Knives EP. It was conceived as a companion to 'Occult Symmetry,' the two-part microalbum released on vinyl February 22nd, 2025. 'The Plowman,' 11th anniversary edition macro single, commemorates 11 years of heralding the void." Here's Voidword. Fucking love this shit. It's a nine-minute-long song. It's awesome. Bye, everybody. See you next week.

• 1:44:22Speaker 01

  Goodbye.

• 1:45:49Speaker 03

  Stars on the field, the flower and bells awake.

• 1:45:59Speaker 03

  However, our eyes meet, time stands still.

• 1:46:10Speaker 03

  And echoes ring through me to you.

• 1:46:21Speaker 03

  And when it returns, don't turn it down.

• 1:46:30Speaker 03

  Turn me on, blow my mind.

• 1:46:40Speaker 03

  I want it all, blow my mind.

• 1:46:52Speaker 03

  The sound, the feel, the burden of your body weight. Don't make me wait. I want it all, blow my mind.

• 1:47:56Speaker 03

  The sound is what's real, the flower and bells awake.

• 1:48:06Speaker 03

  The moment we come is the children's day.

• 1:48:17Speaker 03

  And echoes ring through me to you.

• 1:48:27Speaker 03

  And when it returns, don't turn it down.

• 1:48:37Speaker 03

  Turn me on, blow my mind.

• 1:48:47Speaker 03

  I want it all, blow my mind.

• 1:48:59Speaker 03

  The sound, the feel, the burden of your body weight. Don't make me wait. I want it all, blow my mind.

• 1:49:55Speaker 03

  Stars on the field, the flower and bells awake.

• 1:50:05Speaker 03

  However, our eyes meet, time stands still.

• 1:50:14Speaker 03

  And echoes ring through me to you.

• 1:50:23Speaker 03

  And when it returns, don't turn it down.

• 1:50:31Speaker 03

  Turn me on, blow my mind.

• 1:50:39Speaker 03

  I want it all, blow my mind.

• 1:50:49Speaker 03

  The sound, the feel, the burden of your body weight. Don't make me wait. I want it all, blow my mind.

• 1:51:06Speaker 03

  Turn me on, blow my mind.

• 1:51:15Speaker 03

  I want it all, blow my mind.

• 1:51:25Speaker 03

  The sound, the feel, the burden of your body weight. Don't make me wait. I want it all, blow my mind.

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