New York Dolls Album: “Return of the New York Dolls: Live from Royal Festival Hall, 2004 [DVD]”

If everyone who now claims to love the New York Dolls had actually bought their records back in the 70's, past and present members of the band would have been making big coin from royalties for the past 30 years instead of wallowing in relative poverty and obscurity. Admittedly, the Stooges unwittingly invented punk rock in and around the college town of Ann Arbor, Michigan back in the late 60's, but the Dolls brought it to art-form level with an injection (no pun intended) of heroin chic that would make Keith Richards blanch, influencing everyone from the Ramones to the Sex Pistols to Hanoi Rocks along the way. I've even seen photos of alt.country flavor-of-the-month Lucinda Williams wearing a Dolls t-shirt. It's your call whether she knows how to spell "irony."

In their heyday, the New York Dolls were fuelled by every substance known to man and while they never actually set the charts alight, they did to anything else that got in their way, as evidenced by the number of dead former members, which now doubles that of the living. To be fair, though, bassist Arthur "Killer" Kane's ticket was punched by complications from leukemia (shortly after this reunion show at the Morrissey-curated Meltdown Festival last summer) rather than anything in liquid or powder form, which is not to say his fringe of blonde hair was ever mistaken for a halo.

Obviously, the biggest question surrounding the reunion was whether Kane, David Johansen, and Syl Sylvain had the right to call themselves the New York Dolls without the late Johnny Thunders or, at the very least, the similarly mouldering Jerry Nolan on board. "Morrissey Presents..." answers that with an unqualified and resounding "yes" even before the end of set opener "Looking For A Kiss." To their eternal credit, Johansen and Sylvain bring a geniune sense of enthusiasm, pride, and mirth to the boards when they could just as easily have phoned everything in. The ever stoic Kane's emotions are a little harder to gauge lurking behind his Thunderbird, but he plunks away with what for him passes for a sense a purpose. One of the eerie things about watching this disc is that it's almost as if Johansen and Sylvain knew Kane's days were numbered, showering him with love, affection, and several smooches on the mouth and forehead. Somewhere, my old man is spinning in his urn.

Johansen's thinner now than I ever remember him - bordering on gaunt - but remains one of rock and roll's best front men ever, something that was mostly overlooked back in the days when he used to dress like a crack, er, Quaalude whore. Despite his career getting lost somewhere between those first two amazing solo albums ("David Johansen" and "In Style") and subsequent turns as Buster Poindexter (a move which broke my heart) and grizzled bluesman with the Harry Smiths, his star remains undiminished. He ain't too shabby on harp, either. The lines in his face are now starting to deepen perhaps in response to years of carrying around a set of lips which have now exceeded Jaggerian proportions, prompting my son to look up from the latest copy of Detective Comics and ask "Hey Dad, who's the old guy?" Later on I checked in the mirror for ear hair.

Sylvain anchors the proceedings, much like he did some 30-odd years ago, and provides comic relief by playfully razzing Johansen about being his lover. For my money, he was always the oddest member of the band (and with five guys like the Dolls, that's saying a lot), content to exist in the long shadows cast by Johansen and Thunders like Marc Bolan's kid brother. His talent as a player and songwriter shine brightly on those early post-Dolls solo albums, minor gems which are long overdue for digital upgrade. His cover of Thunders "You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory," which segues into "Lonely Planet Boy," is one of the highlights of this show despite making me tear up.

The set list draws from tried-and-true, lived-in anthems from the band's two studio albums which have always received heavy rotation on Planet Paull, like "Puss 'n' Boots," "Vietnamese Baby," "Pills," (yeah!), "Mystery Girls," "Trash," and "Personality Crisis." If you're a hopeless romantic like me, who still wants to believe in the power of rock and roll but deep down realizes it's all over but the shouting, the staggering roar these guys generate on stage is nothing short of triumphant, 90-some odd minutes of soul cleansing, purification, and - dare I say? - a near-religious experience. And to think that just last week, I couldn't even pronounce "hyperbole."

Complete and humble apologies are due to guitarist Steve Conte (ex-Company of Wolves/Crown Jewels) and Libertines drummer Gary Powell whom this scribe referred to in his Best of 2004 list as "ringers." In retrospect, outside of Walter Lure, it's hard to imagine anyone other than Joe Perry-lookalike Conte filling in for the hopeless Thunders. At times, he eerily seems to be channeling Thunders from the beyond but unlike his predecessor, remains upright, resists the temptation to refer to audience members as "douchebags," and makes less mistakes. He positively soars throughout this performance, hits his marks, and leaves the spotlight to Johansen, Sylvain, and Kane. He's my new guitar hero.

Powell looks death in the face and doesn't blink, completely unfazed at the prospect of spotting Nolan behind the traps and what he may lack in stage presence he more than compensates for in sheer sonic braun and a driving, compact, and unflinching timekeeping sense. Without Conte and Powell, it's easy to imagine this whole house of cards collapsing pretty quick.

It's probably a given that without an assist from Morrissey, who wrote a book about the New York Dolls before joining with guitarist Johnny Marr to create background music for running a warm bath and tapping a vein in The Smiths, we'd all (well, some of us) still be sitting around waiting and hoping for this reunion to take place, much like that long-promised new Stooges studio album which I'm going to give one more year before giving up hope on entirely. But it sure would have been nice if BMG could have seen fit to relegate Captain Bringdown's name to the back cover of this disc instead of the front and give the Dolls their moment in the sun for once in their sorry-ass lives.

With the death of Kane, the future of the Dolls' reunion juggernaut remains unclear, but if these guys roll into Detroit, I'll be the first in line - agoraphobia be damned!

I "got" the New York Dolls when they first came out. They were tongue-in-cheek showmen with a handful of some hot proto-punk songs, lots of attitude, and plenty of campy, outrageous costumes. Keith Richards saw them and said that they were the worst garage band he had ever seen - totally missing the point as that is pretty much what they aspired to be, if you included a good sense of humor. The group fell apart due to drugs, lack of rehearsals, and living the life of decadent celebrities before they had earned it (a friend of mine was showing old "Hullabaloo" films in his basement for a cover charge back in the seventies and David Johansen tried to get in for free, demanding that it was his right as a pop star. He was told he had to pay like everyone else. Johnasen stormed away.). The performances here are good - Dolls music does not require a lot of technical skills. Johansen looks - to be charitable - unwell.

There is something quite moving here on this disc. Arthur "killer" Kane seems to have found religion since the Dolls, and got a job with the Mormon church. He appeared to be very happy before he died. Johansen wrote a sincere, touching, and articulate eulogy for Kane. It turns out to be the high point of this disc package - an unexpectedly gracious and loving tribute on a disc devoted to the reunion of one of the more notorious bands from the last generation. Johansen deserves a tip of the hat for his gentlemanly gesture.