New York Dolls frontman David Johansen dead at 75 after revealing cancer diagnosis

Just last month, the punk musician asked fans for their help paying for his treatment and care

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David Johansen, who was the last surviving member of the seminal punk rock band the New York Dolls, has died at the age of 75.

Johansen — who later performed as his campy alter ego, Buster Poindexter — died Friday at his home in New York City, his stepdaughter, Leah Hennessey, confirmed.

The sad news comes less than a month after the frontman revealed he was living with stage 4 cancer and a brain tumor.

Hennessey had launched a fundraiser to help pay for his treatment and care.

On the site, Hennessey said Johansen had been receiving intensive cancer treatment for “most of the last decade.” In 2020, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor, which had caused further complications. Last November, he fell down stairs and broke his back in two places.

In a statement shared by Brooklyn Vegan, Johansen said: “We’ve been living with my illness for a long time, still having fun, seeing friends and family, carrying on, but this tumble the day after Thanksgiving really brought us to a whole new level of debilitation.

David Johansen poses for a portrait to promote the film ‘Personality Crisis: One Night Only’ in 202 (Invision)

“This is the worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. I’ve never been one to ask for help, but this is an emergency. Thank you.”

The New York Dolls were forerunners of punk and the band’s style — teased hair, women’s clothes and lots of makeup — inspired the glam movement that took up residence in heavy metal a decade later in bands like Faster Pussycat and Mötley Crüe.

“When you’re an artist, the main thing you want to do is inspire people, so if you succeed in doing that, it’s pretty gratifying,” Johansen told The Knoxville News-Sentinel in 2011.

Rolling Stone once called the Dolls “the mutant children of the hydrogen age” and Vogue called them the “darlings of downtown style, tarted-up toughs in boas and heels.”

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“The New York Dolls were more than musicians; they were a phenomenon. They drew on old rock ‘n’ roll, big-city blues, show tunes, the Rolling Stones and girl groups, and that was just for starters,” Bill Bentley wrote in Smithsonian Rock and Roll: Live and Unseen.

The band never found commercial success and was torn by internal strife and drug addictions, breaking up after two albums by the middle of the decade. In 2004, former Smiths frontman and Dolls admirer Morrissey convinced Johansen and other surviving members to regroup for the Meltdown Festival in England, leading to three more studio albums.

David Johansen and Bill Murray in ‘Scrooged’ (1988)

In the Eighties, Johansen assumed the persona of Buster Poindexter, a pompadour-styled lounge lizard who had a hit with the kitschy party single “Hot, Hot, Hot” in 1987. He also appeared in such movies as Candy Mountain, Let It Ride, Married to the Mob and had a memorable turn as the Ghost of Christmas Past in Bill Murray-led hit Scrooged.

In 2023, he was the subject of Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi’s documentary Personality Crisis: One Night Only, which featured a live Johansen performance filmed at Café Carlyle in New York City.

“I used to think about my voice like: ‘What’s it gonna sound like? What’s it going to be when I do this song?’ And I’d get myself into a knot about it,” Johansen told The Associated Press in 2023. “At some point in my life, I decided: ‘Just sing the (expletive) song. With whatever you got.’ To me, I go on stage and whatever mood I’m in, I just claw my way out of it, essentially.”

He is survived by his wife, the artist Mara Hennessey, whom he married in 2013.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press

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