The Sunday Round-Up: 27th July-2nd August (the New York Dolls, the Beach Boys, and the Strokes)

The New York Dolls are one of the most influential rock and roll bands in music, their gritty, rebellious attitude and androgynous sexiness helping to lay the foundations for punk and inspiring the likes of Joan Jett, the Ramones, Kiss, the Damned, Morrissey, the Sex Pistols, the Clash, David Bowie, and many more.

‘I always looked to England for inspiration, but the Dolls were one of the few exceptions,’ Joan Jett told the Guardian. ‘I saw them when I was 13 […] The music seemed really connected to the musicians playing it. Even at that young age, you could hear the difference between them and a super-famous act with a record company push behind them. They seemed genuine. At that point I was trying to learn how to play guitar. I hadn’t decided I was going to form a rock band, but seeing bands like them, I could relate […] I wanted to show that girls could play rock’n’roll, and it was hard to convince people. In school you were told that girls can’t play rock’n’roll – not because you couldn’t master the instrument, but because you’re not allowed. The Dolls represented a breaking of that norm: you can’t wear a woman’s dress? Watch me!’1

‘In November 1973, they did the Biba shows in London and I went to the first night,’ said the Damned’s Dave Vanian. ‘British [glam rock] bands were playing with the same image, but in a very cuddly way. They were dressed in the same clothes, but the Sweet seemed friendly, whereas the Dolls seemed to come out of some New York film where it was all flick-knives on the street […] They weren’t great virtuoso players, but they were as good as any band around […] At that time I wasn’t thinking of being a singer but they made me think I could do it. There was a moment where I thought: I’m not going to be in the audience, I’m going to be on that stage.’2

True to his word, Vanian co-founded punk band the Damned in 1976, just three years after that inspiring New York Dolls gig. Joan Jett, too, formed her first band, the Runaways, with drummer Sandy West a few years after seeing the nonconformist Dolls in action.

But how did it all begin for the New York Dolls, those maverick, gender-bending innovators who, in the words of Rolling Stone, ‘concocted a completely unique sound that fused together glam rock and proto-punk with attitude and a fashion sense borrowed from Sixties girl groups’3?

The band formed in 1971, the first line-up consisting of Johnny Thunders (guitar, vocals), Arthur Kane (bass guitar), Rick Rivets (guitar), Billy Murcia (drums), Sylvain Sylvain (guitar, bass, piano, vocals), and David Johansen (vocals, harmonica).

‘Johnny Thunders, Billy Murcia and I went to Newtown High School in Queens together,’ said Sylvain. ‘There were a few big hangouts back then. For example, every Sunday everyone would meet in Central Park at the fountain..’4

‘Everyone who was hip used to get dressed to the teeth and parade around near the fountain in Central Park,’ Kane recalled. ‘Before I knew him, I used to see Johnny up there with his girlfriend [Janis Cafasso]. They were pretty hard to miss because they dressed like Raggedy Ann and Andy […] Johnny was our singer in the beginning, and then at some point he said, “Listen, we gotta try to find a singer, ’cause it’s too hard for me to sing and play at the same time. It’s too much.” So we kept asking around, and we found someone who led us to David.’5

‘We’d see each other on St. Mark’s Place or whatever and think, “I wonder if that guy plays guitar,” said Johansen. ‘So then eventually we did get together. We were all pretty much dressed [androgynously]. Maybe a bit more hippie. I fell in love with Janis Joplin. I was crazy about her. But we were New York hippie […] We had so many clothes. We used to rotate them and give them away to other people. It was constantly changing. Most of the people who came to the Mercer lived in the East or West Village and we were like the neighborhood band. We were representing, I guess. Wild styles of dress.’6

As well as having a New York hippie fashion sense in common, the Dolls also shared the same motivations. ‘Well we all wanted to play music, and we wanted to do it with other elements,’ Johansen told Clash Magazine in 2009. ‘We wanted to make music, but we also wanted to have a philosophy and a show. We were all artistic and all wanted to express ourselves on as many playing fields as we could.’7

‘When we all started playing together, we knew none of us had the chops to join a better group,’ recalled Kane. ‘We all had been around the circuit in New York a bit, and everyone told us, “Oh, you can’t play, so we’ll see you later.” Same thing with me: “Oh, you suck! Go home and learn to play the bass.” We all had been told that. The group came together at a time when everyone had been pretty much rejected all around town. I spent almost a year in Holland in 1970, and I even spent time in England trying to get into a band. And everyone over there told me the same thing: “You don’t have the chops for this. See ya later!”8

Undeterred, the frequently rejected New Yorkers got together and began writing songs and building a local fanbase with performances at the Mercer Arts Center’s Oscar Wilde Room and the O’Casey.

‘Soon, word got out about them and the press was covering them like crazy,’ said Marty Thau who began managing the Dolls after seeing them at the Mercer. ‘Even the British press were writing about them. They were hot as could be; they were playing everywhere. And then we started talking to some record company people and we received comments like: “I like the band, but the lead singer sucks.” “I like the lead singer, but the band sucks.” “Are they transvestites?” “Are they drug addicts?”…

…So we decided that the American record industry was too conservative for the Dolls and opted to do a small tour of England. The main show was the Dolls opening for Rod Stewart [and the Faces] at the Wembley auditorium. All of a sudden, a group that never played before more than 350 people was onstage at Wembley in front of 13,000 people. The straight press slaughtered them, but the hipper music magazines were saying things like, “We have seen the future of rock and roll, and it’s the Dolls.” Soon everybody was trying to sign us. Atlantic wanted to sign us for $50,000, sight unseen. It looked like we were at the edge of brilliant success in Europe.’9

Sadly, while on their 1972 tour, the Dolls’ drummer, Billy Murcia, was invited to a party where he accidentally overdosed. Unconscious, Murcia was put in a bathtub with coffee force-fed down his throat in an ill-advised attempt to revive him. Instead, he died of asphyxiation, aged just 21.

‘They were terribly wounded over Billy’s death,’ recalled Cyinda Foxe who was briefly married to Johansen from 1977-78. ‘The cockiness was gone out of all of them, especially David Johansen, who was the most arrogant person I met in my life. It changed them.’10

Following Murcia’s funeral, the Dolls decided they had to keep going, eventually finding a new drummer in Jerry Nolan.

‘Jerry gave us a legitimate rock and roll sound’ Kane reflected. ‘He gave us the professionalism we needed to get a record deal.’11

The New York Dolls ended up signing with Mercury Records, and now had to find a producer….

Speaking with Rolling Stone in 2022, Johansen revealed ‘When we made the first record, nobody wanted to produce it because we had this reputation of being like banshees or something. Somebody said, “Well, Todd [Rundgren] will produce it.” Todd was like that guy who would record people in the cotton fields. Lomax. He just recorded what it was. It was like folk art. It wasn’t made to fit into a marketplace. It is what it is. And if people like it, that’s cool. But it’s not something you’re going in and thinking, “Oh, people are gonna like this.” If anything, it was unstressful knowing we were just gonna do what we do. We weren’t going to worry about having it be something else. We sound like we sound and we should the play the songs that are naturally coming out of us. And that’s what we did. Like a diary entry or something.’12

‘It was done in a week, man!’ exclaimed the Dolls’ soundguy Robert ‘Nitebob’ Czaykowski. ‘I remember going up to those sessions and thinking, Wow! They play every song three times and pick the best take and work on that!—which was kinda mind blowing, because back then, people used to do 15 or 20 takes to get the absolute take. I think Todd was smart enough to realize that he had to cop the vibey take. He could have drove them to death and it would have been a lame record. But the way he did it, I think that he captured something.’13

Rundgren was assisted by engineer Jack Douglas who recalls the recording of his personal favourite song from the debut album, ‘Personality Crisis’: ‘When they came into the studio with that, it was already an important song,’ Douglas says. "It was Syl who decided to add the piano — even at that time he was a very decent player. It definitely gave the song more edge, and we compressed the hell out of the piano just to give it even more excitement.’14

On its release, the New York Dolls’ debut sold moderately well, reaching no.116 on the US Billboard Chart, no.81 in Canada, and no.91 in Scotland. Music critics were divided. Some called it ‘innovative [and] brilliantly chaotic’15 and others compared it to the sound of lawn mowers16.

Love or hate the album (Douglas admits ‘[i]t sounds like it was made in a wooden box’17), it captured the band’s wild and raunchy brand of rock and roll that they had perfected onstage, putting fan favourites like ‘Subway Train’, ‘Personality Crisis’, ‘Looking for a Kiss’, and Bo Diddley’s ‘Pills’ on record for a wider audience to enjoy.

Now regarded as one of the most influential albums in music, a seminal punk record by a band that didn’t really consider themselves to be punk - ‘I don't really know what "punk" means,’18 said Johansen in 2023 - New York Dolls (1973) not only inspired musically but pyschologically too (Joan Jett and the Damned’s Dave Vanian being just two examples among many).

‘Basically the New York Dolls were a hit because they sold more influence than anybody else,’ said Sylvain. ‘If you could deposit influence into the bank, man I would be a rich son of a bitch!’19

Check out some more stories behind classic New York Dolls songs in this week’s Further Listening post…

‘One of the finest experiences in a studio that I had,’ said Jack Rieley of his time writing ‘Feel Flows’ with the Beach Boys’ Carl Wilson. ‘Carl put together a raw-bones concept and gave me a tape, I took it home and listened to it over and over. The lyrics started coming out of me: a reflection of the sensitive side of life. I’m so proud of them.’20

Rieley was the Beach Boys’ manager-come-co-writer from 1970 until 1973. Asked by Record Collector Mag how he started co-writing with the band, Rieley replied ‘It was a natural process. I was hanging out with Carl; he was over at my place a lot and I was over at his home on Coldwater Canyon. He kept asking me, “Jack, can you write some lyrics for my songs?” Writing with Dennis and Brian also happened in a very natural way.’21

‘Feel Flows’ was one of three tracks co-written by Rieley on the Beach Boys’ seventeenth studio album, Surf’s Up (1971) including ‘Long Promised Road’ and ‘A Day in the Life of a Tree’ (the latter of which was written with Brian Wilson).

As well as marking Riely’s first time as a lyricist, ‘Feel Flows’ and ‘Long Promised Road’ also represented Carl Wilson’s first major song contributions to the group. The youngest of the Wilson siblings had also been recently appointed the band’s official leader.

Speaking with Rolling Stone, Wilson meticulously (and rather matter of factly) described how he produced the wonderfully atmospheric ‘Feel Flows’…

‘I played piano first and then I played organ. I played piano twice, overdubbed it, and used a variable speed oscillator to make the track different speeds so that the piano would be a little bit out of tune, sort of a spread sound […] that makes the piano sound like the effect of a 12-string guitar, you know? When the two strings are at the same octave but just a tiny bit out of tune? you know that real ringing sound? […] And then I put the organ on and put it through the Moog at the same time, so that one side of the stereo had the direct organ sound and the other side had the return through the Moog synthesizer. It’s sort of like a vibrato, but the frequency changes, there’s a tone change, like a graphic tone…

Then I put on the bass, played the bass guitar. Then I put on the Moog for that part where the piano comes in by itself after the instrumental part, you know? Then we put on the bells, and a guy named Woody Thews played percussion on it, and I sang it. I put the guitar on about the same time. Then I think it was the next day Charles Lloyd came by and we did the flute and saxophone. And I might add, he heard it one time and then started playing, he started recording right away. It was really a thrill for me to have him play on it ’cause he’s a gifted musician. It was really great. And then the next session we did the vocals, the background part, and that was it.’22

Carl Wilson sang the lead on ‘Feel Flows’ with Brian Wilson and Bruce Johnston providing backing vocals.

Unfolding, enveloping missiles of soul
Recall senses sadly
Mirage like soft blue, like lanterns below
To light the way gladly
Whether whistling heaven's clouds disappear
Whether wind withers memory
Whether whiteness whisks soft shadows away

‘Feel Flows’ by the Beach Boys

Describing his somewhat cryptic lyrics (that many take to be a meditation on human consciousness), Rieley said ‘In Feel Flows there’s an awful lot of love-song material within the texture of the lyric. But there are other elements I brought into it. I have diverse interests anyway and they’re reflected in the lyrics. I was overloaded with compliments, especially from the Wilsons. Mike [Love] was sort of mystified by my lyrics and thinking, “Where the hell is Jack Rieley taking us?” This wasn’t just a comment on my lyrics but also in terms of career direction.’23

Love might have been mystified but, as the Guardian writes in their list of the Beach Boys’ 40 greatest songs, ‘‘Feel Flows’ [is] a total delight, a hazily psychedelic take on laid-back 70s west coast rock with a fantastic, surprisingly stinging guitar solo.’24 Its two-time use in Cameron Crowe’s 2000 semi-autobiographical film, Almost Famous, gave the song a new lease of life, introducing Carl Wilson’s flowing, psychedelic soundscape and Jack Rieley’s enigmatic lyrics to a whole new audience.

Share The Music History Club

‘Imagine you took a time machine into the future and found a classic album from way in the past and really liked it.’25

That’s how the Strokes’ frontman Julian Casablancas explained the brief for debut album Is This It to producer Gordon Raphael.

Raphael had recorded three songs (‘The Modern Age’, ‘Last Nite’, and ‘Barely Legal’) with the Strokes, and the demo, released on the UK’s Rough Trade Records, had gone down very well. NME made ‘The Modern Age’ their single of the week, and Rolling Stone was writing about them too - ‘New York City’s best young rock band has since last fall gone from playing in nearly empty rooms to packing the sweatiest rock clubs–all on the strength of one three-song EP, The Modern Age.'26

Swiftly signed to RCA Records after a bidding war in March 2001, the label wanted the band to record their debut album with Gil Norton, the producer behind multiple Pixies albums including Doolittle (1989) and Bossanova (1990) as well as the Foo Fighters’ The Colour and the Shape (1997) and Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace (2007).

However, as Raphael details, ‘Julian said that if I told him I was a better producer, I could record the album. I couldn’t do that. So he stood up and said: “Fuck you. Now we have to use Gil Norton.” A few weeks later, he called. It hadn’t worked out with Gil.’27

To create that ‘classic album from the future’ sound that Casablancas wanted, Raphael employed ‘one microphone for the voice and one for the snare drum: everything minimal. It wasn’t sonically perfect, but it had some magic and emotion that was missing in the big studio stuff other bands were doing.’

Raphael continues ‘Julian had so many ideas – and a freakishly controlled concept of rhythm and timing. Even when he’d drunk 13 beers and was asleep on the couch, one eye would open and he’d go: “The hi-hat’s not right.” He was a master of the cryptic instruction. He’d say: “This song, can you loosen its tie a little?” He wanted his voice to sound “like your favourite blue jeans – not totally destroyed, but worn-in, comfortable.”’28

Casablancas had started writing music from the age of fifteen through a process of absorption. ‘I wanted to get to the bottom of what makes a song really blow you away or hit you hard emotionally […] I went through different stages where I’d listen and figure out the songs, and once I thought I’d absorbed everything from that particular artist, I’d move on. Nirvana. The Wall. Bob Marley. Velvet Underground. Beach Boys. Classical stuff. Stuff on the radio. Even songs I don’t like, sometimes I can learn something from. I’d practice anytime I wasn’t at school or doing homework. Well, I never did homework.’29

Casablancas met Nikolai Fraiture (bassist) at a French school, Le Lycee, aged six. Nick Valensi (guitarist) and Fab Moretti (drummer) came on the scene while they and Casablancas attended Manhattan’s private Dwight School. Casablancas met final Strokes member Albert Hammond Jr (guitarist) at a Swiss boarding school in 1993. When Hammond Jr moved to New York to attend film school, all five ended up jamming together, and the complete Strokes line-up was born.

All three songs from The Modern Age EP are included on the Strokes’ debut with eight more completing the track listing, all written by Casablancas.

‘Some of it was recorded live, but some of it we had time to hone,’ recalled Casablancas. ‘We played around a few months before recording and we played that exact setlist live. We knew what worked, what was cool. We had time to test it.’30

‘Recording took incredible stamina and concentration and dedication,’ says Raphael. ‘There wasn’t a moment where not everybody was firing on all cylinders. Some parts of songs took a couple of days of very intense concentration, almost to the point of being happy it’s over and dizzy from the amount of doing something over and over and over again.’31

James Endeacott, who was A&R at Rough Trade, recalled coming into the studio and hearing Casablancas doing the vocals for ‘Hard To Explain’… ‘He’d been doing them for hours. He’d just finished a version and the whole band were like “That’s the one.” And he said “James, what do you think?” I thought I’ve got to be honest, I said: “I love that song and I think you can do it better” and I could see the rest of the band with their head in their hands – “For fuck’s sake James, you’ve literally just walked in off a plane, we’ve been here all day.” But Julian went back in and absolutely smashed it. That’s the version that’s on the album.’32

Is This It was first released in Australia on 30th July 2001 (reaching no.5 in the charts), in the UK on 27th August 2001 (peaking at no.2), and finally on 9th October 2001 in the US (coming in at no.33). Its huge success in the UK saw the Strokes bumped up from the Evening Session Stage to the Main Stage at Reading & Leeds Festival.

‘We just assumed ‘this is what they do in England, they gather 100,000 people and then you play in front of them’,’33 laughs Casablancas.

25 years later, the Strokes’ half-hour debut album has influenced a huge range of musicians from Jungle and Babyshambles to the Libertines and Kings of Leon. In the words of the Guardian, ‘it prised the zeitgeist away from nu-metal, restored the pre-eminence of rattling neo-new-wave, and was the chief catalysing influence on Arctic Monkeys.’ Rolling Stone included it at no.10 on their list of Best Albums of the 21st Century, writing ‘From “Last Night” to “Soma” to “Hard to Explain” to “Trying Your Luck,” their Is This It bounced by without a single un-catchy song on the track list, placing it among the finest New York guitar records ever made.’34

The Music History Club Archive has stories on over 200 artists and bands from the 20th and 21st centuries.

Check out The Music History Club Archive

If you love music history and fancy learning even more about 20th and 21st century rock, pop, blues, punk, hip-hop, and indie/alternative, consider becoming a paid subscriber for just £3.50 a month (annual subscribers pay £35 a year, which means you get 2 months free!)

Paid subscribers receive:

Your support is truly appreciated - it helps me access more paid research material to keep the Music History Club round-ups and deep-dives as thorough and informative as possible. Thank you!