New York Dolls, "Plenty Of Music": The Best Songs Ever Recorded By Anyone Ever

I’ve long been meaning to write an album guide for the New York Dolls and David Johansen’s solo career. After all, The Dolls’ debut is at 18 on my Top 300 Albums Of All Time, no surprise from an obvious fan of guys smirking over loud guitars. But Johansen’s solo debut is at 38, underscoring that my allegiance is with the verbose clown Mick of the combo instead of their classicist wreck of a Keith, Johnny Thunders. I have a lot to say about the magic of that legendary glam band, the charm of his solo career, his gifts as an interpreter (best heard in his albums with The Harry Smiths, but not negligible in the oeuvre of Buster Poindexter) and the remarkable ‘00s revival of the Dolls that Johansen and Syl Sylvain pulled off in memory of their fallen brothers. But that writing shouldn’t be rushed just because David Johansen succumbed to a long battle with cancer on February 28th. Let the people who are paid to sum lives up in a sudden rush (or years in advance) do that.

Nonetheless, I do feel the urge to play him off, and acknowledge the quality I loved most: his joy and pride in being a wise bohemian weirdo. There’s philosophical wit and wonder in every phase of his career, but the last twenty years is when he got to reflect on that varied journey, and show his taste sans shtick. I loved to reverse google what writer he was quoting without credit when promoting his Sirius XM show Mansion Of Fun on Instagram (hey, artists steal!). When it was time to revive the New York Dolls, Johansen took the opportunity to show how the years of hustling across stage & screen had changed this Frankenstein. Arguably for the better.

The musical arrangements on One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This, the Dolls’ 2006 re-debut, were too Paul Shaffer Band, too lacking Thunders’ thunder, for me to unreservedly wax rhapsodic. Though live sets redeemed the brand revival, the album would make more sense as the return of the David Johansen Group, which also featured Johansen/Sylvain copyrights and more piano than we expect from the Dolls. That handle would make it easier to gawk at what marvels the ballads are, featuring a bittersweet humor most aging musicians wouldn’t dare. Though the title “Maimed Happiness” best captures what Johansen had to share, “Plenty Of Music” is the song that conveys how hard-won perspective doesn’t necessarily feel like victory. 

Feeling a great sadness today
Don't wanna indulge it or shoo it away
It belongs to the whole world
The boys and girls
It ain't just mine

Way to acknowledge your emotions uncritically and not unduly center yourself, Dad!

Like joy and love, it's always there
Don't know how I tune in, don't know why that I care
But I can't pretend
This don't feel like the end
And everything is fine

Again, refreshingly zen!

Feel exiled from the divine
Me and these sad friends of mine
Just waitin' down here
Drinkin' beer
And losin' time

Most people would tell you to establish who/where/what at the beginning of a song, but by delaying the revelation that he’s already off the couch and among compatriots, it gives the grief weight.

I hear plenty of music
I see superfluous beauty
Everywhere
Why should I care?
What does it matter to me?

Has anyone in rock done this before? He’s not asking who took the bomp. He’s not asking for that old time rock’n’roll. His city ain’t gone. He’s not rationalizing his mood as proof that the world isn’t what it once was. “I hear plenty of music”! “I see superfluous beauty”! He accepts that there is still so much to appreciate. But right now, he just doesn’t.

The myth of life is a song
Nature, too, is the song
Don't you destroy the song
Cause when the song is gone
You'll be gone too

This is where the zen comes in handy. Once you’ve accepted that your state of mind and your lot in life are two distinct things, you can have faith in the value of existence even when you can’t appreciate the wonders around you. Maybe you’ve heard of the Stockdale paradox, that Admiral James Stockdale survived years of torture in a POW camp by being brutally honest about his current situation and refusing to have faith in anything more than the necessity of surviving. Since the release of Bruce Springsteen’s memoir, I’ve seen people ruminating on what I’d call the Springsteen paradox, that few men have ever had it as good as Bruce Springsteen did in the early ‘80s, but he still required psychiatric help with crippling depression and finding a reason to live. Put these paradoxes together and the takeaway is clear: where you are and what you’re feeling can affect each other, but they are not the same thing. You can desperately need help in your life, and you can desperately need help with how you're experiencing it. You have every right to ask for help with either. But life and how you experience it are not the same thing. And from this validation of all pain, we can also assume that happiness and the beauty of life is always there, even when it feels inaccessible.

The next verse of the song mostly reaffirms the shame, futility and tragedy one feels around them in this state, but the line that gets me is “Don't need no one to love me/ Oh please, dance up above me.” The narrator sincerely believes in the song, and wants others to experience the song, but accepts they’re not going to hear it again until they do.

I hear plenty of music
I see superfluous beauty

One of the tragedies of professional cultural criticism is the idea of picking a medium - TV, movies, albums - and staking your ability to eat on it being a rewarding, vibrant source of inspiration for the rest of your life. And even if you managed to keep your income stream separate from your self-professed passion, your sense of identity may come from the glory of this sound or that aesthetic. You’re a rocker. You’re a movie lover. You devote large portions of your life to consuming creative works or sports or what have you, and then one day…it ain’t doing the trick. Some gnash their teeth and project that medium has failed them. Movies were for adults when you were a kid, or before you were born, but now that you’re an adult, they’re all just for kids. Rock was liberating once, but now it’s just a corporate fashion show. Yadda yadda “because woke.” There are so many stances people take to diagnose the problem from the outside in, practically afraid of acknowledging their subjectivity.

What I’ll miss most from David Johansen is knowing there was someone who saw the absurdity of those pieties and grievances. Someone who consulted the wisdom of the past and knew how to best face the present with humor and grace. And though he could still be sad, he knew how to turn that sadness into a song. Because what isn't one?

If you've got something bitter and/or sweet to e-mail me about, anthonyisright at gmail dot com is the email address to use.