David Johansen, New York Dolls frontman and NYC icon, dead at 75

The New York Dolls frontman had revealed his stage 4 cancer diagnosis in February

Mar 1, 2025 - 18:10

David Johansen, New York Dolls frontman and NYC icon, dead at 75

David Johansen, the New York Dolls frontman and NYC icon, has died at age at age 75, just a few weeks after revealing he had stage 4 cancer and a brain tumor. He “died at home in New York City on Friday afternoon holding hands with his wife Mara Hennessey and daughter Leah, surrounded by music, flowers, and love,” reads the official statement.

Born January 9, 1950 in Staten Island, Johansen started singing in rock n roll bands in the late ’60s and formed the New York Dolls in 1971. Even though they never achieved mainstream success in the US, their music, hard-edged and glammy, and their transgressive style and behavior would be massively influential on hard rock, metal and what would soon become punk. Their two original era albums — 1973’s New York Dolls and 1974’s Too Much Too Soon — are classics and you can hear echoes of their music in groups still to this day.

After the Dolls split up, Johansen launched a solo career and in the ’80s found success with his calypso lounge lizard alter-ego Buster Poindexter who scored a hit in 1987 with his version of “Hot Hot Hot” and was a fixture on Saturday Night Live. In the 2000s, he reunited New York Dolls with Sylvain Sylvain and Arthur Kane. They toured and released new album One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This in 2006, and then Cause I Sez So in 2009 and Dancing Backward in High Heels in 2011.

Martin Scorsese directed Johansen documentary Personality Crisis: One Night Only which was released in 2023 and is streaming on Paramount+

You were one of a kind, David. Rest easy.