Updated March 01, 2025 at 15:57 PM ET
David Johansen, the chameleonic and charismatic vocalist who fronted the New York Dolls and found solo success under the moniker Buster Poindexter, died on Friday, his publicist confirmed to NPR. He was 75.
Last month, his family revealed that he had been in "intensive treatment" for stage 4 cancer. The punk pioneer "died of natural causes after nearly a decade of illness," according to the publicist's statement.
Johansen died at his New York City home "holding hands with his wife Mara Hennessey and daughter Leah, surrounded by music, flowers, and love," it read.
Born in 1950, Johansen grew up on Staten Island with five siblings and parents who met while working at a Barnes & Noble. "My father was a Norwegian tenor and my mother a New York Irish librarian," he told The Independent.
As a teenager, Johansen started performing in rock 'n' roll bands and at a weekly hoot night at a local Jewish community center; at the latter, he sang the Delta blues songs he grew up loving.
"Some people would do, like, Kingston Trio-type stuff and the Greenbrier Boys," he told Fresh Air in 2001. "I was more into, you know, Lightnin' Hopkins and things like that."
He also joined the Ridiculous Theatrical Company in the West Village in the years preceding the formation of the New York Dolls.
That band rose to prominence in the first half of the 1970s, associated with the glitter-rock movement spearheaded by Alice Cooper, David Bowie and T. Rex, among others. Led by Johansen, the Dolls stood out from even their most colorful peers thanks to striking stagewear and androgynous looks — various combinations of skintight pants, sky-high platform boots, makeup, loud animal prints and women's clothing.
"We didn't consider ourselves glitter rock; we were just rock & roll," Johansen said in the book Please Kill Me, an oral history of punk music. "And we thought that's the way you were supposed to be if you were in a rock and roll band. Flamboyant."
Johansen was a lithe onstage presence who strutted and peacocked with the confidence of Mick Jagger, but possessed earnest insouciance that was rough around the edges. The Dolls' lack of polish was a major part of their charm, as they traded in raucous glam riffage and ragged takes on early rock 'n' roll and R&B. But, in a nod to his foundational sonic texts, Johansen pointedly noted that the band covered Otis Redding, Archie Bell & The Drells, and Sonny Boy Williamson.
Produced by Todd Rundgren, the Dolls' 1973 self-titled album featured songs written or co-written by Johansen. (The lone exception was a slipshod take on Bo Diddley's "Pills.") New York Dolls ended up a proto-punk masterpiece: shambling bar-band boogie ("Personality Crisis"), swaggering glam ("Looking For A Kiss"), hot-rodding garage-punk blueprints (the Johnny Thunders co-write "Jet Boy") and deconstructed rockabilly-soul (the howling "Trash").
Johansen's lyrics were vivid and hungry, capturing the restless energy of both the band's New York City hometown and the political and societal fissures rupturing America.
"We were really such a gang, and it was like us against the world," he told Fresh Air host Terry Gross in 2004. "And we were really trying to evolve music into something new, and it was, you know, very kind of almost militant to us."
But while many of their glammy peers went on to enjoy great commercial success, the Dolls remained a cult favorite, albeit one that had an enormous influence on '70s and '80s rock. The '80s hair metal scene owes a sartorial debt to the band, while Duran Duran, Morrissey and R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe are avowed fans. In the book Please Kill Me, music impresario Malcolm McLaren, who briefly worked with the group, even admitted, "I was trying to do with the Sex Pistols what I had failed with the New York Dolls."
The Dolls broke up in 1976, with Johansen citing "inertia" and "factions in the group that were, you know, more interested in drugs than in playing music" in the 2004 NPR interview.
He subsequently went solo, releasing a swaggering, Rolling Stones-esque 1978 self-titled album with singles like "Funky But Chic." Future records continued to refine his shimmying, bar-band glam, with the Mick Ronson co-produced 1979 LP In Style, occasionally dabbling in disco. Johansen also toured heavily and landed opening slots for Pat Benatar and The Who.
In the 1980s, Johansen revisited his love of the blues — and had an unexpected career resurgence — under the moniker Buster Poindexter, a childhood nickname.
"On the street, they called me Buster," he told People in 1988. "Then they'd catch me with books and call me Poindexter, so it's kind of an intellectual punk or something."
As Johansen told Fresh Air in 2004, he shaped this musical persona during a low-key Monday night residency at an Irish bar in Manhattan's Gramercy Park, a "barrelhouse kind of roadhouse show" where he performed music he had been listening to, like jump blues songs and Camelot's "The Seven Deadly Virtues."
This intimate engagement eventually led to him fronting a big band in the guise of a louche Las Vegas club performer, complete with a pompadour, fancy suit, and accoutrements like cigarettes and martinis.
"By the time it got to the national awareness, it did have this kind of Vegas-y kind of idea to it," he said in 2004 of his act. "But it started off more kind of like the Louis Prima days in the '50s of Vegas."
Buster Poindexter became a regular presence on Saturday Night Live and earned an unexpected hit with 1987's horn-peppered "Hot Hot Hot," a cover of a tune by the soca artist Arrow. The song was the "bane of my life," Johansen told Terry Gross in 2004, after asking her not to play the tune during the interview.
Over the years, Buster Poindexter toured with a group dubbed the Banshees Of Blue and released four studio albums, encompassing vintage R&B, blues, salsa and merengue.
"I know some people think, 'Oh, Johansen puts on a tuxedo and thinks he's somebody else,' " he told People in 1988. "But it's me, really. Sometimes I've found that by getting into a certain drag, or a certain feeling, you can cast off your mortal coil and really do something. I don't know if it's important, but it's something. It's entertainment."
Outside of music, Johansen acted in a number of films, including Married to the Mob and Scrooged. And in the early 2000s, he formed a band called the Harry Smiths to perform his childhood favorite blues songs (including by Lightnin' Hopkins) and tunes by the group's namesake, folk archivist Harry Smith.
Somewhat improbably, Morrissey convinced the New York Dolls to reunite in 2004, a performance that was documented on Morrissey Presents the Return of the New York Dolls (Live from Royal Festival Hall 2004). This led to three more studio albums — the first, 2006's One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This, included guest vocals from Michael Stipe — and tour dates that included Alice Cooper.
According to a statement posted by his daughter Leah Hennessey, Johansen had navigated serious health challenges since 2020, including a brain tumor, but kept this news private and remained busy. He kept up his hosting gig at his weekly SiriusXM radio show "Mansion of Fun," opened for Morrissey in 2023 in London, and did a heartfelt cover of Phil Ochs' "There but for Fortune" at a late 2023 celebration of 1960s Greenwich Village.
He also helped promote Martin Scorsese's and David Tedeschi's 2023 documentary on him, Personality Crisis: One Night Only. The loving chronicle of Johansen's life and career was anchored by footage from a January 2020 set at the cozy Café Carlyle. Sporting a sophisticated take on his trademark Buster Poindexter look (a wolfish pompadour and a sparkly suit jacket), he entertained the crowd with stories and songs from his career, his voice as comfortable and weathered as a worn-in leather jacket.
After a 2022 New York Film Festival screening of Personality Crisis, a panel discussion with Scorsese, Johansen and others involved in the film evolved into some lighthearted back-and-forth about making the film, with Johansen's daughter Leah Hennessey noting how much her father disliked looking back and telling stories about his past.
"It's a beautiful objet, and I'm very appreciative," he protested lightly, referring to the film.
In response, Johansen's wife, Mara Hennessey, gently backed him up with a touching clarification: "The first time David and I saw the penultimate screening, he said, 'Well, that's a version of myself I can live with.'"
Copyright 2025 NPR
