Krashcity Magazine TBT

I’m calling a NEW YORK DOLL, the extremely talented and insanely tight rhythm guitarist, SYLVAIN SYLVAIN [born Sylvain Mizrahi]. I’m calling a NEW YORK DOLL!! I say that that over in my mind as I sit at my desk, staring at my phone, wondering if it would be OK to call early or if that would seem inappropriate. So at exactly the scheduled time I press the numbers.

Syl picks up the phone after two rings and thanks me for being right on time, and then asks me to tell him a little about myself, not a trace of attitude or insincerity in his voice. Even though this is the first conversation we have ever had, we could be long lost pals catching up after not speaking for a while.

SYLVAIN: So tell me a little about yourself. You live in NYC or what?

KCM: I do. I live on Broadway and Tenth Street, your old stomping ground.

SYLVAIN: Broadway and Tenth Street, huh!?! That’s right around the corner from where the Mercer Arts Center used to be. The Broadway Central Hotel housed The Mercer Arts Center on the back side. The New York Dolls, the whole scene – everything started right there!

KCM: That’s right in the middle of NYU land now.

SYLVAIN: Exactly. That’s a brand new building there because the old one just collapsed. They were fixing the basement. What happened was that they had some beams down and the subway came rushing by at an unusual speed for some reason and the whole building collapsed.

KCM: Oh my…

SYLVAIN: Oh, it was a heavy tragedy. If you Google it, you’ll find it. The Broadway Central Hotel was the Waldorf Astoria of its day when it was built in the late 1800s.

KCM: I guess it should have been taken down before it fell down.

SYLVAIN: Well, it was sort of a wealthy hotel [that had seen its better day] when the Mercer Arts Center was there. And the only reason that the Mercer Arts center got it was that it was government funded for artists. They had different kinds of rooms for different art. They weren’t looking for it to make a huge profit. The entrance to the Mercer Arts Center used to be the ballroom of the hotel. Then they closed it down. Then they subdivided it into little rooms.

KCM: You guys played the Oscar Wilde Room.

SYLVAIN: Well the first time we played there was The Kitchen.

KCM: A room CALLED The Kitchen, not the actual kitchen….

SYLVAIN: Well it could have been the actual kitchen. (laughs). Yeah, I was playing while eating my falafel and feta cheese sandwich that my mother made me. Well if you Google The Kitchen you’ll find it. They moved around from place to place but they were like a video workshop in NYC. And video was brand ,brand ,BRAND new at the time. We opened ….we had this gig with The Magic Tramps which was Eric Emerson’s band. Who was in that band was Chris Stein to become Blondie in about a year or two.

And, so, that was the scene. They got the gig and they said, “hey, you guys want to open for us?” They heard that they were playing around besides we were living with their ex-girlfriends. (laughs) KCM: I read that you guys really broke through on the second show at the Mercer Arts Center because Ozzie, Johnny’s ‘business partner’ was hauled off in a cop car from the Chrystie Street Loft while you and Arthur watched from across the street.

“The word went out on the street that the Dolls had been busted, but….who were the New York Dolls and why did they get busted? They were only rumors but they made for great organic underground word-of-mouth promo. ..Kids must have wondered what all the fuss was and …if the Dolls were going to appear at all. ... It was the New York Dolls’ firstever barrier-smashing breakthrough”. [Arthur Kane, I –Doll, Life and Death with The New York Dolls] SYLVAIN: It could have been, because us being kids from the streets and all that, and coming from Queens. The original band was all the guys who came from Queens. Johnny Thunders, myself and Billy Murcia at the nucleus to play together as the New York Dolls. You had us three going to the same high school which was Newtown High School in Elmhurst, Queens. It was first me and Billy Murcia, working out of Billy’s mother’s basement out in Jamaica, Queens.

Hillside Avenue, three blocks away from South Jamaica. Me and Billy had a gig with a real estate company where they would pay us five bucks a day to hand out these little cards to sell your house. So Billy’s mom gave us the spot and we put in the amps and stuff, and we would bring kids home from school to play with and jam with, especially anybody who could teach us anything about the blues, ‘cause that was where we were at. And who was living next to us was none other than Jerry Nolan. And he was going out with Bette Midler.

KCM: Really!?!

SYLVAIN: Yeah. Jerry Nolan!

KCM: I didn’t know that.

SYLVAIN: Fuck, no one knows that. I’m giving you the inside shit here. Sylvain spills the fucking beans. That’s the name of our conversation. And they were all about sex, and trying to turn yourself into an art gallery. A walking talking art gallery. It was so hard to see us, in the words of John Lennon. It was so hard to be creative and break through the mold of being anonymous. ”to be a self-made star”.

KCM: You have a fashion background. You make a line of hats. Plus you made those fabulous sweaters for Truth and Soul, your fashion company.

SYLVAIN: I do that because I have to. Because I can’t breathe if I don’t create. You know what I mean?

KCM: Right. You create music. You create fashion. You create. Period.

SYLVAIN: My whole life… I had learning disabilities. They didn’t know what to call it so they just called you a fucking idiot and kicked your ass…. back in the 60s. So, I dedicated myself to my art. I knew I was groovy. I knew I was fucking cool. I had talent. I didn’t need anybody to give me the fucking welcoming sign.

KCM: Right. You just made your own reality.

SYLVAIN: And they weren’t [handing me the welcoming sign] so it just made me a rebel. So before they even knew what you were [all about] and they looked at you and you were maybe sexy, they called you a fucking faggot. Ya know?

KCM: That was a dangerous time to walk around with nail polish and lipstick…the early 70s.

SYLVAIN: Well exactly, but that’s why you had to do it. I mean I had a reason. I can’t speak for David Johansen, or anyone else. But I had a reason. And I think that there is a struggle. Where ever you think that a lifestyle is being suppressed and oppressed, you gotta kick ass and you gotta make a difference. Hence the reason why I wrote the song Frankenstein. Where it dares you to have sex with a fucking monster. And that monster is your lover, by the way.

KCM:: Right. It might seem like a monster but it’s what you need to do.

SYLVAIN: It’s also the one that you’re sleeping with.

KCM: Yeah…

SYLVAIN: And that could be across the board. Some people find it with their dealer. Waiting for the man, which the Velvet Underground came up with. And some people find it, well, ya know….my girlfriend, her name is Frankenstein. [laughs].

KCM: Ha. I doubt that. Yeah, it’s a love hate relationship. You just have to decide what you are going to do when it comes to a breaking point.

SYLVAIN: Exactly. But you know, the most important thing is, I wanted to make it. I also wanted to be financially secure, which unfortunately never came to pass. But that never distracted me from my true calling which is art. Sometimes art is just telling it like it is. You might be the trail-blazer but not be a success in a traditional way, yet everyone claims that you are number one and you are famous. You really can’t take that to the bank, though.

KCM: Or you can fight to get your due. “Because of the Dolls’ original contract, Leber & Krebs ended up owning the band’s publishing rights. Not only that, they owned the band’s name. They owned everything that you can own. They even owned the royalty rights.” “…the Dolls signed everything that was put before them, little realizing that ‘in perpetuity’ meant forever. Sylvain: “They signed us on individually, plus as a band, plus our publishing, plus our individual songwriting. They signed us everywhere they signed us everywhere they could.” Nina Antonia, Too Much, Too Soon:. The Makeup and Breakup of The New York Dolls [ note: The Dolls did not have their own lawyer.]

KCM: The New York Dolls planted the idea for the Aerosmith’s and the Kisses of the music industry. You had to walk the streets and trail-blaze this new idea when nobody knew where to put you guys.

SYLVAIN: When it comes to the walk this way. Then they made it our wives, and actually took them ence is to Cyrinda Fox] But it’s ners might have even sold them fingers. But I’ve seen a lot of don’t want me to say I’ve seen. not waiting for anyone to die so I what is called an elephant’s what happened. As I mentioned I and writing because of my learncan play the guitar like rings

name Aerosmith, we taught them how to with our girlfriends at the time, who became away and had babies with them.[The referOK. And I think that some of us in some corsome dope. But I’m not here to point any things happen that I think a lot of people ….actually confront them about this. And I’m can tell my story, my true story. I do have memory and I never really forgot much of might not have been very good at reading ing disabilities but I developed other things. I around your fuckin’ neck.

KCM: Well that’s a sort of math

right there. That’s a language.

SYLVAIN: Well exactly, but that

does not get you a high school diploma.

KCM: Well that and $2.50 will get

you a ride on the subway.

SYLVAIN: Well that’s alright.

That’s what I chose and that’s

That’s in their eyes. I chose the artist’s life. what I stuck with.

KCM: Dancing Backwards In sound to it; not as untamed as way. Currently there are more there were in the 70s. How does

High Heels has a retro R & B well produced the works that preceded it, in a good releases by The Dolls post reunion than that make you feel?

SYLVAIN: Since The Meltdown Festival reunion with Morrissey, thank his bloody English tush, (laughs) which was 2004 when we had great ,great, great success. It all started off really, really good.

We recorded three albums but none of them was successful, especially the first one which everybody was banking on.

What we recorded what not what we got signed for. We got signed to produce and deliver…the key word here, a New York Dolls album. And really what we did is we delivered a David Johansen solo album.

KCM: Yeah, I wanted to bring that up.

SYLVAIN: And I would say on the third album, which was the least successful of the three we came the closest, with our producer Jason Hill from Louie the XIV, a California band, by the way. He did the best job of all of the producers we had including Todd Rundgren and Jack Douglas. He did the best to get us the closest to what we are all about. But really hitting the nail on the head….the one who ran the whole show…who gave everyone a ‘deal’…he would yes you, but he ran it…I have to say was David Johansen. He ran the show. He decided what songs would be recorded. For example, you had to give him the songs…he chose the songs out of all of the writers. And the songs of mine that he chose were not always the rock and roll ones. He chose the ones that he felt was more his thing and what he wants to project. And so the end result was that none of the releases were successful. Our salaries went down. We were paid less for gigs. We got less offers year after year. The first album came out in 2006. By 2007 our original manager left us because he said that we’ve had our best times and basically we were over.

KCM: I love Dancing Backward In High Heels. I see that as a rebound album where the reformed Dolls finally ‘got the plot’.

SYLVAIN: Yeah, but it wasn’t a massive hit. Yes we had lots of friends who loved the record but in total ‘One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This’ only sold 25,000 copies. The record company spent more than half a million dollars to put that baby out. It did not make it. Even when it was available free for download there wasn’t a huge demand. [The album charted at number 129 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart.] We got the greatest press.

Rolling Stones Magazine gave us a great review. It was critic Robert Christgau's choice for album of the year. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/ albumreviews/one-day-it-will-please-us-to-remember-even-this-20060811 It was a really good album. We tried our best but it was not accepted by the audience. After that, we’re not selling out Irving Plaza three nights in a row. We’re only selling out one night. And then the next year they didn’t even invite us. So as far as gigs were concerned, they were going down and down and down. I truly have to say that there are a couple of cuts on One Day It Will Please Us that I could not perform. I told David that these are songs that are personally related to you; that are all about you. But he could not see that.

“It’s a VERY old story. I hate to

say it happened to me AGAIN. I was a SCHMUCK TWICE”.

KCM: Well that was one of the factors that split up The Dolls the first time; that David was the last one to be invited to join The Dolls, but he kind of took over the show and self-appointed himself the leader. That’s kind of an old story.

SYLVAIN: It’s a VERY old story. I hate to say it happened to me AGAIN. I was a SCHMUCK TWICE. And the thing is the first time it was our original managers where they took him on the side…and somehow he and his gorgeous, gorgeous woman at the time, Cyrinda Foxe were living in a duplex penthouse at The Albert Hotel on 10 th Street [23 East 10th Street] right off of Broadway. The rest of us, we were lucky to be living on Avenue A at the time which was really really bad.

KCM: I know.

SYLVAIN: We are talking about 1971, 72.

KCM: You took your life in your hands walking around there….especially a guy in make-up.

SYLVAIN: Exactly. And we were dealing drugs on the side just to get by. (pause) I’m not talking about heavy drugs; just a couple of joints here and there.

KCM: Of course.

SYLVAIN: And he [David Johansen] was living in that penthouse.

KCM: Didn’t you guys operate as equal participants or did David control the purse strings?

SYLVAIN: We were all supposedly equal members of the band, but [the favoritism] started right there. It started right there. The rest of us were saying, “hey, come on. What’s going on? Then after that, they started taking care of Johnny. He got a nice apartment on 24th Street and 9th Avenue. Then after that….they started to take care of us, wherever we were, with our girlfriends; wherever we were living at the time. At the time I was living with Elda Gentile [who was in the Stillettos along with Debbie Harry], who used to be Eric Emerson’s wife, and their kid, Branch, we were living all together in her apartment. It was an incredible place. But the point is that they were helping us pay for our apartments wherever we were with our girlfriends at the time, which did not make the situation [regarding expenses] good. Of course this was when Billy Murcia was still alive. So, what we did was we got a big loft down at 119 Chrystie Street.

KCM: Yes, I heard it was huge; big enough to ride a Cadillac around inside.

SYLVAIN: Nah. It was on the second floor, we couldn’t get a Cadillac up there. (laughs) Yeah, at the time there were all of these lofts being rented for $300 bucks a month. I had this other loft on the corner of Wooster and Grand. These lofts were big enough to ride your bicycle around in, but they didn’t have anything inside. Not your Cadillac, but your bicycle.

SYLVAIN: Because what happens, Karena, is that you give someone a kiss and all of sudden you have three kids with them, you know what I mean…. over the years. (laughs) …as the story is handed down. But this is the goddamn honest truth, ya know. And so we used to go to these junk yards, in the Bronx; in Jersey. We used to rent these vans, from people like Hilly [Kristal]. Hilly, before he started CBGB’s he has a truck rental place, right across the street from where CBGB’s used to be by the way.

KCM: No kidding?

SYLVAIN: I am not fucking you around, in fact once Malcolm came back in my life, I told him to go there to for the Red Patent Leather Show to rent a van, cause we needed a van to get our equipment.

[Malcolm McLaren staged a DOLLS ‘comeback’ after taking over the management role post, Leiber, Krebs, Thau. It was Malcolm in his pre Sex Pistols days who had a brilliant idea to stage a RED PARTY with all the trimmings, dressing THE DOLLS in red vinyl, leather and rubber…..AND…hanging a communist hammer and sickle flag (sewn by Cyrinda Foxe) as a backdrop. NEISHT GIT!] http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=1530830&style=music&fulldesc=T Hilly used to have a van rental place in a parking lot on the Bowery up the block and across the street from where CBGB’s was. Back in the day, 1970, 1971, 2, 3. By 1975 he definitely had that van rental place. You ought to search that. Maybe no one wants that to be known. I don’t know. Everybody gets started some way. Source: http:// hillykristal.com/about-hilly/ KCM: Ha! What people did before they did what they were known for….

SYLVAIN: Everyone gets started some way. For me it was all the clothing business.

KCM: That’s right.

SYLVAIN: And I never knew how much for Monsanto, which was part of the of like getting a record deal, and that after we had the shop up in Woodstock. sold out knitted sweaters at the Woodand moved back down to Manhattan. pany out in Brooklyn…and they were ting Mills. They were right on Broadfrom the Broadway Central Hotel. It’s circle of, like, 25 miles.

KCM: Well, Manhattan is a small island Everything is centered around it. Right Mercer Arts Center, the scene of it all.

SYLVAIN: Yeah, the reason why it was the entrance is on Mercer Street. It you walked into the joint and the first called The Blue Room. As you walked the big rooms as you moved to the the one that was the furthest of ALL of Oscar Wild Room. (laughs)

“And Alan Vega would go so wild and stuff that I remember that me and Johnny were walking through the room, and we said, “Holy shit!

How do we get back home to Queens?” Cause that stuff was fuckin’ scary!” [laughs].”

money I could make! In fact I worked company I signed with. That was sort happened with us, me and Billy Marcia, It was called Satcha Knits. We actually stock festival, then we closed down That’s when we signed with this compart of Monsanto…the Nusbaum Knitway, by the way; right across the street so weird. Everything happened in a and they are not making any more of it. now I live right up the street from the called the Mercer Arts Center is that was really a cool fucking place. When thing that greeted you was this cabaret in from there, on either side there were back there were smaller theaters. And them in the very, very back was the

KCM: And that’s where you guy played. When the play ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’ had a run there, there was sort of an odd mix of uptown folks who came to see the play and downtown folks who came to see the DOLLS as well as other most downtown bands. As soon as Marty Rev and Alan Vega duo, Suicide, hit the stage …”Together they made chaos using microphone feedback and a fifty-dollar electronic keyboard. Vega, dressed in studded leather, stalked the stage like a combination of animal trainer and animal, swinging a motorcycle chain like a whip, cutting his face with a switchblade just to freak people out” [www.mcldaz.org ], the uptown crowd pretty much ran for the door!

SYLVAIN: It’s funny that you bring up Marty Rev, cause the very first time we played The Oscar Wild Room with was the room all the way in the back after we played The Kitchen, the guy who was running the place – I forget his name – he was always wearing a bow tie – he said, “you guys really excited the crowd and you brought in a lot of kids. Do you guys want to play here?” So we said, “Yeah!”. When we got paid for playing The Kitchen it was only $15 and I remember we all went home with two dollars. [laughs] The first time we played we played with Magic Tramps. I know their act.

So the next time we played was in the Oscar Wild Room, So we showed up and who was rehearsing to play that evening but SUICIDE. KCM: …and they have their whips and chains….

SYLVAIN: Ya know honey, they were given the whole show but they were only doing the sound-check. You know how Marty Rev wore those radiator glasses? Well their music basically irradiated everyone. You would have to get detoxed after you heard that stuff. And Alan Vega would go so wild and stuff that I remember that me and Johnny were walking through the room, and we said, “Holy shit! How do we get back home to Queens?” Cause that stuff was fuckin’ scary!” [laughs].

KCM: That’s crazy.

SYLVAIN: Yeah, it scared the shit out of us. Of course as musician you long to make it to Manhattan. Although you are living out in Queens and it’s only a few subway stops away. But it takes a lifetime of experience to get to Manhattan. It was like taking a trip to Mars…seeing those guys.

We were, like….”Oh,hhhhh my GOD!”.

KCM: Yeah, it’s only a train ride away but Queens and Manhattan are worlds away as far as culture goes. Did you ever get to meet those guys?

SYLVAIN: Oh yeah. We became best friends. Cause Marty Rev he was a fuckin’ genius. He came up with taking part of a Vox organ…really vintage….like what The Doors used to play on ‘Light My Fire’. And you had this guy taking that instrument and making his own synthesizer, ya know?

I mean, before synthesizers were invented, hooking it up to all kinds of electrics to create all kind of effects; to take a simple organ and make it sound like the destruction of the world.

KCM: And it’s just a two guy band.

SYLVAIN: Yeah. It was beautiful. There was another band that was unknown. They were doing the Suicide thing first.

They were called The Silver Apples I had seen then do almost the same thing except with drums and keyboards in 1968 in The Brill Building. I had gone there as a kid and they were having a performance in the first floor ballroom.

The Silver Apples were opening up for Rick Derringer who was in the McCoys. [They had a hit with Hang On Sloopy.]

They were just an experimental sound type of thing.

KCM: Interesting.

SYLVAIN: There are a lot of real dedicated followers of The Silver Apples. You know, it was that time…the 60s were over and we didn’t want to see a fucking Led Zeppelin.

KCM: Yeah….get the energy going again. Make it dangerous, again. Make it sexy.

SYLVAIN: Yeah, well Plant. He was sexy as shit and all the girls wanted to play with his pee pee.

KCM: [laughs]…yeah, I guess you are right!

SYLVAIN: But it’s different. It’s a different thing. You know.

Like, music that really crossed the line. Like…this is magic. This become part of my life. And it was sexy. It was very sexy, but it wasn’t the type of sexy where someone was going into a 30 minute solo on their own.

KCM: You definitely made an impression. Your reputation preceded you. Where ever you went, your fans showed up before you. They followed you around the country.

SYLVAIN: Even before we made our first record, our songs were hits. Everyone knew them and were singing them. Don’t forget, the New York Dolls, our true success was that we were ground zero for that whole sound.

“Although you are living out in Queens and it’s only a few subway stops away.

But it takes a lifetime of experience to get to Manhattan.”

“The New York Dolls, our true success was that we were ground zero for that whole sound.”

There was nobody, I mean nobody… maybe you had Iggy Pop and the MC5 but they were late 60’s bands. And believe it or not, in 1972 they had gone up and down already. They were back to playing small clubs. Iggy Pop was in Greenwich Village, ya know, trying to…get laid.

KCM: [Laughs] SYLVAIN: And they hung around us cause, hey, wow, we were getting laid. End of story. And everyone around wanted to be with us cause we were the IT kids.

KCM: Yeah, you had this magnetism. You had the people. You had the crowd. You ruled the scene back then. [Even at the top of their popularity and success – with the likes of David Bowie and other luminaries included in their entourage The Dolls never made more than $200 per week each.]

SYLVAIN: Most of all we had the songs….the songs that changes your life. You know, we were talking about, you know Frankenstein….about daring you to have sex with a monster. I mean even as close as Alice Cooper and I were….

KCM: Well, he was hanging around the scene the same time as the Dolls. You must have run into each other a lot.

SYLVAIN: Of course. We did. We went to his house. He would invite us over for Christmas and give us presents.

KCM: Cool. Who else did you hang out with at Max’s. You would be there every night. It was a ritual. You would sleep late, get up in the afternoon, get all dolled up, so to speak, get over to Max’s at about midnight, hand out till 4. Then do it all over again the next day. You practically lived there.

SYLVAIN: Well, yeah. We all got dressed up. Some of us were living in a penthouse. Excuse me ONE OF US was living in a penthouse…. and the rest of us had to go eat those chick peas that Max’s had cause we were starving.

KCM: That’s what I heard, that Mickey took care of you guys. He never made you pay the check…

SYLVAIN: No, no no… that’s not true. He made us work. We were in debt.

KCM: Oh… SYLVAIN: In fact me and Billy Murcia were caught smoking a joint in the bathroom, or something like that, and we had to play upstairs six nights in a row. Two shows a night. But we were 86’d from the club after our sets. We were chased out of the club. We were walked to the third floor, the dressing room. Then we would come down – I don’t know if you remember – the back of the stage had this fire escape that would go to the third floor and all the way downstairs in case there was a fire. So they would bring us in from the third floor down the staircase through the back door onto the stage.

We would perform and leave that way.

KCM: That’s crazy. How long did they enforce that?

SYLVAIN: Well, it didn’t work out to have them enforce it permanently, cause, The New York Dolls were selling out 12 shows in a row, and The Velvet Underground were only selling three nights in a row. So they needed us so eventually they cut us some slack. They needed us there cause everybody came there to hang out with us. But they kept the bill rolling so that we were always in debt, so we would have to come back there and perform.

KCM: Everyone has got a scam going….

SYLVAIN: You gotta understand this is show business. People are fucking tripping if they think that, Oh, back then it was great. It was so groovy. They are dicking themselves up the butt!!

KCM: Yeah, even Woodstock, with all of its love and peace was initially a business deal. Though it ultimately did not work out very well.

SYLVAIN: It’s all business. It’s always been nothing but business. And don’t forget back then, if you think it’s bad now, we never had any independent deals or the internet where you can project yourself before someone tells you, ‘you suck’ and that you had no business to be in show business. Back then it was a lot harder. We did not have a place to play. We had to steal it from people like The Velvet Underground. We went up to the Hotel Diplomat and rented it out.

KCM: They had that room where it was always Christmas…

SYLVAIN: Oh. They had The Christmas Bar. That was outside. In the same building, but that was next door.

When you hear about The Hotel Diplomat, there were two rooms. There was The Grand Ballroom and there was The Ballroom. The Grand Ballroom was a place from the 60s! I played there with my band The Pox in 1968 with Billy Murcia and this guy named Mike Turby.

We opened up for this band called The Group Image.

And The Group Image, their lead singer was Barbara Kane who married Arthur Kane. I met Arthur in 1971. So yeah, we opened for Barbara’s band in 1968. We went out there, in those days I was really in love with Cream and Jimi Hendrix. And I was riffing like this and like that and the crowd really went nuts. And then they shut the electricity off on us! [laughs]. They never told us why, but we just kept on playing. Especially Billy Murcia cause he had drums and he could be heard. The kids were all tripping, or whatever, and they really dug what we did cause we were playing the blues, when it really came down to it.

KCM: Why did Rick Rivets never stay in a band for more than three months? He founded The Dolls, then he formed this other band and they kicked him out. What’s the story there?

SYLVAIN: The true story was that he never founded The Dolls. What happened was we used to hang out in this place on Bleecker Street called Nobody’s.

KCM: Right. Everybody who was ‘anybody’ hung out at Nobody’s.

SYLVAIN: Exactly, there were people there like Mark Bell, who became Mark Ramone after that. And Kenny Aaronson. They were in this band called Dust. And we were hanging out there, me Johnny Thunders and our girlfriends, all the kids from Queens and Brooklyn, Dust was from Brooklyn, we were from Queens. And me, Johnny Thunders and Billy Murcia were already playing together in Billy’s mother’s basement. And then we met Arthur Kane and he said that he was having problems with his father. He was out in Long Island and he had to move out of there. So Billy said, my mother, she rents rooms. Why don’t you go talk to her? And he did. He and his best friend who was George at the time…

KCM: Now Rick.

SYLVAIN: Right, Rick Rivets.

They both made a deal with Billy’s mother and they both moved into the first room upstairs in the house out in Queens.

And of course we had the place downstairs to rehearse and we had all of our equipment, our Marshall amps and our Les Paul Jr.s. And Johnny would come down and we’d all start drinking and smoking and stuff like that. And I remember that Arthur Kane had the greatest record collection with stuff as weird as Suicide and the first Thirteenth Floor Elevators. So we were all jamming together down in the basement, having our girlfriends over and taking the subway out to Nobody’s in Manhattan. So what happened was, summer was coming and I was going to work with Truth and Soul, my clothing company that was signed to Monsanto, with Billy Murcia. I would work all winter and make all the money. And we would go to England every summer and hang out in Kensington Market and buy the boots and go see all of the bands, like Rod Stewart. I introduced Alice Cooper to all of my English friends. And we became friends with The Pink Fairies, which was a huge band at the time playing this club called Ronnie Scott’s. And so I would go there every summer, actually. that summer, the guys didn’t go with me and I went with my girlfriend at the time. And the whole deal was that they knew I wanted to have a band called the New York Dolls [when I got back] because of the place where I worked before Truth and Soul, this place called The Different Drummer on Lexington Avenue. Peter Max made posters for The Different Drummer. One day Billy Murcia was working at The Different Drummer and Johnny came in to buy some pants. And then the three of us were walking up to Alexander’s was near Bloomingdales where the subway station is to go back home to Queens on 59 th Street and Lexington Avenue. And I showed them, “look”, I said, “you see that sign across the street, man? That’s going to be the name of my next band.” Then they said, “What?” Across the street from The Different Drummer was THE NEW YORK DOLL’S HOSPITAL which was a toy repair shop. This guy had the name, The New York Doll’s Hospital. He used to be a toy repair shop and everyone, and I mean everyone, used to go up there and have their damaged dolls repaired.

So I said, ‘wouldn’t that be a great name for a band?” and they said, “What??? THE NEW YORK DOLL’S HOSPITAL?” And I said, “No, just THE NEW YORK DOLLS.”How’s this, Karena? Going back about five years ago, the old man who owned THE NEW YORK DOLL’S HOSPITAL, he passed away. And I get a call from Bob Gruen. Gruen calls me up and he says, SYLVAIN, the old man from THE NEW YORK DOLL’S HOSPITAL died and they want to award you with the neon sign. And I have it down here in my basement! When I was awarded with that, I mean, if you wanted to see a grown man cry…..

KCM: What a story! That is GREAT! So let me ask you something before we close. Is there going to be another DOLLS CD? SYLVAIN: After what happed with our three unsuccessful records, or very marginally successful records, I doubt it very much. I mean I don’t think there are even going to be any more gigs unless someone calls us up as they did for the Motley Crue show last year. We are not getting too much lately. But you know what? You know, I tried my best and I tried to keep it as close to the old New York Dolls as I could and you, know, I’ll take that to the bank.

KCM: Well you formed so many side projects…The Criminals, Teenage News, The Teardrops, It’s seems as though you just create music no matter what.

SYLVAIN: Well, that’s the only thing I really do well and I do a lot of things, but music is something I have to do every day.

And you have to do a lot of things to call yourself a musician and just keep on working. As long as I can perform and record…. As a matter of fact I just recorded some really cool stuff and I’ll tell you about it. I made some really cool records up in Nashville. And one of them was this… You remember the old country star Eddie Arnold and Cheetah Chrome of all people…

KCM: That’s right, you and Cheetah…The Batusis.

SYLVAIN: Yeah, well Eddie got me this gig. He became this A&R man for APlive Warner Records, Eddie’s grandson’s label and they did this compilation, which Bebe Buel was on, too. So I just did that which I feel really proud of. I mean, the musicians I played with…. the drummer from Wilco. And I had a guy who used to play with Johnny Cash, Dave Roe, the bass player. I mean the band was just incredible. Jason and The Scorchers guitar player, Warner E. Hodges. It’s going to come out next year. Plus I’m writing a book. I have a couple of agents that are helping me out. I don’t want to spill the b e a n s , b u t … .

KCM: I can’t wait to read it!

SYLVAIN: I’ve got two writers and I’m going to do lots and lots of interviews from people from back then. I’m really looking forward to that.

KCM: Me too! I’m REALLY looking forward to that. You must have a lot of stories to tell!

SYLVAIN: I do. And it’s about time. I’m just going to talk the same way I’m talking to you. Exactly what I saw, what I lived.

It’s my story. If someone wants to debate what they saw and what they felt, that’s cool. Without any biased or ego…..I’m not trying to become rich or anything…. I just feel that I’m the only person who will be able to tell what I saw and what I experienced.

KCM: Right, besides David Jo, [the only other original Doll still alive].

SYLVAIN: I wish him the best and I hope that he will find happiness. I hope one day down the road he will want to play with The New York Dolls as opposed to just HIM being The New York Dolls. ….playing with a BAND again. And we HAD a band. I didn’t put Steve Conte in the band but I DID put Sammy Yaffa in the band. I thought after Arthur Kane passed away….we tried out seven different bass players…and he left it up to me. He said Sylvain, I want to make you happy. That was the only time he ever said that to me. I said, “well OK, I’m going to call Sammy and tell him he is in the band.” The only reason those guys left… Well, you know a musician can’t call himself a musician if he does not have a home, can’t support his family and can’t put food on the table. He just can’t call himself a musician. And this is what happened. We went down and down and down under one leadership…[David Johansen] with his honey. He and his honey were controlling and running the whole show. As far a titles. As far as what songs are going to be on the record. As far as what songs we are going to sing. Everything. What happened was….it took us both down. I had to sign that I was going to deliver a New York Dolls record, and all I delivered was a David Johansen record. And it was good. I’m not saying that that music was bad. I’m saying that all the songs that David wrote with Steve Conte and David wrote with Sammy Yaffa and he took some of my songs…. they weren’t the most rocking songs. I went to David and said, that’s not a New York Dolls song, and he said, “Well, what IS a New York Dolls Song?” And I said if you have to ask, you don’t belong here. You shouldn’t have signed your name saying that you are going to deliver a New York Dolls record unless you know what The New York Dolls is!”

KCM: Well said.

SYLVAIN: I mean you don’t sign that you are going to deliver New York Dolls when you don’t know what that is. I mean, it started like that in 1973. By 74 when we did our ‘Too Much Too Soon’ album we were doing ‘Stranded In The Jungle’. But the way it came out on record…..OK….it had New York Dolls musicians. But all the things that they added with the girl background singers…it became a Buster Poindexter first record.

KCM: I agree SYLVAIN: Did you ever see the Don Kirshner show…the TV show of the New York Dolls?

KCM: No… SYLVAIN: I want you to go see that. What happened was he did not want Johnny to sing his own song. When Johnny started singing, he protested.

We wanted to be a band. We didn’t want it to be a David Johansen band. We wanted it to be a New York Dolls band, where we are all involved. Johnny wanted to do Chatterbox. Chatterbox came out on the second New York Dolls Album. And I’m telling you right there….it started to get really, really bad.

I could just hear David saying to me, “Well what am I going to do when he is singing?” Do anything! Play the tambourine!

KCM: Dance.

SYLVAIN: Or even, ya know, jerk off! Cause that’s what the public really wants! That would be a big hit, but as Daffy Duck would say, you could only do it once.

Well, sweetheart, I gotta go baby.

KCM: Thank you so much. I really enjoyed our conversation.

"I went to David an d said, tha t’s not a New Y or Dolls so k ng and he s , aid, “Well, w h a New Y at IS ork Dolls So ng And I sa ?” id if you ha v ask, you e to d belong h on’t ere."