Free Autobiography by Morrissey Page B

fast, and around them we see Johnny Carson, Paul Newman, Cassius Clay, Robert Redford, David Cassidy, as males within the paragraphs of law. The Dolls endure the consequences of how they look, afflicted by existence yet not responsible. David Johansen laughs, but is irritated by everything and anything, since life clearly signifies nothing, yet he can always save the day with an eloquent phrase. The detachment of Johnny Thunders and Sylvain Sylvain is open to nothing, and you mustn’t ask more of Arthur Kane than just being alive. Well. The Dolls are the last frontier of task and adventure for the discontented mind. The objective is only in being. Their excess of drugs and alcohol increased the fire and sword of their swagger – now is the golden hour, and tomorrow could be too late. Vietnamese baby may very well be a song of universal meaninglessness, but the Dolls have no cause to disguise their madness, and isn’t sex the one and only reason why all of us are actually alive? Appearance is a new debate in rock music, and the counter-culture of the New York Dolls is an infinite landscape. But who can cope with such a landscape having been kenneled for so long? The uniform of bad denim still shrouds most of the million-sellers on the US chart, but bassist Arthur Kane, with his hand resting on guitarist Sylvain Sylvain’s knee, ventures further than the universe allowed. This did not happen with the Eagles. Squinting, the Dolls were in endless puberty, deeply close to one another, as thick as t hieves, a private gang of deep-seated buddies whose companionship and familiarity revealed a mutual affection that rendered them loveable in a way that Wings or the Moody Blues just weren’t. The word ‘doll’ had only ever previously been tagged to a female – of beauty queen or Venus nectar. The New Oxford helps with ‘doll: attractive woman, beautiful woman’ , which is possibly why we have no recollection of James Cagney ever turning to George Raft with ‘ Say, you’re quite a doll’ (not on camera, at any rate). Their chosen name, the New York Dolls, was as provocative and inflamed as being called the New York Fags; and really, this is precisely how the Dolls were initially deciphered, anyway. Knowing what we now know – that the Dolls chased the bearded clam at every opportunity – simply triples their social effect. And this is how history is made.
    Jerry Nolan on the front of the Dolls debut album is the first woman I ever fall in love with; the hussy-slut positioning of the legs is playmate call-girl, and the pink drum kit just might be a rock ’n roll first. When had drummers ever looked this way and played so hard? You have witnessed a lunar-landing evenbefore you start to listen, and within the courtesan cover you discover a fit of throttling lunacy from a band that fear no foe or woe. The Velvet Underground had been born weary, had found hell within themselves, and they couldn’t care less if they made you suffer, because their message was simple: you will never have anything. The Dolls were laughing all the way to a speedy grave. That they were even alive at all, and had managed to endure on a planet that even I had felt certain was as flat-tire as fuck, was a shock to anyone having been raised, as I was, on smiling nice-boy singers. How had the Dolls found each other? Searches for ‘like-minded musicians’ seemed, to me, to be so unfeasible as to be hardly worth attempting. Pugs who played musical instruments in 1973 were either older than dirt, or moth-eaten techies. In the swell-elegant world of success it was always the case that most bands of dapper style nonetheless also contained members whose natural ugliness let the team down. The New York Dolls were the first band who equaled each other in demeanor and effect; in essence, the most perfect-looking pop group – minus that hesitant component who wasn’t quite sure of his connection to the others.
    High-toned, I carry the Dolls LP sleeve into