13. New York DollsNew York Dolls
For a brief moment in 1973 rock ‘n’ roll reared its firebrand head and a select bunch of UK teenagers stopped feeling confused and felt so alive.
The New York Dolls were pimping and preening their way across the Old Grey Whistle Test, that bastion of all things denim and prog. The sight of the male neo-queens pouting and slavering at the terrified camera crews was a wake up call to anyone who cared.
Johnny Thunders ultra-swagger topped with his impenetrably brilliant birds nest hair must have electrified the loins or least the minds of anyone left alive in the UK in 1973. It was underlined by presenter Bob Harris’ obvious dislike of the band and at that very moment, another generation gap appeared in rock ‘n’ roll.
Whether this was Morrissey’s first experience of the Dolls is a moot point but to many of us it was a teenage moment that flick-knife switched our DNA forever. Morrissey himself was probably already super hip to the goings on in New York. As an avid music paper reader with antennae primed for action he must have been already aware of this pimp stroll and the Dolls have been documented as one of the key bands in his muse. He claims they are one of the few bands to have never let him down and his love of them is quite touching.
He was instrumental in their reformation when he booked them for the Meltdown festival and has bigged them up them constantly over the years. They were one of the bands that bonded him with a youthful Johnny Marr who will himself go to great lengths to explain his search for a leather jacket to match the one worn by Johnny Thunders.
The pair of them were Mancunian hipsters who were hooked on New York and took the then freakish energy of the Big Apple and reconverted it with a northern England slant to create something of their very own. There are echoes of the Dolls louche lipstick-smeared genius in Morrissey’s catalogue without the pointless aping that many others indulged in. It’s the love of classic girl bands, the glam touches, the streetwise rock ‘n’ roll peered at through a post punk lens – the Dolls are never far away from Morrissey’s genius. John Robb
