By Tom Robotham
Our total attitude towards art, was, like, get up and do something — quit sitting there whining. – David Johansen, on the spirt of The New York Dolls
In 1982, when I was working as a reporter and music columnist for The Staten Island Advance, I got word that David Johansen, founding member of The New York Dolls, had scheduled a concert in our hometown—the “forgotten borough,” as some people call it.
I’d only been vaguely aware of him. Although we grew up just a few miles from each other, he was six years older, and when the Dolls released their first album in 1973, I was just a junior in high school. Not that I wasn’t into music at that point. My friends and I frequently ventured from Staten Island to Manhattan to see concerts. But we favored prog-rock shows—especially Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Yes at Madison Square Garden—rather than the underground scene.
Nevertheless, I enthusiastically accepted an invitation to interview him at the offices of his record company in midtown Manhattan. When I arrived, I was ushered outdoors onto a rooftop terrace and told that I had 30 minutes. David would be out shortly.
He came out a few minutes later, sat down, and immediately apologized for his raspy voice.
“I just got back from a camping trip,” he said, “and I came down with a cold.”
I asked him if he ever worried that his style of singing was wearing down his vocal cords.
“What do you want me to sing like Ethel Merman?” he responded with a wry and charming grin. “I plan on performing well into my old age. Look at B.B. King.”
I smiled, then segued into a discussion of his latest album, Live it Up, which featured reworkings of Dolls songs as well as a terrific cover of the Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out of This Place.” From there, we drilled down into his upbringing on Staten Island and his early days in the New York music scene, culminating in the formation of the Dolls.
“It’s been a helluva ride so far,” he said.
After an hour, his manager poked his head through the terrace door, and said, “Time’s up.”
“We’re fine,” David responded. “Leave us alone.”
We talked for another two hours.
I don’t know whether he wanted to keep talking because I was a fellow Staten Islander and he’d always had affection for the place, or if we’d just connected on some basic human level. Maybe a bit of both.
Regardless, I’ve always looked back on that afternoon with a warm heart, and on March 1—when I learned that David had died—the memory came back again, and I felt like I’d been punched in the gut.
Now, I’m trying to understand why news of his death hit me so hard. I only saw him a few times after that interview, so it’s not as if we were close.
Nor can I say that his music touched me deeply. I like it. But it never moved me the way the Beatles did—which brought me intense grief when John Lennon was killed—or the way that Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown did and, as a result, brought in waves of sadness when I learned that he had hung himself.
No, there’s something more subtle in my sadness over David’s death. Part of it, no doubt, is the graciousness he showed me at a time when I was still trying to find my footing as a journalist. But I think the bigger issue is that news of David’s death jarred me into contemplations of my own mortality.
I’ve been lucky so far—I’ve never been in the hospital, even for one night. But at nearly 69, I can’t escape the realization that time is running short—and I can’t help asking myself, what do I want to do with the time that remains?
David was so full of life—so infused with energy and passion—and I guess he has become, since his death, a kind of beacon for me.
What do I want to do with the time that remains?
I know that I want to continue to write and teach for as long as my mind holds out—not in pursuit of publication or recognition, but just as a way of trying to make sense of the world and a way of holding onto some semblance of sanity.
I want, as well, to have as much music in my life as possible, whether by cranking up my stereo and rocking out to the Dolls’ “Personality Crisis,” or sitting at my piano and stumbling through a Bach two-part invention.
And I want to keep traveling, for as long as my body holds out. Travel for me, after all, is not about checking boxes on some bucket list. It’s about reminding myself that there’s still so much beauty in this world, in spite of the torrential rains of daily horrors that soak our spirits from head to toe.
Above all, though, I want to try to be as gracious to people, as David was to me, on that rooftop terrace. I’m sure he had no idea how much the gift of his time meant to me back then. We rarely do. And let’s face it: on occasion, we give our time to people who couldn’t care less. But as Jesus says in the parable of the sower, we need to scatter our seeds of goodwill anyway, in faith that some will take root and flourish. Sometimes, a single seed of your soul that you cast away without a thought means the world to someone else—a simple wave or smile, a held door, a timely text, or, best of all, a few hours of your time to connect through meaningful conversation.
I hardly need to point out that this sort of thing is more urgent now than ever, at a time when forces of evil seek to divide us and crush our spirits.
They want to make us feel powerless. But they can’t take away our power to experience joy in the company of one another and to shower each other with kindnesses.
So, David—if you’re listening somewhere, please accept my thanks. Whether I have another day on this earth, or another 20 years, I want you to know that news of your death and reflections on the life you lived so fully serve as a reminder to me to try live it up while I still can.
