We are united. James will tell you that his life had been nothing until the New York Dolls, and he is enslaved to the song Frankenstein – the Dolls’ slumland melodrama wherein the deeper associations of evangelical pop have a roughhouse scruff-up with the musical dreams of Mahler’s 7th Symphony: ‘When those plans they don’t fit your style, you get a feeling of your own, or two,’ is David Johansen’s phonetic poetry – words as collage, using shape as well as sense to convey ... um ... what? ‘Well, I’m asking you as a person ...’ Verbal, verbal, verbal, the song is 5:58 of holler-holler, minus chorus, minus repetition. Frankenstein has all the magical properties of sheer nerve, ready to blow up any minute. Screw loose and fully-to-the-skull, the guitars of Johnny Thunders and Sylvain Sylvain wrap around spiffy-tuff drums of Tony Lo Bianco’s ducking and diving French Connection New York City. Steam rises from the streets to meet David Johansen’s tourette’s, which complements his teenage dementia.
