New York Dolls / Hell City Glamours

Andy J Ryan Mar 26, 2023

New York Dolls - Metro Theatre, 28 March 2007

Few bands have left such an imposing and influential legacy as the Dolls, who make it to Australia 35 years after the release of their debut.

Hell City Glamours were a rather apt support with their big-on-hair, small-on-shirts rock, and are another in a long list of bands that probably wouldn't have existed if it wasn't for the New York Dolls.

The Dolls arrived on stage in a stilted mess of leather, dark sunglasses and hair. After a fleeting delay that allowed first impressions to sink in, David Johansen - who is one of the only two surviving original members, along with guitarist Sylvain Sylvain - got the band rolling with a gregarious "Sydney, when I say I'm in love you'd better believe I'm in love - L-U-V".
The Dolls in 2007 could never hope to mirror the incendiary, confronting urgency of performances some three decades prior. Yet there was still an almost cartoonish, ragged charm to them - David and Syl still had an inextinguishable streak of mischief and roguishness. While the band's songs have outlived most of its members, those left holding the flame do so with passion and sincerity.

Those lost along the way had songs dedicated to them - 'Private World' for Arthur Kane and 'Lonely Planet Boy' for Johnny Thunders.

The band played a clutch of new songs, a curious cover of Janis Joplin's 'Piece of My Heart', and a throttling version of 'Pills'. You can't really call them 'greatest hits', because the band doesn't have any, but if you gazed through the fog of lights, sweat and hair as the band ripped through 'Trash' and 'Jet Boy' you saw a glimpse of the chaotic, unhinged power of the New York Dolls in their prime.

The Dolls were chanted back on stage by the remaining crowd and sassily whistled through 'Personality Crisis' before pulling out the showman's favourite line: "we've played all over the world, we played to the Sultan of Brunei and his 736 wives, but Sydney, you are still the best crowd we have ever played to". Then came 'Gotta Get Away From Tommy' and they were done.

The New York Dolls are incomparable and of huge significance to music as we know it. While their show of 2007 was somewhat ragged and restrained, the New York Dolls certainly did their legacy no disservice.