What if your dream doesn’t come true?<\/p>\n
I wanted to be a baseball player.\u00c2\u00a0 My parents humored me, took me to Yankee Stadium, but as the years passed, I got the subtle message that this wasn’t a reasonable occupation.\u00c2\u00a0 I thought it was because my parents were judging the players, long before they made twenty mil a year, but really they wanted to protect me, wanted me to earn an educational insurance policy, so after I was gone I wouldn’t be working a menial job, wouldn’t be destitute in the alley.<\/p>\n
But not everybody’s got parents like mine, watching out for them.\u00c2\u00a0 Many mothers and fathers are so overwhelmed by life that they allow their children to dream, and try to achieve that dream.<\/p>\n
I don’t know what made Arthur "Killer" Kane want to become a musician.\u00c2\u00a0 But I bet it was the Beatles.\u00c2\u00a0 When they appeared on "Ed Sullivan" we not only started growing our hair, we began taking guitar lessons.\u00c2\u00a0 We needed to get closer.\u00c2\u00a0 We wanted to live the lives of these young lads from Liverpool.<\/p>\n
You wake up one day and realize you’re just not talented enough.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t stop playing, you read "Rolling Stone", and eventually "Billboard", but there are others still forming bands, still trying to make it.\u00c2\u00a0 That was Arthur.\u00c2\u00a0 And he got a good shot, in the New York Dolls.\u00c2\u00a0 They got a recording deal, and a ton of press, but when the band didn’t live up to commercial expectations, it imploded from within.<\/p>\n
You don’t give up overnight.\u00c2\u00a0 Just ask Krist Novoselic.\u00c2\u00a0 You think you’re an integral part of your previous band’s success.\u00c2\u00a0 But failures, lack of traction, they eventually convince you to give up.\u00c2\u00a0 Years after your peers have passed you by on the economic gravy train.\u00c2\u00a0 You shot for the brass ring…\u00c2\u00a0 If you missed?<\/p>\n
Arthur Kane missed.\u00c2\u00a0 He moved to L.A.\u00c2\u00a0 He worked as a movie extra.\u00c2\u00a0 He hocked his guitars.\u00c2\u00a0 He became despondent when his wife left him and he jumped out the window.<\/p>\n
Too many of our citizens jump out the window.\u00c2\u00a0 Because nobody cares.\u00c2\u00a0 As kids we’re corralled by the school administration, the police, we’re under surveillance.\u00c2\u00a0 Hit our twenties and we’re on our own, there’s no hand-holding.\u00c2\u00a0 If you can’t make it?\u00c2\u00a0 So be it.<\/p>\n
Recovering from his suicide attempt, a canopy having broken his fall from the third floor, Arthur Kane answered an ad for the Book of Mormon in "TV Guide".\u00c2\u00a0 Expecting a Bible to show up, instead missionaries knocked on his door.\u00c2\u00a0 After reading on his own, he had a religious experience, and converted.\u00c2\u00a0 Eventually he won a gig at the Mormon Temple, you know, the giant edifice on the green grounds just west of Century City.<\/p>\n
Three times a week Arthur would take the bus from Hollywood to the Temple, where he worked in the archives, where reading obituaries he learned his own father had died.\u00c2\u00a0 Making him an orphan, his mother having died before he was twenty.\u00c2\u00a0 All Arthur had was God, and the church.<\/p>\n
Thank god he had that.<\/p>\n
"New York Doll", the 2005 Arthur Kane biography, is an incredible ad for Mormonism, Mitt Romney should sponsor screenings.\u00c2\u00a0 You see the clergy and the believers in the film cared about Arthur Kane.\u00c2\u00a0 Does anybody care about you?<\/p>\n
If you’re lucky, yes.<\/p>\n
But so many music fans feel otherwise.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the music, and its makers, that gets them through.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why today’s focus on image and sponsorship by corporations has eroded sales.\u00c2\u00a0 The essence has been eviscerated.\u00c2\u00a0 Rock and roll was the most popular church in America.\u00c2\u00a0 People prayed in their bedrooms, went to services in arenas, sometimes even stadiums, because it was this music that got them through.<\/p>\n
But when the music goes, where do you turn?<\/p>\n
To the window in Arthur’s case.\u00c2\u00a0 Thank god, he was rescued by Mormonism.<\/p>\n
Not that Arthur forgets where he came from, who he was.\u00c2\u00a0 His life is one of nostalgia, telling tales of the way things used to be.\u00c2\u00a0 Angry with David Johansen because David made it, and Arthur did not.<\/p>\n
But through the intervention of Morrisey, the Dolls are reunited, at a festival in London in 2004.\u00c2\u00a0 Johansen greets Arthur with open arms.\u00c2\u00a0 The gig is triumphant.\u00c2\u00a0 And then Arthur "Killer" Kane dies.<\/p>\n
Oh, he doesn’t O.D.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s not hit by a car.\u00c2\u00a0 After returning to L.A., Arthur doesn’t feel well, he goes to UCLA Hospital, he dies mere hours later, twenty two days after returning from the U.K.<\/p>\n
I went to see the Dolls at the Whisky, on the Sunset Strip, in the summer of ’73.<\/p>\n
I’d driven my sister cross-country to graduate school.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d never been to the Mercer Arts Center, but I’d read about the scene in the press.\u00c2\u00a0 Before the days of the Internet, when the only way you could experience a performance was to go to the venue.<\/p>\n
I drove that LeMans through downtown to get to the Whisky, not knowing you just jump on Sunset and drive east.\u00c2\u00a0 I was using a map, I was a tourist.<\/p>\n
The venue wasn’t full.<\/p>\n
And the songs were not that easy to pick out.<\/p>\n
But the energy, the energy was unmistakable.\u00c2\u00a0 The band was trying to impress us, and it did.<\/p>\n
I bought the debut when I got home to Connecticut, and the second album when it was released.<\/p>\n
But I preferred David Johansen’s initial Blue Sky effort.\u00c2\u00a0 With "Frenchette".<\/p>\n
Then David, not wanting to sink into the workaday world, became Buster Poindexter and I stopped caring.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody’s got to make a living, but that doesn’t mean I’ve got to pay attention.<\/p>\n
And my memories are frozen in time.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only of seeing David do his Animals medley at the Roxy, but of listening to the Dolls’ "Lonely Planet Boy" late at night in my college dorm room, as a senior, dying to get out but not sure where I wanted to go.<\/p>\n
Some people want to go to the reunion.<\/p>\n
I don’t even want to see the Stones.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just too sad. I’d rather live on my memories.<\/p>\n
And it turns out I’m not alone.\u00c2\u00a0 Bob Geldof’s kids won’t go to see the Dolls.\u00c2\u00a0 Even though they weren’t even alive when the band was together the first time.\u00c2\u00a0 But those records…they don’t want to see old, decrepit men, playing those records.<\/p>\n
And the three remaining members are worse for wear.\u00c2\u00a0 Sylvain may not have lost his happy-go-lucky personality, but he’s constantly seen in headgear…\u00c2\u00a0 And Johansen comes to the first rehearsal straight from the stylist, in his old Levi jacket and pouffed hair.\u00c2\u00a0 This is not only Arthur’s chance at redemption, but David’s too.<\/p>\n
And Arthur, the man known as the "Killer"?<\/p>\n
He’s the kind of guy you probably wouldn’t know if he lived in the same apartment building. He’s got none of the danger rock stars are supposed to possess.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s got a halting voice.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s a nice guy.\u00c2\u00a0 And what do they say about nice guys?\u00c2\u00a0 They finish last.<\/p>\n
Arthur "Killer" Kane is no longer with us, like three other Dolls and too many of our other players.\u00c2\u00a0 Some were killed by drugs.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes testing the limits, but oftentimes trying to numb the pain.\u00c2\u00a0 Others were felled by broken hearts.\u00c2\u00a0 But leukemia took Arthur.\u00c2\u00a0 If he’d had health insurance, if the disease had been caught earlier, would he still be with us today?<\/p>\n
I’m no doctor.\u00c2\u00a0 But despite how the old song goes, we all need one.\u00c2\u00a0 Help.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only medical.<\/p>\n
But it’s not easy to help people who are incorrigible, who won’t listen to reason, who’ve got to do it their way.<\/p>\n
And that’s what rock stars are…\u00c2\u00a0 Incorrigible.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve got their inner tuning fork, they’ve got to follow it.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re willing to give up education, safety, all the elements that those who own and RUN the business now possess, in order to follow their dream.<\/p>\n
Sometimes their dream is a leg up from poverty.\u00c2\u00a0 But usually it’s love.\u00c2\u00a0 The musicians want love.<\/p>\n
But most times there’s not enough love in the world to make them feel good.<\/p>\n
But their efforts make us feel good.<\/p>\n
One of the great things about technology is the loosening of distribution.\u00c2\u00a0 Used to be you had to see the movie in the theatre.\u00c2\u00a0 Then you could go to the store and rent the video.\u00c2\u00a0 But I doubt Blockbuster has "New York Doll".<\/p>\n
But scanning through Time Warner’s On Demand service last evening, under "Free Movies", I found "New York Doll" and I watched it.<\/p>\n
And it made me sad.\u00c2\u00a0 And it made me happy.\u00c2\u00a0 Just like the best rock music, the great albums of yore.<\/p>\n
That’s why everybody’s still listening to the old stuff.\u00c2\u00a0 It possesses an unsullied honesty that we yearn for.<\/p>\n
Tune into "New York Doll", you’ll get a hit.<\/p>\n
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