Punk: Attitude Page #4

Faster than any boy

could ever describe

When I saw them and the way

they didn't care about nothing...

and that just really struck me straight

away, you know what I mean.

It was something completely different

to anything else that was going on then.

Every punk band that I knew

in London, and I know all of them...

they all had both of

the New York Dolls albums.

No one had told us that

we had all this impact.

We didn't know

anything about it.

Yeah, we would have moved

to England and stayed here.

When I say I'm a luv you'd

best believe I'm a luv, L.U. V.

I know that there's this thing, Malcolm

McClaren managed The Dolls but...

he hung around with this us for the last

2 weeks of our existence. We were like...

we were going

down in flames.

Malcolm thought like what's the

most shocking thing in America?

They're really afraid of

communism in America...

so let's make all these red clothes

and have a red party.

And then for shock value...

he put a big flag with a hammer

and sickle in the back.

They didn't sing about

being communists...

it was just there to irritate

people and it sure did.

It's so funny to

think now that...

you know, that communism

in the States was like...

was like child molesting,

you know.

So this was it, I mean, in America which

we were such a hard pill to swallow.

You know everyone

was booing them.

You know, "Faggots get off the stage",

and you know and a lot of that stuff.

We were number one man and

we were way ahead of the pack...

and then that's when we fell

and broke our leg...

and bam and everyone

else just whoosh.

The red and black leather show and

that look was kind of the final blow.

It's sort of interesting

as that sort of marks...

the point where glam rock died

and punk rock started.

As The Dolls sort of began to wind

down and then eventually broke up...

there were other

bands coming in...

that had been in kind of

in the circle of The Dolls...

and had been inspired by The Dolls

and they started forming bands.

In New York pre-75...

the punk rock scene was probably

just starting to bubble...

but nobody knew it was going

to be the punk rock scene...

we were just taking notes from the MC5

and taking notes from The Stooges...

and the cauldron was

starting to bubble.

You know everybody was so fed up with

what was going on with rock 'n' roll...

which was Deep Purple.

These big bloated concerts where they

did these organ solos for 20 minutes...

or these guitar

solos for 20 minutes.

The Bowery was still The Bowery.

It wasn't cleaned up yet.

It was still fun and

a little dangerous...

and edgy and it was, you know,

a different cultural social world back then.

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