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Listen to album track sound clips & buy cds today at Johnny Thunders CDS
Johnny Thunders, born John Anthony Genzale, Jr (July 15, 1952 - April 23, 1991), was a rock and roll guitarist and singer, first with the New York Dolls, the proto-punk glam rockers of the early '70s. During the late '70s, he was a familiar figure on the New York punk scene, both with The Heartbreakers and as a solo artist. His screeching, penetrating guitar sound is distinctive and highly influential in punk rock music. Thunders tangled with the demons of fame along with alcohol and drug addiction.
After recording two critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful albums — The New York Dolls and Too Much Too Soon — the Dolls broke up. The early Dolls recordings are still in print today and continue to influence young bands with their trash/glam/punk attitude. He formed The Heartbreakers with Dolls drummer Jerry Nolan, ex-Demons guitarist Walter Lure and Television bassist Richard Hell, who left soon after to form Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Hell was replaced by Billy Rath. With Thunders leading the band, the Heartbreakers toured America and Britain, releasing one official album, L.A.M.F., in 1977. L.A.M.F. is a punk classic that documents the important bridge between the U.S. and U.K punk scenes. The group relocated to the UK, where their popularity was significantly greater than it was in the U.S., particularly among punk bands. In late 1979 Thunders began performing in a band called Gang War. Other members included John Morgan, Ron Cooke, Philippe Marcade and former MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer. They recorded several demos and performed live several times before disbanding. Bootlegs of their demos and live performances are circulating; One semi-official live album, credited to Thunders and Kramer and titled Gang War, is easily available from specialist retailers. Thunders recorded a number of solo albums beginning with So Alone in 1978. The album was laid down in drug laden sessions with all the swirling turbulence of an atomic explosion. The complex bittersweet sound is a standard that many bands aspire to emulate and it is universally hailed as Johnny Thunders' masterpiece. It featured guests such as Phil Lynott, Chryssie Hynde, Steve Marriott, Glen Matlock, Steve Jones, Walter Lure, Billy Rath, and Peter Perrett of The Only Ones. The core of the band on the album included Thunders, Lynott, Cook, and Jones. After its release, Thunders and Sex Pistols ex-bassist Sid Vicious played in the Living Dead for a short time. The CD version of the album contains four bonus tracks, including the single "Dead or Alive," one of Thunders' finest post-Dolls moments. During the early '80s, Thunders re-formed The Heartbreakers for various tours; the group recorded their final album in 1984. In 1985, he released Que Sera Sera, a collection of new songs that showed he could still perform convincingly. Three years later he recorded an album of rock and R&B covers with vocalist Patti Palladin, Copy Cats. Thunders kept performing and recording until his death in 1991, but problems with heroin addiction kept his output and songwriting sporadic during the 1980s. Thunders always had a loyal following. No doubt there would be many more fans if not for the uneven performances and lack of good publicity. The flood of bootleg recordings has never slowed. Amongst his last recordings were the live concerts in Japan that show a mature, and surprisingly clean, Johnny Thunders. His final recording was a cover of "Born to Lose" with German punk rock band Die Toten Hosen, recorded some 36 hours before Thunders' death. His hotel room ransacked, with drugs present at the scene, he died shooting acid thinking it was heroin, New Orleans, Louisiana in 1991. Listen to album track sound clips & buy cds today at Johnny Thunders CDS The Heartbreakers were a punk rock group formed in New York in May 1975 by Johnny Thunders (vocals/guitar) and Jerry Nolan (drums) who had just quit the New York Dolls and Richard Hell (vocals/bass) who left Television the same week. After a few shows they added Walter Lure (vocals/guitar) who had played with a group called the Demons. In 1976 Hell was kicked out (or quit depending on who you believe) and was replaced by Billy Rath who according to legend was a gigolo. Hell went on to form his own band Richard Hell and the Voidoids Arriving just as the UK punk scene was building momentum, they developed a following playing in and around London. The Sex Pistols invited them to open for them on the ill fated Anarchy Tour. They shortly signed up with Track Records. Their debut--and only--studio album, L.A.M.F., featured all the Heartbreakers' popular live songs. The release of the album put a huge strain on the band, because of anger among some band members over the poor quality of the mix. Several of the members of the band left at this point. The band reformed in 1979 for a few farewell shows at Max’s Kansas City with drummer Ty Stix stilling in for Nolan. The resulting live album Live at Max's Kansas City '79 is considered a Punk Rock classic. The band re-formed occasionally to play at New York clubs until the death of Johnny Thunders in 1991. Jerry Nolan died a few months later in 1992. Live shows often consisted of songs performed with the New York Dolls or taken from Johnny Thunders' solo career. Richard Hell rarely plays music live concentrating instead on writing and spoken word performances. Billy Rath's whereabouts are currently unknown leading to various rumors such as that he died or became a priest. Walter Lure still performs about once a month with his band the Waldos performing mostly Heartbreakers songs Listen to album track sound clips & buy cds today at The Heartbreakers CDSDownload Heartbreakers tracks here. The New York Dolls are a rock band formed in New York City in 1971. They found little success during their existence, but the New York Dolls prefigured much of what was to come in the punk rock era and even later; the Dolls' over-the-top crossdressing influenced the look of many glam metal groups, and their shambling, sloppy but highly energetic playing style set the tone for many later rock and roll bands. Initially, the group was comprised of singer David Johansen, guitarists Johnny Thunders and Rick Rivets (who was replaced by Sylvain Sylvain after a few months), bass guitarist Arthur "Killer" Kane and drummer Billy Murcia. The original lineup's first performance was on Christmas Eve 1971 at a homeless shelter, the infamous Endicott Hotel. They got their big break when Rod Stewart invited them to open for him at a London concert. Shortly thereafter, Murcia died of accidental suffocation (after he passed out from drugs and alcohol, groupies put him in a cold bath and forced coffee down his throat). He was succeeded by Jerry Nolan, though future Richard Hell and Ramones drummer Marc Bell (Marky Ramone) later claimed he auditioned to take Murcia's place. The band was influenced by vintage rhythm and blues, the early Rolling Stones, classic American girl group songs, and anarchic post-psychedelic bands such as the MC5 and the Stooges, as well as then-current glam rockers such as Marc Bolan and David Bowie. They did it their own way, creating something which critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote "doesn't really sound like anything that came before it. It's hard rock with a self-conscious wit, a celebration of camp and kitsch that retains a menacing, malevolent edge."[1]. Johansen's energy made up for what was then a not-too-strong voice; Thunders's fuzzy guitar sound became a near-instant band trademark, as did Sylvain's minimalistic rhythm guitar, Arthur's bouncing basslines and Nolan's tom tom-heavy drumming style. Sartorially, the Dolls looked like a Halloween party gang of transvestites who had broken into the Rolling Stones' and Marc Bolan's wardrobe trunks and made it even more androgynously exaggerated. Musically, their repertoire---mostly written by Johansen (he spelled his name JoHansen at the time) and Thunders, occasionally by Johansen and Sylvain---was a series of unapologetically high-energy, demimonde expressions of the seamy New York underground from which they emerged, particularly through their legendary shows at the Mercer Arts Center. Songs like "Personality Crisis," "Trash," "Frankenstein," and "Jet Boy" were seminal squalls of guitar abuse, making up in attitude what they lacked in musical ability. But for all their squall the Dolls didn't entirely lack for subtlety; "Subway Train," for one, was as striking a piece of songwriting and even musicianship as the band could execute. Those and six others (including a speedballing cover of Bo Diddley's "Pills") turned up on their eponymous debut album, 1973's New York Dolls, on the Mercury label. Produced by Todd Rundgren, some critics think he laid too dense a hand on the band's raw thrust while others think he gave them precisely the guidance they needed to let the best of their singular snarl step forth. The album received mostly positive reviews, but sales were sluggish. In any case, a Stereo Review magazine reviewer in 1973 compared the Dolls' guitar playing to lawnmowers! For their next album, the quintet opted for another legendary producer, George (Shadow) Morton, whose productions for the Shangri-Las and other girl groups in the mid-1960s had been among the band's favourites. Far from the atmospherics he lent those mini-epics, Morton gave the Dolls a leaner sound for 1974's Too Much Too Soon. The band's songwriting seemed to falter somewhat while their covers of vintage R&B flashed some of the original energy, particularly their cover of Archie Bell and the Drells's "(There's Gonna Be A) Showdown." Critics applauded, mostly, but the public was even less impressed than they'd been with the first album (a Creem magazine poll landed them wins as the best and the worst new group of 1973). Mercury dropped the Dolls not long afterward, and the band recruited British clothier and would-be impresario Malcolm McLaren as their new manager. The kind of provocative stunts he later made work for the Sex Pistols blew up in the Dolls' faces, especially his dressing the band in red leather for performances before a Soviet flag, which alienated record labels that might have pondered taking a chance on the Dolls after Mercury let them go. Except for a few brief periods, the two Dolls albums---considered incontestable classics of raw, protopunk, anything-goes rock and roll, have never been out of print. Thunders and Nolan left in 1975 to form The Heartbreakers with guitarist Walter Lure and former Television co-founder/bassist Richard Hell. They replaced Hell with Billy Rath and toured in support of their heirs the Sex Pistols in England in 1976, while the other Dolls recruited replacements (most notably including Blackie Lawless) and continued until 1977. The Heartbreakers recorded one British-only studio album and a few odds-and-ends live sets (including a memorable set from a Max's Kansas City show) before splintering into an on-and-off concern. Thunders continued to tour and record throughout the 80's, releasing one well-regarded solo album (So Alone, an import-only album, on which Sex Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Cook played as well) and several thrown-together sets of covers and a few originals. Listen to album track sound clips & buy cds today at The New York Dolls CDS The above article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “The Heartbreakers”,Wikipedia article “The Heartbreakers”, Wikipedia article “New York Dolls”.
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New York Dolls-Personality Crisis
On January 4th, 1987, core New York Dolls members Johnny Thunders,
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Johnny Thunders - Sad Vacation+Little Bit Of Whore+ Pipeline
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