Following the news of New York Dolls singer’s battle with stage 4 cancer, David Johansen thanked fans for their support in a fundraising campaign.
The iconic singer/songwriter has been privately battling cancer for five years, and is now bedridden and incapacitated, after breaking his back in a fall last November and the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund and Johansen’s daughter Leah Hennessey launched the David Johansen Fund to raise money for the singer’s physical therapy, full-time nursing needs, and daily living expenses.
In order to thank his fans for the outpouring of support, on Valentine’s Day (2.14,) Johansen and his wife Mara uploaded a short video onto the David Johansen Fund’s site.
“Hello everybody. I just wanted to thank you all for giving us a big boost here with our fundraising campaign, I guess you would call it,” Johansen said. “I’ve never asked for help in my life and lately Mara’s been teaching me the beauty of, when your chips are down, asking for help. That’s what I’m doing and it seems to be working out really marvelously.” “We’ve been living with my illness for a long time, still having fun, seeing friends and family, carrying on, but this tumble the day after Thanksgiving really brought us to a whole new level of debilitation.” “This is the worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. I’ve never been one to ask for help, but this is an emergency. Thank you,” stated David.
Perhaps best known for his work with the pioneering punk group the New York Dolls, Johansen also released several successful solo records. In the early 1980s, he began playing under-the-radar club shows as Buster Poindexter and in 1987, he scored an unlikely pop hit with a cover of Alphonsus Cassell’s “Hot Hot Hot” under his Poindexter alter ego. And in 1987 he had a memorable role as the Ghost of Christmas Past in the Bill Murray movie Scrooged.
What became the backbone of their 2022 documentary Personality Crisis: One Night Only, in 2020, directors Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi filmed Johansen’s show at New York’s Café Carlyle.
Following the passing of Johnny Thunders in 1991, Jerry Nolan in 1992, Arthur Kane in 2004, and Sylvain Sylvain in 2021, Johansen is the last surviving core member of the New York Dolls.
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Author: Saul Goode
Photo: Montecruz Foto from Berlin, Alemania