I was too young to see the New York Dolls in their heyday, though I saw Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers on numerous occasions. The closest I got to David Johansen in those early days was that historically fabulous OGWT in 1973.

That’s the occasion when Bob Harris infamously dismissed them at the end of their mind-blowing performance as “mock rock.” It was enough for me to take them instantly to my heart alongside Bowie and Bolan.

I was lucky enough to see the Dolls when they reunited for Morrissey’s Meltdown Festival in 2004, and again at the 100 Club in 2009. I doubt Whispering Bob was at either; I now learn that his curt dismissal might have been revenge for David Johansen telling him, prior to recording, that he had “bunny teeth.”

Johansen was the archetypal rock’n’roll frontman – all pouts and poses, flamboyant flounces and fancy footwork.

With his extravagant gestures, cartoonishly wide mouth and lips, and long Seventies hair, he was a camper cross-dressing pastiche of Mick Jagger, just as Johnny Thunders was a camper cross-dressing parody of Keith Richards. Together they were the Stones by way of Bowie, T.Rex and The Sweet and at the age I loved them from the moment I set eyes and ears on them at the age of 15.

They were still great at those reunion gigs, not that I had anything to compare them with apart from video clips and the memory of that OGWT performance, when they sang Jet Boy and Looking For A Kiss (still great, still on YouTube), even though they’d lost members along the way.

Original drummer Billy Murcia died on their first UK tour in 1972; his replacement Jerry Nolan in 1991 and guitarist nine months later in 1992, and Arthur Kane soon after that magnificent Meltdown show in 2009.

Nonetheless they were great, and the reason they remained great was largely down to Johansen, who was last man standing following the death of Sylvain Sylvain in 2021.

I did not closely follow his solo career after the Dolls split in 1975, though I did buy his second solo album In Style in 1979. I can’t say I loved it, probably because I didn’t want to hear the lipstick-and-leather Dolls frontman singing a disco-lite tune called Swaheto Woman.

It still sounds terrible, which is why I didn’t pay any attention to his reinvention as a tuxedo-clad and lavishly pompadoured cabaret crooner-cum-ethnomusicologist called Buster Poindexter, playing swing and jump blues – and, later, Latin music – with a killer brass section called The Uptown Horns.

My bad, because it meant I missed his joyous latin-flavoured cover of soca king Arrow’s timeless Trinidadian carnival anthem Hot Hot Hot. Until now.

I now need to delve into his blues period with a group called The Harry Smiths, named in tribute to the legendary folk music collector who compiled the Anthology of American Folk Music, some of whose songs they covered.

Johansen was a lifelong blues fan and the Dolls used to cover Bo Diddley and Sonny Boy Williamson in their early days, as well as Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry, some of them gathered on an album of early demos called Private World.

I’m afraid to say I didn’t listen to the Dolls’ comeback albums, One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This, Cause I Sez So and Dancing Backwards In High Heels.

That was probably for fear of tarnishing my pristine memories of those first two landmark albums, the self-titled debut and its follow-up Too Much, Too Soon – a title that summed up a brief but influential proto-punk career.

Perhaps I will listen now; I’m already listening to his wonderfully eclectic radio show David Johansen’s Mansion Of Fun (“from the jungles of Africa to the Bayou of Louisiana”) which you can catch online.

I didn’t know that in 2020, Johansen had been diagnosed with stage four cancer and a brain tumour, ending his musical career. Last November he had surgery after fell and broke his back in two places.

He died at his home in Staten Island – the quiet New York borough where he had been born and raised – on 28 February at the age of 75.

Everyone else has posted classic dolls songs like Personality Crisis and Jet Boy so I’m going to go with this instead. Farewell Buster Poindexter, RIP David Johansen (1950-2025).