[Edited version of a post originally published 2/18/2010 on Skratchdisc]
…Life and Death with the New York Dolls. Well, that’s what it’s about, all right. Told by ARTHUR “KILLER” KANE himself, this short read is full of all kinds of anecdotes—remembered or half-remembered—by someone who was there for all of it. I, Doll is told from 10-20 years of hindsight by the onetime New York Doll and later-on Mormon and star of his own documentary (New York Doll). Kane tells the stories in a very “I can remember it like it was yesterday” style, even when his memory fails him, due to age or, more likely, how stoned or drunk he was when the episode happened. And he doesn’t try to downplay anything, no matter how embarrassing it might be, so when he tells you the story about how all the Dolls were puking up Newcastle Brown Ale onstage in Birmingham in 1972 (pre record deal!), I’m sure he’s telling it like it is/was.
You don’t have to be a fan of the Dolls to enjoy this memoir (though if you’re not a fan, you’re no friend of mine!). Like The Dirt by Motley Crüe was about the Eighties, it is a fascinating view of what it was like in a rock band in the ’70s, pre-AIDS, pre-uptightness about sex, pre-major label slaughter of the lambs and their music, pre-everything that makes today’s rock ’n’ roll bands pale imitations of their punky, grungy, awesome forefathers.
I met Arthur in 2002 or 3 in Los Angeles at a gig my band shared with The Dogs in North Hollywood, and he was a very kind, subdued guy. At the time I wondered if that was his true personality, or if it was decades-ago ingestions and much more recent Book of Mormon teachings doing their thing on his 60-something year old body. My friend Loren assured me that that was Arthur. I wish I could have gotten to know him. Of course, not a week goes by that I don’t plop New York Dolls onto the turntable or into the CD player and crank it up, so in that sense I know Arthur, or at least his music.
By the way, on one very popular book ordering website, this book is noted as a “posthumous autobiography.” You mean Arthur wrote it AFTER he died? Wow! I knew the man was talented, but holy crap!
4/5 (Chicago Review Press, 2009)
NuDisc 