David Johansen
January 9, 1950 – February 28, 2025
GIJSBERT HANEKROOT/GETTY
David Johansen was the perfect frontman for the New York Dolls. A big-mouthed, loose-limbed, wise-assed, Staten Island talking machine with an immense personality, acres of attitude, a quick wit, a broad vocabulary and an unquenchable passion for rock’n’roll.
“When I was a kid Little Richard blew my fucking mind,” Johansen once boomed at me over cocktails. “I first heard him when I was five years old and thought: ‘Okay, that’s what I’m gonna do.’”
And that’s pretty much, what he did.
David Roger Johansen was born in Staten Island, New York City on January 9, 1950 to an Irish-American librarian mother and a Norwegian-American insurance salesman father.