Despite a 40 year career that managed to include members dying of drug overdoses and having the misfortune of being managed by Malcom McLaren, the New York Dolls are set to release the fifth album of their career, Dancing Backward In High Heels. The band only have two surviving members of the original lineup – guitarist Sylvain Sylvain and singer David Johansen, but on this record they are joined by fellow New Yorker, Blondie’s Frank Infante and Louis XIV front man Jason Hill on bass. Johansen says that the band had been procrastinating about making a new record but their manager talked them in to it.
“A couple of months before we made it, one of our managers said, ‘OK, we’re gonna go make a record.’ Over that two-month period, [as we were touring], we were probably thinking, ‘Oh man, I don’t want to do this.’ The thing is, when you’re on the road and you’re playing in a band every night and you have to stop to make a record, it’s almost like getting a new job. You’re satisfied with the job you already have, so there’s a little hemming and hawing. And essentially our M.O. is we procrastinate for as long as possible and find ourselves in the studio and saying, ‘I guess we’re making a record.”
Check out the good old days:
