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R2 71877/A 26043 ffCHff fuRips TP ?0flfpa|§ifri The Story Special Products RHiNO

Chapter I:

1. TRASH

2 .

; 3 . BABYLON

Chapter II:

4 . FUNKY BIT CHIC

5 . GIRLS

, 6 . DONNA

7 . COOL- METRO
| 8. FRENCHETTE

9 . MELODY

10 .

11. FLAMINGO ROAD

12 .

13 .

14 .

DON'T BRING ME OOWN/IT'S MY LIFE

RHiNO

Sony Music
Special Products

Chapter III:

is. HOT HOT HOT

16 . SCREWY MUSIC

17 . HEART OF COLD

1 18 . HIT THE ROAD, JACK

| 19 . ONE OF THE POOREST PEOPLE

• Original Recordings Produced by TODD RUNDGREN, SHADOW MORTON, DAVID JOHANSEN,

| RICHARD ROBINSON, MICK RONSON, BARRY MRAZ, RON NEVISON & HANK MEDRESS

5 MARKETS, A DIVISION OF POLYGRAM GROUP DISTRIBUTION, INC. • "HOT HOT HOT,” “SCREWY MUSIC,” AND “HEART OF GOLD” ® 1987 BMG MUSIC, AND “HIT THE ROAD, JACK” AND

“ONE OF THE POOREST PEOPLE” 01989 BMG MUSIC, COURTESY OF THE RCA RECORDS LABEL, UNDER LICENSE FROM BMG DIRECT. • ALL OTHER SELECTIONS ^ 1978,1979, 1981
g & 1982 SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT INC. THIS COMPILATION © 1995 SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT INC./SONY MUSIC SPECIAL PRODUCTS/MANUFACTURED BY COLUMBIA
' § RECORDS/550 MADISON AVE., NEW YORK, NY 10022-3211 /“COLUMBIA” & “SONY” REG. U.S. PATENT & TM OFFICE/MARCA REGISTRADA/WARNING: ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

R2 71877/A 26043 from Pumps TO PontpacN?: The Story gSwlSSucts R H i N o

Tramps on 21st Street in New York City, the waitresses wear T-shirts bear¬
ing a tilted martini glass alongside the command “Live It Up” in uneven lettering convey¬
ing a suitable tipsiness. On the wall left of the stage is a red and blue neon sign with the
same thing. Probably no one who goes there knows the signif¬
icance of it.

Buster Poindexter started out at Tramps, way back when
the club was on 15th Street. He’s long since moved to The
Bottom Line, but the sign and shirts remain, though again,
probably no one knows the connection. Live It Up was the title
of David Johansen’s 1982 live album, which — thanks to heavy
MTV play of a medley of Animals hits — brought him his
biggest notoriety as a solo artist. Unfortunately, it wasn’t big
enough to sustain a solo recording career that while as critical¬
ly acclaimed as his notorious New York Dolls stint was about as
fruitless commercially. No matter, Johansen never was as one¬
dimensional as the glam-drag image of the Dolls suggested. So
wide was Johansen’s musical knowledge, in fact, that in short
order he reinvented himself as a tuxedo-clad, high-
pompadoured rhythm & blues encyclopedia — the lovable
lounge lizard Buster Poindexter.

But while the Poindexter phenomenon finally delivered
Johansen the recognition he had earned so long ago, lost to
many was the great historical Johansen/Dolls work that pre¬
ceded Poindexter. That’s why From Pumps To Pompadour: The
David Johansen Story is so important: Few individuals in rock
have had such immense influence as David Johansen, not to
mention quality of output. Yet few heroes have remained so rel¬
atively unsung.

The David Johansen Story begins with “Trash” and
“Personality Crisis,” from New York Dolls, that band’s landmark
1973 Todd Rundgren-produced debut album on Mercury
Records. The album sizzled with the sound and energy of The
Rolling Stones, with whom the Dolls were most readily com¬
pared. David Johansen, the charismatic, chameleonic lead singer, even looked and sound¬
ed very much like Mick Jagger and also played harmonica now and then. But if the Dolls’
heavily blues- and R&B-derived hard rock seemed Stones-descended, their look was
trashy, campy, glitter-glam-drag outrageousness — tutus and combat boots and heavy

NEW YORK DOLES

makeup that walked the Dolls well off the edge of Lou Reed’s “Wild Side.” Indeed, they
were the next link following Reed’s Velvet Underground, The Stooges, MC5, and a hand¬
ful of other vital bands in rock ’n’ roll history’s evolutionary chain — the missing link
between the late ’60s hard rock and the mid-’70s punk rock revolutions.

The New York Dolls formed in 1971, emerging out of Actress, a trio including future
Dolls guitarist Arthur Kane and drummer Billy Murcia. Gigging at
a Manhattan bar called Nobody’s, the two met up with Johnny
Volume, whose given name was John Anthony Gezale Jr. and
who would achieve short-lived but lasting fame as Johnny
Thunders. Thunders took over on guitar and vocals, Kane shift¬
ed to bass, and their friend Sylvain Sylvain (given name: Ronald
Mizrahi) replaced the group’s original rhythm guitarist.

Enter David Johansen. Born January 9,1950, in Staten
Island, Johansen started out singing Archie Bell & The Drells
songs, joining his first group, The Vagabond Messengers, at 15.
Fast Eddie & The Electric Japs came afterward, as did an acting
apprenticeship with the late Charles Ludlum’s Ridiculous
Theater Company in Greenwich Village.

Thunders’ singing was emotionally evocative but thin; in
Johansen, a club scene regular, Actress found a robust rock
voice that could cut through the instrumental ferocity of what
soon became the New York Dolls.

As author Clinton Heylin recounts in his punk rock nar¬
rative From The Velvets To The Voidoids, the Dolls diverged from
the artiness of The Velvet Underground, the pioneering New York
rock group that set the stage for the Dolls and the punk bands
that followed in their wake. More a band of street urchins than
the Warhol-superstar Velvets, the Dolls, like the Stones and other
blues-inspired British Invasion bands, owed allegiance to black
artists like Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, James Brown, and Sonny
Boy Williamson — though they were equally influenced by the
anarchic prepunk trendsetters The Stooges.

The Dolls rehearsed in a bicycle shop on Columbus
Avenue near 82nd Street in late ’71. They made their debut on Christmas Day at a wel¬
fare hotel across the street, when the band booked to play a Christmas party no-showed.

Their next gig came in March 1972 at the Diplomat Hotel near Times Square,
where they appeared in the full glam array that became their visual trademark. But there
weren’t many places for unsigned bands with original material to play in pre-CBGBs

Manhattan — that is, until Eric Emerson, himself the leader
of the unsigned band The Magic Tramps, discovered the
Mercer Arts Center, an off-Broadway theater venue located
downtown on Mercer Street, whose cash-strapped owner
opened some of the facility’s unused rooms to original
rockers.

The New York Dolls occupied the Mercer’s Oscar
Wilde Room every Tuesday night and immediately attracted a
following of young kids who dug the Dolls’ dress and likewise
had nowhere else to go. Rock journalists deathly bored by the
era’s dominant soft rock also caught on quick, and before
long the band had a manager in former Paramount Records
A&R man Marty Thau (whose Red Star Records label roster
later included Suicide and Richard Hell & The Voidoids) and
the hard rock booking agents Leber & Krebs.

By summertime, the Dolls had become the most
exciting act in the New York underground; already, the local
press — and that segment of the music business hip to the
cutting edge — sensed a potential for the kind of national
acceptance that had eluded the Dolls’ predecessors, The
Velvet Underground.

But it was in England, where the glam rock of David
Bowie and Marc Bolan was in full force, that the Dolls first
turned. After a major feature lauding the group in a
September issue of the British music weekly Melody Maker,
the band came over to play a Wembley Arena concert head¬
lined by the Faces. But in November, Billy Murcia died after
ingesting drugs and champagne at a party in a London apart¬
ment. This, of course, only increased the volume of the buzz
surrounding the Dolls.

After a month of grieving and breaking in new drum¬
mer Jerry Nolan, the Dolls returned to the Mercer Arts Center
on December 19, 1972, this time packing the building’s
biggest room, the Eugene O’Neill Theater, to twice capacity
with record company execs. Three months later the Dolls
were signed to Mercury, and four months later came New
York Dolls.

The lead cut was the Thunders/Johansen composition

“Personality Crisis,” a rollicking rocker launching with a
loud Johansen wail. The song defined a large part of the
Dolls’ generation: “You got a personality crisis, you got it
while it was hot/But now frustration, heartache is what you
got!” The song became a Johansen signature, one of the few
Dolls tunes to carry over into his solo act, usually as the set
closer.

New York Dolls, save for Bo Diddley’s “Pills,” was all
original, and while as fierce a rock as anything to come out
of America at the time, showed the sensitivity and vulnerabil¬
ity which was at the core of Johansen’s strength as a song¬
writer and performer. It was also full of references to the clas¬
sic R&B and rock ’n’ roll songs on which he and the group
were nourished. “Trash” borrowed comically and lovingly
from Mickey & Sylvia’s R&B hit “Love Is Strange” while
exploring the gritty lifestyle of confused, alienated, and dis¬
enfranchised ’70s New York young adulthood that the Dolls’
music gave voice to. As Johansen sang in “Looking For A
Kiss,” some two decades before Kurt Cobain, “I need a fix and
a kiss.”

For certain, the New York experience was central to
the New York Dolls and to Johansen’s later incarnations. In
“Babylon,” which led off the group’s second and final album,
In Too Much Too Soon, Johansen cried out with the need to
get back to “Babylon” — presumably Fun City, New York.
“Two girls for every boy,” Johansen quipped, slyly copping
from Jan & Dean’s “Surf City.” Of course, he meets a some¬
what different kind of girl and boy in his Babylon world of
drugs and drag, but what the heck, it’s home —a place the
Dolls were destined never to leave.

In Too Much Too Soon was released a year after New
York Dolls. Produced by George “Shadow” Morton — pro¬
ducer of the equally tough (and beloved) New York ’60s girl
group The Shangri-Las — it relied heavily on covers,
including Archie Bell & The Drells’ “There’s Gonna Be A
Showdown,” Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Don’t Start Me
Talkin’,” and The Jayhawks’ 1956 novelty hit “Stranded In
The Jungle.” But the self-affirming Johansen-Thunders

original “Human Being,” which closed the album, would live on — Guns N’ Roses
recorded it for their 1993 cover album The Spaghetti Incident. But there was little
life left for the Dolls.

A Billboard ad for the album played up the group’s image as “The Band
They Love To Hate,” and sure enough, a readers’ poll in Creem voted the Dolls the
Best New Group of the Year and the Worst New Group of the Year. Though they still
ruled the roost in New York, they had failed to make inroads anywhere else. After
Thau dropped them, Malcolm McLaren, whom the Dolls encountered during their
London stay, took over.

Ever the confrontationalist, McLaren decked the Dolls in red leather, gen¬
erating more outrage with the communist connotation than had the doffed drag.
A series of shows at the Little Hippodrome theater in early 1975 were great, but
it was the Dolls’ last gasp. Kane was too drunk to play a Florida tour in April, while
Nolan and Thunders, whose junk habits would eventually prove fatal, split from the
group while in Florida. McLaren returned to England to strike gold with the Sex
Pistols.

The Dolls were dead, but not their legacy. Spinning out of Television (the
first CBGBs band), Richard Hell, who was directly inspired by the Dolls, teamed
with Thunders and Nolan in The Heartbreakers. The Ramones and The Dictators
also owed heavily to the Dolls, as did KISS (who traded glam for shock), Aerosmith
(who were managed by Leber & Krebs and succeeded everywhere the Dolls
failed), and of course the Sex Pistols, who paid snotty tribute to their forebears in
the song “New York.”

No doubt remnants of the New York Dolls can be found in any alternative
band that has enjoyed the exposure — via modern rock radio,
MTV, and the mainstream media — that didn’t come to such
groups in the days of the Dolls and the punk/new wave move¬
ment they helped spawn. What little response the Dolls generat¬
ed, again, was less than unanimously glowing.

Masterfully produced by Johansen and rock journalist and
longtime supporter Richard Robinson, David Johansen, according
the artist, was “like a logical extension of [the Dolls].” It cer¬
tainly was musically, though in terms of visual image, the dead-
on cover head shot of Johansen — minus any Dolls makeup or
smirk — indicated that this time out there would be no gim-
outside the grooves. Nor, as Johansen made clear from
opening cut “Funky But Chic,” was there any need.

I swear that somebody gave me,”

Johansen, ever style-conscious, sang out with customary verve and joie de vivre.
“My mama thinks I look pretty fruity but in jeans I feel rocky.” He was still dressed
for Manhattan street action, only now it was strictly for the fun of it. The David
Johansen Group, for its part, had much the same raunchy buoyancy of the Dolls,
retaining that group’s knack for high-energy music based on a hard rock rhythm
section, two lead guitarists, and high backup vocals. Syl Sylvain returned on gui¬
tar, joined this time by guitarists Johnny Rao and Thomas Trask, bassist Buz Verno,
and drummer Frankie LaRocka. If the Dolls looked like the Stones, the Johansen
Group — judging from the sleeve photo — all looked like Bill Wyman, save for
LaRocka’s boyish McCartney.

Fellow Staten Islander LaRocka had happened upon Johansen as both
headed toward Manhattan on the Staten Island Ferry. In the liner notes to The
David Johansen Group Live — a 1993 release of a thrilling 1978 promo-only LP
recorded in-concert July 21,1978, at The Bottom Line — LaRocka, now an A&R
man at Epic Records, recounted how he had been hoping to follow Johansen’s lead
into a good rock band and out of Staten Island.

“It was a one-in-a-million stroke of luck,” LaRocka recalled. “He was by
himself, and I went up to him and said, ‘Excuse me, but are you David Johansen?’
And he said, ‘Yeah, what about it, kid?’ And we started talking.”

Well aware that Johansen, who was still active in Dolls-leftover club bands
with Sylvain, was preparing his first solo album, LaRocka seized the moment and
volunteered himself along with Rao, Trask, and Verno — all of whom had served
Staten Island’s top bands.

Johansen “looked at me like I was nuts,” LaRocka said, but several months
later LaRocka finally badgered him into ferrying back to the Island, where the well-
rehearsed locals proved their musical mettle. The resulting David Johansen rocked
as hard as the Dolls, as “Girls” and “Cool Metro” showed. The latter tune, which
opened with a Wolfman howl reminiscent of the one in “Personality Crisis,” was
about an all-nighter back home in Babylon, an experience both invigorating and
emotionally draining. New York, the city that never sleeps, remained a focus of
Johansen’s affections — and pity.

In “Donna,” one of the album’s two great rock ballads, Johansen, perhaps
alluding to the Dolls, longed for the return of a girl whose absence has left him
empty, but streetwise: “[It’s] just like New York death, doll... it happens all the
time/I can’t cover it with purpose, I can’t drown it in wine.”

Gut-wrenching honesty and raw poetic truth aside, Donna’s departure cut
deepest when Johansen moaned, “Ever since you’ve been away it’s been so hard
to dance.” On “Frenchette,” a ballad that stripped away everything phony in

American culture and personal relationships, Johansen ele¬
vated the dance into the supreme reality: “You call that ‘love’
in French, but it’s just Frenchette/I been to France, so let’s
just dance!” he cried out in the album’s poignant master¬
piece. “I can’t get the kind of love that I want, so let’s just
dance and I’ll forget.”

In a brilliant pairing of the genuine and the artificial,
the complete and the diminutive (kitchen/kitchenette, dining
room/dinette), Johansen vainly sought out the real thing,
along the way crediting his roots with nostalgic verses end¬
ing in “ette” groups like The Ronettes and The Marvelettes,
even getting in “Bernadette,” the hit by one of his favorite
Motown groups, the Four Tops (The David Johansen Group
Live included the Tops’ “Reach Out (I’ll Be There)” among
several soul covers).

“People haven’t seen me for so long, nobody knows
if I’m good,” Johansen said in the publicity bio accompany¬
ing David Johansen. “But I think I can go into concert halls
and do a good job, and, hopefully, I’ve made a record that
people will like.” In Rolling Stone, critic Paul Nelson, who as
a Mercury A&R man had earlier signed the Dolls, rightly sug¬
gested that the album might be “the first genuine American
masterpiece that the counterculture punk rock/new wave
movement of the 70s has produced ... [While it] rocks fully
as hard as Never Mind The Bollocks, or Exile On Main St.
(most of the time the banks of layered guitars hit like
bazookas), surprisingly, at least half of its songs manage not
only to bring up but to bridge the gap between the
singer/songwriter rock ’n’ rollers — Bob Dylan, Neil Young,
Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, et al. — and jackhammers
like the Ramones and The Clash.”

Robert Palmer, reviewing the Bottom Line show in
The New York Times, called it “one of the most energizing
evenings of rock ’n’ roll this writer has enjoyed in some
time,” and called Johansen “an artist with a mind of his own,
[who] in assembling a band that goes against the grain of the
punk minimalists and the multiplatinum pop-rockers ... has
cast his lot with a revered rock tradition that just isn’t very

commercial these days. His heart is in the right place, and he
drives his music home with a joyous involvement that
finally makes comparisons with the early Rolling Stones
superfluous.”

Johansen’s 1979 follow-up album, In Style, was
coproduced by Johansen and the late Mick Ronson and
showed even greater sophistication, beginning with what
might easily have been a Four Tops hit. The gorgeous
“Melody” was as haunting in melody as the memory of the
girl lamented in the story. The tender “You Touched Me Too”
matched it in beauty and sounded like an outtake from
Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde. Thematically, “Flamingo Road,”
the six-minute set piece that closed the album, combined
“Like A Rolling Stone” with “Can’t Buy Me Love” and featured
Johansen, at his most vocally powerful, dismissing a girl who
married rich at the expense of her soul.

But the magnificent album received less acclaim and
attention than David Johansen, and 1981 ’s Here Comes The
Night, which introduced a new band centered around former
Beach Boys associate Blondie Chaplin, continued the down¬
ward trend for a singular artist who just couldn’t click com¬
mercially. Still, it was full of great songs, including “You Fool
You,” which sounded like a pop smash, the Flamenco/salsa-
inflected “Marquesa De Sade,” and “Bohemian Love Pad,” a
fun-filled, colorful vignette depicting life in the New York
underground art scene.

Johansen would probably have followed the Dolls into
oblivion had it not been for Live It Up, the 1982 live album for
which ex-Records guitarist Huw Gower replaced Chaplin.
Most of the set list was made up of solo material, though a
couple of Dolls gems were included, along with covers like
The Ronettes’ “Is This What I Get For Loving You.” But it
was the shrewd Animals medley of “We Gotta Get Out Of
This Place/Don’t Bring Me Down/lt’s My Life” that sensi¬
bly affiliated Johansen with the underappreciated British
Invasion group and garnered extensive MTV play. Even then,
though, it was Johansen’s swan song for Blue Sky, an Epic
Records-associated label. His final solo album, Sweet

Revenge, was released independently by Jem Records and stirred barely
a ripple.

And so it all might have been — some of the most intelligent and
thoughtful songwriting of the post-punk era notwithstanding — had
Johansen been less resilient and resourceful. Tired of opening for what he
called “heavy mental acts at Hitler Youth rallies,” he conceived his Buster
Poindexter persona to entertain people he liked being with, he told Rolling
Stone, which described the character as “more like a hip Robert Goulet
than a shadow of his former self.”

The name, he said, stemmed from old nicknames: “Buster” came
from being on the street, “Poindexter,” from being the only one in his gang
who read books. “Kind of like an intellectual punk,” he said in Rolling
Stone. In the bio for his 1987 debut LP Buster Poindexter, he credited
gamblers, authors, filmmakers, and thieves among the “all kinds of peo¬
ple” contributing to his “well-rounded, Runyonesque interest in life.”

According to Poindexter myth, he was an ethnomusicologist from
Bogalusa, Louisiana, the only child of the song-and-dance team
Beauregard and Beulah Poindexter, with whom he traveled all over the
South. Beauregard was murdered for cheating in a bridge game when
Buster was six, and after Beulah read in Variety that Tallulah Bankhead
needed an aide-de-camp, she got the job. Buster grew up in the maid’s
quarters of Tallulah’s Park Avenue digs in New York — hence his Yankee
accent.

The truth was just as convoluted. Johansen officially established
Buster at Tramps in 1984 on Monday nights, when musicians with regu¬
lar gigs had the night off and could come in and jam. But this was really
an outgrowth of The Uptown Horns’ legendary Tuesday night Tramps
jams, which began in late 79 and attracted the likes of Iggy Pop, Joe
Jackson, Mitch Ryder, Southside Johnny, and David Johansen.

“David used to come down to have a drink, raid our band for
musicians — which he did constantly — and sit in,” recalls Crispin Cioe,
saxophonist with the Uptown quartet. “He’d have a couple ales with his
buddies and do old songs with us.”

A year or so later, Johansen enlisted the Uptowns for a series of
loft gigs featuring odd cover tunes like “There’s Gonna Be A Showdown,”
Bessie Smith’s “Give Me A Pigfoot And A Bottle Of Beer,” “Theme From
Valley Of The Dolls,” and The Kinks’ “Alcohol.”

“He told us to wear suits, and he sat on a stool smoking and doing

repartee,” says Cioe. “It was a raging success. The Animals medley had been his
last serious shot at rock stardom, so he finally decided to hang up his rock ’n’
roll shoes and started at Tramps with a small group, The Banshees of Blue, and
it was a total sensation. So he bumped it up to a bigger show and took it to The
Bottom Line.”

Exchanging drag for formal wear, drugs for Bombay martinis, the
Poindexter program was essentially the New York Dolls for adults, with
Johansen’s alcohol-soaked, cigarette-stoked vocals plying the tried-and-true
black music of his roots. “You don’t reach a certain age and suddenly turn into
Frank Sinatra,” he told New York. “You just grow up.”

The Uptown Horns came aboard permanently with the Wednesday night
Bottom Line shows. The Banshees of Blue, now six pieces, continue to include
keyboardist Charlie Giordano, whom Johansen nicked from the Uptowns back at
Tramps and who had previously played in a latter Johansen Group, as did drum¬
mer Tony Machine. Playing violin and providing a perfect foil for Buster is Soozie
Tyrell, who had once sung in a group with Pattie Scialfa — who sang on the first
Buster album — and Lisa Lowell, who is now part of Buster’s three-piece
Busteriers female backup vocal trio.

The first two Poindexter albums — Buster Poindexter anti the 1989 fol¬
low-up Buster Goes Berserk — were on RCA Records and produced by Hank
Medress of The Tokens. Included in The David Johansen Story are the big-band
novelty number “Screwy Music,” and the reggaelike ballad “One Of The
Poorest People.” Among Buster’s other recorded covers were Lulu’s pop hit “Oh
Me Oh My (I’m A Fool For You Baby),” and on his 1994 Forward/Rhino album
debut, Buster’s Happy Hour — released simultaneously with the same-named
comedy series that he hosted for VH-1 — jump blues classics by the likes of
Louis Jordan, Big Joe Turner, and Jimmy Rushing, as well as The Kinks’
“Alcohol.”

Buster Goes Berserk also yielded a letter-perfect rendition of Ray Charles’
“Hit The Road, Jack,” in which Buster is brow-beaten by the incendiary Tyrell.
But the preceding Buster Poindexter provided Arrow’s soca hit “Hot Hot Hot,”
which Buster & The Banshees premiered at a party for the Columbian Embassy
in Atlantic City. “We were playing Buster material before these rich South
Americans who didn’t speak English — and not getting over,” says Cioe. “But
David made us learn ‘Hot Hot Hot’ during soundcheck, and they made us play it
for an hour straight until we got so tired that he said, ‘Follow me!’ and snaked
into the lounge of Caesar’s Palace! We never stopped doing that at gigs.”

“Hot Hot Hot” became a staple of TV commercials and party bands

everywhere. Ironically, the video
earned an MTV Video Music Award
nomination for “Best New Artist in a
Video.” It also featured support from
Poindexter fan Bill Murray, a role rever¬
sal from Murray’s film Scrooged, in
which Johansen had a memorable bit
part as the Ghost of Christmas Past.

Johansen has appeared in
numerous films and TV series over the
years, including Married To The Mob,

Freejack, Car 54 Where Are You? and
The Equalizer. His Poindexter perfor¬
mances brought him a regular spot on
Saturday Night Live, also an ad cam¬
paign for Amaretto di Saronno.

On June 18, 1994,

Poindexter kicked off the Los Angeles
opening ceremonies for the World Cup
soccer games at the Rose Bowl before
a worldwide TV audience. In November he hosted the 16th Annual Billboard Music Video
Awards. Meanwhile, David Johansen sang “Alabama Song” in a stylish docudrama on the
life and work of composer Kurt Weill by Toronto’s award-winning Rhombus Media. On
February 12 he made a rare concert appearance as himself to honor the 20th anniversary
of The Bottom Line, where, as Buster, he holds the performance record.

Buster’s Bottom Line shows always close with “Heart Of Gold.” One of the few orig¬
inals in his set, the song first surfaced in a heartrending folk rock version on Here Comes
The Night and was given a slightly countrified pop feel on Buster Poindexter by Tyrell’s fid-
dlework. Indeed, the melody — and lyric — seem tailor-made for George Jones: “You think
I’m a whore, but I got a heart of gold/You’re locking your door and leaving me out in the
cold/l’ve been bought and, baby, I’ve been sold/And I need protection from the cold.”

With his heart on his sleeve, “Heart Of Gold” distills the essence of Buster Poindexter,
who really was just a fancier package for David Johansen as the ultimate New Yorker. At
home in the city’s seamiest streets and glitziest showrooms, meretricious and elegant,
David Johansen remains a study in contrasts, and, as evidenced by The David Johansen
Story, as great and singular and complete an artist as rock ’n’ roll has yet bestowed.

—Jim Bessman

BUSTER S BAND

Chapter I: Nett Yorft Dolls

1 TRASH W

(Sylvain Sylvain/David Johansen)

2 PERSONALITY CRISIS (A)

(Johnny Thunders/David Johansen)

3 BABYLON

(David Johansen/Johnny Thunders)

Chapter ii: David Johansen

4 FUNKY BUT CHIC «

(David Johansen/Sylvain Sylvain)

5 GIRLS (Q

(David Johansen/Sylvain Sylvain)

6 DONNA (0>

(David Johansen)

7 COOL METRO <9

(David Johansen/Sylvain Sylvain)

8 FRENCHETTE (9

(David Johansen/Sylvain Sylvain)

9 MELODY «

(David Johansen/Romie Guy)

10 YOU TOUCHED ME TOO »

(David Jdhamen/Johmy Rao)

11 FLAMINGO ROAD »

(David Johansen/Sylvain Sylvan)

12 BOHEMIAN LOVE PAD 0

(David Johansen/Sylvain Sylvain)

13 IS THIS WHAT I GET FOR
LOVING YOU (

(Phil Spector/Carole King/

Gerry Goffin)

14 WE GOTTA GET OUT OF
THIS PLACE/DON'T BRING
ME DOWN/IT'S MY LIFE (R

(Barry Mann/Cynthia Wei\)(Gerry
Goff in/Carole King)(Roger Atkins/
Carl D'Errico)

Chapter III:

Buster Poindexter

15 HOT HOT HOT «V

(Alphonsus Cassell)

16 SCREWY MUSIC (G)

(Fred Rose/Jimmie Lunceford)

17 HEART OF GOLD (G)

(David Johansen)

18 HIT THE ROAD, JACK (H)

(Percy Mayfield)

19 ONE OF THE POOREST
PEOPLE H)

(T.A. Brown)

ft I f) u in S p w x c e s / t e r s o n n e I :

A. New York Dolls

(Mercury #675, 7/73)

PRODUCED BY TODD RUNDGREN

DAVID JOHANSEN: lead vocals
JOHNNY THUNDERS: guitar, vocals
SYLVAIN SYLVAIN: guitar, piano, vocals
ARTHUR HAROLD KANE: bass
JERRY NOLAN: drums, percussion

B. In Too Much Too Soon

(Mercury #1001,5/74)

PRODUCED BY SHADOW MORTON

Same personnel as on “A”

C. David Johansen

(Blue Sky #34926,4/78)

PRODUCED BY RICHARD ROBINSON & DAVID JOHANSEN

DAVID JOHANSEN: lead vocals, guitar, percussion

BOBBIE BLAIN: piano, organ

JOHNNY RAO: guitar

THOMAS TRASK: guitar

BUZ VERNO: bass, vocals

FRANKIE LaROCKA: drums, vocals

TONY MACHINE: percussion on “'Funky But Chic”

STAN BRONSTEIN: horns on "Funky But Chic”

NONA HENDRYX: background vocals on “Funky But Chic”
SARA DASH: background vocals on “Funky But Chic”
SCARLET RIVERA: violin on “Donna”

SYLVAIN SYLVAIN: guitar on “Cool Metro”

JOE PERRY: guitar on “Cool Metro”

D In Style

(Blue Sky #36082, 7/79)

PRODUCED BY MICK RONSON & DAVID JOHANSEN

MICK RONSON & DAVID JOHANSEN: orchestral arrangement
on “Melody”

GENE ORLOFF: conductor on “Melody”

RONNIE GUY: piano on “Melody” & “You Touched Me Too”
TOM MANDEL: organ on “Melody” & “You Touched Me Too”
DAN HARTMAN: bass & vocals on “Melody” & “You Touched
Me Too”

IAN HUNTER: piano on “Flamingo Road”

JOHNNY RAO: guitar on “Flamingo Road”

MICK RONSON: acoustic guitar on “Flamingo Road”

BUZ VERNO: bass, vocals on “Flamingo Road”

E. Here Comes The Night

(Blue Sky #36589, 6/81)

PRODUCED BY BARRY MRAZ & DAVID JOHANSEN

DAVID JOHANSEN: lead vocals
BLONDIE CHAPLIN: guitar, vocals
ERNIE BROOKS: bass
TONY MACHINE: drums
BOBBY BLAIN: piano
TOM MANDEL: organ

F Live It Up

(Blue Sky #38004, 6/82)

PRODUCED BY RON NEVISON

DAVID JOHANSEN: lead vocals
HUW GOWER: guitar, vocals
DAVID NELSON: guitar, vocals
BRETT CARTWRIGHT: bass, vocals
TONY MACHINE: drums, percussion
CHARLIE GIORDANO: keyboards

G. Buster Poindexter

(RCA #6633,10/87)

PRODUCED BY HANK MEDRESS

DAVID JOHANSEN: lead vocals, guitar, tambourine, harmonica

THOMAS TRASK: guitar, vocals

FRANKIE LaROCKA: drums, tambourine, vocals

BUSTER POINDEXTER: lead vocals

BUSTER POINDEXTER’S BANSHEES OF BLUE-
JOE DELIA: piano, organ, musical director, arranger

BRIAN KOONIN: guitar, sitar, banjo, mandolin
TONY “ANTOINE FATS” GARNER: bass
TONY MACHINE: drums
FRED WALCOTT: percussion

THE UPTOWN HORNS—

CRISPIN CIOE: alto & baritone sax
ARNO HECHT: tenor sax
HOLLYWOOD PAUL LITTERAL: trumpet
BOB FUNK: trombone

JOHN SHEARD: Sinclavier & string arrangements
U\RRY POINDEXTER: accordion
SOOZIE TYRELL: accompanying vocals, violin
PATTIE SCIALFA, LISA LOWELL, CARL HALL, LOUISE
BETHUNE: additional vocals

H. Buster Goes Berserk

(RCA #9665, 5/89)

PRODUCED BY HANK MEDRESS

BUSTER POINDEXTER: lead vocals

BUSTER POINDEXTER’S BANSHEES OF BLUE—

CHARLIE GIORDANO: keyboards, accordion, musical director,
arranger

BRIAN KOONIN: guitars, mandolin, conductor
TONY “ANTOINE FATS” GARNER: bass
TONY MACHINE: drums, programming
FRED WALCOTT: percussion
SOOZIE TYRELL: vocals, violin
RANDI MICHAELS: vocals
IVY RAY: vocals

THE UPTOWN HORNS—

CRISPIN CIOE: alto & baritone sax
ARNO HECHT: tenor sax, clarinet
HOLLYWOOD PAUL LITTERAL: trumpet
BOB FUNK: trombone

DAVID DARLINGTON: programming
JOCELYN BROWN, JOHN COLLINS, FUTZ, TERRY GABIS, HOY
BOY, LISA LOWELL, STEVE PAUL, KEVIN TRAINOR,
MARTHA WASH, BRENDA WHITE: additional vocals

Compilation: GARY STEWART
Project Assistance: TED MYERS
Research: GARY PETERSON
Remastering: BILL INGLOT & KEN PERRY
Art Direction: COCO SHINOMIYA
Design: RACHEL GUTEK

Special Thanks: STEVE PAUL, FRANKIE LaROCKA,
CRISPIN CIOE

Also Available on Rhino/Forward Records:
Buster’s Happy Hour (R2/R4 #71680)

GET ON THE RHINO MAILING LIST

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over a thousand critically acclaimed Rhino compact
discs and cassettes. Send one dollar (check or money
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name and address to: Rhino Catalog, 10635 Santa
Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025-4900.

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where do the children play?
Nowadays we ask, how can chil¬
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and shelter, not to mention educa¬
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our nation's wealth, one in five
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and disabilities. Some kids grow
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R2 71877/A 26043

Refer to packaging for licensing information. 1
This Compilation i 1995 Sony Music Entertainment'
Ina/Sony Music Special .Products/Manufactured by
Columbia Records/550 Madison Ave., New York, NY
i 10022-3211 / "Columbia” & "Sony” Reg. U.S.

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