‘Johnny’s Gonna Die’: The tragic tribute to Johnny Thunders
The pages of punk rock are awash with tragic heroes, idolised by many but truly understood by very few. The ‘live fast, die young’ attitude, which permeated through much of the scene, meant many burning flames of punk angst were snuffed out long before their time. Of course, the influence of heroin in punk is virtually unavoidable, with everybody from Blondie’s Chris Stein to The Slits’ Viv Albertine having experimented with the needle at one time or another. Few were as synonymous with the golden brown as New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders.
The New York Dolls, famously panned as “mock rock” by musical elders at the time, acted as a huge influence on the development of punk rock. Both in their native US and in the UK, young audiences stood in awe of the Dolls’ daring image, characterised by lipstick and gutter glamour, and their pioneering sound. Thunders left the band in 1975, largely as a result of the management of Malcolm McLaren, before forming The Heartbreakers and subsequently pursuing a solo career.
Although his solo career was fairly successful, and Thunders was hailed as a legend within punk music, his increasing reliance on heroin soon provided his downfall. He was a self-confessed addict, once revealing, “I guess I was about eighteen when I started using heroin. I tried it and I liked it, and in some ways I don’t regret ever having used it. I…I loved taking drugs, right? I thought I was having a real good time, taking drugs and playing rock ‘n’ roll.”
Eventually, Thunders’ lifestyle caught up to him, dying in a New Orleans hotel in 1991. Although the exact cause of death is disputed, it is generally accepted that Thunders’ passing came as a result of his drug habit. The biggest surprise surrounding his death was that it did not come sooner, with heroin addiction having already claimed the lives of many of his contemporaries by the time the 1990s rolled around. His death was even predicted a decade prior by fellow punk icons The Replacements.
Progenitors of alternative rock, The Replacements, once took the opportunity to pay tribute to the incredible influence of The New York Dolls on their 1981 track ‘Johnny’s Gonna Die’. The song is almost entirely about the destructive, party-centric lifestyle of Johnny Thunders, with harrowing lyrics like “Johnny always needs more than he shoots” and “Johnny always takes more than he needs”.
The inspiration for the track apparently came when The Replacements competed to be the opening act for Johnny Thunder’s short-lived band Gang War, eventually losing to Hüsker Dü. Reportedly, Thunders was in a bad way at the Minneapolis show, suffering from heroin withdrawal, leading Hüsker Dü to round up as much cocaine as they could find to keep him going. Replacements frontman Paul Westerberg attended the show and recalls Thunders looking “like he was walking dead”.
While The Replacements track did seem to predict his death a decade following the track’s release, it would certainly not have been difficult for anybody to look at Thunders at the time and theorise that he might not have very long left. Especially since, a couple of years prior, the punk world had been stunned by the heroin-fuelled downfall and death of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious.