There’s No Bones in Ice Cream: Sylvain Sylvain’s Story of the New York Dolls by Sylvain Sylvain

Author:Sylvain Sylvain
Format: epub

OH SYLVAIN, I HAD SO MUCH SEX IN THAT LOFT

We needed new names, to match the energy of the music and our look.

Johnny already had one; he could never be anything but Johnny Thunders. David opted not to change, but “Johansen” had a certain ring to it.

Arthur Kane – that sounded pretty good already, but then he put “Killer” in the middle (although I thought it should have been “candy” because he was really a sweetheart). And Billy was seriously considering renaming himself Jennifer Woods, which he borrowed from one of his girlfriends, and that would have been great. But Alice Cooper had already done something similar, and much as we loved his music, we didn’t want to follow him that far. In the end he became Billy Doll.

That left me. I suppose I could have revived Ricky Corvette, which I still think is a marvellous rock’n’roll name, up there alongside Vince Taylor, Gene Vincent, Billy Fury, Eddie Cochran – the names that hit you between the eyes, which are musical before you even hear the music. Ultimately, however, I decided to simply slap some echo on my first name.

It was right around this same time, too, that we started playing regular loft gigs. I think Billy started it, telling Johnny they needed money because the rent was due, and we should have a rent party. A deuce (two dollars) to get in; Roger Popeye at the foot of the staircase collecting the money, and selling pot on the side; Johnny instructing all his friends from Queens to come over; and then different people from the neighbourhood.

There’d be dealers; there’d be hookers; people who lived in the other lofts on the street – they’d hear our music and they’d want to come and party as well. Drag queens who were doing their own shows, just the coolest of the cool. People were constantly trying to find places to play; it wasn’t like it became later – “Oh this is SoHo, let’s go there” – in fact it wasn’t even called SoHo back then. They’d put on shows to pay the rent, so we were going to those, and they were coming to ours.

Of course, not all of our neighbours were quite so thrilled. The loft faced Christie Street, and we’d set up in the kitchen at the back, overlooking a row of shops selling restaurant equipment. That whole stretch past what became CBGB, up as far as St Mark’s, was full of steel tubs, hotdog machines, restaurant tables and chairs, everything.

Upstairs, however, were what they called lie-in houses, Bowery flop houses, and when we played … we would play all night long, and the down-and-outs who were flopping over there really didn’t want to hear us. All they wanted was to crash, and we made that impossible. Soon, every window on that side of the loft had been broken by the bottles and bricks that they threw at us, and even though we tried some soundproofing, tacking sacking up over the windows, I don’t think it made much difference.

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