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New York Dolls

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Fact: New York Dolls were the single biggest musical influence on Morrissey - he used to run their UK fan club - but you shouldn’t hold that against them; their legacy is representative of so much more than that. During the first four years of their career, they laid the foundations for two of the biggest rock stylings of the coming decades - punk, which dominated the seventies, and glam rock, which defined the eighties. In fact, by the time they split in 1977, they’d secured a legacy not dissimilar to that of the Sex Pistols - sure, they had two records rather than one, but they were certainly viewed as one of the most important bands of the period in the years that followed. They’d eventually reunite in 2004 - at Morrissey’s organisation, to his credit - for Meltdown Festival, although the death of Arthur Kane shortly afterwards destabilised plans to continue, at least initially. Later on, though, the two surviving members would embark upon energetic tours of small UK venues that did their legacy justice, which is more that you can say for the new albums they produced; they continue to play across the world today, and have opened for the likes of Motley Crue and Poison, bands that - as with Morrissey - they were instrumental in ensuring the formation of.

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Shows: 456 Earliest: Dec 24, 1971 Latest: Oct 31, 2011

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New York Dolls

New york dolls concert setlists & tour dates, new york dolls at clyde auditorium, glasgow, scotland.

• Looking for a Kiss
• We're All in Love
• Dance Like a Monkey
• Cause I Sez So
• Private World
• Fool for You Baby
• Who Are the Mystery Girls?
• Talk to Me Baby
• Kids Like You
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New York Dolls at O2 Apollo Manchester, Manchester, England

New york dolls at alexandra palace, london, england, new york dolls at national indoor arena, birmingham, england, new york dolls at the boroughs - sydney 2011.

• I'm So Fabulous
• Gotta Get Away From Tommy

New York Dolls at Amplifier Capitol, Perth, Australia

• Funky but Chic

New York Dolls at Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre, Chula Vista, CA, USA

• Personality Crisis

New York Dolls at Save Mart Center, Fresno, CA, USA

New york dolls at idaho center arena, nampa, id, usa, new york dolls at tacoma dome, tacoma, wa, usa.

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• Personality Crisis ( 143 )
• Trash ( 135 )
• Looking for a Kiss ( 134 )
• Pills ( 130 )
• Dance Like a Monkey ( 100 )

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New York Dolls were a New York City band who were at the forefront of punk, comprised of David Johansen, Johnny Thunders, Sylvain Sylvain, and Jerry Nolan

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By the early 1970s, the New York Dolls were taking Punk attitudes and music in a new direction, albeit with a healthy dose of Glam. They played their first gig in late 1971 and, having secured a support slot with Rod Stewart in London early the following year, they signed to Mercury Records before going on to become one of the most influential groups on the New York scene; the Punk Rock capital of the world at that time.

The line-up that signed to Mercury was singer, David Johansen, guitarists Johnny ‘Thunders’ Genzale and Sylvain Sylvain, bass guitarist Arthur “Killer” Kane and drummer Jerry Nolan who took over from Billy Murcia who had tragically drowned under the influence of drink and drugs. Their  self-titled 1972 debut album  was produced by Todd Rundgren, a former member of The Nazz, but it failed to crack the Top 100; later it was voted No.213 in Rolling Stone magazine’s Top 500 Albums of All Time; the opening track, Personality Crisis, is a classic.

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Having been voted both one of the best and one of the worst bands of 1973 by Creem magazine they released their follow-up,  Too Much Too Soon , in May 1974. It was not as well-received as their debut and the band broke up in 1975 having been dropped by Mercury Records. Do not be put off, give it a listen and you will hear they were a lot more Punk than Glam.

The New York Dolls created punk rock before there was a term for it. Building on the  Rol ling Stone s ‘ dirty rock & roll, Mick Jagger’s androgyny, girl-group pop, the Stooges’ anarchic noise, and the glam rock of David Bowie and T. Rex , The New York Dolls created a new form of hard rock that presaged both punk rock and heavy metal. Their drug-fueled, shambolic performances influenced a generation of musicians in New York and London, who all went on to form punk bands. And although they self-destructed quickly, the band’s first two albums remain among the most popular cult records in rock & roll history.

All of the members of The New York Dolls played in New York bands before they formed in late 1971. Guitarists Johnny Thunders and Rick Rivets, bassist Arthur Kane, and drummer Billy Murcia were joined by vocalist David Johansen. Early in 1972, Rivets was replaced by Syl Sylvain and the group began playing regularly in Lower Manhattan, particularly at the Mercer Arts Center. Within a few months, they had earned a dedicated cult following, but record companies were afraid of signing the Dolls because of their cross-dressing and blatant vulgarity.

Late in 1972, the Dolls embarked on their first tour of England. During the tour, drummer Murcia died after mixing drugs and alcohol. He was replaced by Jerry Nolan. After Nolan joined the band, the Dolls finally secured a record contract with Mercury Records. Todd Rundgren — whose sophisticated pop seemed at odds with the band’s crash-and-burn rock & roll — produced the band’s debut New York Dolls, which appeared in the summer of 1973. The record received overwhelmingly positive reviews, but it didn’t stir the interest of the general public; the album peaked at number 116 on the U.S. charts. The band’s follow-up,  Too Much Too Soon , was produced by the legendary girl group producer George “Shadow” Morton. Although the sound of the record was relatively streamlined, the album was another commercial failure, only reaching number 167 upon its early summer 1974 release.

Following the disappointing sales of the Dolls’ two albums, Mercury Records dropped the band. No other record labels were interested in the group, so the Dolls decided to hire a new manager, the Brit Malcolm McLaren, who would soon become famous for managing the   Sex Pistols . With the Dolls, McLaren began developing his skill for turning shock into invaluable publicity. Although he made it work for the Pistols just a year later, all of his strategies backfired for the Dolls. McLaren made the band dress completely in red leather and perform in front of the U.S.S.R.’s flag, all of which meant to symbolize the Dolls’ alleged communist allegiance. The new approach only made record labels more reluctant to sign the band and members soon began leaving the group.

By the middle of 1975, Thunders and Nolan left the Dolls. The remaining members, Johansen and Sylvain, fired McLaren and assembled a new lineup of the band. For the next two years, the duo led a variety of different incarnations of the band, to no success. In 1977, Johansen and Sylvain decided to break up the band permanently. Over the next two decades, various outtakes collections, live albums, and compilations were released by a variety of labels and The New York Dolls’ two original studio albums never went out of print.

Upon the Dolls’ breakup, David Johansen began a solo career that would eventually metamorphose into his lounge-singing alter ego, Buster Poindexter, in the mid-’80s. Syl Sylvain played with Johansen for two years before he left to pursue his own solo career. Johnny Thunders formed the Heartbreakers with Jerry Nolan after they left the group in 1975. Over the next decade, the Heartbreakers would perform sporadically and Thunders would record an occasional solo album. On April 23, 1991, Thunders — who was one of the more notorious drug abusers in rock & roll history — died of a heroin overdose. Nolan performed at a tribute concert for Thunders later in 1991; a few months later, he died of a stroke at the age of 40.

In 2004, former Smiths vocalist Morrissey — who was once the president of a British New York Dolls fan club — invited the surviving members of The New York Dolls to perform at the 2004 Meltdown Festival, a music and cultural festival that was being curated that year by the singer. To the surprise of many, David Johansen, Syl Sylvain, and Arthur Kane agreed to the gig, with Steve Conte (from Johansen’s solo band) standing in for Thunders and Gary Powell from the Libertines sitting in on drums. The group’s set was well-received by critics and fans (and was recorded for release on DVD and compact disc), which led to offers for other festival appearances, but only a few weeks after the Meltdown show, Kane checked himself into a Los Angeles hospital with what he thought was a severe case of the flu. Kane’s ailment was soon diagnosed as leukaemia, and he died only a few hours later, on July 13, 2004, at age 55.

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The Life and Times of a New York Doll

Jerry Nolan was a gang member then band member, drumming for The New York Dolls and The Heartbreakers, and pioneering the genre of punk rock – this is his story

• Text Miss Rosen

Hailing from Brooklyn, back when it was still a gang town, Jerry Nolan (1946-1992) was an indisputable force in shaping the look and sound of the city’s biggest glam and punk rock bands. As the drummer for The New York Dolls and The Heartbreakers, Nolan set the pace, crafting the face of hard rock during the 1970s – a distinctive combination that was at once raw, rough and rugged, yet highly dandified and charismatic.

“Jerry saw Elvis when he was really young, back in 1956. It reminded him of the gangs he saw in New York,” says  Curt Weiss , author of Stranded in the Jungle: Jerry Nolan’s Wild Ride – a Tale of Drugs, Fashion, The New York Dolls, and Punk Rock (BackBeat Books), which released its Kindle edition yesterday. “For Jerry, gangs and rock and roll were interchangeable. It was a secondary family. He never had a dad; his mother kept divorcing, remarrying, and moving around. The only constant men in his life came through gangs or music.”

Nolan, who had learned to sew and cut hair, created what he described as a “profile,” which allowed him to stand above the crowd. “People thought he was in a band even when he wasn’t,” Weiss notes. But soon enough, he was. He joined The New York Dolls in 1972 after drummer Billy Murcia died of asphyxiation following efforts to revive him after a drug overdose while on tour in England.

“Jerry had been playing in bands like Suzy Quattro, Billy Squier, Wayne County – he could play with anybody,” Weiss recounts. “He laid down that beat and reminded everyone where the cuts, accents, and changes were. He was a master of simplicity on that first record. His style of drumming is a template for what Paul Cook did with The Sex Pistols.”

Hailed as the second coming of The Rolling Stones, The Dolls recorded and released their eponymous debut album in 1973, filling the void left by the dissolution of The Velvet Underground. True provocateurs on all fronts, The Dolls embraced cross-dressing decades ahead of popular culture, donning high heels, flamboyant hats and androgynous clothes as decidedly cisgender heterosexuals.

“If you listen to that first album, there’s not a bad song,” Weiss opines. “They are three-minute packages of pop songs, with that unmistakable Johnny Thunders sound of an alley cat whose tail hit the third rail. It’s very simple but they were undisciplined, sloppy, and out of tune. The press loved them but the problem was taking it to the radio and taking it outside of New York. They were too early. America was not ready for men who looked like women.”

Although commercial sales were poor, Malcolm McLaren took notice and decided to manage them. “Malcolm spurred them on to write new songs including Red Patent Leather  [which is] about Chairman Mao,” Weiss explains. “They played behind a hammer and sickle. And this was in ‘75 when America was still in the Cold War. It was too early and too raw.”

After their second album Too Much Too Soon (1974) failed to sell, a feeling of panic overcame Nolan. “Jerry was doing heroin,” Weiss explains. “He and guitarist Johnny Thunders bonded over that. Jerry’s trauma was abandonment – not really having a father; Johnny also never knew his father.”

The Dolls end came on a Malcolm McLaren led tour. Vocalist David Johansen got sick of them and said they were replaceable. Nolan told him, ‘The hell with you.’” He and Thunders returned to New York where they were treated like kings. In 1975, they started The Heartbreakers, a new band with bassist Richard Hell and Walter Lure.

“It was their way to move into the new look, the new sound,” Weiss explains “As much as The Dolls kick-started CBGB, they were still at the end of glam. The Heartbreakers immediately went to the front of the class. The problem was they were unrepentant drug addicts.”

McLaren invited The Heartbreakers on The Sex Pistols’ infamous Anarchy in the UK tour, where they only played seven of the 19 gigs booked. “They got a record deal out of it – but again, they had the wrong people in the studio. The record, L.A.M.F. – gang slang for ‘Like a Mother Fucker’ – is a flawed masterpiece,” says Weiss.

Yet once again, the band was unable to crossover. “That lack of success, the lack of success of The Dolls, watching Peter Criss, a childhood friend who wasn’t half the drummer he was become a star in KISS, Suzy Quattro sell millions of records, that all just tore at him,” Weiss goes on.

“Even Thunders, a walking trainwreck, was still a cult star. Johnny, just like all those father figures, would eventually abandon him. Jerry had a lot of pain. But he was not bitter. He helped define these two bands both musically and stylistically who are as influential as anyone – from Bob Dylan to David Bowie. There are so many bands that saw The Dolls and got the message.”

Stranded in the Jungle: Jerry Nolan’s Wild Ride – a Tale of Drugs, Fashion, the New York Dolls, and Punk Rock , published by BackBeat Books, is now available on Kindle.

New York Dolls -Chronology-

(new york city: 1971-2012).

David Johansen on Losing Sylvain Sylvain: ‘I Have a Heavy Weight On My Chest’

By Andy Greene

Andy Greene

The death of New York Dolls guitarist Sylvain Sylvain after a long battle with cancer means that frontman David Johansen is now the last surviving member of the pioneering proto-punk band. He’s spent the past 24 hours since the news broke reflecting on his five-decade relationship Sylvain and reading fan tributes to him on social media. “It’s too bad this outpouring of love didn’t happen while he was alive,” Johansen says. “People should say, ‘I’m going to die next week, so please tell me how you feel right now.'”

The singer phoned  Rolling Stone to share his own outpouring of love to Sylvain, and to look back on his lifetime of memories with the guitar great.

Tell me your first memory of ever seeing Sylvain. I remember it pretty vividly. We were getting the band going and we just had rehearsal a couple of times. The guy who was playing guitar didn’t show up. All of a sudden, Syl came in the room with a carpetbag and guitar. He had just gotten off the plane after being, I think, deported from Amsterdam. [ Laughs ] He looked great, but then he started playing and I thought, “Oh my God. We gotta have this guy. He’s great.”

Little did I know, he and some of the other guys in the band had been in cahoots before he was in Europe. They were talking about making a band. He knew [drummer] Billy [Murcia] and [guitarist] John [Johnny Thunders]. I don’t know if he knew Arthur [Kane] or not. But I didn’t know that. I just knew “this guy is fantastic,” and he was.

What role did he play in the creation of the New York Dolls look? I don’t know. I’ve read some stuff about him being very instrumental in that. I guess he was. I know we were all very what we considered “fashionable” at the time. But he was friends with [fashion designer] Betsey Johnson and he hooked up the shoot for the first album cover. I don’t think he dressed us since I can tell by looking at the picture that they were all clothes that we had.

But he came from a long line of tailors. He was very into clothes and was a habitual shopper when we were on the road.

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He was born in Egypt and lived in France for a bit. How do you think that shaped him? His family moved to New York. The organization that sponsored them said, “You can live in any of these places.” The only place in New York was Buffalo. [ Laughs ] They had relatives in Brooklyn. I think his father said, “Buffalo? That’s New York. That’s near Brooklyn.” They went to Buffalo. He said his mother cried the whole time they were there. I don’t know how long they were there, but they finally moved to New York.

When I first met him, we were all New York guys. He was a fascinating guy, but I didn’t know too much about his past. When we started going to Europe, I could see that he was very self-assured.

When you think about the Mercer Arts Center days, what are the images of Sylvain that stand out in your head? He was just such a great kid at that time. He was such a passionate performer. He was very positive all the time. He was very important for that band and their success. You know what I mean by “success.” Not so much the charts and all that bullshit. It was what we were creating. He was integral to that.

Can you elaborate on that? If it hadn’t been for him, the band would have sounded crappy. He knew what he was doing and he could play the guitar. He came up with really great rhythms. He was very accomplished. He was a natural player. He loved playing.

The sound he got when he played with Johnny was such a key part of the Dolls sound. Absolutely. Syl just fit in there. He knew what to do, especially in the beginning. I’m thinking about the early days. We have a long history. We wrote songs together then, but when we got back together, we wrote a ton of songs.

New York was just unimaginably different back then. The city wasn’t really set up for bands like it is now. There weren’t a lot of places to rehearse or to play. We used to have to convince people, impresarios or whatever you want to call them, that we could bring in a crowd. They really weren’t set up for music, so to speak. It’s the same thing when we used to go on the road. We used to have to chop down trees and build a stage and put up posters around town. [ Laughs ]

The band faced a ton of setbacks in the early days. Billy died and the albums didn’t sell. Yet it seemed like Syl always believed in the band’s potential.  Absolutely. He never lost his faith. I don’t think any of us, speaking for myself, really had any expectations for world dominance. We were just doing what we were doing and you could take it or leave it, essentially. John was very ambitious in those days. He was the one that would say, “We have to rehearse! We have to rehearse!” I’d be like, “Can’t we rehearse onstage? What’s the difference?” [ Laughs ]

I loved Syl. We used to room together when we were on the road. There were days when we had to double up with two guys per room and the fifth guy would have to share a room with the road manager. It would be me and Syl in a room and when we first went to Europe and would go to a restaurant, he knew all the waiters and they would treat him like a prince. It was that kind of a thing.

The band eventually just got down to you and him near the end of the original run. We made a go at it, the two of us. We did a lot of great things in that period after the original band dissolved. In those days, we didn’t have anyone looking after our career or whatever. In an ideal world, there would have been someone there that everyone trusted to a degree, someone that said, “Why don’t you guys take six months off?”

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But we were so hand-to-mouth in those days. We were always thinking, “If we don’t make this gig, we don’t make the rent.”

The band is so beloved now, it’s easy to forget you were really struggling back then. Life is a struggle. If it wasn’t, it would probably be very boring.

You kept working with Syl after the breakup. We played together for years after the band broke up. When I got a record deal with Steve Paul, he was in the band for the first two albums I made. It was several years, longer than the Dolls were together. Look, I loved the guy. We used to write great songs together. The stuff that would come out of his musical creativity, I used to just love it.

Did it surprise him that the band reunited in 2004? I’m sure it even surprised you even though you made it happen. When we first decided we were going to do that, I was a little reluctant. Then I thought, “We’re going to go to England and stay in a nice hotel in London. It’ll be a nice break.” I was doing a lot of singing in that time with Hubert Sumlin and I was doing the Harry Smith stuff. I thought it would be nice to have a little refresher thing. It figured it would be great to see Syl and Arthur.

We were just going to do one show. It was sold out, so they made another show. Then we started getting a lot of offers to go on these European festival shows. It was late spring when we did that show. I was like, “If we’re up and running, let’s go do this and see what happens.” Then we just kept doing it for I don’t know how long.

I think it was seven years. Yeah. In the very beginning, Arthur died totally unexpectedly. He thought he had the flu and it turned out he had leukemia. That was kind of devastating. I loved him as well. Every one of the Dolls was so different and so interesting. Anyway, we persevered and got [bassist] Sami [Yaffa] in the band and just kept going.

How did your friendship deepen with Syl in this time period? When you’re with somebody for such a long time, you go through your different kinds of phases. We were laughing so much and had a lot of fun. We both really dug getting onstage and putting it out there. I was just looking at photos of us on those tours. We were always laughing.

I love those new records. They must have been fun to make. It was great. After we were playing for a while, we just thought, “We have a repertoire, but it’s ancient. Let’s refresh it.” We would come up with songs that really worked.

Why did it end in 2011? It just kind of…we were exhausted. We’d been on the road for about eight years. It wasn’t ever a point of, “This is it forever.” We just kind of cooled it for a while and it just kind of lasted.

Did you talk to him much in the past decade? Yeah. We spoke from time to time.

How was he doing? I knew the last three years were rough with his cancer battle. He really thought he was going to beat it. He was a tough little bastard. I thought he was going to come through it as well. But apparently it had been more intense and in more parts of his body than I really knew about.

Getting the news must have been devastating. I can’t say it was a shock, but it…I don’t know how to explain it, but physically there was a heavy weight on my chest. I’m still kind of processing it. I’m sure I will be for the rest of my life, be processing it.

How do you feel being the last one now? That I’m next.

Don’t say that. That’s pretty dark. [ Laughs ] That’s okay. I am pretty dark. You know? I haven’t even thought about that so much. It’s too much to think about.

I’ve seen people call the Dolls the “unluckiest band in rock history.” Morrissey says that. That Morrissey is like…I don’t want to say… [ Laughs ]

He can be pretty dark too. But also, he knows how to spin a yarn as well as the best of them.

He does have a point. There’s been a lot of tragedy. Yeah, there sure has. It’s like those old doo-wop bands.

When you think about Syl right now, what images pop into your mind? What are the happy thoughts? It just makes me smile because we did so many things and had such fun together. That’s what I feel. That’s mostly about me. As far as him and whatever situation he was in in the last couple of years, he was busy fighting what he had. I really am hard-pressed to find anything other than the joy we shared and created together.

It’s such a bummer you aren’t in the Hall of Fame yet. He would have loved that. He would have wanted that, yes. My feelings about that were kind of different than him, but I felt I had a responsibility if it ever occurred that I’d have to back him up on that.

If you get in now, it’ll just be you at the podium. I hope not. Maybe I can send a representative. I can send one of the Harlots of 42nd Street to give the acceptance speech.

The band now is obviously done forever, right? You’d never do it on your own? I don’t have any intention of doing that, no. It would be crazy.

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How the New York Dolls' appetite for self-destruction cost them their career

The New Yorks Dolls' sleazoid, vampish veneer was fuelled by opiates and booze. Ultimately it cost them their career, and two of them their lives

When the New York Dolls swaggered forth from the Babylonian underbelly of Manhattan’s Lower East Side they looked more like assassins than saviours. To the conservative bean counters of 1972’s never-more-lucrative rock business, the Dolls spelled nothing but trouble: uncouth and uncontrollable they could handle, but unsaleable? Forget it.

And the Dolls were about as far from a commercial proposition as corporate America could possibly envisage. The Dolls’ physical embodiment of excessive subterranean sleaze and gender-bending decadence was total anathema to a zeitgeist only just adjusting to the sweeping reforms of the civil rights movement. 

Where the Women’s Liberation movement was regularly painted as radical pinko freaks, what chance for a transvestite rock’n’roll band caked in Bowery hooker slap and called the New York Dolls? That they were from New York was bad enough; but no right-thinking, Midwest Allman Brothers fan was going to invest in any band that looked like that . 

Small pockets of support ensured the Dolls an ephemeral career (Mercury Records struggled with them for a brace of implausibly influential albums; their home-town crowd of equally outré club-kid progenitors supported them to the hilt; the UK rock media cooed over them as an ever-outrageous substitute Stones), but their relentless pursuit of suicidal over-indulgence ended in death, addiction and ultimate destruction. Yet during their brief, coruscating period of tireless self-immolation, the Dolls unequivocally sowed the seeds that saved rock’n’roll.

The prevailing music scene was bloated with po-faced technicians bent on respectability; a desire to be taken seriously had led musicians to replace naïve pop sass and street-sharp danceability with lengthy solos and denim introspection. The Dolls gave rock its roll back by returning the debilitated genre to its deliciously delinquent roots. 

They allied the seductive fated glamour of the Shangri-Las with the snot-nosed, we-piss-anywhere attitude of The Rolling Stones . Every aspect of their craft was accentuated; à la mode threads were too boxy, so they customised thrift shop drag. Angst-ridden, beauty shop chit-chat was simply too urgent to be delivered by any other means than desperate Dexedrine blurts. Halter tops and pedal pushers were chosen for their sluttish tightness – what better way to underline their extreme youth?

Lipstick gave a pout extra clout, rendered a sneer more severe. Guitars were wielded like sonic switchblades; Keith coifs teased into ravished Ronettes rats-tails. The Dolls were all about ‘attitude’, that priceless ephemeral commodity that record executives could no longer detect but which was still as potent as cat-nip to disaffected teens. And it was this attitude, channelled through generations of Jack-totin’, coke-tootin’, hell-raisin’, mirrorgazin’ glam-metallers, sleazemongers and punks that ultimately saved rock.

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Messily sacrificed on the altar of opiates, the New York Dolls imploded before their spiritual progeny emerged to profit from their enduring legacy. But, like all good saviours, they’ve risen again. Of the original line-up only vocalist David Johansen and guitarist Sylvain Sylvain survive, but they’ve got quite a tale to tell. So here’s their story.

Sylvain Sylvain (aka Ronald Mizrahi) was born on Valentine’s Day 1953. His father was a well-to-do Cairo banker who, gradually stripped of his assets by the Draconian anti-Semitic policies of Egypt’s President Nasser, fled with his young family to Paris. It was here that Sylvain soaked up his Uncle Victor’s imported Gene Vincent and Ray Charles records. Upon resettling in Buffalo, New York in 1961, Syl picked up rudimentary piano from his accordionist uncle, but switched to guitar upon discovering The Beatles .

“They were everything to me,” he says of the Fab Four. “I grew my hair, started wearing mod clothes and cried for six months until my father got me a guitar. Then the Stones came on television and I was like: ‘Fuck The Beatles, they’re a bunch of wimps. Listen to these guys’. I loved the fucking Rolling Stones, and started asking every black guy in New York to teach me the blues.”

Meanwhile, Staten Island Catholic high-school drop-out David Johansen, three years Syl’s senior and similarly addicted to the blues, was regularly having his mind blown and ambitions stoked at 20-band Murray the K package shows by the likes of Mitch Ryder And The Detroit Wheels. Johansen’s father had been a singer, and before long his self-assured and gregarious son was duplicating the role in the Vagabond Missionaries and Fast Eddie & The Electric Japs.

“When I was a kid people said I had a distinctive-sounding voice,” Johansen deadpans dryly. “Maybe it’s genetic or something.”

Having relocated to Van Wyck Junior High in Jamaica, Queens, Sylvain hooked up with equally displaced Colombian émigré Billy Murcia “because that’s how surviving’s done”. Billy took up the drums and, in search of bandmates, their attentions were soon drawn to rakish local Lothario John Anthony Genzale, the man who would be Johnny Thunders .

“We wanted Johnny in the band because he was a cool-looking cat who had all the chicks,” Sylvain admits. “So I said to Billy: ‘If this guy can’t play, fuck it, we’ll grab his girls’.”

But the street-sharp Italian-American baseball prodigy could play – eventually. He first adopted the easier four-stringed bass route but then, upon deciding lead guitar was the glamour instrument, insisted upon Syl teaching him its rudiments – before summarily demoting him to rhythm guitarist. This reshuffle opened a bass player vacancy ultimately filled by Arthur Harold Kane, a gently gigantic dipsomaniac haunted by his mother’s early death and his stepfather’s subsequent rejection, whose first duty as a Doll was to accompany Billy on a Johansen finding expedition.

“I’d seen these guys around,” Johansen smiles, recollecting just how ludicrous the couple looked together: Kane a looming colossus, next to the pocket-sized, cherubic Murcia. “Then one day they knocked at my door and Arthur said: ‘I understand you’re a singer’.”

Sylvain named the band after noticing a sign for the New York Doll’s Hospital on Lexington Avenue, and they immediately set about conquering an unusually flaccid, post-Velvets NYC rock scene. “It was a big void,” Sylvain remembers. “The era of stadium rock – half-hour drum solos, 20-minute guitar solos. So boring. It wasn’t from the garage, the basement or the street any more, it was corporate. 

"We hated that shit and rebelled against it. We’d perform where we could touch the audience and they could touch us. All our songs were three minutes of magic – just as long as they needed to be – and because an incredible array of people were dying for such a sound we were immediately embraced. But all we did was take it back to the way it should be: short, sharp, live and in-your-face.”

The New York Dolls’ look, meanwhile, was to die for. Sylvain and Billy had rag-trade experience; under the name of Truth And Soul they’d designed and made belly button-flashing sweaters (30 years before the garments’ total ubiquity) to fund amp-gathering and hash-smoking jaunts to London and Amsterdam. 

So women’s suits – the only kind tailored to the band’s exacting sense of flash – were customised from thrift stores, and actual drag employed as their taste for flamboyance increased. But while the world at large was still gasping at flares, the Dolls’ Lower East Side stomping ground – populated by an array of cross-dressing night creatures, flamboyant gays, transvestite hookers, pillpopping club kids and walking, talking art installations – identified like mad.

“We started a Tuesday night midnight residency in The Oscar Wilde Room of The Mercer Arts Center,” says Johansen. “Which gave this disparate scene of people a focal point where they were able to network, make bands, clothing companies and movies.”

“When we performed there,” Syl says of the pivotal Mercer shows, “all hell broke loose. We became that generation’s band. The Velvets had gone, so that was the end of that. The MC5 were still around but they’d had their moment; I mean, they’d played the 1968 Democratic convention – I wasn’t even born then.”

Rolling on ecstatic home-town reactions and an unexpected groundswell of UK media support, the Dolls still couldn’t secure a record deal. So a profile hoisting support slot was arranged with Rod Stewart and The Faces at Wembley. “We were up in front of 8,000 people after playing for 300 at the most,” Johansen shrugs. “And while it was fun, we were totally ill-prepared for the situation.”

The short UK tour that followed the Wembley debacle ended in utter tragedy when, just as a $100,000 deal with Track Records was being finalised, Billy Murcia died. While attending a party in London’s Cromwell Road the 19-year-old drummer passed out under the combined influence of champagne and Mandrax and was subsequently drowned by those trying to revive him. 

Returning to New York in shock, the surviving Dolls (their notoriety enhanced markedly by the seductive fascination of premature death) elected to continue as a unit and recruited ex-Shaker and Wayne County drummer Jerry Nolan. Born in 1946, Nolan was significantly older – and, as a former gang member, much tougher – than his bandmates. He became something of a father figure to the easily influenced Johnny Thunders and tightened up the band’s ramshackle sound significantly. 

Finally the New York Dolls were a commercial proposition (of sorts) and Mercury Records took the plunge. Transferring the Dolls’ visceral live excitement to vinyl wasn’t exactly seen as a plum task, and following rejections from (among others) Phil Spector, Roy Wood and Leiber and Stoller, the band settled for Todd Rundgren as producer.

“Everybody said: ‘We don’t want to be near those guys.’” Johansen says. “So we’re sitting in Max’s wondering what to do, when we looked over at the next table and there’s Todd. He knew what we were about, who we were as guys and wasn’t afraid of us, so he was the most natural choice in the world.”

“Todd Rundgren delivered a dynamite album,” Sylvain gushes. “I love that first album.” And there’s plenty to love about it. Despite the fact that the only way to keep Jerry Nolan (the band’s most accomplished musician) in time was for engineer Jack Douglas to hammer a cowbell into his headphones, and that the studio was permanently filled with the band’s drunken, dope-befuddled coterie of camp followers, the Dolls’ eponymous debut was electrifying. 

With Thunders’s buzz-saw guitar and a desperate rhythmic assault force, David Jo rode the lightning with chutzpah to spare. It makes perfect sense in today’s frazzled climate of libertine, jaded excess, but in 73 it was an abomination. Contemporary critics hated it.

“They didn’t know what the fuck to make of us.” says Johansen. “The majority of writers were into folky music or hippy bands, so we were a travesty to them. They’d built up this insane reverence for what had become known as rock music – it didn’t roll any more – so when we started it rolling again they were like: ‘You’re destroying five years of the Grateful Dead’s good work.’”

One typical example of the old guard making their negative feelings towards the band known occurred when Bob Harris tutted the words ‘mock rock’ after the Dolls’ infamous performance of Jet Boy on the BBC’s flagship rock show The Old Grey Whistle Test .

Today’s Dolls are not the band’s sole survivors for nothing. Johansen and Sylvain are more than shrewd enough to realise that lingering on the band’s reputation for obnoxiousness by dredging up their more excessive anecdotes will do them no good now that they’re back as a going concern. 

Where they were once loose-lipped on oft-published tales of naked groupies draped in cold cuts, tied to chairs and placed in hotel elevators, now they simply smile indulgently and sip their vintage wines demurely: “I read these stories about us and I think: ‘My god, that is a sordid affair, I’m glad I wasn’t there’,” Johansen smirks with a roguish twinkle.

In their youth the Dolls just about wrote the rulebook on outraging polite society, but David and Syl’s youthful indiscretions are as nothing compared to Johnny Thunders. For it was Thunders who vomited in front of the French press at De Gaulle airport; who regularly wore a swastika armband; and while it was Sylvain who initially outraged a German press conference by asking: ‘Why are all krauts so fucking fat?’ it was Thunders who delivered the sucker punch with: ‘It’s all them Jew-meat sausages’. 

At the dawn of the Dolls, Thunders had been a sweet, 18-year-old kid, high on nothing but rock’n’roll and youthful exuberance (witness their court photographer Bob Gruen’s excellent All Dolled Up movie for the evidence). But shortly before the band’s infamous 73 European tour that set Thunders’ infamy in stone, he’d discovered heroin.

“He turned into a fucking monster,” Sylvain admits. “[Heroin] made him aggressive for no reason because everything is boring until you’ve had a fucking fix. It rules everything and ruins everything.”

Mercury Records, meanwhile were demanding a second album. But the debilitated Dolls were already struggling: Johnny and Jerry were now both using smack; Arthur Kane was increasingly incapacitated both by drink and the injuries he incurred when his jealous part-time hooker girlfriend Connie Gripp had tried to slice his thumb off with a kitchen knife to keep him off the road; and the promotion and touring treadmill had curtailed the band’s writing activities. 

Consequently they entered the studio with former Shangri-Las producer Shadow Morton armed only with two new songs, some leftovers from the first album plus four covers.

Johansen clicked with Morton immediately, but the band had reservations. “I thought the second album commercialised things a little bit,” Sylvain says of Too Much Too Soon , an appropriately titled album cluttered with Shadow’s trademark sound effects, girlie backing vocals, and a degree of stylistic schizophrenia with Thunders’s manic Chatterbox entirely at odds with a positively vaudevillian assault on The Coasters’ Bad Detective .

Cracks began to form in the Dolls line-up as a result of the album. For while Johansen loved it, Nolan loathed it. “You could have given Jerry Nolan a gold-plated toilet bowl and he wouldn’t have been satisfied,” Johansen sneers today. ”One person says one thing about a record and it becomes history.”

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The final scene in the first act of the New York Dolls’ story came with the arrival of Malcolm McLaren. The future Sex Pistols manager had first met Sylvain at a boutique trade show in 1970, and had followed the Dolls ever since. On arrival in New York in January 1975 McLaren discovered a drug-ravaged band in terminal decline. 

Dropped by Mercury Records, the Dolls were reduced to playing ever smaller gigs, their scene-leading status usurped by The Ramones , Television and Patti Smith . Sylvain still remembers McLaren with fondness: “He got us a loft to rehearse in, helped to detox Arthur and tried to put Jerry and Johnny through rehab. He really stuck it out with us; put together a tour and the Little Hippodrome gigs where we did the Red Patent Leather show.”

Johansen, on the other hand, is simply dismissive: “Malcolm was just a guy who made some clothes for us. When we were on our last legs he came over and said he wanted to help us out. But we were an ungovernable force back then.”

The Red Patent Leather Show found the Dolls playing before a hammer and sickle backdrop: “The only thing that Malcolm and David ever agreed upon was that red flag, and it was the most kamikaze thing we could have done,” Sylvain says. “The Vietnam War was still on; it was suicidal.”

After a disastrous show in Florida, the Dolls split when Thunders and Nolan returned home to New York to form The Heartbreakers with Richard Hell. 

“I was so fucking sad when the Dolls broke up,” Sylvain says. “I was the one that called up Jerry Nolan and put him in the band. And after I drove him and Johnny to the airport I called after them: ‘Hey guys. What about the New York Dolls?. Johnny kept walking, but Jerry turned around and said: ‘Fuck the New York Dolls’. And that hurt the shit outta me. I hated Jerry for that. Not because he broke up the band – it was heroin and addictions that broke up the band – but because he said that.”

The remaining Dolls struggled on for one final pay day – a lucrative tour of Japan – but it was too little, too late. Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan never won their battle with heroin. The former was found dead in a New Orleans hotel room in April 91 under unexplained circumstances but with methadone in his veins. The latter followed within a year. His health finally failing after years on the needle, he succumbed to bacterial meningitis and pneumonia in January 92. 

After turning down repeated offers over the years, the surviving New York Dolls finally re-formed in June 2004 to play London’s Royal Festival Hall. Sylvain and Johansen (both of whom had remained in the music business, picking up major US label deals along the way) teamed up with Arthur Kane following a call from Morrissey, former President of the New York Dolls UK Fan Club.

For Kane, who had ultimately kicked booze from his life upon becoming an active member of the Mormon Church, this was clearly a magical event. Within a month, utterly at one with the universe having finally resolved outstanding issues with his oldest and dearest friends, Killer Kane attended hospital to receive treatment for a persistent cold, was diagnosed with leukaemia and died two hours later. And then there were two.

With One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This , Johansen and Sylvain have delivered a third album that is truly worthy of the New York Dolls name. Along with producer Jack Douglas, guitarist Steve Conte, bassist Sami Yaffa, drummer Brian Delaney and keyboardist Brian Koonin they have created a towering testament to unflinching strength in adversity. 

Opiates and alcohol might have curtailed the lives of Johnny, Jerry, Billy and Arthur, but you can’t kill the immortal soul of the New York Dolls.

This feature was originally published in Classic Rock issue 96 .

Classic Rock’s Reviews Editor for the last 20 years, Ian stapled his first fanzine in 1977. Since misspending his youth by way of ‘research’ his work has also appeared in such publications as Metal Hammer, Prog, NME, Uncut, Kerrang!, VOX, The Face, The Guardian, Total Guitar, Guitarist, Electronic Sound, Record Collector and across the internet. Permanently buried under mountains of recorded media, ears ringing from a lifetime of gigs, he enjoys nothing more than recreationally throttling a guitar and following a baptism of punk fire has played in bands for 45 years, releasing recordings via Esoteric Antenna and Cleopatra Records. 

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New York Dolls

The New York Dolls created punk rock before there was a term for it. Building on the Rolling Stones' dirty rock & roll, a bastardization of Brill Building pop, the Stooges' anarchic noise, and the glam rock of David Bowie and T. Rex, the New York Dolls created a new form of rock that presaged both punk rock and heavy metal. The first iteration of the band burned out quickly, but released their Todd Rundgren-produced self-titled debut in 1973 and its 1974 follow-up, Too Much Too Soon, before self-destructing. These albums didn't perform well commercially, but they were instant classics in certain circles, and directly informed the waves of punk bands that followed soon after. A 2004 reunion led to new tours and recordings, with various lineups of the New York Dolls continuing the band's original glam punk vision on albums like 2011's Dancing Backward in High Heels. After a period of renewed activity, the Dolls quietly disbanded around 2012 as the members focused on other projects. The New York Dolls first joined forces in late 1971. Guitarists Johnny Thunders and Rick Rivets, bassist Arthur Kane, and drummer Billy Murcia were joined by vocalist David Johansen. Early in 1972, Rivets was replaced by Syl Sylvain and the group began playing regularly in Lower Manhattan, particularly at the Mercer Arts Center. Within a few months, they had earned a dedicated cult following, but record companies were afraid of signing the Dolls because of their cross-dressing and blatant vulgarity. Late in 1972, the Dolls embarked on their first tour of England. During the tour, drummer Murcia died after mixing drugs and alcohol. He was replaced by Jerry Nolan. After Nolan signed on, the Dolls finally secured a record contract with Mercury Records. Todd Rundgren -- whose sophisticated pop seemed at odds with the band's crash-and-burn rock & roll -- produced their debut, New York Dolls, which appeared in the summer of 1973. The record received overwhelmingly positive reviews, but it didn't stir the interest of the general public; it peaked at number 116 on the U.S. charts. The Dolls' follow-up, Too Much Too Soon, was produced by the legendary girl group producer George "Shadow" Morton. Although the sound of the record was relatively streamlined, the album was another commercial failure, only reaching number 167 upon its early summer 1974 release. Following the disappointing sales of the Dolls' two albums, Mercury Records dropped the band. No other record labels were interested in the group, so the Dolls decided to hire a new manager, the British Malcolm McLaren, who would soon become famous for managing the Sex Pistols. With the Dolls, McLaren began developing his skill for turning shock into invaluable publicity. Although he made it work for the Pistols just a year later, all of his strategies backfired for the Dolls. McLaren made the band dress completely in red leather and perform in front of the U.S.S.R.'s flag, intending to symbolize the Dolls' alleged communist allegiance. The new approach only made record labels more reluctant to sign them and members soon began leaving the group. By the middle of 1975, Thunders and Nolan had left, and the remaining members, Johansen and Sylvain, fired McLaren and assembled a new lineup. For the next few years, the duo led a variety of different incarnations of the group, with no success. After playing their final show in December of 1976 (on a bill with Blondie at legendary Manhattan venue Max's Kansas City), Johansen and Sylvain decided to break up permanently. Over the next two decades, various outtakes collections, live albums, and compilations were released by a variety of labels and the New York Dolls' two original studio albums never went out of print. Upon the Dolls' breakup, David Johansen began a solo career that would eventually metamorphose into his lounge-singing alter ego, Buster Poindexter, in the mid-'80s. Syl Sylvain played with Johansen for two years before he left to pursue his own solo career. Johnny Thunders formed the Heartbreakers with Jerry Nolan after they left the group in 1975. Over the next decade, the Heartbreakers would perform sporadically and Thunders would record an occasional solo album. On April 23, 1991, Thunders was found dead in his room at the St. Peter House in New Orleans, Louisiana. Nolan performed at a tribute concert for Thunders later in 1991; a few months later, he died of a stroke at the age of 40. In 2004, former Smiths vocalist Morrissey -- who was once the president of a British New York Dolls fan club -- invited the surviving members of the New York Dolls to perform at the 2004 Meltdown Festival, a music and cultural festival curated that year by the singer. To the surprise of many, David Johansen, Syl Sylvain, and Arthur Kane agreed to the gig, with Steve Conte (from Johansen's solo band) standing in for Thunders and Gary Powell from the Libertines sitting in on drums. The group's set was well-received by critics and fans (and was recorded for release on DVD and compact disc), which led to offers for other festival appearances, but only a few weeks after the Meltdown show, Kane checked himself into a Los Angeles hospital with what he thought was a severe case of the flu. His ailment was soon diagnosed as leukemia, and he died only a few hours later, on July 13, 2004, at age 55. With Sam Yaffa (of Hanoi Rocks) on bass, the remaining Dolls played a hometown tribute to their fallen brothers at Little Steven's International Underground Garage Festival in New York City on August 14, 2004, reuniting again (this time with Brian Delaney on drums) in 2006 for the all-new CD/DVD One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This. The Todd Rundgren-produced 'Cause I Sez So appeared on Rhino in 2009. A fifth studio album, Dancing Backward in High Heels, featuring both Johansen and Sylvain and produced and mixed by Jason Hill, appeared from 429 Records early in 2011. Within a year of the latter album's release, Johansen and Sylvain closed the book on the New York Dolls. On January 13, 2021, Syl Sylvain died after a two-year battle with cancer; he was 69 years old. © Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

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Discography.

29 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller

Jul 27, 1973

Rock - Released by Mercury Records on Jul 27, 1973

Jan 1, 1974

In Too Much Too Soon

Rock - Released by Mercury Records on Jan 1, 1974

Oct 31, 2006

A Hard Night's Day

Rock - Released by Norton Records on Oct 31, 2006

Rock - Released by Island Mercury on Jul 27, 1973

Punk / New Wave

Nov 5, 2013

French Kiss '74 + Actress - Birth of the New York Dolls

Punk / New Wave - Released by Cleopatra Records on Nov 5, 2013

Jan 1, 1994

Rock 'N Roll

Rock - Released by Island Records on Jan 1, 1994

Rock - Released by Hip-O Select on Jan 1, 1974

Jul 10, 2006

One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This

Rock - Released by Roadrunner Records on Jul 10, 2006

Apr 30, 2009

'Cause I Sez So

Rock - Released by Rhino on Apr 30, 2009

French Kiss '74

Punk / New Wave - Released by Cleopatra on Nov 5, 2013

Feb 7, 2011

Live From The Bowery (Live At The Bowery Ballroom / NYC, NY / 2011)

Rock - Released by 429 Records on Feb 7, 2011

Mar 14, 2011

Dancing Backward In High Heels (Deluxe Version)

Rock - Released by 429 Records on Mar 14, 2011

Jun 6, 2023

Dawn Of The Dolls (2023 Re-Mastered [Studio Demo])

Punk / New Wave - Released by Cleopatra Records on Jun 6, 2023

Sep 28, 2004

Morrissey Presents The Return Of The New York Dolls (Live From Royal Festival Hall 2004) (Live)

Rock - Released by Castle Communications on Sep 28, 2004

Nov 1, 1981

Lipstick Killers

Alternative & Indie - Released by ROIR on Nov 1, 1981

Jan 1, 2011

Dancing Backward In High Heels

Rock - Released by 429 Records on Jan 1, 2011

Dec 1, 2009

Vive Le Trash '74

Rock - Released by Cleopatra Records on Dec 1, 2009

Jan 1, 1986

Personality Crisis

Rock - Released by Cherry Red Records on Jan 1, 1986

Jan 1, 2003

20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection: Best Of The New York Dolls

Rock - Released by Def Jam West on Jan 1, 2003

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The Queen of Broadway is taking her talents far and wide this summer.

From July through August, Tony-winning actress and “Frozen” star Idina Menzel will swoop into theaters and performing arts centers all over North America as part of her 20-concert ‘Take Me Or Leave Me Tour.’

And, while she won’t technically bring the show to Broadway, Menzel is going to get awfully close when she headlines at New York City’s Beacon Theatre on Thursday, Aug. 15.

“Super personal, intimate, lots of laughs, lots of stories, lots of great new music, old music,” the 52-year-old “Wicked” star shared, describing the show on Instagram .

For those that can’t wait to witness Menzel’s iconic mezzo-soprano vocals live — and maybe sing along to “Let It Go” — tickets for all shows can be yours as soon as today.

Although inventory isn’t available on Ticketmaster until Friday, April 26, fans who want to ensure they have tickets ahead of time can purchase on sites like Vivid Seats before tickets are officially on sale.

Vivid Seats is a secondary market ticketing platform, and prices may be higher or lower than face value, depending on demand.

They have a 100% buyer guarantee that states your transaction will be safe and secure and will be delivered before the event.

Idina Menzel tour schedule 2024

A complete calendar including tour dates, venues and links to buy tickets can be found below.

Idina Menzel set list

On Nov. 18, 2018, Menzel headlined at Madison Square Garden.

While we can’t guarantee what she’ll bring to the stage at these intimate gigs — although she teased old and new music — here’s a look at what she performed at MSG way back when, courtesy of Set List FM :

01.) “Queen of Swords” 02.) “The Wizard and I” (Stephen Schwartz cover) 03.) “Don’t Rain on My Parade” (Jule Styne cover) 04.) “Dear Prudence” (Beatles cover)

05.) “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” 06.) “Extraordinary” 07.) “I Melt With You” (Modern English cover) 08.) “Let It Go” (Kristen Anderson‐Lopez & Robert Lopez cover) 09.) “Over the Moon” 10.) “Take Me or Leave Me” (Jonathan Larson cover) 11.) “Finale B (No Day But Today)” (Jonathan Larson cover) 12.) “For Good” (Stephen Schwartz cover) 13.) “Defying Gravity” (Stephen Schwartz cover)

Idina Menzel new music

Last year, Menzel released her seventh studio album “Drama Queen.”

Comprised of ten tracks, Menzel embraces disco and delivers a half hour of essential synth pop.

While there isn’t a dud in the bunch, we’d recommend the danceable “Dramatic,” funky “Make Me Hate Me” and anthemic “Funny Kind Of Lonely.”

Still, the second track “Beast” is the one to look out for; it’s perfect for the club, spin class or a shower singalong.

Want to check it out for yourself?

You can listen to “Drama Queen” here .

Huge stars on tour in 2024

Many powerful vocalists will be on the road these next few months.

Here are just five of our favorites you won’t want to miss live.

•  Regina Spektor

•  Kristin Chenoweth

• Patti LuPone

•  Katharine McPhee with David Foster

•  Sutton Foster

Who else is on the road this year? Check out our list of the 50 biggest concert tours in 2024 to find out.

Why you should trust ‘Post Wanted’ by the New York Post

This article was written by Matt Levy , New York Post live events reporter. Levy stays up-to-date on all the latest tour announcements for your favorite musical artists and comedians, as well as Broadway openings, sporting events and more live shows – and finds great ticket prices online. Since he started his tenure at the Post in 2022, Levy has reviewed Bruce Springsteen and interviewed Melissa Villaseñor of SNL fame, to name a few. Please note that deals can expire, and all prices are subject to change.

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Shakira's 2024 tour coming to NYC: See when and where

By nbc new york staff • published april 16, 2024 • updated on april 17, 2024 at 9:40 am.

Grammy-winning Colombian superstar Shakira is bringing her world tour through New York City later this year.

Shakira announced Tuesday the 12 U.S. cities and two Canadian cities being visited on the first leg of her world tour, which begins in North America on Nov. 2 in California and ends Dec. 15 in Detroit.

The tour will make just one stop in the city, on Dec. 5 when she comes to Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Here's a full list of stops on the tour:

Nov. 2 - Palm Desert, California -- Acrisure Arena Nov. 7 - Phoenix, Arizona -- Footprint Center Nov. 9 - Los Angeles, California -- KIA Forum Nov. 16 - San Antonio, Texas -- Frost Bank Center Nov. 17 - Dallas, Texas -- American Airlines Center Nov. 20 - Miami, Florida -- Kaseya Center Nov. 23 - Charlotte, North Carolina -- Spectrum Center Nov. 25 - Washington, D.C. -- Capital One Arena Nov. 30 - Toronto, Ontario -- Scotiabank Arena Dec. 5 - Brooklyn, NY, Barclays Center Dec. 8 - Boston, Massachusetts -- TD Garden Dec. 10 - Montreal, Quebec -- Bell Centre Dec. 14 - Chicago, Illinois -- United Center Dec. 15 - Detroit, Michigan -- Little Caesars Arena

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The tour is built around the March 22 release of Shakira's 12th album, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (Women No Longer Cry). The 17-track album is the singer-songwriter's first studio album in seven years.

International tour dates are expected to be announced soon.

Tickets go on sale to the public at 10 a.m. on April 22. Shakira's Wolfpack members who join before Wednesday at 11:59 p.m. can access a pre-sale beginning at 11 a.m. on Friday, April 19.

Columbia University president issues deadline for agreement with protesters to leave encampment

Search expands under Long Island park ballfields where chemical barrels were buried

On April 12, Shakira performed at the  Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival  in California  with DJ Bizarrap .

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Taylor Swift’s Track ‘Florida!!!’ Seems to Have a Joe Alwyn Breakup Reference

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Huge news for Florida: Taylor Swift just released a new song dedicated to the state. While the tribute might come as a surprise for the singer, who was raised in Pennsylvania then moved to Tennessee to kick-start her music career in Nashville, fans have theories about the track’s backstory.

On “Florida!!!”, which appears on her new album The Tortured Poets Department , Swift and Florence Welch (of Florence + The Machine) trade verses about finding solace and an escape in the Sunshine State. There are lines like: “I need to forget, so take me to Florida” and “Florida, can I use you up? ” (Florida’s tourism board could not have hit a bigger jackpot.)

The song “Florida!!!” has a similar kind of infectious energy to it. It carries an anthemic and at times euphoric feel, especially with pounding drums in the chorus. It sounds heavily inspired by Welch’s own music and seems like it would kill in a stadium setting.

Swift played three nights in Tampa before moving on to her next tour stop in Houston from April 21 to 23, 2023. (Her lyric, “So you pack your life away just to wait out the shit storm back in Texas,” might be a reference to her tour schedule.) She gave a thumbs up to fans asking if she was okay post-breakup, but in reality, she was suffering, which she details in the TPD track “ I Can Do It With a Broken Heart .” She sings at the end of that song, “’Cause I’m miserable / And no one even knows!”

Swift touched on how her interest in true crime inspired the track in commentary she gave to Amazon Music . “I’m always watching Dateline ,” she began. “People have these crimes that they commit; where do they immediately skip town and go to? They go to Florida. They try to reinvent themselves, have a new identity, blend in. I think when you go through a heartbreak, there’s a part of you that thinks, ‘I want a new name. I want a new life. I don’t want anyone to know where I’ve been or know me at all.’ And so that was the jumping off point. Where would you go to reinvent yourself and blend in? Florida!”

In a foreword she shared as the album dropped, Swift wrote that TPD is “an anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time—one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure. This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted. This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it. And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry.”

Listen to a piece of that poetry, “Florida!!!”, below and read the full lyrics here.

You can beat the heat if you beat the charges too They said I was a cheat, I guess it must be true. And my friends all smell like weed or little babies. And this city reeks of driving myself crazy. Little did you know your home’s really only A town you're just a guest in So you work your life away just to pay For a time share down in Destin. Florida Is one hell of a drug Florida Can I use you up? The hurricane was my name when it came I got drunk and I dared it to wash me away Barricaded in the bathroom with a bottle of wine Well, me and my ghost, we had a hell of a time Yes, I'm haunted but I'm feeling just fine All my girls got their lace and their crimes and your cheating husband disappeared Well, no one asks any questions here So I did my best, too lay to rest All of the bodies that have ever been on my body And in my mind, they sink into the swamp Is that a bad thing to say in a song? Little did you know your home's really only The town you’ll get arrested So you pack your life away just to wait out The shit storm back in Texas Florida Is one hell of a drug Florida Can I use you? I need to forget, so take me to Florida I’ve got some regrets, I’ll bury them in Florida Tell me I’m despicable, say it’s unforgivable These dolls are beautiful, fuck me up, Florida I need to forget, so take me to Florida I’ve got some regrets, I’ll bury them in Florida Tell me I’m despicable, say it’s unforgivable What a crash, what a rush, fuck me up, Florida It’s one hell of a drug It’s one hell of a drug Love loves me like this, I don’t want to resist So take me to Florida Little did you know your home’s really only A town you’re just a guest in So you work your life away just to pay For a time share down in Destin Little did you know your home’s really only The town you’ll get arrested So you pack your life away just to wait out The shit storm back in Texas Florida Is one hell of a drug Florida, can I use you up? Florida Is one hell of a drug Florida, can you fuck me up?

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This post has been updated with Swift’s commentary on what inspired the track.

A Guide to Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department

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All the Easter Eggs in the ‘Fortnight’ Music Video

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