New York Dolls Guitarist Sylvain Sylvain Dead at 69

[ornotna]

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/sylvain-sylvain-new-york-dolls-dead-1114962/

Sylvain Sylvain, the punk icon and guitarist for New York Dolls whose riffs bridged the gap between punk and glam, died Wednesday. He was 69. His wife, Wanda O’Kelley Mizrahi, confirmed the musician’s death to Rolling Stone.

“As most of you know, Sylvain battled cancer for the past two and half years,” O’Kelley Mizrahi wrote in a statement on his Facebook page. “Though he fought it valiantly, yesterday he passed away from this disease. While we grieve his loss, we know that he is finally at peace and out of pain. Please crank up his music, light a candle, say a prayer and let’s send this beautiful doll on his way.”

The group’s self-titled 1973 debut album remains a landmark in rock music, with Rolling Stone naming it to the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. “Glammed-out punkers the New York Dolls snatched riffs from Chuck Berry and Fats Domino and fattened them with loads of attitude and reverb,” we wrote at the time. “Produced by Todd Rundgren, songs like ‘Personality Crisis’ and ‘Bad Girl’ drip with sleaze and style.… It’s hard to imagine the Ramones or the Replacements or a thousand other trash-junky bands without them.”

[LSparkle]

1. Wow ... LOVED the New York Dolls

Glam, omnisexual, great music and not bad to look at. So sad to hear this. RIP, SS ...

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. Oh, no. I have their first album. It is one my top ten albums. It sounds as if

it were recorded yesterday. I never grow tired of it.

New York Dolls (album)

{snip}

Legacy and influence

Until the New York Dolls a hangover from the sixties had permeated the music scene. That album was where a new decade began, where a contemporary version of the essence of rock 'n' roll emerged to kick out the tired old men and clear the way for the New Order.
— Tony Parsons (1977)

New York Dolls has since been often cited as one of the greatest debut albums in rock music, one of the genre's most popular cult records, and a foundational work for the late 1970s punk rock movement. It was a pivotal influence on many of the rock and roll, punk, and glam rock groups that followed, including the Ramones, Kiss, the Sex Pistols, The Damned, and Guns N' Roses. According to The Mojo Collection (2007), the record ignited punk rock and could still inspire more movements because of the music's abundant attitude and passion, while Encyclopedia of Popular Music writer Colin Larkin deemed it "a major landmark in rock history, oozing attitude, vitality and controversy from every note".[60] Chuck Eddy named it one of the records crucial to the evolution of rock music. In 101 Albums That Changed Popular Music (2009), Chris Smith wrote that the New York Dolls pioneered punk's aesthetic of amateurish musicianship on the album, which undermined the musical sophistication that had developed over the past decade in popular music and had been perfected months earlier on Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon (1973). In The Guardian's list of "1000 albums to hear before you die", the newspaper credited the record for serving as "an efficacious antidote to the excesses of prog rock".

{snip}

Seen here on Musikladen:

New York Dolls - Trash
209,222 views•Jul 21, 2014

Ivan Smith
233 subscribers

Performed live on television 1973

WARNING: Your computer might not be able to handle this much greatness:

SYLVAIN SYLVAIN - "Get It On (Bang A Gong)" (Central Park, NYC/9-29-07)
3,843 views•Aug 18, 2016

nanchanger
653 subscribers

Saturday, September 29, 2007 @ 7PM JOE'S PUB in the PARK PRESENTS LIVE in Central Park, New York City:

20th CENTURY BOY: T.REX 30th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION COMMEMORATES THE MEMORY MARC BOLAN !!!

SUPPORT LIVE MUSIC !!!

A Sex Pistols cover? Sure, why not?

Pretty Vacant (acoustic version) - Sylvain Sylvain and Glen Matlock (March 2014)
3,359 views•Mar 4, 2014

cuddleson
55 subscribers

Sylvain Sylvain (New York Dolls) and Glen Matlock (ex-Sex Pistols) dueting on an acoustic version of Pretty Vacant (Sex Pistols) in NYC on March 3, 2014.

https://www.google.com/search?q=pretty+vacant+lyrics

[Blue Owl]

3. Bummer

Here's a song of theirs that always makes me think of the tRumps:

[DinahMoeHum]

4. "14th Street Beat"

Rest In Peace, Sylvain Sylvain