‘New York Dolls,’ Punk Rock’s Bedrock Album, Turns 50

In 1968, the Different Drummer men’s boutique on New York’s Lexington Avenue was known for its bohemian clothing, rock-star shoppers and the trippy color poster that Peter Max designed for the store. But it was the shop’s location that would play a pivotal role in punk-rock history.

That year, guitarist Sylvain Mizrahi and drummer Billy Murcia found themselves without a band and began working in fashion. They started a rock-clothing design business, and Mizrahi went to work at the Different Drummer to help pay the bills. Across Lexington Avenue was a toy repair shop, the New York Doll Hospital. “That’s where I first saw the name,” Mizrahi told guitarist Lenny Kaye in an interview for the book “New York Dolls: Photographs by Bob Gruen. ” “I chopped it down to the Dolls.”

Mizrahi co-founded the Dolls with Murcia and others in 1971. A flurry of personnel changes and gigs followed, resulting in a record deal in 1972 and a new name—New York Dolls. When the band’s eponymous first album came out 50 years ago this month, the music was a revelation. The stripped-down sound, manic tempos, harassing rock guitars, coarse vocals and the group’s cross-dressing attire on the cover excited fans, critics and aspiring rock musicians.

The rest of the country, however, was confused. Produced by Todd Rundgren, the album peaked at only No. 116 on the Billboard album chart and was considered a commercial flop. In Manhattan, however, the LP exposed a nascent “downtown” sound and subculture that embraced trashy fashion, three-chord rock and a defiance of norms. Within two years, the Dolls’ experiment would become known as punk rock, influencing many new bands, from Television and Richard Hell and the Voidoids to Patti Smith, Blondie, the Ramones, Talking Heads and the Sex Pistols.

At the time of the Dolls’ rise and their LP release, New York was inching toward financial ruin. Saddled with debt, the city had begun to deteriorate. Especially hard hit were working-class residents. The layoffs of city workers and slashed programs left families in disarray and their teenage offspring despondent. The Dolls’ music was a perfect fit.

The band didn’t set out to invent punk. Its five members simply wanted to play music that countered arena rock’s slickness and commercial trappings. They embraced early rock ’n’ rollers for whom sincerity and passion mattered more than technical mastery. By 1973, “rock was no longer about kids playing rock ’n’ roll in basements,” said Mizrahi in a 2006 YouTube interview. “We broke down those walls with our own stuff.”

“New York Dolls” featured David Johansen on vocals; Arthur Kane on bass; Jerry Nolan on drums; Mizrahi (known as Sylvain Sylvain ) on piano, rhythm guitar and vocals; and Johnny Thunders on lead guitar and vocals. Most of the songs were written by Mr. Johansen or co-written by him and different band members.

The album’s opening salvo, “Personality Crisis,” has the explosive, glam energy of David Bowie’s “Suffragette City.” Mr. Johansen’s vocal was hurled in a new shout style amid a shower of electric guitars, a throbbing bass and pounding drums. The next three songs—“Looking for a Kiss,” “Vietnamese Baby” and “Lonely Planet Boy”—are wonderfully spare garage pieces.

Unlike Iggy Pop’s croony vocals on his “Raw Power” album released five months earlier, Mr. Johansen’s delivery is more of a growling take on Mick Jagger and Lou Reed.

“Frankenstein (Orig.)” is a campy guitar-and-Moog rant about demon-riddled teens newly arrived in New York. It’s also a tribute to Phil Spector’s layered Wall of Sound recording style. “Trash” is the album’s most sophisticated proto-punk piece, a furious foreshadowing of the high-speed model many punk bands would adopt. We also can hear Mr. Rundgren’s shrewd hand on that track, with its dense instrumentation and his overdubbed background vocals echoing We Five’s “Whoa-oh-whoas” from “You Were on My Mind” (1965).

As a vocalist, Mr. Johansen too often adapts Mr. Jagger’s taunting vocal style, particularly on “Bad Girl” and “Subway Train.” Lyrics also are pedestrian in places. On “Bad Girl,” the words miss an opportunity to take the side of the woman branded as bad. Instead, it’s just another sexual-object song. “Subway Train” doesn’t fare much better: “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah, I know.”

The album bounces back with “Private World,” a piercing rocker with rhythm-guitar figures that emulate handclaps on girl-group singles. It’s also one of the earliest songs to address lower Manhattan’s new scene: “Oh, you know I want some money, she replies / When uptown comes downtown, better take her for a ride.”

“Jet Boy,” the album’s closer, is a sizzler. The music’s energy is electrifying, and Mr. Johansen’s vocal is perfect, even if the lyrics don’t make much sense.

“New York Dolls,” with the help of Mr. Rundgren, was where punk began—a rock movement of unhinged emotions played by outcasts who wanted to be famous on their own terms. The album’s music and message weren’t intended to be slick or coherent. If listeners were shocked and repulsed, all the better.

—Mr. Myers is the author of “Rock Concert: An Oral History” and “Anatomy of 55 More Songs” (Grove Press).