Alongside Iggy Pop’s band The Stooges and MC 5, the New York Dolls were the most important pioneers of the punk boom in the 1970s. Sylvain Sylvain founded the band in 1971 with singer David Johansen and guitarist Johnny Thunders. Sylvain, who was born into a Jewish family in Egypt in 1951 under the name Sylvain Mizrahi, had previously played with Thunders in the band Actress.
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The “Dolls”, as fans call the band, played a high-paced, impetuous rock’n’roll that quoted old black heroes of the genre like Bo Diddley and Fats Domino. At the same time, the band thematized the way of life of urban bohemians in their songs. She was managed by the British impresario Malcolm McLaren, who later made the Sex Pistols one of the first global stars of punk.
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In 1973 the New York Dolls released their debut album, which also includes the songs “Personality Crisis” and “Pills”, with which the five musicians formulated a vocabulary that was often taken up by subsequent punk generations. It was about drug consumption, anti-commerce and the commitment to consciously move outside of social conventions.
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In their flamboyant appearances, the New York Dolls liked to wear worn women’s clothes and high heels; they were one of the first bands to appear on stage in what would be called queer today. Sylvain liked to wear opulent make-up for concerts.
In 1977 the New York Dolls disbanded. Sylvain formed a new, short-lived formation called The Criminals and released two solo albums in 1979 and 1981.
It was thanks to the enthusiastic Dolls fan Morrissey that the band reformed in the mid-noughties for a festival he organized – but without Thunders, who died in 1991. The band then recorded another studio album and completed extensive tours. Over the past decade, Sylvain has still performed sporadically, for example at concerts with the first Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock.
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