New York Dolls Singer, Punk Icon David Johansen Reveals Stage 4 Cancer Diagnosis and Brain Tumor
New York Dolls co-founder and punk icon David Johansen has revealed that he is battling a brain tumor and stage four cancer. The news came via a Sweet Relief Fund in his name seeking to raise money for the singer’s ongoing care in which his daughter, Leah Hennessey, revealed the extent of her 75-year-old father’s health issues.
“Five years ago at the beginning of the pandemic we discovered that David’s cancer had progressed and he had a brain tumor,” Leah wrote. “There have been complications ever since. He’s never made his diagnosis public, as he and my mother Mara are generally very private people, but we feel compelled to share this now, due to the increasingly severe financial burden our family is facing.” She noted that in a further blow, the singer known for his outrageous, high-energy stage persona, fell down a flight of stairs after Thanksgiving and broke his back in two places.
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Following a week-long hospital stay and a successful surgery, Leah said her dad has been bedridden and incapacitated since then and “due to the trauma, David’s illness has progressed exponentially and my mother is caring for him around the clock.” Given the multiple health crises, Leah said that in order to continue treatment and give her dad the best chance at a full recovery he will need full-time assistance.
“As hilarious and wise as David continues to be, he is physically debilitated and his care exceeds what we are capable of providing without specialized professional help,” she wrote, adding, “David has worked continuously as a singer and actor for the better part of six decades, to the delight of his fans all over the world. However for the past five years, David has been unable to work as a performer. “
The non-profit Sweet Relief Musicians Fund was initially founded by singer Victoria Williams in 1994 to help her pay medical bills after a multiple sclerosis diagnosis and has since grown into a 501 (c)(3) that has helped raise funds for professional musicians in need of health or financial assistance.
In a statement, Johansen said, “We’ve been living with my illness for a long time, still having fun, seeing friends & family, carrying on, but this tumble the day after Thanksgiving really brought us to a whole new level of debilitation. This is the worst pain i’ve ever experienced in my entire life. I’ve never been one to ask for help but this is an emergency. Thank you.”
The organization’s executive director, Aric Steinberg, added in a statement, “Our Directed Artist Funds can provide a meaningful solution when the community rallies around the recipient, and we anticipate that David’s community will be eager to help here. His influence on the musical landscape with the New York Dolls is indelible, and his career as an actor and an artist has touched many people around the world. He’s been knocked down but we’re here to help him back up with the help of his family, friends and wider community of supporters.”
The family said that their most immediate needs are for full-time nursing, physical therapy and funding for day-to-day vital living expenses, aimed at helping Johansen regain “some mobility and independence.” Supporters can donate to the David Johansen Fund here, or buy a “luv” shirt benefitting Johansen’s fund here.
Johansen has long been a beloved figure on the New York scene, beginning with his time as the lead singer and provocateur of the gender-bending New York Dolls. That band — which also featured guitarists Johnny Thunders and Sylvain Sylvain, bassist Arthur Kane and drummer Jerry Nolan — emerged from the fertile underground New York rock scene in the early 1970s, releasing a pair of albums in 1973 and 1974 that helped set the template for the punk revolution and, later, inspired the lipstick and Aqua Net late 1980s hair metal scene.
After drugs and weak sales pushed the band’s members apart, Johansen went on to start his own solo band and then reinvent himself in the 1980s as the smarmy lounge lizard Buster Poindexter, through which he explored his love of the blues, jazz, swing and Latin music on such radio hits as “Hot Hot Hot.” He later formed the Harry Smiths, a group dedicated to early folk, blues and country music gathered by music historian Harry Everett Smith in the Anthology of American Folk Music.
In addition to the occasional reunion with the Dolls over the years, Johansen also hosted a freewheeling Sirius satellite radio show, David Johansen’s Mansion of Fun and acted in projects including the HBO series Oz and the movies Scrooged, Let It Ride, Freejack, Mr. Nanny and others.
Johansen was the subject of the 2020 Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi-directed Showtime documentary feature Personality Crisis: One Night Only, which told the singer’s life story and chronicled one of his freewheeling shows at New York’s Café Carlyle.
“My mother’s favorite acronym for God is ‘Grace Over Drama,'” Leah Hennessey wrote. “Together we have endured crisis after crisis, but with the support of our community we hope to carry on laughing and loving our way through this most trying of times. Thank you for embracing our family, and for your love and generosity.”
Check out some of Johansen’s most beloved moments below.
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