Sylvain Sylvain

February 14, 1951 – January 13, 2021

David Johansen has paid tribute to his New

York Dolls bandmate Sylvain Sylvain who recently succumbed to cancer at the age of 69. Now the band’s last surviving original member, lead singer Johansen told Rolling Stone that the Dolls “would have been a crappy band” without Sylvain, adding: “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.”

Sylvain was born Sylvain Mizrahi in Cairo, Egypt, in 1951. When he was young his family fled to New York where, as a teenager, he formed The Pox with future New York Dolls bandmate Billy Murcia. The pair also featured in the band Actress, where they were joined by Johnny Thunders and Arthur Kane, morphing into the New York Dolls when Johansen joined the band.

Sylvain played with the Dolls until they broke up in 1975, appearing on the band’s self-titled debut in 1973 and on Too Much Too Soon the following year.

After the group’s dissolution Sylvain worked on a number of projects, releasing two albums under his own name, one with Syl Sylvain and the Teardrops, and two billed as With Sylvain Sylvain and The Criminal$.

In 2004 the surviving members of the Dolls (Sylvain, Johansen and Kane) reunited to perform at the Morrissey-curated Meltdown festival in London. Kane died just weeks after the show, but two years later came a third Dolls album, One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This. This was followed in 2009 by Cause I Sez So and Dancing Backward In High Heels in 2011.

In April 2019 Sylvain set up a crowd-funding campaign to raise money to pay his medical bills, revealing he’d been battling cancer.

“I have not been able to work since last year,” he wrote, “and have more surgery scheduled. I love life! As hard as life has been to me these past two years, I want to live and I know with your love and support

I’ll have the best chance that I could ever have.”

Talking in 2014, Sylvain told Classic Rock: “A musician’s life is a lot better with money than without, but the true job of an artist is to inspire and turn people on. That’s the job of an entertainer. So in those terms, you can forget everyone else. We’re Number One. We were the first band out of the fucking gate in New York City, before there was anybody else.

“Getting signed was a huge wall to break down, because before the New York Dolls you had to be fucking Foghat or Led Zeppelin. And we were so fucking bored with that generation. Whole shows were built around stadium rock, and the song itself had lost its pizazz, its sex appeal. So it was a case of: if they can’t deliver it, then we’ll have to do it ourselves.

“I’m so proud that we did what we did, against all odds. They used to say we couldn’t sing or write a tune and had no excuse to be on stage. But it was the audience who kept us going.”

Former Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye called Sylvain “the heart and soul of the New York Dolls”. Kaye elaborated: “Though he tried valiantly to keep the band going, in the end the Dolls’ moral fable overwhelmed them, not before seeding an influence that would engender many rock generations yet to come.”

After hearing the news, Slash posted a photo of Sylvain accompanied by the word: “RIP”. Steven

Van Zandt described him as “a great, great guy. Very talented. Underrated. Always welcoming positive energy. An essential member of the legendary New York Dolls.”

When Rolling Stone asked for Johansen’s feelings about being the lone survivor of the Dolls, the singer replied simply: “That I’m next.” FL/DL