Singer and actor, who scored a hit with “Hot Hot Hot” as his alter ego Buster Poindexter, dies after revealing Stage Four cancer battle last month
David Johansen, frontman for the New York Dolls and the last surviving original member of that pioneering punk band, has died at the age of 75.
The death of the singer who also moonlighted as “Buster Poindexter” and, as an actor, appeared in films like Scrooged and Let It Ride, was confirmed Saturday by a spokesperson for Johansen, who said in a statement to Rolling Stone, “David Johansen died at home in NYC on Friday afternoon holding hands with his wife Mara Hennessey and daughter Leah, surrounded my music, flowers, and love. He was 75 years old and died of natural causes after nearly a decade of illness.”
Johansen’s death comes less than a month after he revealed he was battling Stage Four cancer and a brain tumor, and had been bedridden and incapacitated following a fall in November where he broke his back in two place. A fund was launched by Johansen’s family to raise money for his around-the-clock care.
The New York City-born Johansen was best known for his work in the pioneering punk group the New York Dolls, with whom — during the band’s initial run in the first half of the Seventies — he recorded a pair of influential glam punk albums, 1973’s New York Dolls and 1974’s Too Much Too Soon, with Johansen co-writing the bulk of the albums with guitarist Johnny Thunders.
Following the band’s breakup in 1975, Johansen embarked on a solo career that included albums recorded under his own name and, in the Eighties, LPs by his swing alter ego Buster Poindexter, including a rendition of calypso song “Hot Hot Hot” that became an unlikely Hot 100 hit for Johansen.
This story is developing.
