We were twice transported back to the early 1970s this weekend, our memories snagged on the deaths of Roberta Flack and David Johansen. One of the two was afforded quite a send off by the media, the other wasn’t. I think they got it the wrong way around.
Flack, who died aged 88 on 24 February, was a soul/pop crossover artist with a luxurious contralto range and a canny judge of what made a hit record. She had two big solo hits in the UK with “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, written by Ewan MacColl and “Killing Me Softly With His Song”, a Gimbel/Fox/Lori Lieberman confection written after Lieberman had witnessed a Don McLean concert and, incredibly, seemed to have enjoyed it.
Flack had another hit stateside, as they say, with Eugene McDaniels “Feel Like Making Love”, which didn’t quite make the top thirty over here. Perhaps her finest interpretation was with the exquisite Janis Ian song “Jesse”, a B-side over here. A partnership with Donny Hathaway brought her a couple of further successes. How should we rate her? She possessed a beautiful voice, undoubtedly and was fairly successful in ploughing that soul/pop crossover furrow – although less so than many of her contemporaries, such as Gladys Knight and the mid-period Diana Ross. She fancied herself a songwriter, but her album contributions slowed to a trickle and then dried up.
Instead she went for the tried and trusted talented middle of the road writers – Jimmy Webb, Gimbel and Fox, Simon and Garfunkel – and these afforded her success. Her interpretations sometimes had a beauty, but even by the standards of 1972 were perhaps rather bland. Robert Christgau remarked of one album that she “always makes you wonder whether she’s going to fall asleep before you do”. He had a point.
For me, the interesting thing about her was her collaborations with the genuinely talented Eugene McDaniels, a maverick black songwriter who was considered such a danger to US society that Spiro Agnew wanted him kicked out of the country. Flack covered quite a few of his songs and contributed to his rather wonderful, if dated, albums “Outlaw” and “Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse”.
David Johansen died aged 75 on 28 February, which most people who knew him would consider a miracle. Every other member of the band for which he is most renowned checked out years ago, the earliest being drummer Billy Murcia who died aged 21. His replacement, Jerry Nolan, died at 45 and most people thought that had been a long time coming, frankly. The guitarist, the wonderful Johnny Thunders, died aged 38.
That band was, of course, The New York Dolls. Hits – none. Their two albums made it to about 167 in the Billboard charts. Both were abysmally produced, as was Johnny Thunders’ album with his spin off band, The Heartbreakers. And yet all three albums, if you hear them today, are palpably alive, original, raw, exciting and often hilarious.
More to the point, they had probably as great an influence on rock music as the Velvet Underground. Without the Dolls, no Sex Pistols, perhaps no punk. No Smiths. No glam metal. No glam indie stuff, no Suede. You might blame them for a later epidemic of cross dressing debauchery, for epitomising the idiotic James Dean live fast and die young schtick. But you cannot deny the excitement they provided, nor that wonderful legacy of songs – Lookin For a Kiss, Personality Crisis, Jet Boy, Trash and, my own favourite, Vietnamese Baby.
Johansen was the singer – a fabulous and dangerous parody of Mick Jagger. He was, to me, the very essence of 1970s rock n roll. And I hope that now he is in some kind of heaven, the kind of heaven he would like.
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