A conversation with Sylvain Sylvain of the New York Dolls from 2000
The glam-rock pioneer talks about leaving the Big Apple, being a single parent, meeting Michael Stipe, and that time Ivana Trump showed up at the Velvet Goldmine premiere
Photo: Michael Ochs/Getty Images
Welcome to stübermania, where I dig into my box of dust-covered interview cassettes from the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s to present bygone conversations with your favourite alterna/indie semi-stars (and the occasional classic-rock icon). This is a newsletter in three parts: The Openers (links to recent writings, playlist updates, and/or other musical musings), The Headliner (your featured interview of the week), and Encores (random yet related links).
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THE OPENERS
A heads-up to readers in the Hamilton, Ontario area: the Broken Social Scene documentary It’s All Gonna Break has its local premiere this coming Tuesday (March 18) at 6:40pm at the Playhouse Cinema. And if you stick around after the credits, there’ll be a post-show Q&A with director Stephen Chung, producer Andrea Menzies, and yours truly.
In related extended-BSS-family news: Happy 25th birthday to this Canadian post-rock classic:
Notes on this week’s new arrivals on the stübermania 2025 jukebox:
Ty Segall, “Fantastic Tomb”: The first single from the upcoming Possession (out May 30) settles deeper into the groove burrowed by last year’s Three Bells and this year’s debut from his Freckle side project, where psych-folk, glam-rock, and Southern boogie converge into a seamless six-minute minisuite.
Circuit des Yeux, “Truth”: After years of lurking on the avant-folk/noise fringes, Haley Fohr wants to be your darkwave queen. On her new album, Halo on the Inside (out today), she lets her sonorous and sinister voice bounce off the concrete walls of a warehouse rave to create dance music that’s as unnerving as it exhilarating.
cleopatrick, “Hammer”: This Cobourg, Ontario duo has logged a couple of Soundgarden-esque hit singles on what remains of corporate alt-rock radio in North America, but their latest album, Fake Moon, honours a different sort of ‘90s tradition: that of a commercially viable band throwing their fans for a loop by making the sort of off-kilter, lo-fi, indie-coded record that, 30 years ago, would’ve landed them a slot alongside Sparklehorse, Beck, Sebadoh, and Eels on a Monsters of Slack tour.
Casper Skulls, “Roddy Piper”: On their first album in four years, the Toronto-via-Sudbury band give shout-outs to the star of They Live atop Daydream Nation guitars, making this the most 1988 song of 2025.
feeble little horse, “This Is Real”: This fulfills a fantasy I didn’t even know I harbored: prog Breeders.
THE HEADLINER:
A conversation with Sylvain Sylvain
The date: December 8, 2000
Publication: Eye Weekly
Location: I was in the Eye Weekly office in Toronto, Syl was calling in from Atlanta
Album being promoted: Syl’s 1998 solo release, (Sleep) Baby Doll
The context: With the recent passing of David Johansen from cancer at age 75, there’s naturally been a lot of New York Dolls nostalgia on my social-media feeds. I never had the pleasure of speaking with Johansen, however, 25 years ago, I did enjoy a lengthy, career-spanning phoner with his long-time accomplice, Sylvain Mizrahi—a.k.a. Sylvain Sylvain (who likewise died of cancer in 2021 at age 69).
If the New York Dolls were the sleazy Stateside Stones, then they were a band with two Keith Richardses—but where the Johnny Thunders indulged the junkie rock-star aspect of the Keith mythos to fatal extremes, Syl embodied Keith’s music-historian side, by keeping the Dolls’ glam flamboyance grounded in an old-school rock ‘n’ roll soul. After leaving the Dolls in 1974 and releasing a self-titled solo album in 1979, Syl spent the next two decades out of the spotlight as a stay-at-home dad. But with the release of 1998’s (Sleep) Baby Doll, he came back just in time to ride a glam-rock renaissance spurred by Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine. Recorded with a host of fellow punk-rock pensioners (including Generation X's Derwood Andrews and Blondie's Frankie Infante), the record revamped all the essential Dolls parts—doo-wop harmonies, rockabilly bounce, attitude-heavy melody—while reliving past glories (like a thrashed-up take on the Syl-penned Dolls classic “Trash” and a fantastic orchestral remount of Syl and Johansen's post-Dolls standard, "Frenchette").
This interview happened a week before Syl performed at the long-gone B-Side (a.k.a. the upstairs space of the equally long-gone Fez Batik) at the corner of Richmond and Peter, backed by a makeshift band of local glam-scene ringers, including members of Robin Black & The Intergalactic Rock Stars. On the phone, Syl was a total sweetheart—generous with his time and stories, and genuinely appreciative of all the fans and bands who had kept the Dolls’ legend alive long after their demise, even though (as he reiterated throughout the interview) the band’s influence never translated into affluence. And while Syl was living in Atlanta at the time after years in L.A., he retained an authentic Noo Yoik accent that made him sound like a scene-stealing character actor from some mid-’70s sitcom.
Our conversation began as many interactions do between two people who’ve just met each other: by talking about the weather.
Hey Syl, this is Stuart at Eye Weekly in Toronto.
Is it cold up there? I bet you it's fucking freezing!
We just got a massive snowstorm waiting for you here.
Thank you. I'm going out shopping right now for a winter coat. Because you know where you’re calling me? Atlanta, Georgia. This is where I live. Today, it’s 60 degrees over here, and it's freezing!
So why the hell do you want to come up to Toronto in the middle of December?
I wanted to see the Christmas lights. We don't have no Christmas lights out here. Actually, I've been touring around my new album, which has yet to be released in Canada. It was recorded in 1997, and released in ‘98. In Europe, it came out as Paper, Pencil & Glue and here it’s called (Sleep) Baby Doll. I'll tell you the truth: It's my best work ever, and I've been on a lot of things. And I'm not knocking anything that I did when my RCA contract was around and my days in the New York Dolls. But this one, I did all on my own. I should give Radio Shack some credit because I basically used their equipment to record it.
So it’s all home-recorded?
Yeah and I got all these great friends and stuff that played on it and didn't even charge me a nickel. You got Frankie Infante, you’ve got Derwood Andrews from Generation X…
I was surprised to hear strings on the record. Have you always had aspirations to make something this grandiose?
Not really. I didn't use that many tracks, really. Some of it was done in my basement right here in Georgia. I have a studio, andI took my time. With some cuts, like, “My Babe,” the rockabilly one and “(Sleep) Baby Doll” and “Frenchette,” I'm basically the only musician on the whole damn record. But I played every instrument. I'm a trial-and-error kind of a guy in a recording studio. I try everything and I'll keep what’s feeling great and if it doesn't work out, I’ll trash it.
Were you doing a lot of home recording over the years even when you weren't putting out records?
Yeah. A lot of those years, I didn't really have a deal, even though I was knocking on people's doors. A lot of people think that I didn't feel like making records, which is just really a bunch of crap. What happened to me is basically I became a single parent, and my son was four years old in the mid-’80s. And I could not come home drunk and stinkin’ anymore, you know what I mean? I had to take care of business, and that changed my life because all the musicians I had ever met were at, like, Max’s Kansas City at 4 o’clock in the morning just before they were going to close the doors or whatever. So it was a big change in my life. I started making clothes again for a living.
Did you feel like you had to get out of New York? Was the city a corrupting influence?
No, no, no, New York was just too expensive for me to celebrate. And I feel like, “why the hell should I live in a place that I just used as an address? If I can't even ride a cab, go to the theater or go to a good restaurant, then what the fuck am I doing there?” I look at it this way: I want to have a real rich life at a bargain price. This is my quest, from all these years, this is what I fucking learned. It’s pathetic, but it’s true. And then Johnny died, poor guy, and my parents passed away and everything was really bad and shit, and the complication of having no money and all this stuff. I got hired in California to produce this band called the Motorcycle Boys on Triple X Records. And I was subletting a place in Manhattan that was $1,200—and this was, like, 10 years ago, maybe a little more. So when I went out to California, I couldn't believe it. All these places said “for rent,” and “we’ll help you move in” and “the first month’s free” and they all had swimming pools, so I said “fuck this,” and I rented out a place and I moved the family out to California, where I created this album, (Sleep) Baby Doll, with the musicians and the band that I put together when I was in California playing around there.
It does have a bit of a California/Phil Spector vibe.
Well, you know, a lot of people would say to me, “Man, this album really sounds like New York City.” I say, “that's funny because I recorded it in California and Georgia.” You know what it is: you can take the little boy out of New York but you can’t take New York out of a little boy. Did you hear the version of “Trash” on my record? You know in the middle there when I say, “would you like some coffee?” That’s a real New York thing. You’re more celebrated when you're not just another schmuck in the same town. When you're just another New Yorker in New York, you’re just another New Yorker. Anyway, so I was out in California and I woke up to go to one of these cafeterias for breakfast before I was supposed to go sing, and so I walked into this real Los Angeles place where they’re all wearing the ‘50s Johnny Rockets kind of clothes like you're watching Happy Days, and I walked in and asked “can I have some coifee”—I didn't really notice I had a New York accent. Yeah. So the girl with the white apron jumped over and said, “oh, you want some coifee?” And I say, “yeah I want some coifee.” And she says, “hey Murray”—he’s the guy behind the counter—”he wants some coifee!” And Murray’s like, “he wants coifee?” So now everyone's turning around and fucking looking at me and laughing about this coffee thing. So I got my coffee and I walked into the studio to sing and I normally do a scratch vocal and it came time to do the middle part for “Trash.” And I said, “oh, would you like some coifee?” I told him to cut the tape, take it back, and I'll give him the real vocal, but to see them on the floor cracking up, they wouldn’t let me get rid of it. That said, “that’s it, it’s a print, get the hell out of the studio!”
So it’s about celebrating your New Yorkness but not having to be in New York to do it.
Yeah, especially in the south, it’s amazing. Everybody's like, “oh, you're from New York? Wow!”
Georgia doesn't strike me as the most obvious destination for someone like yourself.
There's a lot of fucking music down here, I made a lot of friends down here. There's a new generation that's coming up with all these great bands, there's a lot of hot little bands that come out of here.
That’s interesting because when I interview bands from New York, they say that it sucks coming from New York, because everyone’s in a band, so no one gives you the time of day.
Yeah, Los Angeles is the same thing. It's a graveyard. How do you think I found all those guys to play on my record? You go down to Rock ‘n’ Roll Ralph’s. There's a supermarket called Ralph’s right on Sunset Boulevard, but they call it Rock ‘n’ Roll Ralph’s because all the bands go there to go shopping. So I found musicians down there—I’d go down aisle number one and you get your drummer, and aisle number two next to the milk and beer you find your bass player. But L.A. really is a graveyard. It's really unfortunate. Everybody goes there to work and to get discovered and to get this and that and then the years pass and the band breaks up and the girlfriend goes out with the drummer instead of the singer and then there’s a big fight…
It’s crazy that people still believe the same myths over and over again—that they’ll get off the bus and have a record deal…
I wrote a song that I haven't yet finished called “Mama, Don't Leave Me Here.” I wrote when I was watching the news one day in L.A., and it was about this mom—a white mom—she had a divorce. Her first marriage was mixed, so her child was mixed, and then she had a new boyfriend who was white just like her and didn't want this mixed kid around anymore, so she takes the kid and dumps her on the Sunset Strip—she gives her, like, 50 bucks and says, “Don't worry, in two weeks, you're going to be a big star in Hollywood.” Can you imagine how sad that could be? And there's so much of that in L.A. Same thing in New York.
Do you find you give a nice balance now between having a quiet home life, but then going out to rock ‘n’ roll when the mood strikes?
You know, one of the things that got me out of New York was there was no more opportunity. It seemed like even the guy standing on the corner selling the damn hot dogs had to pay a million dollars to stand on the damn corner! Now I live in a house, which is the first house that I ever lived in in the United States, period. And I've got a basement where half of it I do like all my clothes because I still sew and make my own stuff, and then the other half is all music, and it's just so nice to have just a room and have birds come around and things of that nature instead of…
Sirens.
Well, I was just so used to that for so long, and it was great and everything, and you know, people dared me to make a record that sounded like I could still live in New York, and I think I proved them right. I could live any fucking place in the world. I don't necessarily have to live in the Lower East Side to come up with this kind of music. Right now, it's all about the whole world anyways. I just came from Europe and in Spain, it's just so amazing—like, the young and the old are all hanging together. The mom and dad are not against the kids, and the kids do whatever the fuck they want. They all smoke hashish and they go out drinking and have a good time. It’s not a taboo thing to have sex. They're quite a happy society, you know?
Does the legend of the Dolls creep up every couple of years, or is it this constant, pervasive presence in your life?
Well, you know, it's always going to be there.
In Toronto, over the past two years—I guess around the same time the Velvet Goldmine movie came out—all these glam and garage-rock club nights started popping up and then this whole trashy rock scene sprouted up.
I can't complain about it because obviously it's given me new life and it's just so wonderful. They invited me, by the way, to the premiere of that movie when it came out in New York, and I went to the party at the Bowery Ballroom, and I met Fred Schneider from the B-52's and I met Michael Stipe, who had a lot of input as an executive producer for that movie. It was really funny. He said to me, “Oh, man, I saw you in the ’70s, in 1978 in Missouri” or someplace like that and he said, “oh, man, it was really great. But I'm sure you're sick and tired of hearing that you were great. And I go, “No, I'm not! I don't have any money, so if it wasn't for hearing I’m great every now and then, I wouldn’t have much at all.” And then what’s-her-name, Ivana Trump came in with her new boyfriend and all the fucking cameras and the paparazzi went [makes shooting noise] and here I was talking to the most important rock and roll stars and no one was paying us any damn mind. I played in L.A. and Morrissey came to see me, and it was in the paper all over the place—”Morrissey! Morrissey! Morrissey! Morrissey!” Did they say anything about Sylvain? No. But after that, he played “Trash” live, so I’d like to thank my friend. And he sings it like [does Morrissey impression] “Trash/ don’t pick it up… I got a job yesterday and I don’t like it…” But I love it. I’m thinking of doing a whole album of other performers, except the Dolls, that only do “Trash”—the whole album. You know who else is doing “Trash”—you know Poison? Rikki Rockett, the drummer, has a new solo album coming out, and he did “Trash,” and he's got one of the Go-Go's singing it—I forget which one it is. And Gilby Clarke—you know, one of the 500 members of Guns N’ Roses—he does “Trash” too. There are so many people that do “Trash,” it's amazing, so I'm just thinking it would be great just to hear them all on one damn album.
Well, there aren’t too many people who claim to have had their song covered by both Morrissey and a guy from Guns N’ Roses.
And do you remember this band from California called Kris Kross? Oh wait, Redd Kross! What am I thinking, Kris Kross—that’s the hip-hop band. I wish they would do “Trash” [laughs] I would be talking to you personally—I would fly in to see you on my own private jet! But Redd Kross do one of my other songs, “Puss N Boots.” That was the big difference between our first album and our second album. Our first album, of course, was produced by Todd Rundgren, and it was really heading towards the right direction that we needed. You know, he was really paying attention to our guitar stuff—me and Johnny—and David's voice, and he was helping us develop our musicianship. But then on the second album—”14th Street Beat,” “Teenage News” and “The Kids Are Back” were already ready for that. And of course, I wrote the title song, “Too Much Too Soon” that only came out on a Johnny Thunders album 10 years later! Shadow Morton, he came from the 60s, and he was a genius—you know, the girl groups were a big influence on the Dolls. He brought in the girls, who were beautiful chicks, and they sang lovely and I wish I could have ended up in bed with them, but on the album, it wasn't the Dolls anymore, you know what I mean? And then, of course, I played piano on “Personality Crisis” and Todd helped me develop those slides and all that sloppy piano stuff, but on the second album, Shadow didn’t want me to play—he got a professional pianist to do all that. It was like, the guy hadn't been around in so long, because there was so much music done between the early ’60s and the early 70s—it was like 300 years of music history.
So he thought everything still ran like the Brill Building.
Yeah, exactly, and he produced it like that. And we did so many covers. Why didn’t we do some of the new songs? He wanted to clean us up. To me, it sounded like the first Buster Poindexter record. And all the songs that we tried on the first album that didn't come out that good, like “Human Being” and “It’s Too Late” became important songs for our second album, which it shouldn't have been. The only song that I got credited for, was “Puss ‘n’ Boots,” and that really sucked. I even told him, “hey, you know, the title cut is not even recorded.” And he told me that he really didn't have any more time to spend and the managers were telling him to pay more attention to David and Johnny. So you know what I did? I fucking packed my bag, I said goodbye to everybody, and I went on vacation. And I walked out of there crying because I knew it was my suicide. I went with my girlfriend at the time, Janet Planet, and we went to Jamaica for the first time, and we started hanging out and smoking ganja, and I came back home with a shit load of reggae/Clashy kind of songs. That's when I wrote “I'm So Sorry” and everything else. “I'm So Sorry” is really the same chords as “London Calling.” And mine was written in 1974 and I was already performing it live when I first started The Criminals in late-’75 after the Dolls broke up.
Were you touring England at that point?
No, but I went there with my demo when I toured there with Johansen and The Pretenders were opening up for us, playing for the first time ever. David's wife—Kate Simon, the photographer—she started bringing around Mick Jones and everyone else. I played him my tape, and that’s when the guy who was producing and managing The Pretenders, who gave Johnny his first record, Dave Hill from Real Records, and he gave me my first deal out of that demo that he heard, which has also been released as Teenage News here and in Europe it's called The Bowery Butterfly. And it was my RCA demo, basically, that I got my deal with. I had been playing it around since 1978.
It’s hard to find that stuff up here.
I'll bring some to the shows. Tell everybody to bring down all their Dolls records if they want me to sign them. I’m there an hour before my show and I'll sign anything for anybody, take pictures, and kiss the little babies and all that. And anybody that comes in drag gets in for free, by the way. Or my deal with my band is if they get in drag, then they get paid double.
It’s interesting, because what you’re doing now isn’t exactly glam rock, but you’re playing a glam-themed club night here.
Wait until you see my show. It's a little bit of everything I do. At the end there, I basically close out with the Dolls stuff. I'll play “Trash” and “Jet Boy” and “Pills.” And I open up with “The Cops Are Coming”—my instrumental—and then I shoot into “Emily,” and I'll be doing “Paper, Pencil & Glue” and “I’m Your Man” and “14th Street” and I even do a Velvet Underground song, “Femme Fatale,” and I fall into the whole Chelsea Hotel trance with the crowd. I bring a lot of tears to people's eyes, which is really beautiful to see. I do Heartbreakers songs, and if they really get me on a good night, I might do “Blank Generation.” And remember The Boys from England and that song “The First Time”? I finish up with that for my encore. My show is really designed for the audience—if they want it and if they're going to go wild for it, we'll be there. When people start to take off their clothes, you're doing a damn hot show.
So it must feel good, considering that in the ’70s, mainstream critics slagged the Dolls for being too sloppy, but now you're still doing it and inspiring people…
Now, it’s genius!
…whereas you had bands like Bread who were considered serious, sophisticated pop groups in their day, but no one gives a shit about them anymore.
Like I said, I never really made the money—my banker still doesn't know who I am. But when I walk down the street, I hear, “Hey, Sylvain! I'm glad you're alive, man! Keep on kicking! Rock and roll!” Down here in the South, they go, “yeah, boogie like hell!” In Spain, it’s like, “Hola! Hola!” I thought that as I get older, the shows were going to get harder and harder for me to do, but towards the end of the set, it gets easier and easier. I played in Philadelphia at this club called Upstairs at Nick's. And I played there, and it went on too long, and the guy shut off the juice. I was doing “Trash,” which was my closing song anyways. And we were at the part where I do all the “oohs” at the end there, so I got all the kids to do all the “oohs” and we walked off the stage, we went downstairs to the cellar where our dressing room was, we got dressed, and the guy [at the bar] threw out all the kids and as we were walking away and driving away, we could still hear the kids going “ooh ooh oooh,” and it was so beautiful. I mean, that's why I do it. That's what keeps me going. How can I stop with such love?
So have you been up to Toronto much over the years?
Of course! I've been up there so many times that they gave me Canadian social security! But I haven't been up there in the last 10 years there so it's going to be really nice for me to just walk down Yonge Street again. The last time I was up there, I was playing the El Mocambo.
As I was saying earlier, there’s a pretty healthy garage and glam-rock scene that’s been building up here for the past couple of years…
I was playing here in Atlanta and it was one of my first performances and I noticed there were so many young kids outside that couldn't get in. They were underage. So I started doing all these all-ages shows. And, there's this one band here, and I swear to God, they're 15 years old, and they open up for me and they look like a young Who with the bangs and the ruffled shirts and they’re really rock ‘n’ roll. The kids that come to see me are all like 15. They’ve got all these Dolls t-shirts, and I don't know where the fuck they get them. I wish somebody would send me my two percent because still, to this day, I don't get paid anything for any merchandise. I often describe the New York Dolls as a business in the Los Angeles riots: everybody comes in, they print up the records and bootlegs and t-shirts and then they just walk out of the store, you know?
So are we any closer to a Dolls reunion?
I don't think so, my friend. I'm really sorry to say that. It's not in my hands, unfortunately. I said “yes” years and years and years ago. And Arthur Kane said “yes” years and years and years ago. And even when Johnny Thunders was alive, he said “yes.” But I think the only one that's standing in the way of the end of our rainbow is Mr. David-So-Handsome. So, you got to ask him for that. But I would do it at the drop of a hat. I mean, yeah, I welcome the money—I'm not going to say stupidly that I'm going to give it to charity or something like that. But I'll tell you another thing: The kids would love it because they don't even really know. Somebody told me not too long ago they saw pictures of the New York Dolls having sex together on the internet. And I said, “Please! It was only a fucking kiss! Now we're fucking each other?” So I called Johansen and I said, “This is why have to fucking play—because they're going to think I'm going to have your baby or something.”
So you’re still in contact.
You know, I wrote a lot of songs with him. I was the only one that was always working with everybody. I worked with Johnny, and we did tours together of Europe. I recorded some songs with Jerry in Sweden when he lived up there. We had a band together called The Ugly Americans in 1989 just before he died, the poor guy. I worked with Johansen—I wrote “Funky But Chic,” I wrote “Frenchette,” I wrote “Cool Metro.” Every solo album he did, half of that material was mine. I never had a bad breakup with none of them really.
So you're the mediator.
Well, I don't know who gave me that fucking job! I never really wanted the damn fucking thing. I hate it. It's lame as hell. And it's frustrating as hell, too, when they don't fucking mediate.
It’s like being the sober guy who has to drive all his drunk friends home.
But sometimes we all have to do that. Because there is a beautiful thing and that's tomorrow, no matter how ugly today is.
ENCORES
In 2004, Syl’s long-standing dream of a New York Dolls reunion finally came true when he and fellow surviving members Johansen and Arthur Kane performed at London’s Meltdown Festival at the behest of guest curator Morrissey. And though Kane passed away from leukemia shortly thereafter, Syl and Johansen ushered the Dolls into a new era with 2006’s One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This, which I reviewed for Pitchfork. Like most comeback efforts from long-dormant, retooled, veteran rock groups, One Day tries to reignite the ol’ spark with mixed results, but the record actually gets better the more the Dolls embrace their older/wiser status—to wit, the best song on the record is this Springsteen-esque power ballad featuring Michael Stipe:
Since David Johansen’s passing, I’ve been habitually rewatching this 1988-era Tonight Show clip of him—in his Buster Poindexter days—telling a hoary old Borscht Belt joke to Johnny Carson, but stretching it out to Aristocrats lengths. It’s a reminder of what ultimately distinguished the first wave of proto-punk pioneers from their unruly spawn: as much as they set out to shock the showbiz establishment, their real superpower was charming and disarming the geezers. (See also: Iggy on Dinah Shore.)
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