https://www.rollingstone.com/music/musi ... d-1114962/
He was 69, long battle with cancer.
R.I.P. Sylvain Sylvain
Re: R.I.P. Sylvain Sylvain
I was just thinking about the New York Dolls yesterday, and had already been planning to pull out the debut, one of my all-time favorites (it's consistently in my top 5 when we do our album polls). Now I'll be listening to it as a tribute. David Johansen is now the only surviving member of the lineup from those two 1970s albums.
Re: R.I.P. Sylvain Sylvain
That's funny - I've had In Too Much Too Soon on heavy rotation lately, and last week pulled up the full Don Kirchner concert (including link above) on youtube. Johnny Thunders was my guy - I was really bummed (though not surprised) when he died. I saw him several times live in the mid-late '80's (pretty much hit or miss but I pretty much idolized him at the time). Got to see Sylvain playing rhythm for him then. Seemed like a friendly, approachable guy, always smiling.Harold wrote: ↑Fri Jan 15, 2021 6:35 pm I was just thinking about the New York Dolls yesterday, and had already been planning to pull out the debut, one of my all-time favorites (it's consistently in my top 5 when we do our album polls). Now I'll be listening to it as a tribute. David Johansen is now the only surviving member of the lineup from those two 1970s albums.
Re: R.I.P. Sylvain Sylvain
Robert Christgau, in a terrific essay on the Dolls in the classic 1979 desert-island-records anthology Stranded, has some interesting insights on Sylvain’s essential role in the band, even though he “doesn’t add something unique to a sound that pits the competent-plus musicianship of [vocalist David Johansen and drummer Jerry Nolan] against the rude thrashing of [lead guitarist Johnny Thunders – “a primitive genius” – and bassist Arthur Kane – “a primitive klutz”]. (Christgau credits critic and Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye for helping shape his thoughts about Sylvain.)
“The responsibility of compensating fell to Syl. Syl’s guitar was the band’s fulcrum. By mediating between rhythm and melody, a bassman’s work, he picked up some of Arthur’s slack. And while it’s really true that he had nothing unique to add to the Dolls’ sound, he wasn’t an ordinary circa-1971 hard rock guitarist either. If he had been, the band might well have sunk under his weight, but Syl was a Doll because he was in love with speed, and he knew enough to counteract Arthur’s inertia by keeping his touch unusually light. There’s even a sense in which his ordinariness – the very fact that he had nothing unique to bring to the sound – provided a modicum of conceptual stability, a common ground where the band’s primitives could meet the musicians.”
“The responsibility of compensating fell to Syl. Syl’s guitar was the band’s fulcrum. By mediating between rhythm and melody, a bassman’s work, he picked up some of Arthur’s slack. And while it’s really true that he had nothing unique to add to the Dolls’ sound, he wasn’t an ordinary circa-1971 hard rock guitarist either. If he had been, the band might well have sunk under his weight, but Syl was a Doll because he was in love with speed, and he knew enough to counteract Arthur’s inertia by keeping his touch unusually light. There’s even a sense in which his ordinariness – the very fact that he had nothing unique to bring to the sound – provided a modicum of conceptual stability, a common ground where the band’s primitives could meet the musicians.”