Savage Distortion

NEW YORK DOLL

I was delighted to find this movie on my in room viewing selections. Parsippany NJ doesn't offer much in the way of entertainment, and this documentary helped keep me from drinking myself into beligerancy.

Arthur "Killer" Kane, bass player for the New York Dolls is the subject of this excellent film about success, failure, redemption, and Rock and Roll.

What is truly great about this story is that unlike most films about dead rock stars, this one is heart warming.

Lost in the shadows of David Johansen and the late Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan, Arthur never managed to get anything together after David left him broke, and in the care of the toxic twins Thunders and Nolan in the parking lot of a Florida Motel in 1974. Johnny and Jerry manged to get The Heartbreakers together, and become punk rock living dead legends, but Arthur's rock dreams never panned out.

After years of alcohol abuse, obscurity, and an attempted suicide (a dive from a 3rd floor room), Arthur found God in the form of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or as they are more commonly known, the Mormons.

That was his first salvation, his second came in the form of Morrissey, who, in 2004, asked the Dolls, or what was left of them (Johnny and Jerry had both died of drug use in the early nineties), to play a festival in England.

Arthur died days after the gig, but although the story is bittersweet, and indeed sad at times, it is, overall, and uplifting tale about redemption.

For me, it has taught me two things. I will no longer mock the Mormons, and I now have some respect for Morrissey.