Sylvain Sylvain of the proto-punk group New York Dolls dies at 69



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The band made a quick noise but within a few years had disbanded, leaving only two albums from their heyday, “New York Dolls” (1973) and the prophetically titled “Too Much Too Soon” (1974, the title borrowed from the autobiography of actress Diana Barrymore). He did not produce any radio hits, but his fame grew after the fact. As Mr. Sylvain said in his memoir, “There are no bones in ice cream” (2018, written with Dave Thompson), “We have been reborn as a historic precedent, year zero of punk, New Wave New World Roanoke Settlers. “

Mr. Murcia died of an overdose while the band was touring England in 1972. Johnny Thunders died in 1991. Jerry Nolan, who replaced Mr. Murcia and played on the albums, died in 1992. Mr. Sylvain continued to perform with his own groups and with Mr. Johansen after the Dolls disbanded. In 2004, he, Mr. Johansen, and the other surviving member of the Dolls, bassist Arthur Kane, reunited for the Meltdown Festival in London, but Mr. Kane died of leukemia soon after.

Mr. Sylvain once summed up the bittersweet arc of the group.

“It was like a race, and we were like horses,” he says. “The Dolls were the number one horse. We were right there, two seconds from the finish line, and behind us were the Ramones, Kiss, Dictators and Blondie, and the list goes on. Then we fell and broke our leg and the next one won the race.

Sylvain Sylvain Mizrahi was born on February 14, 1951 in Cairo. Her father, David, a banker, was from a family of Sephardic Jews from Turkey and her mother, Marcelle, was of Syrian descent. The Suez Canal crisis of 1956, precipitated when Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the canal, led to the emigration of the family.

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