New York Dolls - Royal Festival Hall 18/06/04

I'm not going to repeat myself (or rather re-repeat myself) about the lack of interest many of my friends had regarding the return of the New York Dolls.

Personally I couldn't get tickets quickly enough, and not just for the gig but for a showing two days beforehand of footage of the band taken by Bob Gruen and introduced by the man himself. There were backstage clips (the sight of band hairdresser Johnny Thunders having to jump up so that he could spray Arthur Kane's hair sticks in the memory), recordings taken from TV appearances (as this was pre-VCR this was captured by literally filming the TV as the shows aired) and arguably the highlight was the special trailer to the 'St Valentines Day Massacre' gig that showed the Dolls in full 1930s gangster regalia. Much of this footage has since been released as part of All Dolled Up.

That same night, though, the Dolls had agreed to play an extra show due to the demand for tickets. Now, one thing that was apparent during the screening was the lacksadaisacal approach to checking tickets. Both the venues involved are odd in that you don't need a ticket to get through the front entrance, only to get into the performance areas. So after the film finished we moved on to the Royal Festival Hall next door, took up residency in the bar and monitored the situation. Once suitably oiled it was apparent that a sneaky peek at the Dolls was on the cards, particularly when almost on cue the doorperson wandered off for a moment ...

The 45 minutes of the set we caught that night blew away the full show I saw two nights later. Being drunk and sneaking in probably helped the sense of occasion (plus the tickets I had for the Friday show turned out to be up in the gods, despite getting them in a supposedly special pre-sale), but mainly it just came down to the excitement of seeing the three remaining New York Dolls on stage - and putting in a performance so unexpected for a band that hadn't played for almost 30 years. The DVD of the Friday night show captured them perfectly, even leaving in some of the errors (such as Steve Conte playing the opening riff to 'Jetboy' instead of 'Personality Crisis').

The passing of Arthur Kane a few weeks later was a huge shock; from seeing the excellent and emotive biopic New York Doll you can't help but think his only reason for staying alive was to get the band back together one last time. Thankfully he got that one last wish.