A long time comin' and that's a fact this is a rollin' thunder trick or knee-tremblin' treat for Dolls / Johnny Thunders nuts and also a worthwhile investment for be-cushioned settee-CBGB-ite historians. Culled from hours of footage shot by Bob Gruen on a camera-cruise through clip joints, titty joints, backstage and stage make-upped hip swiveling, lip curling, seducto-sleaze urchin drag racing limp wristed fag in hand Rock'n'Roll that influenced a marbled menagerie of kids to plug in, mangle their mixed up shook up worlds and crank out their own high-collared gutter gaunt grimy primeval stew through their silk sheen souls. In theory anyway, for as even a cursory glance over rock's history shows, there was a Madison Square Garden full of little copy cats who ruffled a big black mane of matted hair, shot some smack and drifted off into the eternal stage-left towards the sign stating 'Point missed', (nay, soul missed), far as I know, they ain't making a methadone for superficiality, marble or no.

Happily, this beautifully constructed feature length doc is in a time before the heroin and heartbreak...the interview with the band on a grassy incline shows just how horrendously young they were underneath all that hair with them joshing with the camera after Arthur (admittedly rather disturbing throughout) lets slip about them using MDMA at a certain gig, even though they manage to look almost horrifically old at times.

There's not a great deal of insight, especially if you've read anything by Nina Antonia (well, her writings in the Dolls anyway y'know?) and who cares, c'mon everybody, this is the the most divine, deliciously wondrous gladrag n' roll you could reel along to. Anyone (like me) who wilfully drops off the wagon at every weary step along the ragged line of sub-standard sub-bootleg Thunders tribulations and only versed in tales of their uniformly kamikaze caterwauls when they hit the stage will have their fucked over faith replenished when you witness, and fuck me this film should have a whole trocadero of testifying believers, how tightly together and sweetly stomping they were in their universal garbage dump of kitschy kooky class...the sheer spookiness of seeing Thunders strip the paint off the walls and the seats out your bitches britches with his searing sardonic guitar lines, resplendent underneath his dead-crow hair, again especially when all that's been previously seen is him stumbling around (if that) in vids purely designed to extort cash from the converted yet curious.

Worth it ALL for the spine freezing moment when this unholy transvestite junky rock'n'roll circus play 'Personality Crisis' live on US TV...which is nothing more than being transported to a little time-pod of your own wherein you get to experience what you can still only imagine, but you can glimpse clearer...the feeling that Keef must've had when he says watching Elvis on TV in 1955 was like suddenly seeing the world in technicolour. A wonderful moment to imagine Middle America howling in irate inarticulacy at this apparition...and those few kids savouring it, unconsciously sensing that this is it as David Jo leers and pouts, Thunders wobbles on huge platforms...Rock'n'Roll finding its audience in the electric rush of adolescent angst, the truly turned on plugging into the electric cool static stream. Like Elvis and the cool cats before them the Dolls set out on their own subway train through almost unchartered territory...without the big bucks showbiz waltz of Bowie in his Cracked Actor killing off Ziggy for a suck on the Iggy mode the Dolls exhibit a wonderful aura of being the gaggle of young guys they were underneath the street sass wise guy Queens cockiness. As ever on their ever winding sad vacation the Dolls naiveté, charm and utter tragedy wins out. Quite lovely.

- Stu Gibson
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 "I need a porter and some action..."
-Sylvain Sylvain

Back in the hairmetal 80's, while Aerosmith were enjoying their clean and sober, corporate rawk comeback, singin' "Dude Looks Like A Lady", about
friggin' Tommy Lee, lounge lizard, Buster Poindexter, seemed like he was really embarrassed by his inbred descendents, and was sorta understandably,
goin' outta his way to distance himself from glam, almost denying the legitimacy of his "heavy mental" past, by suddenly, goin' all show-biz on us, singin' "Hot, Hot, Hot", and acting in lots of really cheeseball movies like, "Car 54 Where Are You". So, better late than never, it's really been thrilling to alot of us lifelong Dolls fanatics that Morrisey, or whomever, was able to encourage him to finally want to embrace the goldish legacy of
his Dollsy past.

Killer Kane and Sylvain, and all them, waited ,for years on end, for David Jo to come 'round, and it's awesome that Arthur got to live out his long held reunion dream before he passed. I have yet to see the Killer Kane documentary (I heard Chrissie Hynde was at the premiere in L.A.) or witness
the Dolls Revisited live show, but mutterings all through the grapevine have
it that ex-Hanoi Rocker, Sami Yaffa's been co-authoring some really solid
new songs with David, and there's alot of real positive, upbeat, hopeful
buzz, "all over Manhattan", about their impending studio album. I'm usually
as skeptical as the rest o' you purists and diehards, but I have summa this
shit from good authority. A Thunders worshipping guitar hero par excellence
who DIDN'T get the spot in the band.
 
Needless to say, Bob Gruen's unseen concert footage and backstage home
movies are a velvet goldmine-esp. the candid, behind the scenes footage of
former choir boy, Johnny Thunders, kissing his Mom and sister goodbye at the
airport and shit. This DVD is the perfect and essential companion to the
Nina Antonia books, and no glam brat should be without it. It's alot cheaper
than the Alice Cooper boxset, and you don't have to sit through nothin' that
bodybuilder Kane Roberts "shreds" on.... Bring on the in-depth STIV BATOR
bio!

P.S. When Guitar Center metal moron, Tracii Guns, constantly brags about how impressive it is that his Brides Of Destruction boss, Nikki Sixx, made way,
way, way more money than Johnny Thunders by reducing his shtick to mere
shtick-with-malice, it always makes me wanna puke. He also greatly admires
hooker punching, Razzle wrecker, Vince Neil for, quote, "taking David Lee
Roth's whole thing and turning it EVIL!" Guys like that will never get it.
They're like jocks-they got no place in rock'n'roll. That's why I use the
phrase "REAL ROCK'N'ROLL" so often - to differentiate between Thin Lizzy and Nelson. Phony rock'n'roll is unpardonable.

-Saint Pepsi

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