David Johansen of the legendary proto-punk glam rock band the New York Dolls has died at age 75. 

Johansen “passed away peacefully at home, holding the hands of his wife Mara Hennessey and daughter Leah, in the sunlight surrounded by music and flowers,” according to a statement from his family shared via the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund on Feb. 28.

David Johansen had been in ‘intensive treatment’ for cancer 

Earlier this year, Leah Hennessey announced that her father had been in “intensive treatment for stage 4 cancer for most of the past decade.” At the beginning of the pandemic, he learned the cancer had progressed and he had a brain tumor. Though Johansen and his family were “generally very private people,” Hennessey wrote, they were facing an “increasingly severe financial burden” as the singer’s health worsened, leading them to start a funding campaign to help cover the cost of his care. 

In the 1970s, Johansen became known as the flamboyant frontman of the New York Dolls. He was the last surviving original member of the influential group, which also included Johnny Thunders, Arthur Kane, Sylvain Sylvain, and Jerry Nolan. He later performed as Buster Poindexter and with the Harry Smiths. As an actor, Johansen played the Ghost of Christmas Past in the Bill Murray movie Scrooged and appeared in TV shows and movies such as Oz, The Adventures of Pete and Pete, Let It Ride, Married to the Mob, and 200 Cigarettes. He was also the subject of the 2023 Martin Scorsese documentary Personality Crisis: One Night Only.

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