Johnny Thunders - So Alone

Johnny Thunders's principal solo claim to fame, So Alone consists of Dollsy covers (the Shangri-Las' "Give Him a Great Big Kiss," the Chantays' surf chestnut "Pipeline," even the Dolls' "Subway Train") and gems of self-piteous wretchedness like "Leave Me Alone" and "You Can't Put Your Arms Round a Memory." The memory of what Junkie Johnny had been before heroin was almost enough to make So Alone a poignant experience--almost, but not quite. Oh, and "London Boys" was Thunders's sneering putdown of the London punk fraternity, several of whom (Steve Jones and Paul Cook, among others) are playing on the album. --Barney Hoskyns Amazon.com

A spectacular record and a sad reminder

Within every punk/loser/ne'er do well is a heart of gold. So we've learned from countless soap operas and trashy novels. But is it just a cliche? In Johnny Genzale's case, it was very true.
Beneath JT's "couldn't care less" exterior was one sweet guy. A hell of a great guitarist, a terrific songwriter, and a guy with a great record collection. First the covers: a very hot "Pipeline" that opens the album, The Shangri-La's' "Give Him a Great Big Kiss," a holdover from his Doll days, "Daddy Rollin' Stone," an ill-fated Supergroup summit with Phil Lynott (RIP) and Steve Marriott (RIP.) For good measure, he does two Dolls songs, "Subway Train" and "Downtown."
The originals are astounding: "London Boys" with Steve Jones and Paul Cook, "Ask Me No Questions," "Leave Me Alone," and of course, "You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory." The album title "So Alone" is of course wrong, because anyone who heard these songs would have wanted to give Johnny a great big hug and tell him "you're not alone."
JT is also capably backed by members of the Only Ones and Chrissie Hynde.
JT lived a decade longer, sometimes clean and sometimes enslaved by heroin. He recorded over that period, but nothing comes close to this album. It's a damn shame what drugs have done to some of the most talented people in our lifetimes.
July 2, 2008

junkie paradise

Gee, I wonder what was going on with Thunders, Phil Lynott and Steve Marriot in the studio together? It's a miracle this record was ever completed. This is the best Thunders solo album. Approach all the others with caution. They all have some good songs but if you're not a fanatic, you can skip most of them. You need to have this one fo sho!

Check out Mighty High...In Drug City. Thunders lived in the same zip code. June 20, 2008

So Alone

Johnny Thunders-So Alone *****

It's dirty, it's raw and naked, it's strung out, and yet it is absolutly amazing and cool. From that sentence you wouldn't know if I was talking about the album or Johhny Thunders himself. Well I guess I mean both. This is concidered Thunders' best solo album out side of The New York Dolls and The Heartbrakers, and rightfully so because it is his best.

The sound and feel of the songs is still very New York Dolls, which is fitting for each song, and with a heavy New York/Joey Ramone accent his vocals are fantastic. With three cover songs, all of which sound like New York Dolls songs, and one if which actually is. The Shangra-la's 'Great Big Kiss' is perfect, opening with a "when I say I'm in love you best believe I'm in love L-U-V" rip off. The Chantays surf instrumental 'Pipeline' opens the album feriously like the crack of the seal before the first sip from a bottle of whiskey. Finally the Dolls cover 'Subway Train' which appears on the bands infamnous debut, but which I think Johnny does better with on his own.

Other gems such as the albums stand out track, the sentimentle 'You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory' and 'Ask Me No Questions' are some of his most inspired. 'Daddy Rollin Stone' a Dolls song which never made it to release was here with Thunders, Phill Lynot of Thin Lizzy and Steve Marriot of Humble Pie all sharing vocals. Not only his this on of Thunders' best tracks, but slightly haunting as the subject matter mirrored that of all three vocalist who would all be dead in the nearing decade. 'London Boys' a slamming of the british punk camp, which Thunders helped to create, and the irony is that almost every one who plays on the song were involved in it, like Steve Jones for example. The swaggery '(Shes So) Untouchable' is next to 'Memory' the very best song that Thunders ever penned. With great sax work and a solid back beat this early '60s esque love song is really untouchable.

Four bonus tracks are available on some versions of the album. 'Dead Or Alive' 'Hurtin' the should have been title track 'So Alone' and 'The Wizard.' All four of which would have made this a five star album. You see the only reason this is given a Five star rating by me is the addition of these songs, because with out them I would have only rated this a four star, which is still solid.

So Alone was released just as The Heartbrakers began to fissle out. They were reduced to playing only a hand full of gigs here and there and just when they needed money to support their drug habbits so Thunders bailed leaving yet another one of the greatest bands of all time behind, that being his second, and embarking on a patchy solo career. up until his death in '91 that was in one way or antother brought on by his use of Heroin he continued to release albums of dirty sleazy rock and roll just like this one, but So Alone remains the truest to form rock album Johnny Thunders ever released in his solo career. January 20, 2008

How do you stretch 23 songs over eleven albums

I love Johnny Thunders, it wasn't until after he died that I realized that he was the most talented of the Dolls, and I loved the Dolls and saw David Jo a million times solo or as Buster. So this has unique cuts of Subway Train and You Cant put your Arms round a Memory...and a unique cut of So Alone, but I keep buying these albums and have six versions of Pipeling. Okay, it's all good; he should've been talked about in the same sentence as the rest of the guitar gods. Too bad November 19, 2007

Let's Get Real, Real Gone....

Johnny Thunders' discography is such a vast and endless heap of cruddy sounding live albums (reissued ad nauseum), half-baked compilations, and other artifacts not worth the price of a bag of dope, that anyone not around back in the day might understandably be a bit overwhelmed by it all and wonder just how to identify the genuine great music made by a hugely important and influential guitarist and all-round rock 'n' roll original. There are of course two classic New York Dolls albums - "New York Dolls" (1973) and "In Too Much Too Soon" (1974) - which you'd be better off tracking down in their original vinyl since CDs of both titles date to the very early (more bluntly, premature) days of the format, and are in dire need of remastering. The debut sounds especially thin and lifeless, JT's dense chording and blistering solos drained just like the rhythm section is, so what you're left with sounds dinky - the piano on "Personality Crisis" was NOT intended to dominate! The best-sounding CD to feature the Dolls' original recordings, for now, remains 1994's 21 track compilation, "Rock and Roll", with 10 out 11 tracks from the debut, 7 out of 10 from "Too Much", and a few worthy rarities.
Johnny was as essential to the Dolls as Keith Richards is to the Stones, and like all the best collaborators (Mick/Keith, John/Paul, Reed/Cale, Duke/Strayhorn, etc.) each was in a way made complete by the other. Thunders' "primitivism" (for lack of a better word) and intuitive genius had a way of keeping the more conceptual/intellectual David Johansen grounded in the grime of the streets and subways (JT's riffs smeared and whined like a Subway Train grinding to a halt, noise transformed into something exhilarating and transcendent), and cut David's slight air of wariness and careerism with a romantic faith in rock 'n' roll salvation mixed with an anarchic defiance: defiance against commerce, the industry's everpresent, inevitable need to package, tame, and see some return on its financial investments; defiance, loud loose and snotty, at the era's cult of guitar-hero as technical virtuoso; Johnny's defiance would eventually turn against his and his fans best hopes and expectations, a process complicated by a small part of his 'fanbase' that gathered to see shows like they were viewing car accidents, waiting to see if he'd OD onstage, a morbid, voyeristic kick stimulated by the artist's perceived self-destructiveness (Johnny publicly embraced junk, of course, thus his career arc differed from another fallen genius, Sly Stone, whose audience simply stopped coming as Sly's downward spiral became increasingly evident). Johnny's singular brand of loyalty, a 'street cred' whose contradictions glared, meant 'defiance' darkened into a helpless betrayal of all expectations, personal and professional, and for much of his last decade, betrayal of his own talent.
Of course, all such compulsions to ward off pain and disorder and dread lead to the very nightmare of chaos one is trying to avoid. Yet, as a handful of Heartbreaking late-period songs and astonishing performances attest, Johnny never really extinguished his soul or humanity, even if his sometimes bloated hands and poverty and addiction meant his guitar playing did not keep pace with his (admittedly sporadic) remarkable evolution as a songwriter.
Where was I? After Thunders and Nolan split from the Dolls in 1975 they formed the Heartbreakers, who blew the Brits away on the "Anarchy Tour" (with Sex Pistols, Damned, etc) and made "L.A.M.F" (1977), a supposed punk classic that to me remains a rather uneven album. Inspiration wavers, with a few too many less than inspired rockers, whose eccentric rewrites of pop cliches were soaked with heroin references and salvaged by the raw energy and grimy ambience. Their sole studio set never achieves the status of a masterpiece on the order of either Dolls set, not to mention seminal debuts from the same season by Television, X-Ray Spex, The Clash, or whatever your faves might be from that vital and transformative era. "L.A.M.F." is still pretty essential, for Thunders' and Walter Lure's barbed wire twin-guitar attack, Jerry's relentlessly powerful (and reliable) drumming, and a handful of classics: the losers' anthem, "Born Too Loose," the great Yardbirds raveup/cop, "Baby Talk," Johnny's magnificent mid-tempo "It's Not Enough" (a moodier "Satisfaction"), the lurid/celebratory/hilarious take on junk life, "Chinese Rocks", and the red-hot rave-up "Pirate Love." The mix on the original lp was dreadful, but in the past two decades an endless string of upgrades has restored much of its power, and the latest 2-cd set of "lost '77 mixes" on disc one, with the second disc's assortment of alternates/demos/etc is definitive, for now.
Nothing really could have prepared fans for "So Alone," a brief, seemingly padded effort that underwhelmed more than a few fans and critics. "Slight," I recall thinking, tho' I dug it and kept playing it. On the surface, hardly a unified statement, rather randomly patched together when Real Records indicated a willingness to support a solo project six months after his "Downtown" single. Nor did we get a generous set of new original material. Ten songs clocked in just over 32 minutes on the original LP, and that includes two seemingly pointless remakes of Dolls songs (one from each of their lps), another unrecorded Dolls song going back to '74, three covers representing a retro/punk aesthetic (surf, girl group, and an Otis Blackwell classic that simultaneously pays tribute to Brit Invasion r&b as well). A Heartbreakers-written sendup of the Sex Pistols' "New York." Oh, and one fine new original that, by default, would be seen as a masterpiece. Finally, "So Alone" did not exactly impress me as a showcase for Johnny's guitar - he's in there, but usually with a couple other lead guitars, including contributions from some of Thunders' most accomplished students - Steve Jones (Sex Pistols), Peter Perritt (Only Ones), and ...
That was so long ago...Time has been kind to "So Alone," and - I assure you - not just because Thunders never really surpassed it. It just resonates with emotional depth and authority, a coherent sensibility hitherto only hinted at, and stands musically as a rock 'n' roll classic both dark and joyous, harsh and tender, remarkable for its stylistic range - here's a punk icon celebrating mid-60s Girl Groups (three guitars, sax, and Patti Palladin's vocal turn "Great Big Kiss" into a sexy, densely produced party classic worthy of Lesley Gore). Johnny opens his set with the Chantays' surf classic "Pipeline" and along with Steve Jones makes it roar with pure Pistols/Dolls adrenalen, and later trades verses with Small Faces'(and 60s Mod Icon) Steve Marriott and Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott on a slinky, blues rock classic ("Daddy Rolling Stone"). With time, the disorganized circumstances of the album's construction (as with other accidental classics such as "December's Children" ) have become irrelevant. In a way, it's Johnny's tour de force, as he touches on a remarkable range of musical styles, influences, and perhaps more importantly, themes and emotions that never made it to the Heartbreakers album and were mostly filtered through David Johansen's words and vocals in the New York Dolls. "So Alone" also intends to be the first Johnny Thunders album on which the artist demands to be taken seriously as a vocalist - his singing is consistently effective, voice snarling, mocking, or sometimes breathy, almost girlish - that voice might convey vulnerability, tenderness, or even affectlessness; it would be utilized to magnificent effect on the hauntingly personal songs from "Hurt Me" (1984). The familiar behind-the-beat drawl, snide, playful, whiney (it never succumbs to punk caricature) enlivens his witty and affectionate response to the Sex Pistols on "London Boys", and Thunders ends the set with the scorching "Downtown," a dark track of an oddly insular power, a grimy urban blues featuring referances to Methadone and complacency amid squalls of vivid, barbed wire guitars, for once all of them played by Thunders.
Lest we forget, "Ask Me No Questions" is a prototypical Thunders original, with a fresh, galloping rhythmic approach and beautifully executed vocal, plus a one note chicken scratch guitar break from Peter Perrett. And "Untouchable," is one of Johnny's sexiest (and catchiest) originals, all yearning and melancholy except for those asides during the last verse...
After years of familiarity, the versions of "Leave Me Alone" (ne "Chatterbox") and "Subway Train" stand on their own, distinct from the Dolls' originals.
This 1992 CD edition of "So Alone" could use a new remaster from the original tapes. However, it has been expanded by nearly half its original length, enhanced by four superb bonus tracks, most of which became familiar songs in Thunders' live repertoire. "Dead Or Alive", a non-album single, has an animated Thunders imagining his own overdose with mordant humor and Stones-like crunch and energy (again Thunders plays all the guitars on this solid rocker). "Hurtin'", originally the B-side of "You Can't Put Your Arms 'Round A Memory" is another terrific addition, this time a adding dirty guitar runs over a catchy and propulsive shuffle beat and somehow hilarious/childlike/poignant lyrics. The vocal adds to the slightly bizarre and utterly characteristic mood. The title track to this set never made the final cut in 1978, but "So Alone" is familiar from live versions issued in subsequent years. It's a truly classic and soul searing Thunders song; this five minute version seems neither as passionate nor as developed as the truly devastating take on "Live At The Lyceum, 1984." Finally, Johnny adds an aptly fey vocal over a dub-like version of T. Rex's "The Wizard" - another gem that closes this essential set on a weird and wonderful note.
Thunders issued more studio and live material up to his death in 1991 (and the stream of product continues fifteen years later). Working with Jimmy Miller, the live/studio hybrids "In Cold Blood" and "Too Much Junkie Business" (both 1983) are incredibly raw, especially the low-fi "Junkie Business." The studio tracks from "In Cold Blood" appear as bonus material on Thunders beautiful and highly recommended 1984 acoustic set, "Hurt Me." "Que Sera Sera" (1985), was both darker (beginning with the cover) and more drab, hence less powerful than "So Alone", with a couple of remakes and new songs that wanly echoed old classics, but it still contains several gems. 1988's album of covers, "Copy Cats" was a disappointment in that Thunders played virtually no guitar, but his singing (partnered with Patti Palladin) and choice of material was committed and convincing, and the album is quite enjoyable...Many of Thunders' best new songs from his last four or five years were never recorded in the studio, and are scattered on various 1987 - 91 live sets. Perhaps the best of the posthumous live albums is the fierce "In The Flesh" from '87, with JT reunited with Jerry Nolan and Arthur Kane. They play like their lives depend on it, no stoned breakdowns or forgotton words. It's killer. RIP Johnny, Jerry, and Arthur. October 2, 2006

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