Arthur Kane

Arthur Kane
Background information
Birth name	Arthur Kane
Also known as	Killer
Born	February 3, 1949 The Bronx, New York City
Died	July 13, 2004(2004-07-13) (aged 55)
Genres	Rock and roll, glam rock, punk rock, glam punk
Occupations	Musician
Instruments	Guitar, bass guitar
Associated acts	New York Dolls, Blackie Lawless, W.A.S.P.

Arthur Kane (February 3, 1949 – July 13, 2004) was a musician best known as the bassist for the pioneering glam rock band the New York Dolls. He stated in the 2005 documentary film New York Doll that his nickname, Arthur "Killer" Kane, was inspired by the first article written about the Dolls in which the journalist described Kane's "killer bass" playing. He also suggested that it was inspired by the adversary of (the 1930's science fiction hero) Buck Rogers, a villainous character named Killer Kane. Kane remained part of the Dolls from their founding, until he was forced out of the group shortly after the departure of Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan. He joined them for a reunion show in 2004, which was the subject of the aforementioned 2005 documentary New York Doll.

Early life

Arthur Harold Kane Jr, was born in The Bronx, New York, the only child of Erna and Harold Kane. Kane was close to his mother and her sister, his Aunt Millie, who used to like to listen to Elvis records. The first word that Kane learned as a young child was "record." When Kane was seventeen, his mother died of cancer. His father had been abusive while he was growing up and soon Kane left home for good. He graduated from Martin Van Buren High School in Queens, New York. He first played bass in the band Actress along with other original New York Dolls: Johnny Thunders, Rick Rivets and Billy Murcia.

Kane attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York as a Food Science and Management student, a "foodie." During his early years there, Kane socialized with art students such as Eric Marshall in the Pratt dormitory on Willoughby Avenue. (Marshall was later, through association with the retro New Wave band Marbles, recruited on saxophone for fellow-Doll Sylvain's short-lived Criminals.) Kane was always interested in music. By his third year at Pratt he had stopped attending classes, was sharing an apartment with Dave Trott, and wanted to start a band. At twenty-one he inherited money that he used to move to Amsterdam hoping to find like-minded musicians. Kane's ancestors, on his maternal side, were from Sweden.

The New York Dolls

After returning to New York after spending about a year in Amsterdam, Kane had noticed a charismatic figure around Manhattan with avant-garde hair and clothes who would shortly take on the name Johnny Thunders. Kane decided to approach him one day in a West Village pizzeria (accompanied by Rick Rivets) to ask him if he wanted to get together to jam on their instruments. Sometime after that event, Kane then approached future Dolls singer David Johansen. As Johansen explains it:

Sometime in ’71-72 there was a knock on my apartment door on East 6th Street. I opened it to find Arthur and Billy in platforms with Arthur a good foot and a half taller (I had to look up). He said “I heard you’re a singer.” The tone of his voice was kind of ethereal for a boy with such an imposing presence, and I have to say that I was both amused and intrigued by him, so we went to Johnny Thunders’ apartment on 10th Street and started to play some music and just like that I was a New York Doll.

Killer Kane was known for his outrageous outfits such as one-piece body stockings, large bow-ties, and thigh-high, neon-colored platform boots. Kane invented many original and infamous looks by scouring shops in London, thrift stores in Manhattan, and a flea market in Amsterdam which had clothes which were unavailable in the States. Mixing pop art with music, the Dolls sought to create a persona as "larger-than-life rock-and-roll comic book superheros", or as if they were a band from outer space - concepts that were expanded upon in one form or another not much later by other bands such as KISS.

In addition to his signature bass sound, Kane had a unique way of performing on stage. As rock photographer Bob Gruen explained, while playing bass Kane "moved a bit robotically, kind of like a giant Frankenstein." Throughout his tenure with the Dolls, Kane dated a succession of atypically tall women, including Stacia of Hawkwind.

The Dolls put out two studio albums, 1973's New York Dolls and 1974's Too Much Too Soon. Their drummer, Billy Murcia died tragically from an accidental overdose while they were touring England in 1972. Plagued by bad management, drug and alcohol abuse, and cliques forming within the group, the band broke up in 1975 - Kane's last experience with the band that year being a shouting match in a trailer court in Florida.

Post Dolls

After the Dolls broke up, Kane collaborated with Blackie Lawless from W.A.S.P. on a project dubbed Killer Kane, which resulted in the single "Mr. Cool." Lawless was an old friend from the Bronx and had replaced Johnny Thunders during the ill fated Florida tour in 1975. Other projects that Kane participated in after the Dolls included: playing bass in the backup band for Sid Vicious - during his brief solo career in 1978 after the Sex Pistols and before his death in 1979; being a member of The Idols (with Jerry Nolan) and The Corpse Grinders (with Rick Rivets); and backing Johnny Thunders on a few tours in the 80s.

One by one, these projects did not turn into long-term gigs, and Kane began to feel that there was no longer any place in the music business for him, and that what little material success he had achieved with the Dolls was to be the high water mark of his career. He saw himself living in poverty and obscurity for the rest of his life. As this bitter realization gripped him, band after band directly inspired by the Dolls catapulted to stardom, and the other members of the Dolls continued their careers. Lead singer of the Dolls, David Johansen, who Kane viewed as a rival, found success as "Buster Poindexter".

As a result, Kane grew frustrated with music (although he continued playing and in fact learned harmonica during this period). He relocated from New York City to Los Angeles, but he could not escape his regrets. His envy and creative block, coupled with alcoholism and the breakdown of his marriage, led to a deepening depression. Although urban legend frames Kane as a drug addict, this was not the case; his true downfall was alcohol. After seeing David Johansen as the Ghost of Christmas Past in the comedy Scrooged, Arthur, in his depression, got drunk and jumped out a second story window. Although a planter box partially broke his fall, the impact caused slight neural damage and affected his speech.

In 1992 Kane was walking home from a party for the Red Hot Chili Peppers when someone attacked him and he was later found in a ditch near his apartment. His injuries were severe enough that he was in physical therapy to learn how to walk and talk again. A rumor then circulated that he was a victim of the Rodney King riots, but that was another urban legend. Kane's wife Barbara explained in the epilogue of his autobiography that nobody knows what happened and that it might have been a mugging by a "violent street person." For several years Kane lived in a small studio apartment in West Hollywood where he was just scraping by financially.

Kane surprised all who knew him when, in 1989, he joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1998 Kane started volunteer work as a librarian assisting the public with genealogy at the Family History Center at the Los Angeles Temple. Although Kane's involvement in his church had been sporadic over the years, and he struggled to fit in, Kane later said that the structure of his time being a volunteer had a positive impact. (It was while working in the genealogy library that Kane discovered on a microfilm one day that his father was no longer alive).

New York Doll and reunion

In the early 2000s, Kane met filmmaker Greg Whiteley through his work with the Latter-day Saints, and the two became friends. Whiteley (as well as anyone who knew Kane) commented that all Kane ever talked about was how he wished that he could somehow get the Dolls back together. Whiteley saw Kane as an interesting character and had the idea of chronicling his life in a documentary. Coincidentally, in 2004 Morrissey gave the project impetus when he offered Kane an opportunity to perform a reunion show with the surviving Dolls (David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain) in London as part of his Meltdown Festival. (Band members, Johnny Thunders died in 1991 at age 38, and Jerry Nolan in 1992 at age 45). Whiteley filmed Kane's experiences preparing for the performance, which was for Kane the culmination of a nearly thirty year dream. In the process of preparing for the concert, Kane bought his bass guitar back from a pawn shop with money borrowed from fellow Latter-day Saints, reconciled with Johansen, and put together a stage outfit in homage to church founder Joseph Smith, Jr. Whiteley's footage resulted in the 2005 Sundance featured documentary entitled New York Doll.

Death and legacy

On July 13, 2004, just 22 days after the reunion concert, Kane thought he had caught the flu in London, and checked himself in to a Los Angeles emergency room, complaining of fatigue. He was quickly diagnosed with leukemia, and died within two hours. He was 55 years old. Johansen described Kane as "nonjudgmental, bawdy and holy." Annual tributes to Kane's lasting memory and influence were held at the Continental in New York City until its closing in 2006. Singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock wrote a tribute to Kane, "N.Y. Doll", for his 2006 album, Olé! Tarantula. In 2009 Kane's autobiography was published entitled, I, Doll: Life and Death with the New York Dolls.

External links

• Arthur Kane at the Internet Movie Database