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Punk Band New York Dolls’ Frontman David Johansen Dies at 75 After Years-Long Battle With Stage 4 Cancer
David Johansen, the lead singer of 70s punk band New York Dolls, passed away at 75 after a decade-long health battle. The tragic news came weeks after his stage 4 cancer revelation.
Trigger warning: This article contains mentions of death.
David Johansen, the frontman of 70s hit punk band New York Dolls, passed away at 75. His daughter, Leah Hennessey, confirmed the tragic news to multiple outlets on Friday, February 28, weeks after disclosing Johansen’s stage 4 cancer.
In the announcement, Hennessey revealed that her father died peacefully due to natural causes while holding her and her mother Mara’s hands “in the sunlight surrounded by music and flowers."
The late musician had been dealing with health issues for years. Last month, Hennessey shared a post revealing her father’s deteriorating health. She disclosed that five years ago, at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, his cancer progressed into a brain tumor.
The punk musician and his wife Mara are private people who kept his health issues away from the public eye, as per Hennessey. But they had to disclose it due to the “increasingly severe financial burden” his family has been facing amid his intensive treatments over the past decade.
In the death announcement statement, Hennessey expressed gratitude for the outpouring of love and support her family had been getting since they made the late singer’s diagnosis public. "He was thankful that he had a chance to be in touch with so many friends and family before he passed,” she added.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Johansen briefly spoke about his terminal illness and gave a glimpse into his low-key life. He told the outlet that he and his family have been “living” with the illness for a while but still manage to have “fun,” catch up with friends and carry on.
But a fall around Thanksgiving 2024 “brought us to a whole new level of debilitation,” he revealed at the time. New York Dolls was a short-lived but memorable punk band of the 70s.
After the band dissolved in 1975, Johansen released four solo albums and two live albums under his own name, four albums under the pseudonym Buster Poindexter, and two more albums as David Johansen and the Harry Smiths.
He also made acting cameos, most memorably in the HBO drama Oz, and appeared on Saturday Night Live as a musical guest. Johansen is survived by daughter Leah and wife Mara Hennessey.
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