David Johansen Had A Perfect Reason For Staying Out Of Martin Scorsese’s Way During ‘Personality Crisis’ Editing Sessions: “I Would Definitely F*** It Up”

David Johansen is a man who’s made a career out of adopting different guises. Although he first found fame as the frontman for the legendary New York glam/punk band known as the New York Dolls, he subsequently forged a solo career under his own name, after which he kicked off a new phase by adopting the guise of lounge lizard Buster Poindexter. Not long after that, Johansen started to occasionally set his music aside in favor of furthering his acting career, appearing in such films as Let It Ride with Richard Dreyfuss and – perhaps most notably – Scrooged with Bill Murray. 

Just before the start of the pandemic in 2000, Johansen returned to the role of Buster Poindexter and did some live shows in New York City. One of those shows was filmed by directors Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi, after which they incorporated interviews and archival footage to tell the long and winding story of Johansen’s musical career. The end result, Personality Crisis: One Night Only, makes its debut on Showtime this week, and Johansen was kind enough to do some press to assist in the promotional efforts for the film.

Even though it was for print, Johansen’s conversation with Decider took place on Zoom, and it began with him double-checking that we wouldn’t be posting the video. (“I just rolled out of bed!”) Moments later, however, he was acknowledging that his previous interview was done without either party being on camera, so upon seeing who he was talking to this time, he decided, “This is nice!” Needless to say, the feeling was mutual.

DECIDER: The last time I actually saw you was when you opened for Morrissey during his 2004 shows at the Apollo Theater.

DAVID JOHANSEN: Oh, yeah? [Laughs.] I sang “Mecca” [by Gene Pitney]. That’s my memory of it. And I had never sang that before. I was, like, “Wow, this is a great record!” I used to play it on the radio, and I thought, “I’m gonna sing that song!” It was really a lot of fun. We’d just put that band together. I didn’t really have a band at that moment. I think I was doing something else. I can’t even remember!

Well, it was a great show made all the more memorable by the fact that it was also my wife’s birthday that night. It was quite a present.

Oh, great!

So I was able to watch a screener of Personality Crisis, and I loved it. When did you and Martin Scorsese first cross paths? Because I’ve read his quote about how he was actually a fan of the New York Dolls, which was news to me.

I don’t even remember when. Sometime in the ’70s. 

Did he approach you personally about doing this documentary?

No, he comes to a lot of my shows in all my different incarnations, and we were doing this run at the Carlyle, and Mara — my wife — and myself, we wanted to keep doing it once the two weeks were over because we were having so much fun. And it was a hit, so we were thinking about taking it to a theater, maybe a little off-Broadway theater or something, and running it for as long the market would bear, so to speak. So she was calling all of our friends who were in the theater, like Harvey Fierstein and people like that. 

So she called Marty, and Marty came, and he said, “Oh, I don’t know anything about the theater. I fall asleep in the theater! What I want to do is film it.” So ultimately we filmed it. And that’s how it started, and…I don’t even know what they did. They filmed a film. [Laughs.] And after the concert, my job was pretty much over, y’know? And then David Tedeschi and Marty and their staff and Mara got all of this archival footage, they knew who had it, and this and that and the other thing. So they were putting all of that together.

I didn’t really have that much to do with it, because I knew if I started getting into it, I would definitely fuck it up. [Laughs.] So I kind of stayed back and let them do their thing. Because I knew it was gonna be good. 

Did they run any of the archival footage past you to see if you approved or disapproved?

Nah. 

When you were putting together the set list for your cabaret shows, did you just try to mix things up from throughout your career?

Yeah, y’know, the thing that was the decider.. [Pauses.] Did you get that? [Laughs.] The main thing was what that room could bear, because it’s a very small room. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in it, but it’s a beautiful room, and when I talk about playing at Max’s [Kansas City] or I talk about playing at the original Tramps, where I started the Buster [Poindexter] show, which was very much the same type of band that I’m using now. This is a small band. We didn’t have all the horns and the girls and the bongo drums and stuff. So the main thing was, “What’s the room gonna bear as far as the sound’s concerned?”

So we tried a bunch of songs and then kind of narrowed it down to those songs. We did some more songs in the show that, just because of time, they didn’t use. But Brian Koonin, who’s my band leader and arranges a lot of the songs, he put together arrangements for a lot of those songs that were suitable for that room. Y’know, it’s in a hotel. You don’t want to blow the roof off the place. [Laughs.] Also, we wanted it to sound good. So that was how we really picked the songs. Because we have a lot of songs. There’s plenty of songs we could do. But some of the songs I’ve done, especially in my youth, are really rowdy. So it wouldn’t have been appropriate for that room.

Well, I’m glad you found room for “Personality Crisis.”

Yeah, well, y’know, that’s kind of the story of my life. [Laughs.] It kind of wraps it all up!

As far as creating those new arrangements, were there any songs that you found didn’t lend themselves to that sort of reinvention? For instance, “Trash” wasn’t in the set.

I’ll tell you, we actually reinvented it on that record we did in Hawaii (‘Cause I Sez So). We did kind of an island-y version of it. 

And I should say that the song does actually make an appearance via the archival footage. By the way, I was extremely entertained by your remarks on the albatross that is “Hot Hot Hot.” 

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, when I started at Tramps, I was gonna do four weeks. Four Mondays, actually, because they had great acts there, like Big Joe Turner and all these great old-time bluesy singers, who would do residencies there, and there was a room they had for them to sleep in upstairs. And they’d play, like, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and then the rest of the week they’d have different things on different nights. Wednesday was, like, a ska party, where they’d play ska records and you could dance. Things like that. And because it was in my neighborhood, I used to go there and hang out, and I noticed that on Monday the back room was dark. So I thought, “Oh, I could do a show there and get some of these jump-blues songs out of my system!” I was so enamored with that music at that time.

So we were doing that, and it was a rollicking thing, and it turned out that we started playing the weekends. It went great. Then I went on a vacation in the Caribbean and I heard that song, and I thought, “Oh, this is a good song!” And at that point the horns started playing with us — The Uptown Horns — and I had my ear kind of open for horn songs, and I thought, “This could be a great song!” So I came back and played it for the guys, and we started playing. But it wasn’t, like, our main thing. I guess it was kind of a novelty thing for us. We were mostly novelty. But then when we made a record, the record company went, “Oh, you gotta put this one out as a single!” And I was, like, “Okay, whatever.” And then you’re just kind of stuck with it. I can’t go to a wedding without them making me get up and sing that song, you know what I’m sayin’? 

I’m glad that the documentary was dedicated to Hal Wilner. I loved the version of “Castle in Spain” that you did for his Stay Awake album.

Yeah! That session was… [Starts to chuckle.] We went in the morning after playing all weekend. It was a Sunday morning. My voice was shot, my head was pounding, and I said after the session, “I’m gonna come back and do this vocal again, okay?” And Hal was, like, “NO!” [Laughs.] Okay, it’s your record, man! So that’s actually how I sounded.

I wanted to ask you about a couple of your film roles. How did you enjoy the experience of working on Scrooged?

Oh, it was heavenly. It was great! It was so good. I still think about it, because Bill [Murray] taught me so much about the music business in those days. Not about acting, per se, but he used to do things like… We were in L.A., and he wanted to go home for Christmas, and he was talking to the guy who was at Paramount, whoever was running the studio at the time, and he’s on the phone with the guy and going, “Yeah, so, y’know, I’ve got to get to New York…” And the guy said, “Okay, you can use our corporate jet to go to New York.” And Bill says, “Yeah, okay, I’ll call you back,” and he hangs up. And I said, “Well, if you’ve got the jet, I can go with you, right? You got plenty of room on that thing.” He said, “I’m not taking that jet!” [Laughs.] He says, “Now, when I call him back and say, ‘I’m not taking the jet,’ then they owe me!”  

Do you have a favorite film that you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?

No, I don’t think so. I mean, Let It Ride was a pretty good movie, I thought. It’s funny, because in New York a lot of different people know me for different things. I’m literally, like, five people in New York. I can get in a taxi and the guy’ll say, “Let It Ride!” Usually when it’s degenerate gamblers, that’s what they think of me from. It’s a lot of different personas – not that I’m putting on a persona – that people know me as. But, no, I don’t really have a favorite thing.

I know when I did Car 54, Where Are You, which was, uh, kind of my career-suicide movie… [Laughs.] I was talking like the guy in the TV show, Joe E. Ross. I’d go, “Ooh! Ooh! Okay!” I was talking like that, and we started shooting the film, and we got kind of into the first day, and I said to the director, “Should I be talking like that? Should I be channeling this guy?” And he’s, like, “Yeah!” So I just kept with it. But I think it got a little on people’s nerves after awhile. 

I know we’ve got to wrap up, but I just wanted to mention that I found your first film, Candy Mountain, on YouTube. I was wondering what, if anything, you remember about that experience.

That was… Well, y’know, I only worked, like, one day on that film. But those guys were people whose art I respected a lot, the two directors (Robert Frank and Rudy Wurlitzer). But they apparently had problems with each other on that movie, ultimately, and never spoke to each other again! [Laughs.] They were kind of curmudgeonly, in a way. They were both geniuses. They have a right to do whatever they want to do. But they decided to not speak to each other anyway. 

That’s what happens in the artistic community, I guess.

I guess! I don’t know. 

Well, I’ll keep you on track, David, but I really loved the movie, and I’m already ready to watch it again, frankly.

Oh, great! Well, it’ll be on TV, so you can stream it all you want!

Will Harris (@NonStopPop) has a longstanding history of doing long-form interviews with random pop culture figures for the A.V. Club, Vulture, and a variety of other outlets, including Variety. He’s currently working on a book with David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker. (And don’t call him Shirley.)