Obituaries: Canadian Musicians Remember New York Dolls Punk Pioneer David Johansen

Paul Bronfman, the pioneering supplier of production equipment, soundstages and services to the Canadian and Hollywood film and TV industry, died on Feb. 26, at age 67, following a long battle with multiple sclerosis. “He was the most resilient, stubborn and dedicated man,” his family said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.

THR reports that "Bronfman was first diagnosed with MS in 1995, yet he persevered for the next 30 years in business and philanthropy. That included running film studios and serving as a leading production rental equipment supplier for Hollywood studios and streamers and local producers shooting in Canada."

Prior to becoming a giant in the Canadian film industry, Bronfman worked in the music business after graduating from the University of Toronto. Montreal-born, he was a member of a major Canadian corporate family and a cousin of former top Seagram and Warner Music executive Edgar Bronfman Jr., but moved to Toronto to make his own mark.

In the mid-1970s, he worked first as a roadie for the hit Canadian rock band April Wine and then as an assistant production manager for The Stampeders and top English rock band Supertramp.

Bronfman got his start in the film business in the 1980s while working in Toronto at Astral Bellevue Pathe, part of the Astral Media group, at the height of Canada’s tax shelter years.

In 1988, Stephen J. Cannell, creator of The A-Team, The Rockford Files, 21 Jump Street and other hit U.S. TV series, teamed up with Bronfman and built North Shore Studios in Vancouver.

THR reports “That studio facility, which Bronfman sold to Lionsgate in 1997, became the foundation for later ventures like Comweb Productions, an indie banner that allowed Bronfman to produce homegrown movies like the 1989 feature film Prom Night III: The Last Kiss.

“Also in 1989, Comweb acquired William F. White International, the production equipment supplier to Hollywood in Canada, with divisions for camera, lighting, grip and specialty equipment rentals.

Along the way, William F. White started renting production equipment to studios shooting stateside. Bronfman’s studio and rental equipment customers included major studios Warner Bros. Discovery, Walt Disney, Universal Studios, MGM and Lionsgate and Silicon Valley players like Amazon Prime and Apple."

Bronfman was also a founding partner and a major shareholder in Filmport Studios, a film studio complex that opened in Toronto’s portlands in 2007. In 2009, the company was rebranded as Pinewood Toronto Studios and Bronfman became chairman. He sold his minority stake to the Pinewood Group in 2023. In 2009, The Globe and Mail ran a feature interview with Bronfman.

Bronfman was on a first-name basis with politicians at all levels of government. In July 2010, he hosted a lunch at Pinewood Toronto Studios for Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh.

Bronfman’s philanthropy via his Comweb Foundation included longstanding support for the Toronto Film Festival, the Atlantic Film Festival, the Banff World Media Festival, the Hot Docs fest and Norman Jewison’s Canadian Film Centre.

He also served on the board of directors at the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television, the Banff Television Foundation Board, the Canadian Film Centre and the Canadian Media Production Association and, representing indie film and TV producers, FilmOntario and Ontario Creates.

His funeral was held in Toronto on March 2. Donations in his memory can be made to the Paul Bronfman Family Foundation.

International

David (Roger) Johansen, frontman of the pioneering punk/glam rock group New York Dolls and solo “Hot Hot Hot” hitmaker as his alter ego Buster Poindexter, died on Feb. 28, at age 75, of natural causes.

In its obituary, Billboardreports that "the news of Johansen’s death comes after he announced in early February that he was battling stage 4 cancer and a brain tumor. The musician was diagnosed in 2020, and after a fall that broke his back in two places in November 2024, he decided to share his story. A GoFundMe campaign was set up to assist with his medical bills."

Johansen and The New York Dolls had a major impact on rock via their pioneering proto-punk meets glam and garage rock fusion. Their sound helped spark the British punk explosion and the fertile New York City rock scene that followed after the Dolls, as Debbie Harry of Blondie noted in this Facebook tribute: “One of my favorite things was to go see the New York Dolls. They were so exciting to watch. They were a real rock band. Their influences were Marc Bolan, Eddie Cochran, the Stooges, Bowie and many others, but they were so New York.

"They were straight but they dressed in drag, at a time when the cops were still raiding gay bars. They were ragged and raunchy and uninhibited, strutting, swaggering about in their leatherette, lipstick, and high heels. The Dolls influenced countless bands, including 70’s punk bands, glam metal bands, and alternative rock bands. Thank you for your service, David. You will be missed dearly… and never forgotten.”

The Billboard obit asserts that "It’s hard to imagine New York City in the ‘70s becoming ground zero for punk and new wave music without the existence of the New York Dolls. Favoring simple, sloppy rock n’ roll over the increasingly complex and conceptual rock music of the early ‘70s, New York Dolls made up for what they lacked in technical mastery and professionalism with attitude, gender-bending fashion (women’s clothes and high heels) and gobs of lipstick."

"The Staten Island-born Johansen joined the Dolls in 1971, playing his first show with the group at a homeless shelter on Christmas Eve that year. Gigging around Manhattan in 1972, the group steadily increasing in popularity among young, disaffected audiences looking for something different and the NYC art crowd."

“We used to do Otis Redding songs, Sonny Boy Williamson songs, Archie Bell and the Drells songs,” said Johansen in Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s essential punk tome Please Kill Me.

In that book, Johansen stated that “The audiences [at the Mercer Arts Center] were pretty depraved, so we had to be in there with them. We couldn’t come out in three-piece suits and entertain that bunch. They wanted something more for their money. And we were very confrontational. We were very raw.”

Billboard notes that "The group’s self-titled 1973 album is a no-notes distillation of their rough-and-tumble, campy take on the straight-forward, blues-boosted rock n’ roll of the ‘50s."

This debut would be hugely influential, but it was a commercial flop, only reaching No. 116 on the Billboard 200. Its follow-up, Too Much Too Soon, would also later be considered a classic, but it also failed sales-wise, peaking at No. 167. The band broke up in the mid ‘70s, just prior to the punk explosion it helped spawn.

The persistence of superfan and The Smiths frontman Morrissey led to a reunion in the '00s, followed by shows and a return to the studio for three well-received albums: One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This (2006), Cause I Sez So (2009) and Dancing Backward in High Heels (2011).

After the demise of the original New York Dolls, Johansen released four solo albums between 1978 and 1984, some featuring contributions from his former bandmates. Those records were David Johansen (1978), In Style (1979), Here Comes The Night (1981) and Sweet Revenge (1984), plus a couple of live albums, with highlight tracks including "Funky But Chic," "Frenchette" and an Animals medley headed by "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place."

Musically eclectic, these records received critical support without threatening the upper reaches of the charts, though a somewhat surprising commercial success was to follow. As Billboard noted, Johansen's solo albums saw him "contemporizing his rock palette in a fashion that set him up for a commercial breakthrough with 1987’s Buster Poindexter, the debut LP from his martini-swigging, lounge lizard alter ego Buster Poindexter."

For his work as Buster, Johansen "channeled jump blues, Caribbean rhythms and lounge jazz-pop with an exaggerated, vaudevillian wink. His cover of the calypso tune 'Hot Hot Hot' became an unexpected hit, enjoying heavy rotation on MTV and hitting No. 45 on the Billboard Hot 100. Characteristically uncompromising, Johansen grew to loathe his biggest hit, which is touched on in the 2023 documentary about him, Personality Crisis: One Night Only, co-directed by Martin Scorsese (another superfan) and David Tedeschi."

That fluke hit aside, Johansen's Buster Poindexter project became a popular live draw, as it vividly showcased his skills as a charismatic and witty showman. This scribe was lucky enough to see a totally entertaining early Buster show at intimate New York City venue Tramps in the mid-80s.

As Buster Poindexter, Johansen released four albums, the latest being 1997's Buster's Spanish Rocketship. A post-Poindexter detour that also brought positive notices was The Harry Smiths, who released two albums, 2000's David Johansen and the Harry Smiths and 2002's Shaker. That project found Johansen exploring vintage blues and folk style (the group was named after famed folk music historian Harry Everett Smith, who compiled the Anthology of American Folk Music, several songs of which were covered by the band).

Johansen occasionally also moved into TV and film acting. Notable movie roles included Scrooged, Let It Ride, Mr. Nanny, Married To The Mob and Car 54, Where Are You?, with TV appearances including Oz and The Jim Henson Hour. His deep knowledge of many different musical genres was showcased on his popular and long running weekly radio show “The Mansion of Fun” on SiriusXM.

in an interview featured in Personality Crisis: One Night Only, Johansen reflected on the legacy of the early New York Dolls. “We were a band’s band in a lot of ways,” he noted. "A lot of kids who were influenced by us started bands. Take the Ramones. The Ramones saw us and they looked at each other said, ‘Hey, if these guys can do this, we can do that.’ To have an influence like that on people is really good. To give people the idea, like, ‘Hey, I can do that.’”

That example similarly inspired such noted Canadian punk-fuelled bands as Teenage Head, The Diodes, Forgotten Rebels and many others.

The frontman of Teenage Head, Dave Rave shared his memories of Johansen with Billboard Canada: "I remember seeing Alice Cooper with [Teenage Head guitarist] Gord Lewis at the baseball stadium in Hamilton in 1971 and thinking this was very far out. But when I saw the New York Dolls' first album cover, that was mind blowing. Gord and [bassist] Steve Mahon took to it like ducks in the water.

"In 1975 Gord and Frank [Venom, original Teenage Head frontman] came and asked me to sing for their first show. And on the song list were the New York Dolls songs 'Trash,' 'Mystery Girls,' 'Looking for a Kiss' and 'Chatterbox.'

"I loved David's gritty New York voice. It really told a story. I thought that's how you have to sing especially on 'Looking For A Kiss.' I really felt I was in New York when he was singing. I was hooked from them on and I loved his solo records, Buster Poindexter and basically anything he did.

"I had the pleasure of being in the same bill with him and backstage at the Beacon Theatre in New York City once, and he was larger than life. Telling us jokes and keeping us all laughing. I used to run into him at night at the Cosmic Diner up in Hell's Kitchen in NYC. He was always kind and friendly. He was a great Rock and Roll spirit and I wanted to sing like him and perform like him."

"I was hoping for another incarnation from him. But he gave us so much so he can rest in peace. Thank you David. God bless you."

On Facebook, Canadian rock veteran Tom Wilson (Junkhouse, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings) posted a clip of the New York Dolls in full flight, commenting that David Johansen "made us true believers in the filth of rock 'n roll."

Concert promoter Lou Molinaro played a pivotal role in luring a reunited New York Dolls lineup to play at The Sound of Music Festival in Burlington in 2010. On Facebook, he recalls that "In late 2009, I was asked to be part of the Sound Of Music Programming Committee. We were responsible for booking acts for the 2010 festival. I had one goal in mind...to bring the New York Dolls to Burlington. I knew that the band was touring so it had to be done.

"During one of our meetings, we learned that the Dolls said yes to a June 19 show. We later found out that The Stooges were going to be performing at Yonge & Dundas Square in Toronto [a NXNE highlight] on the same evening. So, the only solution was to have an afternoon concert. The New York Dolls with The Diodes & The Barettas. 1 pm start.

"On the afternoon of the show, I went to say hello to Sylvain Sylvain, who had stayed with me on earlier occasions, then I introduced myself to the rest of the band. I met David Johansen last. He commented on how gorgeous the park was and how he loved the water being so close. I thanked him for being a guest on my [campus] radio show and he asked me if I was the person who used the word 'arboretum' during the interview. I confirmed it was me and he smiled and told me how much he really liked that word."

Molinaro got to spend time with Johansen after the show, and he notes that "Hanging out with David Johansen was so fulfilling. It felt like I personally knew him for years. A sunny late spring afternoon with the New York Dolls. So grateful to have had this experience. I love thinking about this day. Rest in Peace, David Johansen."

A former member of The Diodes, Richard Citroen, was at that show (though he didn't perform). He tells Billboard Canada that "David and the Dolls put on a real masterclass on how to be a proper rock & roll band there."

Also present at the Burlington show was Forgotten Rebels frontman Mickey DeSadist. "I never got a chance to meet David," he tells Billboard Canada. "Johnny Thunders came to one of the Forgotten Rebels New Years shows and Sylvain and I worked on a Poison Aeros record. I wish I met David so I could have told him how important their contribution was to my life."

Canadian jazz saxophonist, bandleader and radio host Darcy Hepner sent this tribute to Billboard Canada: "I was really sorry to hear about the passing of David Johansen. I worked with him in NYC in Buster Poindexter and the Spanish Rocketship Band from 1998-2000. Often at the Bottom Line, a club in the Village where he had a monthly residency. Some runouts, Carly Simon’s club “The Hot Tin Roof" in Martha’s Vineyard and an unforgettable gig in Bermuda.

"Probably the most memorable though was an annual show he did at Sproutstock, an event for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The love he showed as he sang and danced with audience members was joyful and truly from the bottom of his heart."

"One of the most beautiful moments I can remember playing music. He’d been doing it for years but it was my first time. At the end of the show he came up to me with a smile and said 'Hey Darcy!' and sang, to the tune of '3 Blind Mice,' 'You’re one of us, you’re one of us.' David was so much more than a world class artist and consummate showman. He was a shining example of grace and humanity. I feel very lucky to have known him."

Joey Molland, a singer and guitarist for U.K. band Badfinger’s classic lineup in the early ’70s, died on March 1, at age 77.

In its obituary, Billboardnoted that "While a cause of death was not specified, Molland had faced ongoing health challenges in recent years, including a recent battle with pneumonia."

"Badfinger, originally known as the Iveys, was one of the first bands signed by The Beatles‘ Apple Records. Molland joined the group in 1969, after the recording of their debut album, Maybe Tomorrow, which featured the Paul McCartney-written hit 'Come and Get It.' The song reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1970.

"Molland’s first album with Badfinger was No Dice (1970), co-produced by Beatles road manager Mal Evans. The set featured two of the band’s most iconic tracks: 'No Matter What' and 'Without You.' The latter became a hit after being covered by Harry Nilsson and Mariah Carey, with the Nilsson version holding the #1 spot on the Hot 100 for four weeks in 1972."

The key Badfinger lineup comprised Molland (guitarist), Pete Ham (singer/guitarist), Tom Evans (bassist) and Mike Gibbins (drummer)and they recorded five albums together through 1974, producing hit singles like “Day After Day” and “Baby Blue,” both co-produced by George Harrison.

After Ham died in 1975, Molland and Evans reunited as Badfinger, with the guitarist taking on a larger role in songwriting and vocals for the albums Airwaves (1979) and Say No More (1981). Molland, the last surviving core member, had performed under the name Joey Molland’s Badfinger since 1983.

In recent years, Molland had participated as part of the “Happy Together” tour of mostly ’60s hitmakers, and he collaborated with a revolving number of acclaimed musicians including Todd Rundgren, Micky Dolenz, Christopher Cross and several others in a Beatles tribute tour called “It Was 50 Years Ago Today."

Molland’s resumé includes also playing on John Lennon’s Imagine album, on George Harrison’s Grammy-winning album All Things Must Pass, and joining Harrison for the Concert For Bangladesh.

Angie Stone (born Angela Laverne Brown), a Grammy-nominated and hitmaking R&B and Soul singer, died in a car crash on March 1, at age 63.

In its obituary, Billboard noted that "with a career in music that spanned the late ’70s through her sudden passing, Stone topped both the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and Adult R&B Airplay charts and was nominated for three Grammy Awards."

"Stone’s career in music began with female rap trio The Sequence, known for their single 'Funk You Up' that reached No. 15 on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart in 1980. Five of Stone’s albums as a solo singer reached the top 10 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. She saw her set The Art of Love & War rise to No. 1 in 2007, while Dream made it to No. 3 (2015), Mahogany Soul and Stone Love both reached No. 4 (in 2001 and 2004, respectively), and Black Diamond charted at No. 9 (2000).

"Stone had six top 10 hits on the Adult R&B Airplay chart, including two No. 1s, 'No More Rain (In This Cloud)' (1999) and 'Baby' (2007). The four other top 10s were 'Wish I Didn’t Miss You' (No. 2, 2002), 'Brotha' (No. 3, 2002), 'More Than a Woman' (No. 4, 2002) and 'Sometimes' (No. 7, 2008)."

In 2007, Stone relocated to the reborn Stax Records for The Art of Love and War, an album featuring duets with legends Betty Wright and James Ingram that was her highest-charting LP.

The Guardian states that Stone "exited Stax to find herself adrift in a disrupted industry. But while the albums that followed never matched Mahogany Soul’s triumphs, the deep cuts like 'Dinosaur,' 'Forget About Me' and 'Grits' were golden. 2023’s Love Language peaked with 'The Gym,' a final, beautiful duet with longtime foil Musiq Soulchild."

Stone was the founder of national nonprofit Angel Stripes, with the goal of facilitating artistry and neighborliness in communities.