R.I.P. New York Dolls guitarist Sylvain Sylvain
Photo: Phil Bourne/Redferns via Getty Images
Sylvain Sylvain has died. As the guitarist and co-founder of the New York Dolls, Sylvain charted an unpredictable course between the forces of hard rock, glam, and the earliest dregs of what would one day be punk at the dawn of the ’70s New York club scene, marrying fashion, cynicism, and a frequently determined
lack of interest in musicianship into a bold new iteration of modern music. Reviving the group to surprise acclaim in the early 2000s with his old colleague David Johansen (also known, around other genres, by his stage name, Buster Poindexter), Sylvain took his place as an elder statesman in the world of modern rock, acknowledged—regardless of whatever specific genre you might hope to pin him into—as one of the pioneers of underground music in the 1970s. Per