Print Sylvain Sylvain, whose guitar playing in the early 1970s as a member of the New York Dolls helped lay the groundwork for what would become punk rock, died Wednesday in Nashville. He was 69. His death was confirmed by his wife Wanda O’Kelley Mizrahi. She wrote on his Facebook page that the guitarist had “battled cancer for the past 2 ½ years.” In 2019, Sylvain started a GoFundMe to help pay for his treatment. Along with the announcement of his death, Sylvain’s wife posted a remembrance by Lenny Kaye, the venerable punk historian and guitarist, who called Sylvain “the heart and soul of the New York Dolls” and described the band — a brashly theatrical outfit made of equal parts glam and grit — as “a quasar in the rock firmament.”