Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / "Johnny Thunders: In Cold Blood"/Nina Antonia [Episode 144]

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"Johnny Thunders: In Cold Blood"/Nina Antonia [Episode 144] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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Oh, we're totally booked in rock and roll. I think I'll leave you.
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You're reading Little Hands. It's time to rock and roll, bag rollout.
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We are totally booked. Welcome back to Booked on Rock, the podcast
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for those about to read and rock online. At booked on rock dot com,
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the exclusive videos, blogs, links to all of the social media sites
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including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. You find every episode of
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Booked on Rock there, along with links to your favorite listening platforms. Thirteen
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years ago, author Nina Antonia wrote the cult bible of all things Johnny Thunders
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with her book Johnny Thunders in Cold Blood. It's the definitive portrait of the
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condemned man of rock and roll, from the baptism of fire and tragedy that
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was the New York Dolls, through the junkie punk years of the Heartbreakers to
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his sudden and mysterious death in nineteen ninety one. A brand new edition has
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just been released, adding a new closing chapter, bringing Johnny thunders legacy up
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to date, with new photos and a forward by Mike Scott of the Waterboards
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and Nina's here to Talk all about It. A playlist of Johnny Thunders,
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including The New York Dolls, The Heartbreakers, and Johnny Thunders Solo. I'm
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a show notes page. Hi Nina, Welcome to the podcast. Hello,
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good to be here. This book was originally released back in nineteen eighty seven,
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so we know all about this book. It's it's the authorized biography of
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Johnny Thunders. And if what I read is correct, this was your first
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book. Yes, okay, in nineteen eighty seven was, but it was
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revised in nineteen ninety two when Johnny died and okay to Cherry Red. But
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now it looks absolutely beautiful with a new edition. And I was getting asked
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pretty much every month for copies and the weren't Jenny the cherry red one,
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the cherry Red deal. It's stopped that it's sold out, and apparently it
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was also one of the most searched out for books on Amazon. Yeah,
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I'm not surprised. How did that first edition all come together? What inspired
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you to write it initially? Well? I was a huge Johnny Thumders friend
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and a book about Iggy had just come out. Could I need more?
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With Anne? Were her I think her name was, And yeah, I
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just thought there should be a book here. About Johnny Thumders, but nobody
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had written one, so I thought that I'd better do it then, because
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because he was an enigma to me, though I was stuck in Manchester at
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the time and Liverpool and there was only tiny amounts of press about him at
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that point. This brand new, updated edition includes a new closing chapter forward
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by Mike Scott of the water Boys, and some new photos beautifully put together
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by job On Press. In Mike Scott's forward, he writes about you being
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the perfect person to tell Johnny's story. You knew Johnny, You observed his
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life with fandom, understanding, compassion, and detachment. When did you first
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discover Johnny Thunders and what was your relationship like with him before? In after
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the book, Oh gosh, I first discovered Johnny in the pages of sixteen
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Magazine and the New York Dolls just before the first album was due to come
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out. Do you remember You probably don't remember sixteen Magazine. I do remember.
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Let's see who. I was born in seventy two, so I do
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remember the magazine. Yeah, So it's an American magazine and it was kind
3:24
of aimed for a very young female audience, but occasionally because they were more
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interesting than the sort of English teeny book press. They'd have Stooges in there,
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or less Cooper or Roxy music, things that you wouldn't have expected.
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And in amongst that were the New York Dolls. And I just thought the
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photograph of them, and in particular Johnny just looked like the essence of what
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I thought rock and roll should be when I was thirteen. You know,
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when you're that age, you I don't know, you can look at a
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picture of a band and I could honest imagine what they would sound like.
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Yeah, well that and that's that's the thing that's missed Nowadays. With the
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Internet, you can see everything right away, and especially live shows, a
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lot of that mystery has been taken away too. That's the mistique of rock
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and roll. Great pity because it also enabled people like David Bowie to kind
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of grow up a little bit hidden before he was ready to make his grand
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presentation on the world. But people need mystique, Us dolls need mistique.
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Yeah, absolutely, I totally agree. We need our We need our rock
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stars is what we need. And now with social media too, that's the
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other thing. We know everything that's going on with these public figures and the
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less I think, the less you know is better in terms of that mystique.
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I absolutely agree with you. How long they've with the Gretic Garboe method,
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Oh yeah, he has absolutely How many times did you see the band
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performed the New York Dolls, and Johnny though I didn't, I didn't set
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to see the Dolls perform because I was just that bit too young. That's
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right, because they weren't together for that long. No, and funny story
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is that they did. The Dolls did play in Liverpool with the first lineup
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with Billy Mercier, and they were due to play it at a venue called
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the Stadium, which was really often ready supporting lou Reid, and then lou
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Reid had a tantrum and didn't want them to go on, so so they
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almost but didn't quite play Liverpool. And then with the Anarchy Tour, you
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know, some of the dates were vetoed by all these morality groups because punk
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was thought to be the next big bedevilments upon children. So they had all
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the posts printed to help for the Anarchy Tour and the Heartbreakers, but the
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gig was pulled again. What's interesting about Johnny stories that he was, as
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you write, both polite and insulting, charismatic and insular. As a child,
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he was shy, but he was also a live wire. Can you
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give us a brief backstory of Johnny, where he's from and what his childhood
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days were like. He was a child of the fifties. His father wasn't
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in the picture that much, right what he was a child of the fifties.
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But his older sister Mary Anne loved the girl groups and they were very
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important to the new yet dolls and to Johnny the sort of purity of it.
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And Johnny always sang Shanghi Lars songs, given a great big kissing that
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beautifully. So that was the nineteen fifties, and I think Johnny always retained
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purity of that era and in what he was doing as a rocker, and
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say the mode of Jean Vincent already Cochrane. So he grew up in Queens.
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Unfortunately, his father was a womanizer and he left Johnny's mother to sort
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of to be a single mother. When I met Johnny, I was also
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a single mother, and I think it made him warm to me, actually
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more than than if I had just been some cold professional male journalist. At
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that point, I had to bring my daughter with me to one of the
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earliest meetings and he broke the ice. What was it a story about him
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getting his tonsils out and he did not want to go, but eventually he's
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putting on the Elvis impression. Yeah, that was That was his sister Mary
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Antelmie. So obviously he was born to rock. You know. He got
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his first little toy guitar and everything, and he was in a group called
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the Rain when he was at school. They looked very kind of cabaret when
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you look at them, like they would be ready to play Bombits was some
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weddings and everything. That's why he was a big Elvis guy. He also
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Keith Richards was the other thing. Yeah, Keith Preith Richards was the other
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thing. But I think I met his old sports coach that I went to
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stay with Johnny's sister in Queen's. He's very much the kind of hometown hero
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in a way, kind of like a legend. He went to a ton
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of shows in New York as a teen too. There's the story in the
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book about hanging with the rock stars and hotels and mentioned Keith Richards. He
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took on Keith's cigarette packet, is that? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
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they were in the same bar. And the book is probably also an interesting
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book at how what gigs teenagers were going to in the sort of late sixties
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early seventies, and Johnny was very much influenced by English rock and rolled as
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well, so all the English bands were playing in New York. So yeah,
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he was a gig fixture. In listening to the Dolls, I can
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hear it now after reading the book, I can hear the influence of Keith
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on Journey's style. It's also disposed to the thing where he's in the audience
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that you know the film give me because I was going to ask you about
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that. He's I didn't know that until reading the book. I mean,
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it's it's always been, is it, isn't it? Silvainstead it was,
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And I have to say, it really looks like him, and he's messing
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with his her as as Jacky goes, you know, hello New York.
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Oh yeah, he's got a distinct look. So when you do it a
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side by side, I think somebody did that on the web and it's him.
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It's gotta be Yeah, now I did that on video. Did you
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okay, blowing it and just yeah, that's Johnny. When and how did
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the New York Dolls Forum, Well, actually it bombed in two to separate
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camps. There was Sylvaine and his best friend Billy Mercier, and there was
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Arthur Caane and his power Rick Rivets, and they were just, I don't
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know, just hanging out. Billy and Sylvane saw Johnny at school and thought
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he was the coolest thing ever. But then so did Arthur Cane and Rick
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Rivets. So it sort of grew up around that group of people. But
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Sylvaine and Billy had a clothing thing, so they concentrated on that. But
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by I think it's at the winter of seventy two, they were already gigging,
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but not with the band as we know it. And I love band
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name origin story. So the band gets its name from an actual doll repair
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shop. Oh yeah, there was a New York Dolls hospital across the road
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from where they rehearsed. But it also has that it hits the sort of
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trashy aspect of Valley of the Dolls as well, which is very appealing.
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Yes, absolutely all. That's why it's amazing that it's an actual name of
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a place, because it just seemed like something that you'd come up with,
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and it's perfect, perfect Johnny Gonzale, Is that what he was? Is
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that how you pronounced Gonzali, Johnny Gonzali, So he becomes Johnny Thunders.
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He thought about being Johnny Volume. How did he come up with the last
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name Thunders? Oh? Because it was a comic book, you know,
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Johnny Thunders wild West here, Hero of the wild West. But the people
10:33
often talk about, you know, the Kinks song to say mentioned a character
10:37
called Johnny Thunder, indeed the between Preservation Society, but that wasn't the source.
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You quote the late Sable star in the book she moved in with Johnny
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during those early days of the New York Dolls. She said. There was
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an innocence about him, but then he turned hardcore twenty joints today and opium.
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He was doing heroin kind of like a Jacklin Hide thing. He told
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a journalist in an interview you that you transcribe for the book, that it
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all started innocently. He was somewhat evasive. He says, he was just
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another board kid, you know, just looking to feel alive. Do you
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think he was self medicating? Was it that shy side of him that he
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was trying to suppress. Yeah, I think so. I mean, when
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the Dolts first started, he would play with his back to the audience.
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He was so shy. And also he got himself into a state with no
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fan passing me into me. He took tons of it, so he would
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have been looking for something to bring him down at that point. But I
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do think he will stop medicating. He was a very wounded human being.
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People have more insight these days about why drugs are taken and the effects of
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them. Yeah, it's interesting you say that neither, because I actually have
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an interview this week with there's a book that's it's either out now or it's
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coming out soon, Touring in Mental Health and Music Industry Manual, and it's
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well, you know, doctor's mental health doctor and they all put together their
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stories even and they have actual musicians and their experiences and just how to survive
12:07
that world. I mean, it's a lot of people when you especially when
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you're talking about when you're young, when we're kids, you think it's just
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the coolest thing to be a rock star, and it is, but there
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you have to you have to know what you're in for. Because it's there's
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there's some certainly some you know, some dangers that are out there and the
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people that you meet, and it can start innocently, that's really and then
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it catches up with you and then it's too late. But also at that
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point to Johnny from his perspective, seeing people say like Keith Richard story,
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he pope, they would have appeared to glomarize it for him exactly. Yeah.
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Well that's the other thing. Yeah, yeah, the sex, drugs,
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rock and roll. It's cool. That's that's what you do, especially
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if you're mixed up kid. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. What ultimately led
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to him quitting the New York Dolls in nineteen seventy five, there was there
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was an odd final string of shows right where he who were wearing red leather.
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This was their manager's idea. I think it was. Yeah, mismanagement
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was at the core of it. And I think the Dolls split into two
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halves and Johnny and Jerry Nolan piled up and in David and Sylvan were on
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the other side. And David and Johnny had been the original songwriting team,
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not that they were short of material, but the Midwest did not take to
13:28
the New York Dolls. They didn't understand them, and the Dolls management team
13:33
were also managing Aerosmith, and every Smith managed to watch the Dolls but make
13:43
the music and the stunts kind of more watered down. They were ordinary boys
13:48
just wearing these high heels. They weren't exotic and slightly dangerous. So the
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Midwest took to Aerosmith in a way that they didn't to the Dolls. We've
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got all the major cities with the fashion people and stuff like that. Yeah,
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and that's what's interesting about that first album in particular. It didn't sell
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well, but it's considered one of the most influential albums in rock history.
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That's the strangest thing about I mean, even as a Kiss fan, I
14:16
just listened to an episode of a podcast where they talk about what would Kiss
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be if the Dolls didn't exist, because the Kiss was influenced by the Dolls.
14:22
In fact, their first look was a New York Dolls type of look,
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and they realized, we can't do the Dolls like the Dolls do it,
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and so they went with the face paint and all that. But yeah,
14:33
but they got their name from looking for a Kiss. Ye. But
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yeah, I mean there's just so influential the New York Dolls, and and
14:39
yet I don't know the numbers on the sales of that first album, but
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it wasn't it wasn't great, right, No, But it's probably like the
14:48
felt of the underground great sales. But you know, thirty forty years later,
14:54
the cultural relevance is finally understood. So Johnny and drummer Jerry and they
15:00
quickly formed the Heartbreakers, and they just as quickly became one of the most
15:03
popular underground bands in New York City and led that first wave of punk rock.
15:07
The Heartbreakers lasted about five years. There's a great interview in your book
15:11
with Lee black Childer as he managed the band. You asked him if there
15:16
was any way to avoid the disintegration of that band. What did he have
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to say about why it ended, and if in fact it could have been
15:24
avoided. I think there was always a volatility around john and Jerry. I
15:28
mean, they were not people who could be tamed, which is one of
15:33
the things that gave them an exciting edge. The trouble was that the deal
15:39
that they signed wasn't particularly savvy, because they thought that they were signing to
15:43
the whose label Track, but in fact Track was in the middle of some
15:48
legal shenanigans with the former managers, and the Dolls actually signed to one of
15:54
the whose former managers, Chris Stamp. That really didn't bode well, but
15:58
they met. They were again hugely popular in London. All the English punks
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looked up to them because they'd adored the New York Dolls. It's more co
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Cloni said that people people weren't wearing the motorcycle jackets in sort of punk bands
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until Johnny showed up with his wearing a leather jacket as a motorcycle jacket.
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The Book Down Rock Podcasts will be back after this. Are you an author
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or a publisher with a rock based book to promote? If so, the
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Bookdown Rock Podcast is looking for guests promote the mall I say send an email
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at gmail dot com, or you can contact the podcast through the bookdown Rock
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website bookdown rock dot com. I think it's your new book, and be
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sure to keep us in a loop for any upcoming book releases related to rock
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and roll. It took Guts. I'm promoting you Nina Antonia as our guest.
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Her highly cleaned book In Whole Blood, the official biography of Johnny Thunders,
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has been released in a new updated edition to photos, an additional final
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chapter, and new forward by Mike Scott, lead singer of the Water Boys.
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Johnny never stopped recording and touring as he moves on into the eighties,
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but the drug use continued. Chapter nine titled ask Me No Questions. It's
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an interview you did with Johnny for this book. You asked him if he
17:19
thought his career in life would have run a bit smoother without Heroin. What
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did he have to say about that? What was his response? Well,
17:26
he always said he could play just as well without Heroin as with it,
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but he was not. He didn't cope emotionally. That was his thing.
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Well, that was what I observed, even as a young person. He
17:41
was too at odds with himself and really quite insecure. Because that didn't stop
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him being a brilliant rocker, because he brought that edginess to the stage.
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There were times when he would act like he was high if he just didn't
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want to talk to somebody, So he used as a sort store and some
18:00
people, I mean I remember that time well, because he had a German
18:06
manager, Christopher, and he got onto a MetaDONE program in France and was
18:12
really trying to He had his Swedish girlfriend then, who would very much loved.
18:18
But he was beaten up by the French police just through being a junkie
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walking down the street. I mean he was doing anything bad, but that
18:26
really sets him back. When you asked him about his heroine, he was
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he was comfortable with you. So did you feel any any reservations asking it?
18:34
Did you feel like maybe he would? Ah? No, But it
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took age, of course, it took ages and ages. And actually his
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girlfriend sees Anne set up the interview because I just said, you know how,
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I need to get one interview with John. It's all very well for
18:48
me doing it in an observational way, which is what he'd asked for,
18:52
and I appreciated that. But we did get there and it was not one
18:56
of the one of the run up the meal interviews either. It's you know,
19:02
because he doesn't use any stock answers in it. Yeah, that's the
19:06
thing that's so impressive. Well again, I think that goes back. He
19:08
felt comfortable with you. He opened up a little bit more with you than
19:11
he would with others, maybe, though he did have a very bad cold
19:15
that day, so he was he was quite a trooper. But it was
19:19
been a good day because he was in the studio in Denmark Street. He
19:23
was doing demos and he had Mike Monroe and Sti Basses into backing vocals.
19:30
Patty Paladin worked extensively with him during his Heartbreakers days and solo days. She
19:34
told you that the obsession with his death plays such a major role in his
19:38
career, so much so that it was gauged by it. How did Johnny
19:42
feel about death? I wonder how he really felt about death. Did he
19:47
fear it, was he preoccupied with it, or did he just not care?
19:49
Just got he just got on with it. But he was wise enough
19:53
to know that certain people, I think it's one of his sons is the
19:57
only way you get expect is when you're dead. So he kind of knew
20:03
that. But he didn't sit there thinking about daddy. He looked at everything
20:07
from a sense of being a really pure rocker and you know, loving his
20:12
mother, and his mother loved him, and he was a homeboy in some
20:15
ways. I just think unfortunately his druggies put him on a treadmill of having
20:22
to gig and gig and gig and gig just to feed the habits. Unfortunately,
20:27
there is a term you use in the book that I found interesting,
20:30
and he applied it to Johnny self sabotaging, big gig syndrome. What's the
20:36
big gig syndrome? When he did gigs and he didn't really care about the
20:41
venue or anything like that, he was superb and he really related to the
20:45
audience and he'd have the best time ever. But if there was a gig
20:49
where he knew that there was agents coming down and new labels, he'd drink
20:55
on top of everything. He just would go into a meltdown. And he
20:59
was very unfortunate because it meant that people weren't seeing him when he was really
21:03
fantastic. He's a very human figure. I think that's what makes them so
21:07
interesting, because we've both self sabotaged things, haven't we. I was gonna
21:12
say, self sabotaging is something we all do. It's it's I guess it's
21:17
a self esteem thing, like sometimes do we feel we deserve something? You
21:19
know, do we Is this something that I should be if I got something
21:22
good? I don't know if I can, if I can accept this.
21:26
The only gig of Johnny So that I ever ran away from was the huge
21:32
one in London and he was really laid out on stage, and I knew
21:36
that all the press was there, and it was, you know, once
21:38
supposedly one of these important shows, and oh he was such a mess when
21:42
he came out. I just huk my head in my hands. But because
21:47
I thought so bad for him. Yeah, well that's the thing too.
21:49
People forget with these public figures rock stars, There's a human being in there,
21:53
and a lot of times it just becomes They're like, well we've seen
21:56
it with a lot of musicians too. They're in a place that they really
22:00
shouldn't bet and be out there, but they're pushed out there on the road
22:03
for money reasons. I think I would like, you know, if I
22:07
watched the sort of last gigs of Enemy Winehouse, that tragic. Oh yeah,
22:11
the name Jerry Garcia comes to mind because I remember when he towards the
22:15
end there, it was like, why is he out there? He doesn't
22:17
look good, like his head is hanging down. He's just like he's barely
22:19
standing. And I'm a big van Halen Fan. I remember and Eddie struggling
22:26
in the early two thousands and I went to see him on a tour and
22:29
you couldn't even recognize the songs he was playing, and it's like, why
22:30
is he even out there? But you know why, money and all these
22:34
people make money off of them, and they're like a commodity more than a
22:37
human being. And I wonder now these days, I suppose the business hopefully
22:42
is different with the way they approached that, because man, I remember I
22:48
was there was an author talking about your eye heap, you wrote a book
22:51
on and back in the early days when they just toured night after night.
22:56
To be a band member that broke his hand or something, and they just
22:59
said, no time for the emergency room. We just got to get out
23:02
there and play. And it was like, you know, it's just it's
23:04
sad. And like you say, he needed the money from touring because the
23:08
album sales weren't like that of an arrow smith, you know. So that's
23:14
how he made his money, that's how he made his living. But he
23:15
was absolutely adored in certain places. You know. He was walked down the
23:21
street in Paris, walked down the street in Japan, walked down the street
23:25
in London and it was like the steam from a montc. Did you get
23:30
the feeling he enjoyed being famous or was he uncomfortable with fame. I don't
23:34
think she thought about fame really. I think he was more like an old
23:37
blues guy that has to keep going and trying to look as much of a
23:41
dandy as he could. And he's about being cool. Yeah, and he
23:48
was. He was. He died in New Orleans April twenty third, nineteen
23:52
ninety one. He was thirty eight, and rumors around his death wasn't an
23:56
overdose, was a foul play, And you get into it in the book,
24:00
you right, quote from the moment Johnny Thunders vanished beyond the departure gate
24:03
on April twenty second, nineteen ninety one. His exact movements become harder to
24:07
substantiate, so he gets on that flight headed for New Orleans. I believe
24:11
you're saying the book that he wanted to start over. Well, he'd gone
24:15
to rehab. He'd gone to Hazeldon because of his sister and some of his
24:19
friends really wanting him to go there. But he unfortunately left early because he
24:25
couldn't cope with the therapeutic side of it, I think was too painful.
24:29
But he had a few maybe a month or so, of being clean.
24:34
But he'd always since about nineteen seventy eight, talked about going to New Orleans
24:38
and getting a kind of New Orleans review, as in, you know,
24:44
ten piece band with backing vocalists. So that's primarily why he went out,
24:48
and because Willie Taville had had some success in New Orleans as well. New
24:53
Orleans is dangerous too, because that's one of my favorite bands came out of
24:57
the nineties, was Blind Melon and Shannon Huon. He died in New Orleans,
25:02
and they were saying that that's probably the last place he should have been
25:04
to try to get clean and sober, because that place is just constant party,
25:08
party, party, all the time. So I'm sure there are a
25:11
lot of temptations surrounding him. And apparently there was this sort of evil wave
25:18
of people knowing that Johnny was in New Orleans as well, and how could
25:22
they profit from that exactly. And part of me has also thought, you
25:26
know, like cats kind of crawl away to die. He was very ill,
25:30
he was very weak. He must know that he was not in a
25:36
good place helped. Wise, Jerry had tried to convince him to go into
25:41
hospital. Jerry Deeton said, I will stay, I will sleep over,
25:45
you know, I'll make sure you're all right. But he didn't. He
25:48
went. He played Japan, where he was absolutely adored, and then he
25:55
traveled on to New Orleans where he died. He had a substantial amount of
26:00
money on him, so he had these big glad saddle bags where he tended
26:03
to put all his money into it. That you know, that was ram
26:07
stacked. Anythink of any worth in the room was ramsacked. I personally don't
26:12
think that he was murdered. I think people enjoy making up conspiracy theories,
26:18
but certainly he wasn't helped. He should have an ambulance should have been called
26:25
for him. There's the story that he had leukemia too. That was something
26:29
that showed up. I mean, I've read the coroner's report and that points
26:33
to it being kemia from everything that the corona found, but they didn't do
26:41
enough tests really day, and if his sister even got a private detective to
26:45
try and find out more and they couldn't, I think his sister said,
26:48
well, the New Orleans police thought, oh, this is just another junkie
26:52
John Doe on a Saturday night. That's moved this as long as fast as
26:56
possible. Yeah, that's the problem is there's a lot of a lot of
27:00
people that are hanging out there, and he overdosed, likely overdoses, and
27:03
then the people that were there were just like they just said, he didn't
27:07
overdose. Though he did not overdose, he didn't not have enough drugs in
27:11
his body for it to be an overdose. That that's one thing that is
27:15
obvious. On the coroner's report, they were called how much the odd drugs
27:22
in the body? But it actually stays but it's not of an overdoseable level.
27:27
Because he was he was dying because he was ill. You have to
27:30
Kimia. There was somebody who said they heard sounds coming through the walls of
27:36
Johnny's room. There were people in the stealing things or Johnny's final death throws.
27:41
It's just too painful to think about. The worst thing to meat is
27:44
that he died by himself without anybody to hold his hand. Is really attractic.
27:51
Well, there is an additional last chapter in your book, and you
27:52
say this will be the final version of the book. And for listeners who
27:56
either have the original edition or are going to buy a copy of this for
28:02
the first time. What's in that chapter that you can tell us? And
28:03
what do you hope that that last chapter will serve the readers and fans of
28:07
Johnny Thunders in terms of telling his story. Oh, that's that's a very
28:11
hard one to say, he might be able to say, but I just
28:15
wanted to really checkle the subject of addiction and that as Johnny as an older
28:22
person, really did not want to follow the same route that he had.
28:26
And also all the beautiful things in the world that he missed by dying young.
28:32
Name he's got absolutely lovely children and grandchildren, all the people who would
28:37
have loved him. If somebody hasn't heard or just only heard a little bit
28:41
of The Dolls or his solo work, what do you recommend? And I
28:45
know that first album by the Dolls is always the probably at the top of
28:48
the list, But he's got some great work that he did as a solo
28:51
artist too with the Heartbreakers. Oh why don't I mean I like Hurt Me,
28:56
but I like all of it. I say, the first Dolls album
28:59
and the first Top Breaker's album and so alone, and just the list goes
29:03
on We're not sure of wonderful material. But I think the other thing that
29:10
I say in the final chapter is that his stuff wasn't just out and out
29:15
rock and roll, was also, you know, a more introspective side on
29:18
him. In some ways, I guess Johnny died like how he would have
29:23
wanted to live the awful live bast die young thing. And but it's still
29:32
a tragedy. If you had to pick a favorite song or a song that
29:34
defines him, oh you know which one that would be. You can't put
29:38
your owns around them. Memory. I was listening to a ton of dolls
29:41
just getting ready for the interview, and man, and I gotta but I
29:45
gotta listen to more of his work with you know, after the Dolls,
29:49
because like I say, it's very good, it's not I get there are
29:52
some some of the dolls in there in that sound, but he's kind of
29:56
going off into his own directions. He's doing something. I mean, the
29:59
best on the second album, Too Much, Too Soon is Chatterbox. I
30:04
love that. That tells you kind of where he's moving forward to. And
30:07
because that was his solo song and he really had to like to sing that.
30:14
David Johansson was like, what am I supposed to do? Play at
30:17
tambourine while he's singing? And yeah he was anyway the brain new edition of
30:22
In Cold Blood, the Official biography of Johnny Thunders. It's out now through
30:26
job and perhaps available wherever books are sold. And is there anywhere people can
30:30
find you online if they want to reach out to Nina? Oh yeah,
30:33
I have a website which is Nina Antonia Author and I'm on Twitter at Nina
30:40
Antonia thirteen. Excellent, very very much. This isn't really enjoyable to talk
30:45
to you. Unfortunately. It's a very rainy jay in London where you are.
30:52
Oh well, it's just we just ended a heatwave here in New England
30:55
here in the US, and boy, I could wear you down. We
30:57
welcome the rain here, I tell you. But yeah, London, boy,
31:02
I'd love to go to London one day. I've never been. Really,
31:04
did you love it too? Gives me cool? Absolutely on the sorts
31:08
of places that Johnny would have visited. Kind a tool. Oh man,
31:12
that'd be cool. Well, I got your email, I'll reach out take
31:15
care of YouTube. That's it. It's in the books.