Dead Or Alive: Johnny Thunders’ So Alone at 45

Remembering a New Wave era classic that defied category

October 17, 2023 Ted Miller 0 Comments “So Alone, 1978, 45th Anniversary, Chrissie Hynde, Johnny Thunders, Paul Cook, Phil Lynott, Pixies, Real Records, Steve Lillywhite, the New York Dolls, The Replacements, Tom Verlaine, Walter Lure

So Alone era concert poster (Image: Pinterest)

I admit I love an album that starts with an instrumental.

And I love an album that starts with a cover tune. So I really love an album that starts with both; few things make me as happy as the Pixies’ Bossanova. The Replacements didn’t do it themselves but it’s absolutely up their dingy alley, to clear their throat, kick off the night, what have you, with a big, bracing throwaway like an amped-up spy-surf theme from their collective youths. I’m sure they did it at their frayed-wire shows.

Even more than the New York Dolls, Johnny Thunders’ 1978 solo debut album surely opened the trash-rock bar-sleaze lane for the ‘Mats, who returned the “favor” by predicting his early death (“Johnny’s Gonna Die”) on their (always aptly titled) 1981 debut album Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash. I mean, they also covered KISS.

David Johansen had a lot of feelings about humanity that bordered on philosophy. That wasn’t them. Thunders’ department was to dig out (but not clean up) the tunes, let ‘em blurt. Especially but not exclusively with his fellow fuzzed-over Heartbreakers. (Then again, the Replacements are intrinsically tied to gender-bending expression more than anyone could’ve imagined — caught Against Me! bringing out Joan Jett to cover “Androgynous” in 2012, easily the best thing that’s ever happened at Terminal 5.) Thankfully, Thunders made it to 1991, though 38 is still dying way too young. He was, however, the type of legend who dies young but not as young as you’d think.

Johnny Thunders So Alone, Real Records 1978

The heart-on-sleeve romantic, gutter-poet thing that would go on to be misprised so badly by, oh, Beach Slang had a real maturity when the right misfits mined it before it was a trope. Thunders wasn’t deep, and So Alone isn’t particularly, but his tangled romances with music were, and after said spy-surf instrumental “Pipeline,” he unveiled his most vulnerable and possibly even greatest moment, possibly even including the Dolls: “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory.” Those chords hurt, careen, and hope at the same time. Well, one after another. That chorus is far too exultant to be so full of regret. The tumbling, girl-group-derived drums on the verses clumsily put the feelings forward, and the chorus explodes like you wish your heart would when you’re trying to will the past back into reality. But you can’t. It’s one of the all-time rock and roll can’ts, like Mick yearning for satisfaction. Don’t try. It takes balls and heart to open your solo career with that, which is why it’s crucial for “Pipeline” to scare up the courage, like it’s pumping something into Thunders’ veins before his hiccupped, Tom Verlaine-style delivery can command the mic.

So Alone really tries to be a first impression, though. It’s anything but alone; Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott duets on the Jerry Lee-cum-Flamin’ Groovies rave-up “Daddy Rollin’ Stone.” Chrissie Hynde gives the Dolls remake “Subway Train” a reason to be reborn; I prefer it. The Only Ones’ Peter Perrett is on hand for auxiliary axemanship throughout. And you can hear Steve Lillywhite trying to invent the 1980s with his trademark drum sound before he figured out how to gate them to oblivion. It’s not a punk album, but it’s so new wave, in the anxious Graham Parker and Elvis Costello sense, that it doesn’t feel like roots-rock either. It feels more skinny-tied and suited up than feather-boa’d, so glam doesn’t quite fit either. Is it bar-band cliche being born? Not with the bluesy Raw Power homage “Downtown” giving Iggy Pop one of his all-time imitations.

So maybe we can call it a roots-punk album, with the exceptional Dolls impersonation “Dead or Alive,” complete with gang vocals, and the bouncy “Hurtin’” presenting an alternate timeline where punk continued only in the ‘50s-adoring tight-sharp pop-song lane of the Ramones. When Thunders calls back the bratty L-U-V intro to “Looking for a Kiss” before the honking sax romp “Great Big Kiss,” it passes wink all the way to straight eyeroll. In the final stretch it renews the call-response from the Isleys’ “Shout.” Is that punk? Retro? For all the reference points, this is music that doesn’t care about anything in the way of its pure potency as young, pilled-out rock and roll.

That’s why you gotta l-u-v the opening gambit: instrumental cover? Girl-group power ballad? Dolls and Isleys bookending the same tune? That’s why Lynott, Hynde and company couldn’t resist; Thunders’ big-grin rock and roll shapeshifts like the whole umbrella the genre implies, not some Wenner-esque exclusivist swath or some punk club with a dress code. Unsurprisingly, Thunder and the Dolls aren’t in the RNRHOF, just like their progeny in The Replacements. Legendary outcasts that wouldn’t be part of any club that would have them, their CBGBs-bathroom voices, or their untrained riffs.

So Alone is rock and roll as dirty secondhand pop, junkshop leavings decorating ramshackle mannequins who reveal themselves to have human feelings but aren’t really interested in figuring them out when the amp’s unplugged. It’s easy to romanticize the inherent destruction within because the tunes are so good and the presentation is so ragged. Thankfully, Johnny Thunders stayed alive long enough that his classic debut isn’t a reminder of death like so many great works of trash-art. In fact, it sounds like immortality.