The family of New York Doll singer David Johansen revealed that the pioneer of glam punk rock has stage 4 cancer and a brain tumor.
Johansen’s daughter Leah Hennessy has posted to her current Instagram story that her father has been in “intensive care for stage 4 cancer for most of the past decade.” It was revealed in.
Five years ago, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Johansen’s cancer progressed to brain tumors.
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“I’ve had complications since then,” Hennessy wrote. “He and my mother Mara are generally very private people, so he has never published a diagnosis, but due to the increasingly serious financial burden our family faces. And we feel compelled to share this now.”
In addition to his cancer battle, Johansen also broke his back in two places after descending stairs the day after this past Thanksgiving. He had to undergo surgery, but it was a success and spent a week in the hospital. However, his family says he is “bedridden and neutralized.”
“Because of trauma, David’s illness progresses exponentially, and his mother cared for him 24 hours a day,” explained Hennessy.
The family has not currently been able to work for the past five years and is seeking financial support to provide full-time nurses, physical therapy and “finance for important daily living expenses.”
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The Sweet Relief Musicians Fund later established the David Johansen Fund to help him receive the care he needs.
For 60 years, Johansen has worked as a singer and an actor.
He was the lead singer and songwriter for New York Dolls in the early 70s. In the late 80s he reinvented himself, performing under the pseudonym of Buster Point Dexter, and earned his first hit with Sing “Hot, Hot, Hot, Hot.” In 1988 he starred as a ghost of Christmas past in the 1988 Bill Murray film Scrooged.
Recently, Johansen was the subject of the documentary personality crisis between Martin Scorsese and David Tedeski: Only one night. He also hosted the weekly radio show “The Mansion of Fun” on Sirius XM.
Johansen was also a very painter, and over the summer, the Elliot Templeton Art Gallery in New York held an exhibition of his paintings.
