| As if this
isn't enough, the following track, DON'T START ME TALKIN' overshadows the
bewildering BAD DETECTIVE for a number of reasons. Here, Moreso than
anywhere else, is the proof, if proof were needed (and many behind-the-age
critics were stubborn) that the Dolls had no problems when it came to playing
their instruments. Jerry Nolan is exceptional, Johansen's harmonica
take leaps and bounds, and even Arthur manages some inventive bass lines.
The Dolls' musical ideals were to let the instruments express themselves
rather than holding firm to academic regulations. There is a word for this.
Imagination.
On DON'T START ME TALKIN'
David's voice is again at its best, and that is when he spits out the words
in his gritty, mean, Staten Island brawl. The tone is vehement, the
theme is domestic. 'Don't you start me talkin'/Or I'll tell everything
I know' warns the loose-tongued David who never talks gossip only scandal.
'I'm gonna tell her what I heard her boyfriend say' and 'I'm bragging this
thing about' as he proceeds with tales of wife-beating and margarine.
'When she gets back home/Told her husband a lie', what could it all mean?
The Dolls are deliberately gauche.
Their true colours are
blinding on the final track - a confession of course - HUMAN BEING.
Johansen pleads for acceptance 'I'm a human beeeeeing!', which says more
for |
psycho-sexual
misunderstandings than Bruno Bettleheim ever could. Johansen, a tartified
six-foot monster of yellow curls, high heels, distorted features severely
plastered with heavy make-up, pleads despairingly, 'I'm a human beeeing!'
But what about the lurid analogies? 'I'm a human beeeing!' ...and
nothing really matters. Clothes. Or hair. Sex. Posture. Money.
Morals. David's a human being and he has more to say: 'In fact I'm
talking 'bout the human race/We've gotta cover up this big disgrace'.
David needs someone to 'generate some warmth', and not just a machine.
'Why don't you give me a little sip/why don't you try me on a drag of that
cigarette/why don't you try to give me something that I'll never ever forget/but
now, don't you blow it all on a million dollar bet/because you're liable
to lose it on the best lover you had yet...' The instrument fade
and David's voice gives way as a bleating sax comes to the fore and mysteriously
becomes the conclusive Dolls sound.
"If (the critics) like
the album, then they're the ones we made the album for. If they don't
like the album, then we didn't make it for them," said David Johansen,
and TOO MUCH, TOO SOON was launched. It sold less than their debut
album, making the lower 30's of the US chart, which was still enough to
keep the group in the unnecessary luxuries that they had grown accustomed
to. |
