Bob Gruen + Nadya Beck’s All Dolled Up is a cast-iron rock-doc.
For three years in the early 70s they toted new-fangled video equipment trailing the New York Dolls, capturing fab performances, photo-shoots, media encounters, backstage delirium, fan interviews, even dancing at Rodney Bingenheimer’s E Club (the precursor to his English Disco).
The footage was assembled into a freewheeling 90 minutes in 2005.
Kane, Nolan, Sylvain and Thunders all give good pout, sneer and backchat, and Johansen in particular is on fire: “You could have shaved!” he declares after snogging Kane, while his description of Californian youth resonates: “There are two kinds, like eggs: Sunny side up [turns round and waggles his arse] or [waves koo-koo fingers at the side of his head] scrambled.”
Much is made of sporting kids’ cowboy hats and twirling toy guns but Sylvain steals the Wild West show sartorially with his pair of chaps over teeny, flimsy panties.
Buy/download All Dolled Up here.
