David Johansen Thanks Fans for Support Amid Stage 4 Cancer Battle

David Johansen thanked fans for their support in a fundraising campaign that was launched following news of the New York Dolls singer’s battle with stage 4 cancer.

Earlier this week, the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund and Johansen’s daughter Leah Hennessey launched the David Johansen Fund to raise money for the singer’s physical therapy, full-time nursing needs, and daily living expenses; Johansen had privately been battling cancer for five years, and is now bedridden and incapacitated after breaking his back in a fall last November.

On Friday, Johansen and his wife Mara uploaded a short video onto the David Johansen Fund’s site to thank fans for the outpouring of support over the past few days.

“Hello everybody. I just wanted to thank you all for giving us a big boost here with our fundraising campaign, I guess you would call it,” Johansen said. “I’ve never asked for help in my life and lately Mara’s been teaching me the beauty of, when your chips are down, asking for help. That’s what I’m doing and it seems to be working out really marvelously.”

Johansen is best known for his work in the pioneering punk group the New York Dolls, but he also released several successful solo records. In the early Eighties, he began playing under-the-radar club shows where he billed himself as Buster Poindexter. In 1987, he scored an unlikely pop hit with a cover of Alphonsus Cassell’s “Hot Hot Hot” as his Poindexter persona. The following year, he had a memorable role as the Ghost of Christmas Past in the Bill Murray movie Scrooged.

In 2020, directors Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi filmed Johansen’s show at New York’s Café Carlyle. It became the backbone of their 2022 documentary Personality Crisis: One Night Only. 

Johansen is also the last surviving core member of the New York Dolls, following the deaths of Johnny Thunders in 1991, Jerry Nolan in 1992, Arthur Kane in 2004, and Sylvain Sylvain in 2021.

“We’ve been living with my illness for a long time, still having fun, seeing friends and family, carrying on, but this tumble the day after Thanksgiving really brought us to a whole new level of debilitation,” Johansen said in a statement earlier this week. “This is the worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. I’ve never been one to ask for help, but this is an emergency. Thank you.”