David Johansen, the former frontman of seminal punk band New York Dolls and subject of a 2023 Martin Scorsese-directed documentary, has been revealed to have Stage 4 cancer and a brain tumor, his daughter wrote in an online crowdfunding campaign the family has launched as the musician’s health care has placed an “increasingly severe financial burden” following medical complications.
Partnering with the nonprofit Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, Leah Hennessey, Johansen’s daughter, began the post by revealing the diagnosis, saying that her father has been in “intensive treatment” for a majority of the past decade.
“Five years ago at the beginning of the pandemic we discovered that David’s cancer had progressed and he had a brain tumor. There have been complications ever since. He’s never made his diagnosis public, as he and my mother Mara are generally very private people, but we feel compelled to share this now, due to the increasingly severe financial burden our family is facing,” she wrote.
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Hennessey added that Johansen suffered a fall the day after Thanksgiving, resulting in a back broken in two places, which landed him in the hospital for a week. Following a successful surgery, however, she wrote that he is “bedridden and incapacitated.”
“Due to the trauma, David’s illness has progressed exponentially and my mother is caring for him around the clock,” she explained. “To continue his treatment and give him the best chance of recovery, David and Mara will need full time assistance. As hilarious and wise as David continues to be, he is physically debilitated and his care exceeds what we are capable of providing without specialized professional help.”
Also an actor, Hennessey noted that Johansen has not been able to continue working as a performer for the last five years. The family’s immediate needs, she wrote, are full-time nursing, physical therapy and day-to-day living expenses.
“My mother’s favorite acronym for God is ‘Grace Over Drama.’ Together we have endured crisis after crisis, but with the support of our community we hope to carry on laughing and loving our way through this most trying of times. Thank you for embracing our family, and for your love and generosity,” Hennessey concluded.
Johansen and his pioneering of punk music was explored in the Scorsese and David Tedeschi-helmed Personality Crisis: One Night Only, following the lead singer and songwriter through the lens of the influential New York Dolls band, widely acknowledged as one of the first in the genre.
“I only cringed two or three times during this film,” he said of the doc to Deadline at a screening event at the time.
Afterward, he began an eponymous group and reinvented himself in the ’80s as Buster Poindexter. He later formed The Harry Smiths, leaning into his passion for blues and folk music to tour the world. He is also known for a handful of films, like Christmas classic Scrooged with Bill Murray and the Richard Dreyfuss-starring race track comedy Let it Ride.
David Johansen Has Stage 4 Cancer, Daughter Organizes Fundraiser
