Word: high
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Contract wrangles kept Johansen out of the recording studio, pretty much confining him to a narrow circuit of club dates that paid the rent for two years, while lawyers and managers settled the future. His first solo album, finally released last spring, was full of high-vaulting songs performed with his typical breakneck energy, but the record seemed unfocused, finally, as if the release of feeling after such a long time was substance enough...
Johansen's credentials for such a calling include some years in parochial school dodging the discipline of the nuns and four years of public high school in Staten Island, a blue-collar enclave that most New Yorkers regard as little more than the place the ferry stops before it turns back toward Manhattan. Johansen made that ferry trip a lot, voyaging into Greenwich Village at an age when most kids are sweating out the junior varsity cuts...
...first high school band was Fast Eddie and the Electric Japs ("We used all Japanese equipment - real cheap - and hung a souvenir war flag of the Rising Sun behind us"), from which Johansen graduated to another group more easily than he graduated from Port Richmond High ("Lunch was definitely my favorite subject...
...still sings as if he has a gun pressed to his temple: if it's a love song, every line is a plea for life. If it is one of his high-wire rockers, the song is like a last attempt to go out in a blaze of manic glory...
...city rock, restless and implacable. He works fast (lyrics for three of the tunes on the new album were written while the band was off having dinner), performs at white heat. He likes to keep the music simple, the lyrics spare, so that a song like Flamingo Road reaches high and wide, becomes an angry, baiting confessional stashed inside a catchy pop threnody. Flamingo Road is a place where many of Johansen's obsessions - fashion, high romance, lowlife - all meet and rebound off one another until they form dead ends. Flamingo Road is the street where love is lost...