So Alone

by

Johnny Thunders

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By the time his Heartbreakers were reduced to playing the occasional gig to raise the rent money (it's anyone's guess why the quartet couldn't make it in a punk revolution which they had a hefty hand in stirring up, when they formed in the aftermath of the New York Dolls's crackup), Johnny Thunders was as renowned for his seeming determination to cripple his own faculties as for his furiously amateurish, angry-hornets-on-speed guitar playing and attitude. He might well have been the last one from whom to expect any kind of even passable solo project - but he may well have surprised himself as well as punk watchers with this 1978 gem. He didn't lack for distinguished help - Sex Pistols mainstays Steve Jones (guitar) and Paul Cook (drums) repaid the Pistols' debt to the Dolls by providing yeoman bandsmanship to Thunders's greatest post-Dolls blast (anyone who thinks the Heartbreakers - even on their own surprising "Live At Max's Kansas City" - were better than this should have their inner ears checked); Thin Lizzy mastermind Phil Lynott chipped in with some stellar bassmanship; and, above all, there was Thunders himself, spinning out lick after lick of buzzing, pinpoint controlled guitar, singing with surprising feeling for a fellow with one of the thinnest voices in rock and roll, and generally cranking out an album which in hindsight proves introspective in a way its creator probably didn't expect.

The highlights: Thunders beats himself at his own game with "Leave Me Alone" (the umpteenth re-write of his underappreciated Dolls chestnut, "Chatterbox"), brings the two ex-Pistols in on the gag with "London Boys," an obvious answer to the Pistols's Dolls cop "New York," and exposes himself as a self-immolating romantic via "(She's So) Untouchable," laying back just so for a classic doo-woppish saxophone break. It probably wasn't that bright an idea for him to cover a couple of Dolls tracks; not that he drops the ball when he remakes "Subway Train" but his crunchy, stomping version isn't quite as panoramic as the Dolls's original (and he'd been the key to making the Dolls version work, with his dead-on impressionistic guitar sounding just as though it had come up from the Canarsie local). On the other hand, his take of "Daddy Rollin' Stone" (a Dolls cut that band never nailed in the studio) is now a rather haunting epitaph, if you consider that three of the five players who make that dripping cut work here - Thunders, Lynott, and erstwhile Humble Pie frontman Steve Marriott - would be dead within a decade of cutting it.

And if you wonder about some of his rock and roll heart, give a nod to the leadoff track, a shattering, roaring cover of the ancient surf hit, "Pipeline". Thunders sounds like he's having real fun for one of the few times in his career, and he's infectious enough that the two ex-Pistols forget their own selves and just get lost in the ride with him. But then, there's "You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory," which follows immediately, ostensibly a love song but sounding as much as though Thunders was trying to gain closure on a past which made him both an underground rock legend and his own worst enemy. The edge of fear in his sensitive vocal says it only too well. Behind the glazed, diffident stage style [...], there seems to have been a lost soul scraping to find his way home, only to discover he didn't have the grip it took to reach the door once it came to within his sight, but somehow finding through the glaze and the haze an occasional ability to savour the journey without collapsing under his own dissembling weight. "So Alone" was such a finding, and it made for the most powerful recording of Johnny Thunders's career.