video replaced 2018
Robyn Hitchcock's Tribute to Arthur Kane, deceased, once upon a time of the New York Dolls. Click on the title above to get to the song played in concert...
CHRISTINE TRZYNA on ARTHUR KANE
For several years I was deeply involved in genealogy projects and used the Latter Day Saints Family History Center (which I like to call The Salt Mine) very often. Missionaries come and go there, but several had long term assignments. One of those with the long term assignment was Arthur Kane. He had put about two-three years in about the time I met him and was feeling sure that his Bishop would "call" him to do three more. Thing was, he had hopes of going on a rock and roll tour again. If not the New York Dolls exactly, then to Japan with some of the Dolls and some of Blondie's old band.
First or early impressions can be wrong, but because he was so much younger than most of the missionaries, a man, and he was not married, Arthur stood out among the ladies and the typically very married, as a missionary. And he was lonely.
Partly because of his looks, partly because of the white white shirts and conservative ties he wore tucked into black blue jeans with boots, I imagined Arthur to be two things he was not: wealthy to be able to volunteer time so young and, with his white-pinkness and blond and blue eyed looks, coming from a long line of rugged Utah pioneers. Later when I did some genealogy work for him, I learned his was a family born of Irish immigration and that the problems between the Catholics and the Protestant Irish had been the issue in his family that lead to immigration. He needed to induct some family into LDS heaven and so I embarked on research for him to find his father.
It was months before I understood that he was no ordinary born to the faith Mormon, but one of LDS's best missionaries, who used the bus on weekends to make home visits and convert others to LDS, as he had been when, just when he was contemplating suicide, there was a knock on the door. He was not sold on LDS but he told me "You have to choose something and stick with it." Ours was a momentary friendship that revealed all his conflicts and anxieties.
Arthur talked in a whispery raspy rapid fire voice and still had a tang of New York accent. I imagined him leaving family behind in New York to come to Los Angeles, and he had. The New York Dolls. As he saw it they were his only true family....
C Christine Trzyna 2008 All Rights including Internet and International Rights Reserved
christinetrzyna.blogspot.com
NEW YORK DOLL
Lyrics from a website about Robyn Hitchcock
I never finished the bookThere's always someone to be loved
Or to be forgotten
But if you take a long look
Well there's always someone
Young and fresh
Or cold and rotten
One in a million
People touch you
How do I explain?
Sincerely I remain, Arthur Kane
I was a New York Doll
I was really something
on the map that never ends
I was the pulse of it all
But there's always poison to drink alone
Or to share with friends
One in a million
People hit you like a window pane
Sincerely I remain, Arthur Kane
I found myself in the church
I needed something
Bigger than the world I knew
But in the library of your memory
People live in their books
till the pages close
Close on me like they're gonna
Close on you
One in a million
People matter
Then they go again
Sincerely I remain, Arthur Kane
Arthur Kane
