Arthur Kane - Early Life

Early Life

Arthur Harold Kane Jr, was born in The Bronx, New York, the only child of Erna and Harold Kane. Arthur was close to his mother and her sister, his Aunt Millie, who used to like to listen to Elvis records. The first word that he learned as a young child was "record." When Arthur was seventeen, his mother died of cancer. His father was an abusive alcoholic, and when he quickly remarried, Arthur left home for good. He graduated from Martin Van Buren High School in Queens. He first played bass in the band Actress along with other original New York Dolls: Johnny Thunders, Rick Rivets and Billy Murcia.

Kane attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York as a Food Science and Management student, a "foodie". During his early years there, Kane socialized with art students such as Eric Marshall in the Pratt dormitory on Willoughby Avenue. (Marshall was later, through association with the retro New Wave band Marbles, recruited on saxophone for fellow-Doll Sylvain's short-lived Criminals.) Kane was always interested in music. By his third year at Pratt he had stopped attending classes, was sharing an apartment with Dave Trott, and wanted to start a band. At twenty-one he inherited money that he used to move to Amsterdam hoping to find like-minded musicians. Kane's ancestors, on his maternal side, were from Sweden.