Post Dolls
After the Dolls broke up, Kane collaborated with Blackie Lawless (who would later form W.A.S.P.) on a project dubbed Killer Kane, which resulted in the single "Mr. Cool." Lawless was an old friend from New York City and had replaced Johnny Thunders during the ill-fated Florida tour in 1975.
After the Dolls Kane was involved in several projects including: playing bass in the backup band for Sid Vicious (during his brief solo career after the Sex Pistols in 1978); being a member of The Idols (with Jerry Nolan), and The Corpse Grinders (with Rick Rivets); and backing Johnny Thunders on a few tours in the 80s.
One by one, these projects did not turn into long-term gigs, and Kane began to feel that there was no longer any place in the music business for him; that what little material success he had achieved with the Dolls was to be the high water mark of his career. Kane saw himself living in poverty and obscurity for the rest of his life. As this bitter realization gripped him, band after band directly inspired by the Dolls catapulted to stardom, and the other members of the Dolls continued their careers. Lead singer of the Dolls, David Johansen, who Kane viewed as a rival, found success as Buster Poindexter.
As a result, Kane grew frustrated with music (although he continued playing and in fact learned harmonica during this period). He relocated from New York City to Los Angeles, but he could not escape his regrets. His envy and creative block, coupled with alcoholism and the breakdown of his marriage, led to a deepening depression. Although urban myth frames Kane as a drug addict, this was not the case; his true downfall was alcohol. After seeing David Johansen as the Ghost of Christmas Past in the comedy Scrooged, Arthur, in his depression, got drunk and jumped out a second story window. Although a planter box partially broke his fall, the impact caused slight neural damage and affected his speech.
In 1992 Kane was walking home from a party for the Red Hot Chili Peppers when someone attacked him and he was later found in a ditch near his apartment. His injuries were severe enough that he was in physical therapy to learn how to walk and talk again. A rumor then circulated that he was a victim of the Rodney King riots, but that was another urban legend. Nobody actually knows what happened and he might have simply been mugged by a "violent street person." For several years Kane lived in a small studio apartment in West Hollywood where he was just scraping by financially.
Kane surprised all who knew him when in 1989 he joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1998 Kane started volunteer work as a librarian assisting the public with genealogy at the Family History Center at the Los Angeles Temple (It was while browsing the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) on microfilm one day in the genealogy library that Kane discovered that his father, with whom Arthur had been estranged since the death of his mother in 1966, was deceased).
Read more about this topic: Arthur Kane
Famous quotes containing the words post and/or dolls:
“A demanding stranger arrived one morning in a small town and asked a boy on the sidewalk of the main street, “Boy, where’s the post office?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, then, where might the drugstore be?”
“I don’t know.”
“How about a good cheap hotel?”
“I don’t know.”
“Say, boy, you don’t know much, do you?”
“No, sir, I sure don’t. But I ain’t lost.””
—William Harmon (b. 1938)
“Our home has been nothing but a play-room. I’ve been your doll-wife here, just as at home I was Papa’s doll-child. And the children have been my dolls in their turn. I liked it when you came and played with me, just as they liked it when I came and played with them. That’s what our marriage has been, Torvald.”
—Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)