Should add acts like Ricky Nelson and Micky Dolenz (and the rest of the Monkees) who were in that dubious category of musicians who launched their careers as television inventions. But I like Nelson in
Rio Bravo and his duet with Martin is a wonderful. He also made plenty of great records that are essential to any rock library. (The best collections usually have about 30 or so tracks with virtually no filler.) I'm not really into the Monkees (I tried) but Dolenz was hilarious in the one season he voiced Arthur in the original cartoon for
The Tick.
Isaac Hayes seemed to transition altogether into a character actor, most famously as Chef in
South Park...man, did that have a sad ending.
I love David Johansen and knew him first as someone who popped up in films before I ever knew about the New York Dolls. One of the big revelations about the film Scorsese directed was that Miloš Forman wanted to cast him in
Hair:
Rolling Stone wrote:In the late Seventies, when Miloš Forman was beginning work on his adaptation of the musical, Hair, Johansen auditioned and hit it off with the filmmaker. Forman liked him so much, Johansen recalls in the doc, that he referred Johansen to choreographer Twyla Tharp, who liked his dancing. The last piece of the puzzle to get the gig was to impress Galt MacDermot, who composed Hair’s music, so he met MacDermot at a rehearsal studio. “He’s at the piano and I come in and I start singing the song ‘Hair,’” Johansen says. “I hadn’t really prepared. But Galt MacDermot stood up. He shut the lid of the keyboard and he said, ‘This guy can’t sing’ And I was like, ‘Wait a minute. I don’t dance but I’m a singer.’ That’s what I do. I didn’t get the part anyway. My dreams were crushed. But I only had those dreams for three days so it wasn’t, like, a lifetime.”
(I was never a fan of
Hair in any form, but I might've liked it with Johansen.)
