Нью-Йорк Доллс тобының басс-гитарисі Артур Кейн өмірі мен шығармашылығы

Arthur Harold Kane Jr. (February 3, 1949 – July 13, 2004) was an American musician best known as the bass guitarist for the pioneering glam rock band the New York Dolls. Kane was a founding member of the Dolls in 1971 and remained an integral part of the band until he was forced out in 1975, shortly after the departure of Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan. In 2004, after decades of estrangement from Dolls singer David Johansen, Kane rejoined the surviving Dolls (Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain) to rehearse and play a reunion concert in London, which was the subject of the 2005 documentary New York Doll. In addition to his bass playing, Kane was known for his subculture fashion sense and for uttering original aphorisms in his uniquely toned voice. When Arthur was seventeen, his mother died of cancer (leukemia). 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. 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.

After returning home after spending about a year in Amsterdam, Kane had been noticing a charismatic figure around New York City with avant garde hair and clothes who would shortly take on the name Johnny Thunders. Kane decided to approach him one day in front of a West Village pizzeria (accompanied by Rick Rivets, who had heard that Johnny was a musician) to ask him if he wanted to get together sometime to jam on their instruments. Shortly thereafter they all met at a rehearsal studio, where they had booked some time, located in the West Thirties area of New York City

Sometime after that event, Kane then approached future Dolls singer David Johansen. As Johansen explains it:
Sometime in '71–72 there was a knock on my apartment door on East 6th Street. I opened it to find Arthur and Billy in platforms with Arthur a good foot and a half taller (I had to look up). He said "I heard you're a singer." The tone of his voice was kind of ethereal for a boy with such an imposing presence, and I have to say that I was both amused and intrigued by him, so we went to Johnny Thunders' apartment on 10th Street and started to play some music and just like that I was a New York Doll.|

Killer Kane was known for his outrageous outfits such as one piece body stockings, large bow ties, and thigh high, neon colored platform boots. Kane created many original and infamous looks by scouring shops in London, "combing through Amsterdam's Waterlooplein flea market during all of 1970", and "various Brooklyn thrift shops". Mixing pop art with music, the Dolls sought to create a persona as "larger than life rock and roll comic book superheroes", or as if they were a band from outer space – concepts that were expanded upon in one form or another not much later by other bands such as KISS. In addition to his signature bass sound, Kane had a unique way of performing on stage. As rock photographer Bob Gruen explained, while playing bass Kane "moved a bit robotically, kind of like a giant Frankenstein." Throughout his tenure with the Dolls, Kane dated a succession of atypically tall women, including Stacia of Hawkwind. The Dolls put out two studio albums, 1973's New York Dolls and 1974's Too Much Too Soon. The Dolls influenced several bands that came soon after with the emerging Punk scene such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, and Generation X; and were a precursor to 80's Glam metal bands such as Mötley Crüe, Cinderella, and Poison. being a member of The Idols (with Jerry Nolan), and The Corpse Grinders (with Rick Rivets); and joining Johnny Thunders on a few tours in the 1980s. These projects failed to 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. 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". Whiteley started shopping around the idea of doing a film on Kane's life. Coincidentally, in 2004 Morrissey—who for decades had been a high profile fan of the Dolls—offered Kane an opportunity to perform a reunion show with the surviving Dolls (David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain) at the Royal Festival Hall in London as part of his Meltdown Festival (former band members Johnny Thunders died in 1991 at age 38, and Jerry Nolan in 1992 at age 45). When Kane called Whiteley to ask for a ride to the pawn shop to retrieve his bass guitar, Whiteley asked if he could bring along a camera. From there Whiteley filmed Kane's experiences preparing for the reunion, rehearsing with the Dolls in New York, and reconciling with Johansen, culminating in two sold out shows in London; which for Kane was all a fulfillment of a nearly thirty year dream. Whiteley's footage resulted in the 2005 Sundance featured documentary, New York Doll.

On July 13, 2004, just 22 days after the reunion concert, Kane thought that he had caught the flu in London and checked himself into a Los Angeles hospital, complaining of fatigue. He was quickly diagnosed with leukemia, and died within two hours. He was 55 years old. Johansen described Kane as "nonjudgmental, bawdy and holy." She was interviewed for the New York Doll documentary, portions of which are interspersed within the film's narrative. In 2005 the documentary, New York Dolls: All Dolled Up, was released on DVD. The directors, rock photographer Bob Gruen, and his then wife, Nadya Beck, owned an early video camera and shot many hours of footage of the Dolls in the early 1970s. Edited down to 95 minutes, the black and white film shows the Dolls in different locales, such as backstage or at an airport, and documents several of the Doll's live performances in New York City and California. Kane appears in some of the footage wearing a plaster cast on his left arm. This was the result of his volatile girlfriend Connie Gripp (1947–1983) attempting to cut off his thumb so that he would be unable to play bass anymore. In his autobiography, fellow bass player and Dolls fan Dee Dee Ramone mentioned Kane when discussing Connie, whom he himself later dated. Dee Dee and Connie's similarly violent and tumultuous relationship would inspire the 1977 Ramones song "Glad to See You Go".