(KTLA) – The family of New York Dolls singer David Johansen has revealed the punk rock pioneer has stage 4 cancer and a brain tumor among other major health issues.
Johansen’s daughter, Leah Hennessey, revealed in a post to her now-expired Instagram Stories that her father has been undergoing “intensive treatment for stage 4 cancer for most of the past decade.”
Five years ago, right at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Johansen’s cancer progressed into a brain tumor.
“There have been complications ever since,” Hennessey wrote. “He’s never made his diagnosis public, as he and my mother Mara are generally very private people, but we feel compelled to share this now, due to the increasingly severe financial burden our family is facing.”
In addition to his cancer battle, Johansen broke his back in two places after falling down the stairs the day after Thanksgiving in 2024. He had to undergo surgery, which was successful, and spent a week in the hospital. However, his family says he’s “been bedridden and incapacitated.”
“Due to the trauma, David’s illness has progressed exponentially and my mother is caring for him around the clock,” Hennessey explained.
The family is now asking for financial assistance to help provide Johansen with a full-time nurse, physical therapy, and “funding for day-to-day vital living expenses,” as he hasn’t been able to work for the past five years.
The Sweet Relief Musicians Fund has since created the David Johansen Fund to help him receive the care he needs.
“David is a legend but he’s also my very real very sick Dad. I have so much to say but I guess I’ll be posting about this a lot and I don’t have to say it all now,” Hennessey wrote on her Instagram Stories. “I know how dire so many of our situations are right now, and how much fundraising literally everyone is doing but if you love David or any of the magic he’s brought into the world please just take a minute to read this or share it.”
For six decades Johansen has worked as a singer and an actor.
He served as the lead singer and songwriter for the New York Dolls in the early ’70s. In the late ’80s, he reinvented himself and performed under the pseudonym Buster Poindexter, earning his first hit with the single “Hot, Hot, Hot.” In 1988, he famously starred as the Ghost of Christmas Past in the Bill Murray film “Scrooged.”
Most recently, Johansen was the subject of Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi’s documentary “Personality Crisis: One Night Only.” He also hosted a weekly radio show “The Mansion of Fun” on Sirius XM.
Johansen is quite the painter, too. Over the summer, New York’s Elliot Templeton Fine Arts Gallery held an exhibition of his work.
