In the oft-fuzzled world of Johnny Thunders, the 80s saw a partreturn to the roots of the music he and the New York Dolls and Heartbreakers had held so dear, collaborating with a series of like-minded lost souls, culminating in the 1988 release of Copy Cats. The LP’s 50s and 60s R&B and doo wop workouts range from a sharp shot at Dion’s ’62 smasher I Was Born To Cry, through the slinky Shirelles number Baby It’s You, to Love Is Strange, a hit for Mickey & Sylvia in 1958.
When in duet with the streetwise/resonant tones of Snatch vocalist Patti Palladin, the results are often intriguingly cracked. In retrospect, and with the knowledge that, by this point, Thunders had embarked on a gradual descent back into the addiction that finally killed him, there is often a sense of depressingly inevitable tragedy about the recordings. Venerable punk and social writer Jon Savage observes in the sleevenotes that it is a “flaming disc of genius at bay, and reckless youth corroded by temptation”. As succinct an overview of the artist as you’ll ever get.
