Singer David Johansen diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and brain tumor, family asks for help
The family of New York Dolls singer David Johansen has revealed the glam 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 this past Thanksgiving. 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 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.
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, he earned his first hit with the singe “Hot, Hot, Hot.” In 1988, he famously starred as the Ghost of Christmas Past in the 1988 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 also quite the painter; over the summer New York’s Elliot Templeton Fine Arts Gallery had an exhibition of his paintings.