The Dolls. They were trashy. They were flashy. They were drag queens. They were junkies."

David Johansen is summarizing the official line on The New York Dolls, an unkempt group of rockers he first fronted nearly 35 years ago.

"Over the years that kinda settled in my mind as, 'Oh yeah, that's what it was,' " Johansen continues. "But when I went back and deconstructed the songs to learn them again, I realized this stuff is great!"

He's right. The Dolls left us with but two studio albums, bowing out with the aptly titled Too Much Too Soon, but each is a punk-rock masterpiece -- a veritable how-to guide to turning youthful energy into music.

Those guides, in fact, so impressed an enterprising London clothing-store owner named Malcolm McLaren that he assembled a band of unkempt English youths, named them The Sex Pistols and set about "inventing" punk rock two full years after the release of the Dolls' self-titled debut album.

Trashy, flashy, drag-queen junkies? Oh yeah, they were all that. And so much more.

"They say we were fairly influential," shrugs Johansen, a modest man who after the Dolls' demise eventually resurfaced in the absurd guise of lounge lizard Buster Poindexter.

"They say we influenced the punks and hair-metal guys, which I think is funny because they're about the two most diametrically-opposed camps in rock 'n' roll. If you put that in a movie everybody would laugh."

Not that many were laughing in 1974, when The New York Dolls confronted an unprepared rock establishment with a sound that dared to intrude on a bigger-is-better climate of virtuoso musicians and excessive production with a lo-fi collection of barely competently played three-chord tales of personality crises and rock-'n'-roll pills.

Not laughing with the band, anyway. It's often been said that while few people bought the first Velvet Underground album, everyone who did formed a band. Fewer people bought The New York Dolls. And most who heard it likely felt a lot better about whatever band they'd already formed.

At least for a couple of years, by which time those rock-'n'-roll pills had taken their toll on the Dolls, fragmenting the band and sending members like guitarist Johnny Thunders and drummer Jerry Nolan on a self-destructive path that meant when Morrissey (yes, that Morrissey) asked the Dolls to reunite for a 2004 London festival, only three original members were left.

By the time the reborn Dolls (with Johansen and original guitarist Sylvain Sylvain joined by Steve Conte and drummer Brian Delaney) returned to New York last summer, they were down to two, having lost bassist Arthur "Killer" Kane to leukemia shortly after the London shows.

"I think one of the main reasons I did it was for him, because it meant so much to him," Johansen says of the reunion and Kane's passing.

"It seemed to be his raison d'etre to have another go at it. And I think his desire to do that was keeping his leukemia in abeyance, so he didn't even know he had it. When he accomplished that I think he relaxed and it took over. So if there's anything good to be said about it, it's that he went out on a high note, because he'd had a rough time."

In an inspired move, the reformed Dolls recruited Sammi Yaffa as Kane's replacement. Yaffa had previously spent time as bassist for Hanoi Rocks, a band that knew a thing or two about mixing punk with hair-metal. And about The New York Dolls.

And so the Dolls' time has finally come, as they re-enter the fray (there's talk of a new studio album) to compete for attention with countless bands that would never have existed without them.

Recognition for the Dolls' legacy remains limited; and it does sometimes seem like the band is better remembered for the trashy, flashy lifestyle than for the music.

Recent shows, however, have placed the music front and centre. And after all, it is the music that Johansen remembers. For, perhaps, obvious reasons.

"It's funny," Johansen says, "because we'll be someplace now and Sylvain will say, 'Do you remember the last time we were here?' And I'll say, 'No.'

"He'll say, 'But don't you remember, the police came to the motel and kicked down our door and threw you against the wall and pulled out their guns?' And I have to say, 'I honestly don't remember that.'

"But memory, I don't even know what that is. All your memories are holding onto illusion."