“The New York Dolls would have been a crappy band without him,” says the singer about his longtime bandmate.

Sylvain Sylvain and David Johansen.

The death of New York Dolls guitarist Sylvain Sylvain after a long battle with cancer means that frontman David Johansen is now the last surviving member of the pioneering proto-punk band.

He’s spent the past 24 hours since the news broke reflecting on his five-decade relationship Sylvain and reading fan tributes to him on social media.

The singer phoned Rolling Stone to share his own outpouring of love to Sylvain, and to look back on his lifetime of memories with the guitar great.

Tell me your first memory of ever seeing Sylvain.

We were getting the band going and we just had rehearsal a couple of times.

Little did I know, he and some of the other guys in the band had been in cahoots before he was in Europe.

I don’t know if he knew Arthur [Kane] or not.

I just knew “this guy is fantastic,” and he was.

What role did he play in the creation of the New York Dolls look.

I don’t know?

His family moved to New York.

The organization that sponsored them said, “You can live in any of these places.” The only place in New York was Buffalo?

That’s New York.

I don’t know how long they were there, but they finally moved to New York.

When I first met him, we were all New York guys.

He knew what he was doing and he could play the guitar.

The sound he got when he played with Johnny was such a key part of the Dolls sound.

New York was just unimaginably different back then.

The band faced a ton of setbacks in the early days.

We were just doing what we were doing and you could take it or leave it, essentially.

It would be me and Syl in a room and when we first went to Europe and would go to a restaurant, he knew all the waiters and they would treat him like a prince.

It was that kind of a thing.

The band eventually just got down to you and him near the end of the original run?

The band is so beloved now, it’s easy to forget you were really struggling back then.

It was several years, longer than the Dolls were together.

It’ll be a nice break.” I was doing a lot of singing in that time with Hubert Sumlin and I was doing the Harry Smith stuff.

We were just going to do one show.

I was like, “If we’re up and running, let’s go do this and see what happens.” Then we just kept doing it for I don’t know how long.

That was kind of devastating?

Every one of the Dolls was so different and so interesting.

Anyway, we persevered and got [bassist] Sami [Yaffa] in the band and just kept going?

It just kind of…we were exhausted.

It wasn’t ever a point of, “This is it forever.” We just kind of cooled it for a while and it just kind of lasted?

How was he doing.

I can’t say it was a shock, but it…I don’t know how to explain it, but physically there was a heavy weight on my chest?

I’ve seen people call the Dolls the “unluckiest band in rock history.”.

The band now is obviously done forever, right

I don’t have any intention of doing that, no

David Johansen, New York Dolls