You can’t put your arms around a memory, sang Johnny. We remember this extremely charismatic song writer and musician, his songs brought us something that was beyond. He prevented us from falling into a rut, he gave us freedom to speak, act and think. Think in extraordinary way. Johnny’s spiky hair and born-to-lose looks inspired many music contributors for creativity and invention. Johnny never claimed himself to be a part of punk rock culture, no, he was just part of something called Art. Music art.

Johnny Thunders songs represent the true rock-and-roll masterpiece, taking back to those times when you could put on your leather jacket, smoke a cigarette, take your motorbike and ride it with the wind. Years of soul freedom and liberation from all conventions. Every letter of his lyrics and every sound of his music are full of call for liberation from any possible fear, being yourself and never serve the servants.

A quick biography sketch taken from rollingstone.com: “In a perversely brilliant casting maneuver, filmmaker Lech Kowalski picked Johnny Thunders to play Jesus in a 1982 documentary on New York junkie life. In actuality, Thunders was a Jesus noir, a trashy Jean Genet saint, his hard-fated life a furious, unfocused rebellion. Never more than a cult figure, he died in 1991, ready made for myth -- the last of the hell-bent rock & roll true believers. Even when Thunders started out in the '70s, that faith was anachronistic -- in the New York Dolls, playing Keith Richards to David Johansen's Jagger, the guitarist was trapped between two forms of parody: glitter (which inflated basic rock & roll) and punk (which deflated it). Thunders was instrumental in making the waters semisafe for the Sex Pistols, the Dead Boys, and the like, but his own playing, however sloppy, contained no irony: He rocked straight out of Chuck Berry. The zeitgeist, though, demanded caricature -- and Thunders soon became a pathetic one, a kamikaze sadder than Sid Vicious, because Thunders had real talent.

When the Dolls predictably imploded, he just as predictably continued -- and his records have all the power of an apocalyptic party, a stumbling dance toward annihilation. So Alone, with help from ex-Pistols Paul Cook and Steve Jones, the underrated Only Ones, Steve Marriott, and Phil Lynott, remains his most cohesive set, and it's terrific, dangerous music. With the Heartbreakers (guitarist Walter Lure, ex-Doll Jerry Nolan on drums, ex-Television bassist Richard Hell) his work was shakier, but D.T.K. (with Billy Rath, who replaced Hell) features savage live versions of the band's anthems "Chinese Rocks" and "Born To(o) Lo(o)se," while L.A.M.F., the Heartbreakers' ragged debut (which has seen several expanded reissues over the years) remains the definitive Thunders statement; like D.T.K., it kicks with a desperate power.

While these 1977 recordings are out of print domestically, the three-disc career retrospective You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory contains both L.A.M.F. and D.T.K., along with most of two other unavailable LPs, Live at the Speakeasy and Live and Wasted: Unplugged, 1990. Que Sera, Sera (currently available only as an import) is surprisingly tidy Stones-ish rock, lacking only an imaginative drummer.

New Too Much Junkie Business, despite the presence of veteran Stones producer Jimmy Miller, suffers from wretched sound; it's worth checking out, however, for Thunders elegy for Sid Vicious, "Sad Vacation." Stations of the Cross, music originally intended for the Kowalski documentary, isn't a bad intro to Thunders -- the live release collects almost all his "greatest hits." Thunders met his inevitably sad end in 1991, setting off the equally inevitable flurry of archival releases on obscure indies (primarily in the U.K., where he enjoys a greater cache than stateside), the bulk of which will take some effort to track down, if you must. (PAUL EVANS/BUD SCOPPA) “.

Thank you, Johnny for being the way you were, thank you for saving me from hard times of diffidence and anonymity, thank you for opening the world of music and freedom. You are alive within us, your fans. King of the streets, of rock-and-roll and self-relief Johnny Thunders will live forever.