Good eyes, Tom, you unlovely meter maid, and a TBird player (in the far left corner) to boot - when else have the two most Fender-iconoclastic basses, Ric 4001 and TBird Rev, shared the same stage?!
But the explanation is plainly visible too, Killer Kane's Kast so to say, which has a somewhat illustrious bacckground:
In 2005 the documentary, New York Dolls: All Dolled Up, was released on DVD. The directors, rock photographer Bob Gruen, and his then wife, Nadya Beck, owned an early video camera and shot many hours of footage of the Dolls in the early 1970s. Edited down to 95 minutes, the black and white film shows the Dolls in different locales, such as backstage or at an airport, and documents several of the Doll's live performances in New York City and California. Kane appears in some of the footage wearing a plaster cast on his left arm. This was the result of his volatile girlfriend Connie Gripp (1947 - 83) attempting to cut off his thumb so that he would be unable to play bass anymore. In his autobiography, fellow bass player and Dolls fan Dee Dee Ramone mentioned Kane when discussing Connie, whom he himself later dated. Dee Dee and Connie's similarly violent and tumultuous relationship would inspire the 1977 Ramones song "Glad to See You Go".The TBird II played by the stand-in bassist must have been his though judging from the above pic. At some gigs Kane even just sang backing vocals as long as he wore the cast,
possibly for that Midnight Special performance he just pretended to be able to play and they didn't even send his signal through. If you watch his fretting hand and listen closely, you notice that there is a bass playing rock'n'roll lines in eighth notes/quavers at times, but that it isn't Arthur who is just hitting quarter, half and full notes and changing the root with the guitarists' chords due to his hands forced immobility. From the audio and over my laptop I'm unable to discern whether you can hear a bit of him or not.
Honorary feature:
Culprit Connie the Thumb (G)Ripper with yet another bassist victim!!!
No idea who the guy playing the TBird is though, but at least they put him on stage and did not hide him behind the amps, though obviously with the stage directions: "
No boots, no glam (a no less than legendary phrase here after all!) and dontcha ever move either!" He looks like they nicked him from a Foghat gig.
