What David Johansen's Story Can Help Us Understand About Brain Tumors

What was made public, and when

David Johansen fronted the New York Dolls, then reinvented himself as the lounge singer Buster Poindexter. He died on 28 February 2025 at his home in New York, aged 75.

His illness became public only weeks earlier. On 10 February 2025 Rolling Stone reported that he had stage 4 cancer and a brain tumor, and that a fall the previous November had broken his back and left him bedridden, needing round-the-clock care. The Sweet Relief Musicians Fund launched an appeal for his nursing and living costs.

Rolling Stone described five years of health problems kept private until then. Variety and PBS NewsHour reported his death at the end of that month.

Neither the type of the original cancer nor a cause of death was made public. This page does not fill those gaps. It explains the vocabulary those reports used.

Two very different things share the name "brain tumor"

A primary brain tumor starts in the brain or spinal cord. A metastatic brain tumor started somewhere else and traveled there.

The distinction changes everything. A metastatic brain tumor is made of the original cancer's cells. Lung cancer that reaches the brain is still lung cancer, and it is usually treated with drugs chosen for lung cancer. NCI notes that primary brain tumors, by contrast, rarely spread outside the nervous system, though they can spread within the brain and down the spine.

When someone with advanced cancer elsewhere is found to have a brain tumor, spread is the usual explanation. Only tests can settle it in any one case. Our page on metastatic cancer explains how cancers travel.

Among primary tumors, NCI ranks anaplastic astrocytomas and glioblastomas first at about 38%, then meningiomas and related tumors at about 27%. Pituitary tumors, schwannomas, CNS lymphomas, oligodendrogliomas and ependymomas follow.

Some are benign, meaning not cancer. That word offers less comfort here. The skull does not expand, so a benign tumor pressing on a critical structure can still be dangerous.

What a tumor does depends almost entirely on where it sits

NCI frames symptoms around anatomy rather than tumor type. General signs include:

• Headaches.
• Seizures.
• Changes in vision.
• Loss of appetite, nausea and vomiting.
• Changes in personality, mood, mental capacity and concentration.

A brain tumor can change how someone thinks, feels and behaves before anything else shows. Families often notice it first.

Seizures are the presenting symptom in about 20% of tumors in the upper brain, and NCI notes they can precede diagnosis by months or years when a tumor grows slowly. Over the whole illness, about 70% of people with primary brain-tissue tumors and about 40% with metastatic brain tumors have seizures.

How it is found

CT and MRI do different jobs and NCI describes them as complementary.

CT is fast, which matters when someone is unstable. It is better at showing calcium deposits, skull damage and very recent bleeding.

MRI shows soft tissue far better. It picks up tumors that CT would miss, shows swelling around them, and is the study of choice for the spinal cord.

Imaging alone is not a diagnosis. NCI stresses that a brain tumor must be told apart from other things that take up space in the skull: abscesses, tangles of blood vessels, and strokes. Biopsy confirmation is described as critical for a suspected primary brain tumor, by needle or during surgery.

What treatment involves

NCI lists five options for primary CNS tumors: surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, active surveillance, and supportive therapy.

Surgery has two goals: getting tissue for a diagnosis, and relieving pressure inside the skull by removing as much tumor as is safe. The limit is function. Surgeons take what they can without damaging the parts of the brain that make a person who they are.

NCI is careful about the evidence. Survival is better in people who have the tumor removed than in those who have only a biopsy. But that comes from observational studies, not randomized trials, and sicker people are less likely to be offered surgery at all.

Complete removal by surgery alone is rarely achievable, which is why radiation and drugs usually follow. Our page on brain metastases covers treatment when the tumor came from elsewhere.

When to get checked

There is no screening test for brain tumors. NCI notes that few definitive observations have been made about what causes them. Symptoms are the route in. See a doctor about:

• A new headache pattern, especially one that is worse in the morning, wakes you, or comes with vomiting.
• Any first seizure at any age.
• New weakness, numbness or clumsiness on one side of the body.
• New trouble with speech, vision or balance.
• A change in personality, memory or concentration that others notice.

Almost all of these have another cause. A first seizure in an adult always needs assessment.

What the survival figures cover

The 2026 count of about 24,740 new brain and other nervous system cancers in the United States, with about 18,350 deaths, is an American Cancer Society projection that SEER carries. Five-year relative survival, which SEER measures directly, was 32.9% for 2016 to 2022, and the median age at diagnosis is 61.

Read that with care. The SEER category counts malignant primary tumors. It excludes benign brain tumors, and it excludes brain metastases, which are recorded under the cancer they came from. It also averages tumors as different as glioblastoma and low-grade astrocytoma. Our page on brain tumors separates them out.

What this does not mean

Nothing here describes David Johansen's own tumor, treatment or cause of death, because none of that was made public.

Stage 4 cancer plus a brain tumor is not one diagnosis. How the two relate is a question only his own team could answer.

And the caregiving his family described is part of the illness, not a sideshow. Round-the-clock nursing, a broken back, lost income and a public appeal are the ordinary shape of advanced cancer for many households. That part generalizes far more widely than the medicine does.

Sources

• Rolling Stone, David Johansen Has Stage 4 Cancer. He's Asking Fans for Help — https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/david-johansen-cancer-diagnosis-1235260923/
• Variety, David Johansen, New York Dolls Frontman, Dies at 75 — https://variety.com/2025/music/obituaries-people-news/david-johansen-dead-new-york-dolls-1236324334/
• PBS NewsHour and the Associated Press, David Johansen dies at 75 — https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/singer-david-johansen-last-surviving-member-of-the-new-york-dolls-dies-at-75
• NCI PDQ, Adult Central Nervous System Tumors Treatment (Health Professional Version) — https://www.cancer.gov/types/brain/hp/adult-brain-treatment-pdq
• SEER Cancer Stat Facts, Brain and Other Nervous System Cancer — https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/brain.html

How this article was prepared

An AI-assisted editorial system helped prepare this page. No named medical reviewer has reviewed it unless one is listed.

The National Cancer Information Foundation publishes Cancer Explained. This page is for learning. It is not medical advice and does not suggest a test or treatment.

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