The last time New York Dolls frontman David Johansen and bass-player Arthur "Killer" Kane were communicating was when they were bawling each other out in a Florida car park 30 years ago.

After an acrimonious parting, their career paths were very different indeed. Johansen continued as an enfant terrible of the American indie scene while Kane found God and joined the Mormon Church.

Three decades on the catalyst for their unlikely reunion is miserabalist Mancunian Morrissey, who was curating the famously eclectic Meltdown Festival on London's South Bank.

His first memories of the Dolls were a 1973 appearance on TV rock show The Old Grey Whistle Test when disgruntled prog-rock presenter Whisperin' Bob Harris disparagingly dismissed them as "mock-rock".

However, they provided the inspiration for thousands of British bands who would go on to forge a popular music revolution under the punk banner.

Kane, who lost fellow band members including Johnny Thunders to heroin, now lives just above the poverty line working alongside Women's Institute types in the Mormon Church's Family History Centre in LA.

An awkward, diffident sort of chap, he comes across as a sort of bewildered Jack Charlton and is completely thrown when the call from Morrissey came through.

However, he recovers his guitar from a pawn shop and is soon rehearsing in New York alongside original members Sylvian Sylvian and his former nemesis Johansen.

His reunion with his old enemy provides one of the most touching moments in the film which goes onto demonstrate Johansen's mischievous humour when he taunts his old friend with the Ten Commandments.

Despite Kane looking like he's a couple of chords short, the Meltdown gig is acclaimed a triumph and yet Kane appears happy to be returning to his clerking job with the Mormons.

Twenty two days later he was dead two hours after leukeamia being diagnosed.

Tim Evans