David Johansen, the main vocalist for the New York Dolls, has died. He was 75.

Johansen’s daughter, Leah Hennessey, reports that he died at home in New York on Friday, February 28.

“David Johansen passed away peacefully at home, holding the hands of his wife, Mara Hennessey, and daughter Leah, in the sunlight, surrounded by music and flowers,” she tells PEOPLE in an exclusive statement. “After a decade of profoundly compromised health, he died of natural causes.”

“David and his family were deeply moved by the outpouring of love and support they’ve experienced recently as the result of having gone public with their challenges,” writes Hennessey. “He was thankful that he had a chance to be in touch with so many friends and family before he passed.”

In February, Hennessey announced that Johansen was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and a brain tumor.

“David has been in intensive treatment for stage 4 cancer for most of the past decade,” she stated. “Complications have continued ever since. He’s never made his illness public, since he and my mother Mara are normally pretty private people, but we feel obligated to do so now because of the growing financial strain on our family.”

Hennessey and her mother also donated money to cover his medical expenses after he fell and damaged his back.

Later, speaking exclusively to PEOPLE about her father, Hennessey said, “He’s very, very unwell, but he’s reading all the notes and getting in contact with people he hasn’t spoken to in many years. The relationship is definitely the greatest thing for him right now—and for all of us.”

She continued, “He’s absolutely with us—cognitively, emotionally, [but] he’s physically disabled.”

Hennessey remarked on her parents’ relationship, “Their love is mythological.” They are so in love every second of the day, and it’s great to be a part of and see.”

Johansen originally gained popularity as the lead vocalist of the New York Dolls, one of the first punk bands. He began his solo career in the 1970s, and in the late 1980s, he began playing cabaret under the moniker Buster Poindexter, most known for the song “Hot Hot Hot,” which is now a wedding classic.

Johansen was born and reared in New York’s Staten Island in 1950. His father sang opera before becoming an insurance salesman, while his mother worked as a librarian.

In 1988, Johansen shared with PEOPLE that he spent most of his school years “on another planet,” yet he recognized his passion for singing at a young age. Instead of attending college, he joined an avant-garde performing ensemble. In the late 1960s, he began working as the lead vocalist for the Staten Island band Vagabond Missionaries.

Johansen joined the New York Dolls in 1972. They released their self-titled first album in 1973. Their second album, Too Much Too Soon, arrived a year later. Though neither record was a commercial success, the band impacted subsequent generations as punk gained widespread popularity.

As Billboard put it in 2021, “There’s a slew of artists from the ’70s and beyond whose No. 1s would be unthinkable without the pioneering look, sound, and attitude of these glammed-up NYC proto-punks.”

The band was never accepted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but Johansen didn’t mind, telling the source, “To me, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame appears to be a racket.”

Johansen pursued a solo career, releasing four albums between 1978 and 1984. Then, in 1987, he debuted his alter ego, Buster Poindexter.

In 1988, PEOPLE characterized the figure as a “Vegas-style lounge lush and cabaret showman extraordinaire.”

Johansen explained that the moniker sprang from childhood teasing: “On the street, they called me Buster. Then they’d find me with books and nickname me Poindexter, so I’m sort of an intellectual punk or something.

Rolling Stone rated Johansen’s debut album “the party album of the year,” and it peaked at No. 40 on the Billboard 200. During his gigs, he’d share anecdotes about his rock and roll career between songs. He also appeared frequently on late-night television.

”I know some people think, ‘Oh, Johansen puts on a tuxedo and thinks he’s somebody else,'” he stated in 1988. “But it’s me, really.” Immersing yourself in a particular mood or sensation can sometimes help you transcend your limitations and achieve something. I’m not sure how essential it is, but it’s something. “It is entertainment.”

“Hot Hot Hot” from that first album became Johansen’s most popular song, despite his mixed views about it. He previously described it as “the bane of my existence.”

Johansen told PEOPLE in 2015, “Sometimes when you’re stuck with a hit, you have to sing it whether you want to or not. A song has different stages. But when I went to my nephew’s wedding and the band played it, and they had me get up and sing it, I thought, ‘Oh my God, this thing is like an albatross around my neck.’ ”

Johansen began acting in the late 1980s, appearing in Candy Mountain (1987) and Married to the Mob (1988). He played the Ghost of Christmas Past in the 1988 film Scrooged and later starred in The Adventures of Pete & Pete, Oz, and A Very Murray Christmas.

“I’m doing exactly what I want to do, and I’m having fun doing it,” he stated in 1988. ”Buster can live a fantastic life in the spotlight and take the blame for everything, and David can go home. “It is the most brilliant thing I have ever done.”

Johansen went on to say that although the New York Dolls were “hot stuff,” Buster was “more relaxed.”

Lounge shows saw a comeback in the years after Poindexter’s debut. “Like most of what I do, it becomes popular ten years later,” Johansen told Interview Magazine in 2014.

In 2004, Johansen reformed the Dolls. He told NPR at the time that he had to relearn the band’s lyrics.

“I thought, ‘God, how did I write that song?'” “This is fantastic,” he remarked. Johansen performed with them till 2011. “We originally planned to perform one show, but ended up performing for eight years and traveling around the world three times,” the musician told PEOPLE.

In 2015, Johansen resumed his Poindexter performances at New York’s famed Café Carlyle. “I just decided to do an act that only plays New York, that can only play New York,” claimed the actor.

Poindexter stated that he “can sing any song I want” and classified his personal musical choices as what he “digged,” adding, “I don’t pay much attention to anything that doesn’t turn me on.”

Johansen and actress Cyrinda Foxe were married from 1977 until 1978. From 1983 to 2011, he was married to photographer Kate Simon. In 2013, he married artist Mara Hennessey and became the stepfather to her daughter.

One Night Only, directed by Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi, revolved around his cabaret act.

It also included Hennessey’s interviews with her father.

“Initially we just talked about using my interviews as research, but as I kept shooting, David started to open up a little, and the rather intimate footage became a through line in the film,” she told Cultural Magazine in 2023.

“It had a poignancy to it and a beauty,” Scorsese said of Johansen’s performances to the Los Angeles Times.

Johansen is survived by his wife and a daughter.

— Cara Lynn Shultz contributed additional reporting.