Erika Harding · Public domain

Sylvain Mizrahi, born in Cairo to a Syrian Jewish family that left Egypt after the 1956 Suez Crisis, co-founded the New York Dolls and helped invent the band's glam-punk look before he'd fully learned to play guitar for it. As Sylvain Sylvain he was the group's rhythm guitarist through its foundational early-1970s albums, reunited with surviving members for three more records between 2004 and 2011, and worked in music for five decades despite living with dyslexia throughout.