It’s a fair bet that The Clash, The Ramones and The Sex Pistols never would have existed, or at least not in the form the did, were it not for The New York Dolls.

Yet those three acts are enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame while the Dolls aren’t. Does the snub bother front Doll David Johansen?

Apparently not.

“I went to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., once. Ever been there?” Johansen asks during a brief telephone interview. “You didn’t miss much.

“I’m not really interested in it,” Johansen says. “I’m not much of a club guy, you know?”

Johansen clearly isn’t interested in living in the past.  Remind him that the Dolls broke-up in Tampa in 1975 and he shoots back, “Is that where it was? I knew it was around there somewhere.”

The band was camped out in a motel run by drummer Jerry Nolan’s mom at the time. “I think it was called Bates Motel,” Johansen quips.

Still, the past has a way of inserting itself into the future.

The Dolls created a sensation in the early ‘70s. Their look smeared together street tough and drag queen styles, while their music was bare-knuckled rock ‘n’ roll that presaged punk but was at odds with just about anything else around at the time.

Critical kudos and gobs of press couldn’t buy them hits, though, and “New York Dolls” (1973) and the all-too-aptly titled “Too Much, Too Soon,” (1974) were mostly ignored by the record-buying public.

After the 1975 break-up, Johansen began a solo career and had his biggest success with his lounge-lizard persona Buster Poindexter. Nolan and guitarist Johnny Thunders and Nolan formed the equally short-lived Heartbreakers. Guitarist Syl Sylvain recorded on his own and with Johansen, while bassist Arthur Kane struggled with drink and drugs before getting clean in the ‘90s. His story is told in the must-see film “New York Doll.”

Thunders and Nolan died less than a year apart in ’91 and ’92, respectively, so the Dolls seemed like a dead issue until 2004.

Dolls fanatic Morrissey persuaded the three surviving Dolls to reunite for that year’s Meltdown Festival in England. The show was a smash, with the band mates finally witnessing first-hand the acclaim that had built for them in the years since their split.

Kane’s glory was short-lived, sadly.  He was diagnosed with leukemia not long after the Meltdown triumph and died.

Johansen and Sylvain carried on, however, with a new crew including former Hanoi Rocks bassist Sami Yaffa, guitarist Steve Conte, drummer Brian Delaney and keyboardist Brian Koonin, who has since left the band.

“We just got that one gig,” Johansen says of Meltdown. “And we got gigs at a couple other places and then we just kept playing.

“It’s kind of cool because we sort of followed it. We didn’t have any plan.  We’re taking the Taoist approach,” Johansen says with a nicotine-scarred laugh.

“One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This,” with guest appearances from Bo Diddley, Iggy Pop and Michael Stipe, was released in 2006. The follow-up, “’Cause I Sez So,” was released in May.

The new album reunites the Dolls with Todd Rundgren who produced the band’s 1973 debut.

“They did venture out of their comfort zone,” Rundgren told the Tribune in March, prior to the album’s release. True enough, “’Cause I Sez So” is far more diverse than the usual menu of raw rock on the earlier albums.

But the album also brings some of the Dolls’ long-time influences to the fore – Chicago blues (“This Is Ridiculous”), soul (“Nobody Got No Bizness”) and Brill Building pop (“Better Than You”).

Johansen’s solo years were marked by a musical restlessness that saw him exploring everything from synth-rock to jazz to country blues, but he he says he’s focused on the Dolls for now.

“Everybody’s doing their own thing in such a way that it complements everyone else,” Johansen says. “I’m just enjoying that at the moment. “