Rock Chicks

by Alison Stieven-Taylor

  The guitarist with the Stilettos was Chris Stein, who became Debbie’s lover, soulmate and Svengali. He reignited her passion for music and gave her a real sense of purpose and direction. In 1974 Stein, along with the Stiletto’s bass player Fred Smith and drummer Billy O’Connor, formed a new band with Debbie. This line-up played under various names but didn’t last long. O’Connor dropped out and Smith bailed to play bass for Television.

  the name Blondie came from the constant cat-calls the platinium blonde got when out and about

  Stein and Debbie ran an ad in the Village Voice, which brought in drummer Clem Burke, then bass player Gary Valentine and keyboard player Jimi Destri. The five clicked. Blondie was born, the name coming from the constant cat-calls the platinum-blonde Debbie received from passers-by when she was out and about the street of New York.

  Debbie brought an overtly sexual charisma to a time when butch females ruled. Patti Smith, her antithesis, reportedly told Debbie to ‘get the fuck out of rock’n’roll’—although that may have been out of jealousy because Debbie was getting too close to Smith’s lover Tom Verlaine, frontman of Television. But Debbie certainly wasn’t interested in following Smith’s tomboyish lead. She knew that sex sells and she wanted to explore how far she could take it. She was challenging the female singer stereotype as much as Janis Joplin had.

  By 1975 Blondie was performing as the house band at underground club CBGB in the Bowery, along with the Ramones, Talking Heads, New York Dolls and Television. Blondie also took the stage at Max’s Kansas City—the irony of being the celebrity was not lost on Debbie, who often found herself sitting with Warhol and his posse.

  her natural shyness evaporated as she lost herself in her performance

  The club environment suited the seductive, sexy, punk-glam rock chick Debbie conjured on stage each night, her natural shyness evaporating as she lost herself in the performance. A petite 160 centimetres, Debbie was a Marilyn Monroe replica, in clinging, low-cut dresses and make-up that accentuated her enormous eyes, pert lips and high cheekbones framed by bleached blonde hair. She projected a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth persona, who sang about the dark side of human nature—lustful violence and psychotic tendencies—and seduced her audience with promises of intimacy. Her sexy manner playfully mocked the darkness that lay beneath the lyrics—death, violence and rape were delivered with an almost cruel ambivalence.

  In 1976 the band was signed to Private Stock Records, an independent label. Their first recorded song, written by Debbie with bass player Valentine, was produced by Craig Leon at Plaza Studios in New York. Originally titled ‘Sex Offender’, and changed because of concerns it wouldn’t get any airplay, ‘X-Offender’ was the first single from the band’s debut album Blondie, produced by Richard Gottherer, who at that time was known for his work with the Angels. When Private Stock was bought out by Chrysalis, the album was re-released at the end of 1977.

  With the Chrysalis muscle behind them, Blondie hit the road, performing with Television in Britain and supporting the Iggy Pop/David Bowie tour in the USA. Bowie and Pop both hit on Debbie backstage one night. It was ‘mind-blowing’ to be touring Debbie backstage one night. It was ‘mind-blowing’ to be touring with them, Debbie said, and having flirtations was ‘just the icing on the cake’.

  The re-released Blondie album launched other singles, including ‘In the Flesh’ and ‘Rip Her to Shreds’. Always prepared to shock, one night Debbie appeared on stage at CBGB in a wedding dress, which she proceeded to tear from her body while singing ‘Rip Her to Shreds’. ‘This is the only dress my mother ever wanted me to wear,’ she told the audience. Wearing the dress on stage would be the closest she got to being a bride.

  Blondie successfully melded pop and new wave punk with the musical tones of the 1950s girl groups. Debbie’s voice, which at times was almost lethargic in its little-girl delivery, could handle the gutsier, punk-rock moments of songs like ‘Rip Her to Shreds’. It separated Blondie from the other new wave bands.

  By the time the band went back into the studio in 1977 to record their second album Plastic Letters, guitarist Frank Infante was standing in on bass, replacing Valentine who had moved to LA. Plastic Letters spawned two singles: ‘Denis’, a reinterpretation of ‘Denise’ by Randy and the Rainbows, and ‘I’m Always Touched by Your Presence Dear’, which had been written by Valentine. Both singles made it into the British top ten, giving the band the exposure it needed on the other side of the Atlantic.

  Blondie successfully melded pop and new wave punk with the musical tones of the 1950s girl groups

  Towards the end of 1977 Blondie toured Australia, where ‘In the Flesh’ and ‘Rip Her to Shreds’ had reached the top five. In Brisbane there was a near riot when a concert was cancelled because Debbie had an upset stomach, supposedly as a result of eating too many cherries. Blondie came back to Brisbane at the end of their tour to honour the cancelled date.

  As soon as they came off the road, they were hustled back into the studio to make the next album. Recorded in Britain with producer/songwriter Mike Chapman at the helm, Parallel Lines launched Blondie into the big time. It reached number six on the American Billboard charts and included four major singles. ‘Heart of Glass’, by Debbie and Stein, reached number one in the USA and Britain. ‘Picture This’, written by keyboardist Destri, made the British top twenty, Stein’s ‘Sunday Girl’ went to number one in Britain and Australia, and ‘Hanging on the Telephone’, a cover of the Nerves song, reached the British top five. Another single, ‘One Way or Another’, written by new bass player Nigel Harrison and Debbie, hit the US top thirty. Harrison had been brought in to replace Infante, who could then go back to what he did best, play lead guitar.

  perceiving herself as a late starter—she was now thirty-six—Debbie was working at a relentless pace trying to make up lost time

  Parallel Lines secured Blondie’s place in rock’n’roll history, selling more than twenty million copies worldwide and making Debbie a mega-star. Photographers clamoured to snap the sexy songstress and her face began to appear not only on music rag covers but also in fashion and men’s magazines.

  As the media attention increased, Debbie became cagey. Because she conducted few interviews without Stein, some journalists suggested she was Stein’s puppet. That was far from the truth. Debbie was very much her own person. The press assumed the woman and the onstage extrovert were one and the same. But the offstage Debbie was shy and didn’t care to share her personal life with the world.

  she projected a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth persona, who sang about the dark side of human nature and seduced her audience with promises of intimacy

  In 1979 it was back into the studio for the fourth album, Eat to the Beat, produced by Chapman again. The album failed to recapture the brilliance of its predecessor and its performance in the US was disappointing, although the single ‘Atomic’ reached number one. Eat to the Beat was also released as a video album, the first of its kind. Chrysalis was getting maximum bang for its buck.

  Around this time Debbie tried her hand at acting in a full-length film, starring in the indie Union City, with Stein writing the score and Pat Benatar in the cast. As Debbie’s star continued to rise, her fellow band members began to feel like they were a backing band. As far as the record company was concerned Debbie Harry was Blondie and she was the only one who was irreplaceable. Understandably, the rest of the band were less than thrilled with this position. In a bid to counter this perception, and plump up deflated egos, the band launched the ‘Blondie is a Group’ publicity campaign in 1979, but it fell on deaf ears.

  Before the release of their next album Debbie worked with producer Giorgio Moroder to write ‘Call Me’, which featured in American Gigolo, starring Richard Gere. The song became a smash hit, topping the American and British charts.

  On the band’s 1980 album Blondie continued to br
eak new ground. Autoamerican featured the first mainstream pop song to incorporate rap. Written by Debbie and Stein, ‘Rapture’ is exactly what the song sent DJs and the listening public into and its video was played on the day MTV first went to air in 1981. ‘Rapture’ hit number one in the USA, as did the album’s other notable single ‘The Tide is High’, a cover of a song by Jamaican group the Paragons. Producer Mike Chapman used a host of session musicians to give Autoamerican its fuller, more opulent sound.

  Blondie had deteriorated into a cesspool of infighting fuelled by alcohol and drug abuse. It was nasty

  That same year Debbie played a down-and-out fairy godmother in Downtown 81, a film that followed a day in the life of graffiti artist and Warhol protégé Jean-Michel Basquiat (who appeared in the ‘Rapture’ video).

  Whether it was intentional or just bad planning, the release of Autoamerican coincided with the launch of Debbie’s first solo album Koo Koo, which was not well received by the music press. Koo Koo’s first single ‘Backfired’ didn’t even make it into the top thirty. The most startling thing about the album was its cover of Debbie’s face and neck seemingly pierced by giant nails. Koo Koo marked the beginning of a downward spiral, professionally and personally.

  Perceiving herself as a late starter—she was now thirty-six—Debbie was working at a relentless pace trying to make up lost time. In addition to her Blondie commitments and recording her solo album, she sported a mop of dark red hair in the film Videodrome with James Woods. The film, about a pirate TV channel that broadcasts snuff movies, became an 1980s cult classic.

  Blondie’s last album was released in 1982. The Hunter was clearly by a band under duress. Made to fulfill their contract with Chrysalis, the material reflected the crumbling relationships within the band. The album didn’t rate on the charts and its one single, ‘Island of Lost Souls’, barely made it into the US top forty. Blondie had deteriorated into a cesspool of infighting fuelled by alcohol and drug abuse. They hardly talked to each other. It was nasty.

  Debbie busied herself with other projects. In 1983 she recorded ‘Rush Rush’ with Giorgio Moroder for the soundtrack of the Al Pacino movie Scarface and also took to the Broadway stage with comedian Andy Kauffman in the play Teaneck Tanzi: The Venus Flytrap. The New York production was based on a successful London play, but whatever magic had existed in the original production seemed to have been lost in translation. It was canned by critics and canned by the theatre owner—closing after its first night.

  Then Stein became gravely ill. He had a genetic skin disease that flared due to chronic stress. He lost weight to the point of emaciation, prompting suggestions that he had succumbed to heroin. Debbie didn’t think twice about looking after him. That’s what you do when you are in a relationship, she said.

  There were many dark days ahead for the pair, their misery compounded by the fact that they went bust. Blondie ended up with ‘no record contract, no manager and we all had tax problems,’ she said.

  Debbie was facing forty and a bleak future. But she is nothing if not a survivor. She stood up to face the music with the same New Jersey bluntness she’d always displayed. ‘I do have to take responsibility for my stupidity and for things that happened to me.’

  The experience of going broke made Debbie smarter fiscally. She and Stein hadn’t bothered to look too closely at figures or contracts. Artistic abandonment had equalled financial ruin. She wasn’t taking that path again.

  When she signed to Geffen Records and reignited her career with the album Rockbird in 1986, she knew she had to cooperate with the record company if she were to have a future as a solo artist. Rockbird evolved over the years when she was nursing Stein, who had recovered sufficiently to perform on the album along with dozens of session musicians. Debbie co-wrote most of the songs, a number with Seth Justman, the former keyboardist for J Geils Band. The album’s only hit, ‘French Kissin’ was written by Chuck Lorre, a TV sitcom producer.

  Debbie was continuing her interest in film, appearing in Hairspray, an off-beat comedy centred around a TV dance show, with Ricky Lake, Sonny Bono, Divine, Ric Ocasek from the band the Cars and Pia Zadora.

  In 1987, after fifteen years together, Stein and Debbie parted ways. They remain friends, Stein marrying and Harry being the godmother of his children. She has successfully remained under the gossip columnists’ radar and the media has been unable to link her to anyone, male or female.

  Signed to Sire Records, the same label as Madonna, Debbie released Def Dumb & Blonde in 1989, the first album to bear the name ‘Deborah Harry’. This was closer to Blondie than her previous solo efforts and it spawned the dance hit ‘I Want That Man’, which went to two on the modern rock chart.

  The release of Def Dumb & Blonde coincided with Madonna’s Blonde Ambition tour. Debbie was on Sire Records’ ‘B list’ and it hurt.

  Debbie admitted it was hard going from being the ‘it’ girl to a less celebrated star—something all beautiful women in the entertainment world face at some point.

  But Debbie Harry was not going to be relegated to the bargain bin. In 1990 she recorded a duet with Iggy Pop, ‘Well Did You Evah!’ for an album of Cole Porter classics, performed in front of 72,000 people at the Summer XS concert headlined by INXS at London’s Wembley Stadium, and appeared in Tales From the Darkside: The Movie playing a suburban housewife who kidnaps a small child with the intention of having him for supper. Two years later she was on screen again in Intimate Stranger, playing a struggling musician who makes ends meet as a phone sex girl.

  Stein worked on Debbie’s 1993 rock-oriented album Debravation as co-producer, songwriter and musician. Members of R.E.M. also made an appearance and the album’s highest charting single, ‘I Can See Clearly’, made it into the top five in the British and American dance charts.

  Debbie left rock behind in 1994 to take up with New York band the Jazz Passengers. She enjoyed exploring a new musical dimension and was a guest vocalist on the band’s 1994 album In Love, along with Jeff Buckley and Mavis Staple, then spent four years as a permanent member of the band. One of the high points of the Jazz Passengers 1996 album, Individually Twisted, was Debbie’s duet with Elvis Costello, ‘Doncha Go Way Mad’. She stayed with the group until the reformation of Blondie in 1999. During this period she also recorded with Argentinean ska/jazz/rock band Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, on a cover of the Lennon/McCartney song ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’.

  the offstage Debbie was shy and didn’t care to share her personal life with the world

  No Exit was the first Blondie album to be released in seventeen years. But two of the original Blondie band members were left out of proceedings. Frank Infante and Nigel Harrison were replaced by Leigh Foxx on bass and guitarist Paul Carbonara. Infante and Harrison launched law suits against the rest of the band.

  But Blondie fans responded positively and No Exit’s first single ‘Maria’, written by original keyboardist Jimi Destri, became a surprise hit, topping the charts in fourteen countries. In the United States ‘Maria’ reached number fourteen on the Billboard top forty. No Exit also delivered Debbie an honour she would probably prefer to forget—the 2000 Guinness World Book of Records named her as the oldest female vocalist to reach number one in Britain.

  In 2000 Debbie appeared on the Andy Summers tribute to jazz legend Charles Mingus, Peggy’s Blue Skylight, singing ‘Weird Nightmare’. On stage again, she was in the emotionally dark play Crave by English playwright Sarah Kane, who hanged herself at the age of twenty-eight. Crave—and Debbie—received rave reviews, with Ben Brantley in the New York Times stating that she gave a ‘subtle, pitch perfect performance’. She also appeared in a number of indie films: The Fluffer (2001), Spun (2002) and Deuces Wild (2002).

  Another Blondie album, The Curse of Blondie, was released in 2003. Giorgio Moroder produced the single ‘Good Boys’, which became a hit on the dance club scene and was the album’s only real
chart success. Curse was more aligned to the Blondie of old, but it wasn’t Parallel Lines by any stretch and many thought it was time they called it a day. The band followed up the album with a tour to Japan and Australia as well as more dates in Britain. Another tour—of South America and the USA—and another film, Full Grown Men, followed.

  Now in her sixties, Debbie hasn’t slowed down. In 2006 she was back on stage in The Show (Achilles Heels) at the Kitchen Theatre in New York, penned ‘Dirty and Deep’ as a song of support for embattled singer L’il Kim, which was available as a free download, and sang ‘New York, New York’ with Moby for his best-of album. Still considered one of the great beauties, Debbie was named as one of the stars of the MAC Viva Glam VI campaign.

  In 2006 Blondie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Frank Infante and Nigel Harrison were part of the induction in name only. Debbie—reportedly still furious at their failed attempt to sue her—and Stein refused to allow them to perform. Infante’s altercation with Debbie at the event, when he pleaded with her to let him play, generated more publicity than the band’s actual performance.

  The same year Stein and Debbie dropped keyboardist Jimi Destri when Blondie toured the USA with the New Cars fronted by Todd Rundgren. Citing drugs as the reason for his sudden departure, Debbie despaired that Destri was still battling the same demons he had twenty years earlier.

  she left rock behind in 1994 to take up with New York band the Jazz Passengers. She enjoyed exploring a new musical dimension

  Although Debbie has broken down many doors during her career, she believes women have regressed, that the musical rebellion has lost some of its oomph. She says music doesn’t have an edge anymore. ‘When Blondie were starting out ... we were fighting the idea that the only decent music was the Eagles or Chicago.’