by Debbie Harry
Page to page in my teenage dream . . .
I’m not living in the real world
And in a way that’s how it was. That year, Blondie was on the cover of Rolling Stone and I was on the cover of Us magazine and other magazines around the world. I’ve been photographed so many times by so many people—Chris Stein, Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Avedon, Mick Rock, Roberta Bayley, Brian Aris, Chalkie Davies, Bob Gruen, Christopher Makos, Francesco Scavullo, Bobby Grossman, the Earl of Lichfield, and more. In the process, I learned what to look for in a photograph. I’m definitely a visual thinker. When I get ideas, I tend to see them as images rather than something my feelings create. My songs are moving pictures. I watch to see where they go; I adjust the character or the lighting and maybe come up with a soundtrack.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved movies and television, been mesmerized by what’s on the screen. Feeding into this was a lifelong love of dressing up and experimenting. Of imagining who I wanted to be and by extension who I might become. In the early days of Blondie, I had the security of having a role to stand behind. I was always very interested in the idea of being in movies, and Chris was interested in writing music for film. As Blondie became more popular and my face was in so many magazines, movie scripts came in from all directions. Most were little more than exploitation pieces that read like they had been written on someone’s coffee break: “beautiful rock ’n’ roll singer in a band plays crummy clubs and takes a bunch of drugs.” Nothing at all beguiling, until Union City.
Union City was an art house movie. Marcus Reichert, the director, was also a novelist and a painter whose work was in a number of small galleries. Set in small-town fifties New Jersey, it’s the story of Lillian, whose paranoid husband, Harlan, played by Dennis Lipscomb, is less interested in her than in catching whoever he believes is stealing bottles of milk from in front of their door. Lillian tries in vain to please him, but as he becomes increasingly psychotic she amuses herself with the building superintendent. Actually, the husband was a victim of PTSD from World War II, although it’s not really stated in the movie. Nobody talked about that back then; it wasn’t even a “syndrome.” If you had problems you had to grin and bear it and be a man, and if you were a woman you had to do the same, by taking one of the roles designated for girls in those days. That’s how things were when I was growing up. That was the restrictive milieu I was groomed to perform in—and that I ran away from. Lillian was very much alone in her own private world and I could relate to that.
I had been in movies before, but the Lillian character was my first real lead role. It wasn’t a cameo, I wasn’t glamorous, and I didn’t sing. Chris wrote music for the film and much later Nigel and I wrote a song entitled “Union City Blue,” but it was not about the movie. Coincidentally, this was a period when “Heart of Glass” was in the charts, yet Blondie was on suspension for not fulfilling its contractual obligations to the record label, which meant we weren’t recording new material and supplying them with the requisite number of albums as per our contract. None of the actors were particularly well-known but they displayed a spectacular array of attitudes and characters—so good to work with. Pat Benatar was in it too, cute as a hot button and not at all camera shy; we were both on the same record label and I think that she had just released her first album. The guy who played her husband, Tony Azito, was a Broadway song-and-dance man who died tragically young. Taylor Mead played a neurotically hilarious neighbor. Everett McGill played Larry Longacre, the janitor who became my lover. C. C. H. Pounder—who was in one of my all-time favorite movies, Bagdad Café—made a brief appearance as a woman with nine kids and a husband, looking for an apartment. The makeup man, Richard Dean, was a talented illustrator who made drawings of all the different characters and their looks and makeup. Richard went on to work for NBC for many years. I think I still have his drawings of me, somewhere. Our DP, Edward Lachman, was under the radar, calling himself Eddie Lumiere, at the time.
It was a short shoot because it was very low budget, maybe a few weeks. The first day on set I was quite nervous, worrying about remembering my lines. It was so different in so many ways from singing in a band. A different pace, a different sense of timing, and a different kind of intimacy. There’s no audience, no one to feed off; there’s a crew and the director but they’re all busy doing their job so you do your job and hope you do it well. When it was done, Chris and I watched it together. I think he was more nervous than I was, nervous for me, wanting it to be good for my sake. I think he was pleasantly surprised. I’m the one who always thinks I could be better; you know how that is. But the cinematography and the lighting were so beautiful. The whole movie had a great painterly quality to it. Marcus, the director, now lives exclusively as a painter, in France. At one point he wrote a sequel to the movie but he couldn’t get the money to do it.
I remember thinking, If you don’t like it you don’t ever have to make another movie. But I just took to it. I really enjoyed being a character and telling a story in pictures, taking direction, sharing a vision. “Blondie” was a role that I created, and if you think about it, it’s one of the longest-running roles in rock. But the Union City experience was less like a collaborative creation because Marcus was clear about what he wanted, who the character was, and what he needed from me. So naturally, after that experience I wanted to do more films.
On the set of Union City with director Marcus Reichert
Amos Chan
Chris and I were planning to do a remake of Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville, a futuristic French film noir from 1965. We would be the producers and Amos Poe would direct. I was to play the female lead, Natacha von Braun, the part that Anna Karina played in Godard’s movie—and Robert Fripp would be the detective antihero, Lemmy Caution, who had been played by Eddie Constantine. Robert, the remarkable guitar player and composer who cofounded the British rock band King Crimson, became a friend after he moved to New York and worked as a solo artist and producer. He sat in with us at one of our CBGB’s shows in May 1978 and he made many guest appearances as well as playing on Parallel Lines, in “Fade Away and Radiate,” the song Chris wrote about my falling asleep in front of the TV screen. Robert and I dressed in character and did some screen tests. You can still find it on the Internet.
Chris and I had met with Godard in person and told him we wanted to do the movie. He said, “Why? You’re crazy,” but he sold us the film rights anyway for one thousand dollars. We found out later that he didn’t own the rights, but that’s not why the movie didn’t materialize. One element was that we knew nothing about producing a film, but the other was that our record company didn’t want us doing it. There was a similar problem when Robert Fripp asked me to sing on a record with him; our record company wouldn’t allow it. And later on, when I was sent a script for Blade Runner, the record company blocked that too—and I really wanted to do that movie. I’m sure it would have helped us sell records, in any case. But it seemed that the higher we got on the totem pole, the less they wanted us to do anything except for Blondie. Especially me. Chris had an outlet taking photos—he shot the sleeve for Robert Fripp’s new album—and for his own company, Animal Records, he produced albums like Iggy Pop’s Zombie Birdhouse and Gun Club’s Miami. He also produced Walter Steding for Warhol’s label Earhole, and an album by Gilles Riberolles and Eric Weber from the French rock-disco duo Casino Music, and also the soundtrack for the landmark hip-hop film Wild Style, plus a whole slew of other ventures.
I loved fooling around and experimenting, but there’s no point if it lands in a lawsuit. The music business is a business like every other, but art and commerce make for uneasy bed partners. “Can’t live with you, can’t live without you.” I didn’t choose to be an artist to have other people telling me how to create. We felt a deep need for creative freedom, a day-to-day rattling away on the bars of our emotional cages.
So, the bell rang and it was time to deliver another Blondie album. During a short break in a yearlong U.S. tour, we
went into the Record Plant studio to start working with Mike Chapman on Eat to the Beat. The good news was that our manager Peter Leeds wasn’t lurking in the studio putting the pressure on and making us crazy. We had finally cut all ties with him, although we couldn’t do so without allowing him to own 20 percent of our future. But now we had to find new people to represent us, which meant endless meetings with businesspeople trying to persuade us how wonderful they were and how good they’d be for us. We interviewed with everyone from Shep Gordon to Sid Bernstein to Bill Graham to Jake Riviera. It’s hard to think of anything more distracting when you’re supposed to be making a record. So, we canceled the sessions.
But when we started again two months later, it went really, really fast. We finished the album in about three weeks. Maybe it was because after all that time on the road we could record a lot of it live. But what I remember most is sitting in a lounge in the studio, trying to write a lyric, feeling really hard-pressed because the tracks were being put down and I didn’t have a clue about what I was going to sing. Maybe that’s why some of the songs are so minimal. Take “Atomic.” That song sort of happened on the spot. Jimmy had come in with this music that sounded like a Morricone score from one of those fabulous spaghetti westerns by Sergio Leone. I just started basically fooling around with the lyrics and making fun of it. I didn’t think it would stick, but it did, and people love that song. And in fact, the song has resonated through the years to the point that most recently there was a movie entitled Atomic Blonde. The lead character, who was played by Charlize Theron, was styled in my Blondie image. The album was all original songs this time, no covers, including funk, reggae, disco, even a lullaby, but it was also our most rock album, and the first album we recorded knowing that we really had an audience waiting to hear it. Our first single was “Dreaming.” Sometimes Chris would give me a phrase that he’d had in his head while working on the music—in this case, “Dreaming is free”—and I’d write the rest, like I was writing the theme for a film. It was our first single from the album and went to the top of the British charts, our fourth UK number one in two years. The second single, “Union City Blue,” wasn’t released in the U.S. but made the UK top twenty. The third, “Atomic,” put us back at number one.
Blondie went straight back on the road once the album was done. We took some days off in Austin, Texas, to make a cameo in a movie called Roadie, whose young director, Alan Rudolph, came from the Robert Altman company. This was the first gig our new manager, Shep Gordon, got us. Shep also managed Alice Cooper, and we signed with him on a handshake, no contract. Roadie starred Meat Loaf, who was bigger than life in every sense. At the other end of the size scale, the film also had a number of dwarf actors. There was one scene in a café where a fight broke out with the dwarves and a few of us actually got roughed up, because those little guys were very active and very, very strong. It was chaotic and a lot of fun. Blondie also recorded a rock treatment of the Johnny Cash song “Ring of Fire” for the soundtrack of the movie. Chris’s hearing was never the same after he got squirted in the ear during the fight scene.
We took another short break to make a video for each of the songs on the album. I remember our having conversations with the director David Mallet about how all the material on the album seemed to lend itself to cinematic storytelling. The visual side of Blondie was always very important to Chris and me, and since you didn’t need to have much money to make videos then, David managed to sell the idea to Chrysalis. Most of the videos were shot around New York except for “Union City,” which we shot at the docks along the Hudson on the Jersey side.
It was December 1979, “Dreaming” was at the top of the British charts, and we’d flown to London to rehearse for a major tour that would begin the day after Christmas. Soon after we arrived, we did an in-store appearance in London at a record shop on Kensington High Street. This little shop was mobbed by thousands of fans. The whole street was blocked and the traffic had ground to a halt. The police arrived to close off the street; we’d never had a street closed off for our benefit before. Looking out of the window to see a crowd of people screaming was fantastic. It was like Beatlemania. It was Blondiemania! Coincidentally, we met Paul McCartney on that trip. He was standing in front of our hotel as we were boarding our bus. He knew vaguely who we were and he was very relaxed and friendly, and of course Clem was out of his mind. Clem was and is Beatlemania personified, and was totally infatuated with Paul McCartney. Paul was very nice. He chatted awhile with us until his wife, Linda, showed up and dragged him off.
A crew from 20/20, an American weekly TV news show on ABC, was following us around London on that trip. They were doing a story on the new wave scene and the rise of Blondie. They filmed the crowds at the record store and they came to the Hammersmith Odeon, where we played eight shows this time, headlining, all sold out. Tony Ingrassia, who was living in Berlin at that time, flew in to choreograph and stage-direct us. Robert Fripp guested on a song with us every night. On our last night, Iggy Pop came onstage for the encore. He sang “Funtime” and it really was a fun time, a big ongoing party. Joan Jett was there; the Runaways were in London to record an album that was never made. We saw her outside the Hammersmith Odeon, arguing with the guy at the ticket office who said she wasn’t on the list, so we scooped her into our bus and she came in with us.
Joan was in our hotel room the next day when the 20/20 people interviewed Chris and me. They asked Chris what it was like to live with “the sex symbol of the seventies,” and he answered, “I couldn’t be happier.” When the interviewer pressed for more he said, “As an ego boost to a man, it’s fantastic.” The questions were starting to drive me crazy. Earlier I’d complained to Joan about having these people up my ass all the time. Joan had been emptying the minibar simultaneously and I think Chris introduced her to the interviewer. Joan went in front of the camera and said, “Fuck you, ABC!” flipping them off with both hands.
It was the end of January 1980 when we left the UK. Eat to the Beat was number 1 on the UK charts and a platinum album in the U.S. We flew back to New York on the Concorde. In three hours we were home. Shot through the air like a rocket ship; I felt like an astronaut.
9
Back Track
Jody Morlock
Chris Stein
What’s in the woods? Every morning, I let the dogs out for their first piss of the day. Lately, one dog runs toward my neighbor’s property, then freezes. She stands at the edge of the wall—something I can relate to—and barks in bursts of three for as long as I let her. It’s a very excited kind of barking, almost hysteria, but she doesn’t seem to lose her voice. She can bark for thirty minutes or more and I don’t hear a single scratchy note. No canine laryngitis for this little lady. What a valuable vocal technique, and what might she have to teach me here? Special, secret doggie vocal skills . . . However as a rock singer I have clearly stood on the edge hysterically bursting into an excited version of “One Way or Another.”
Well, I didn’t sit down to write about the damn dogs, really, although I do get my entertainment dollars’ worth from their antics. What I was trying to do was come up with a name for my book, this hike down memory lane. Today’s nominee is Tempered Glass. Tempered glass is manufactured to be tougher than its brothers and sisters through exerting heavy compression on its exterior and heavy tension on its interior. It’s designed to crumble into pieces rather than explode into jagged shards when subjected to high pressure. And that would be me. Tempered to take the hits without flying into dangerous pieces. I like that. And, of course, there’s the reference to “Heart of Glass.” Another contender is Matter-Antimatter; just a small cog, a tooth on one of the infinite gears that run the universe. One of the earlier titles I came up with was Perfect Punk—because I’m punk through and through and have been from my very first breath. The other day, just for fun, I looked up the etymology of “punk” in an older Webster’s dictionary. I was surprised to learn that one possible origin was from Unami, an Algonquian langu
age local to New Jersey. Definition: “Wood so decayed as to be useful for tinder to light a fire. A touchwood.” I like this meaning. It’s cool. I’d heard a number of definitions for “punk,” from Shakespeare’s “whore,” to a lowlife kid, to a jailhouse sex toy. At least the Algonquians had a somewhat higher purpose for “punk.” Face It became my title choice for three reasons: 1) from all the fan art portraits I have collected over the years, 2) because of all of the photos taken of me, 3) and finally, because I have had to face it in order to do this memoir.
But let’s get back on track. The book, remember? Well, “remember” is both the keyword and the bugaboo. Not just trying to remember but reliving all the shit of my life, instead of just moving ahead from day to day into new shit. The sheer living of it back then was already more than enough. It’s a chemical challenge to have to experience it all over again. When I was a brat, I would threaten my parents or anyone who treated me badly with, “You’ll be sorry when I’m rich and famous!” And who exactly is sorry now? I wonder as I clutch my fame in my well-manicured fingers.
Fame was a sensual sort of feeling, initially. It felt like having sex, a wash of electricity coursing through your fingers and up your legs, sometimes a flushed feeling at the base of your throat. It was exciting, but at the same time strangely anticlimactic. Maybe because it didn’t come in one big explosive rush. Fame built itself more gradually, punctuated by moments that would pull you up short and make you think, It’s working, whatever “it” is. But then you’d just keep moving, like a moth drawn to the flame or a horse straining for the dangled carrot, as Chris liked to put it.
Allan Tannenbaum
Those times when we came closest to real rock ’n’ roll madness: The show we played at Max’s before leaving on that first Iggy tour, the room so oversold that someone—probably our manager—called the fire department, and I was onstage watching all these helmets and uniforms trying to wade through the crowd. They shut us down twice but we kept on playing. Then there was the in-store at Our Price Records in London, when there was such a mob that the cops had to block off the street. Or Germany, where we had fans clinging to our bus or throwing themselves in front of it. All these things happened while we were scuttling along from place to place in a state of chaos. There was no time to really take them in. But as the new decade began, for a precious moment the machine stopped. It was late January 1980, we were back in our apartment on West Fifty-Eighth Street with no suitcase to pack or plane to catch, and Chris was able to tend his plants on the terrace. Suddenly there was room to breathe, to shake off the vertigo of being in constant movement and review what we’d achieved.