Face It

by Debbie Harry

  Since the Blondie tour began, I’d found myself back in the old routine of doing interviews. It’s the nature of the game. I can’t count how many times I was asked about my relationship with Chris and I always said the same thing. Chris is one of the most important people in my life, if not the most important. I love Chris deeply and I always will. He’s a great friend. And I am godmother to their two girls, Akira and Valentina. It was unfortunate that we were put through the wringer so much. Marriages and partnerships break up under financial pressures alone and with us there was so much more going on than that. And we will have moments of doubt when we think the whole thing is impossible and we can’t go on.

  Dennis McGuire

  I STARTED THE NEW MILLENNIUM WITH A STUPID ACCIDENT. WE WERE in London, the tour bus was leaving any minute, and it would be a long drive, so I decided at the last second to grab a sandwich for the trip. We were on Kensington High Street and there was a place—it’s burned down now—where I had bought some good sandwiches a few times before. So I ran across the road and into the shop. Only this time, the plate-glass door was closed and I slammed headfirst into my reflection. Smack! The sound of the impact echoed through the shop. I barely saw the startled customers, with their mouths full of sandwich, gaping at me before I passed out. I lay on the ground at the entrance in a semiconscious state, our tour manager Matthew Murphy hovering over me, asking if I was all right. I was surprised that I was all right. I don’t remember if I got a sandwich, but I do remember getting onto the bus, feeling very stupid, with a bloody nose and a bright red bump on my forehead. The black eyes came later. So did the whiplash. I couldn’t believe that I gave myself whiplash just by running into a door.

  Do you remember those segmented bamboo wiggle snakes? You know, those cheap little toys sold in Chinatown? How those snakes could move horizontally but not vertically, and they made that clickety-clackety bamboo sound? Well, it was after I ran into the plate glass that my spine started clacking and creaking like a wiggle snake. I tried massage and chiropractic adjustments. Sometimes they helped, sometimes they hurt. I preferred acupuncture, partly because it’s got “punc” in it (having a punk attitude—holding stubbornly to an underground sensibility—has served me well). Instead of having my back adjusted, what I do is crouch, much like a peasant woman selling things in a street market, and then simply throw myself on the floor. I thrust myself backward with some force and I flop and hear that satisfying pop in one movement. Then I roll around a bit and stretch. It’s a fine thing, that feeling of being well-adjusted/self-adjusted. Ha!

  But things did not feel so well adjusted working on the next new Blondie album. Here was the problem. I was in a boys’ club. I wasn’t trying to be in a boys’ club, but the boys’ club had been a constant in my career. There were few women in the New York scene—in fact, in the whole music industry in the 1970s—and being a female lead singer in an otherwise all-male rock band was rare. But I wanted to do music and I didn’t give a shit if that meant being in a boys’ club. My intimate relationship with Chris undoubtedly helped me navigate all the testosterone. Chris is all man, but he’s not a bully, not someone who’s always trying to control things. He’s flexible and he’s smart. Jimmy though was a tough customer, a real macho Brooklyn guy, who had more than a little attitude when it came to women.

  Our manager Allen came to a rehearsal when Jimmy was being typically abusive, and he was infuriated by this lack of respect. Jimmy would frequently speak to me with his eyes locked onto my breasts. Hello! Exasperating, irritating, demeaning of course, although sometimes the sick punk in me felt flattered. Hey, I know what you’re doing, I see you staring at my tits and you can’t look me in the eye. Sure, maybe it’s backward, but as a woman, to know that I have that kind of magnetism gives me a rush. So, generally, I’ve been able to turn that sexual disrespect around and make it work for me, rather than against me. Gender play is seldom simple; it’s a complicated, shifting dance. We’re primal one minute, civilized the next, and everything in between. I did have some frustration getting some of my ideas carried out in the band and I would often be voted down. Sexism? Sometimes, undoubtedly, but I think more often it was a natural outcome of the band’s democratic structure. The majority ruled. So sometimes I won and sometimes I lost and I had to bite the bullet. Fair enough. And maybe, just maybe, some of my ideas sucked.

  I was the one who came up with the title for the new album, The Curse of Blondie, as a tongue-in-cheek homage to the great old black and white B-movies and an ironic comment on all that we had gone through. The plan was to release it in 2001, but it ran into all sorts of snags and it would take us two more years. Two thousand one was a lousy year. In April, Joey Ramone died of cancer, a terrible shock. I was devastated. I loved Joey. Not in a sexual way but as a singer and as a friend. He was the sweetest and friendliest person. I remember the early days when Punk magazine ran a comic-book story of Joey and me as star-crossed lovers. Our parents disapproved of our relationship, then Joey was kidnapped by aliens or something. Roberta Bayley, the door girl and self-appointed house photographer at CBGB’s, took photos of the two of us in bed for the story. It was so much fun.

  2001—Click+Drag 2.0 . . . New York was about to change.

  Tina Paul

  Then came 9/11. I was in my bedroom in NYC and I got a phone call from my friend Kerry. She said, “Are you watching TV?” I said no. I was actually looking out the window. I had a very clear view of the Twin Towers from my window and there was smoke coming out of one of the buildings. Kerry said, “Turn on the news.” I turned it on and I started watching the TV and the live coverage while at the same time looking out of my window. I saw the plane fly into the second tower. I was watching it live and watching it on TV, and watching them both was so trippy. A surreal feeling of not knowing exactly what I was seeing. Was it film footage or live reporting or reality? After 9/11, some of the people I knew became very afraid and wanted to leave New York right away. They were talking about things like storing cans of food and moving into the basement because we were under attack. I didn’t feel that way, not that kind of fear, but I was definitely in a state of shock. Really, I was in mourning. I was grieving. Within a two-week period after the attack on the Twin Towers, I went through a whole series of emotions: shocked, then very sad, then very angry, and very nostalgic about the old days. Around that time, I wrote this poem.

  RUSH OF SOULS

  The slated sky hung over the Hudson

  Reached across the wide waters

  And continued, a gray lurking potential above New Jersey.

  Landing lights flashed their warnings onto the tarmac

  At Newark.

  All this doubled in the glassy gliding river.

  I wait, weighted by ambitions, by desires,

  . . . . . oh what do I do.

  Many voices for many melodies confound me.

  A problem to speak my mind

  So many voices, so many times.

  But then there are indelibly clear moments scored plainly

  Shaping all time to come.

  Recently unsought

  My worldly view has stretched

  Emotions and instincts long left untouched but still intact

  Now roar to the surface surging into my vocabulary

  My voice breaks out

  I call for survival. Powerless, out of control, saddened

  Wakened where sleep kept comfort animal reactions

  Racing to live to keep life, the ordinary skills I use every day

  fall to

  A new proportion.

  How insignificant these talents will be in a roughened world.

  Walking, roaming, pacing the cage was some temporary relief.

  Distraction for a heart turned to a different tempo

  . . . . . my heart, my heart, my heart. . . . .

  Pounding me out of sleep into some static dimension

  Between my bed, the sky, the room, earth, the then, the now,

  And this space
is filled with fluttering—but no birds

  And alive with tiny blinking lights—but no bulbs

  And it is crowded with new voices

  Large and little, near and far,

  Those voices the sound of a boiling

  Thousands of them in confusion, bubbling, touching me.

  I feel the flutter, an electric tingle, not unpleasant

  And I know I have felt the rush of souls.

  When I was going through that mourning period I said to myself, Oh God, I wish it was the seventies again. I kept on wishing myself back to those early days, eventually coming to the inevitable conclusion that things would never be the same again.

  Chris and Barbara moved out of the loft on Greenwich Street and moved upstate. Their place had been only twelve blocks up from the towers and for months afterward you could still smell the smoke there. It was understandable, but it did come as a shock to me that they were even contemplating the move. Barbara was intent on getting out of downtown and raising her kids in a softer, safer environment. So, it made sense—and Woodstock was the perfect choice. I was heartbroken when they left. The thought of that kind of distance between us, of that separation . . . But in a way it was an enlightenment for me. Because their departure gave me a profound insight into something deeply rooted in me that I had never completely understood before. I was riding my bike along the Hudson when this sense of overpowering sadness washed over me. However, this time the sadness was infused with insight. I “saw” my sadness and it spoke to me: my heartbreak was the heartbreak of the abandoned child. Abandonment, the most enduring pain that always lay within me, waiting for its moment to consume me again. With that insight, something shifted in me finally. A new clarity, an acceptance, an acknowledgment, and a kind of release. That moment will live with me forever.

  Evidence of Love

  Chris Stein, 1976.

  AS I WAS LOOKING THROUGH EVERYTHING I CAME ACROSS A CUTOUT of a bee, signed by Jane. I think this must have been given to me recently because of the Pollinator connection which helps save honey bees. But if it wasn’t recent, it is so synchronistic, so totally appropriate, I was overjoyed by how perfect it is, I put it on a new T-shirt, orb-shirt, called BEE CONSCIOUS.

  So here are some, lovingly saved since the 1970s, a gallery of drawings and paintings done for me, likenesses of me by my fans. You must know by now how precious you are to me and totally amazed by what you’ve given me I am, because the act of making art is the important part. The art itself is just souvenirs . . . and beauty in the eye of the beholder.

  So for better or for worse, I have saved face. My collection of Fan Art is not only portraiture. The works include other things, other subject matter and figures, i.e., dolls and different ephemera with my likeness on them. It touched me, touches me still that another person would go to the trouble and time to create a piece of art and then give it to me. Many of these things aren’t even signed except for the evidence of love.

  14

  Obsession/Compulsion

  Jody Morlock

  Rob Roth

  Coal fueled the furnaces that heated our houses for most of my childhood. I loved to watch the coal delivery: The massive dump truck grinding to a halt beside the house; the dust-covered driver hooking together the metal chutes, with the final one placed into the open cellar window; the gleaming of those chutes—polished bright as silver from the years of rough coal sliding down their throats. Then the best part of all—the mesmerizing, satisfying climax—the electrifying sound a ton of coal made as it rushed down the chute and splashed into the bottom of the basement bin.

  Left to my own devices, as kids were in those days, I would sneak into the cool dark dampness of the basement to play in the coal bin. My father would toss those shiny black stones into the open furnace before he left for work and again when he came back home. No final glory as a glittering diamond for these bits of carbon, who were doomed instead to a death by fire. My mother wasn’t exactly thrilled by my coal obsession and especially the dirty little Debbie who would keep popping up in her spotless kitchen. What was the big deal? Hey, it was just coal dust all over my clothes. It brushed off just fine onto the floor . . . This was no doubt the same dust that had wrecked the lungs of and killed thousands of miners worldwide.

  The coal-fired furnace generated steam heat. Later, when we moved, we graduated to an oil heater and a forced-air system. There’s a story here about the origin of obsession and compulsion, if you’ll take the leap with me. The fuel delivery for our oil heater lacked the visual and auditory excitement of the coal delivery and it had a strong, unpleasant odor. However, what did grab me was the process. How it worked. Clearly, I had an instinct, or as I know now, some kind of genetic feeling, maybe even a calling, for plumbing and heating. But the concept of forced air also led me to another talent, or maybe another genetic predisposition. Singing. And over time, as I learned to create compression in my body as a singer, I could see myself as a kind of combustion engine or bellows. I now know that I am part of a forced-air legacy. Singing for me at first was a way to keep myself company and a way to say things without words. It was a release of air, often inspired by emotion. The difference between heating and singing is the moisture content in that forced air. Singing is hot and wet, and you can take that any way you want. Singing was a compulsion for me, something I was irresistibly drawn to. The need to create was an obsession, something that always preoccupied me.

  I’m trying to think if I have any other compulsions. I can certainly cop to some additional obsessive behaviors. At one time I’d gather all my nail clippings and flush them down the toilet—the same for every strand of hair I could pick off my brush. These traces of Debbie have disappeared into the sewers of city after city, in country after country, as I have toured the world. Eliminate all evidence. No trail to track me by . . . If I could, I would vacuum up every discarded skin cell and flush them away too, but even I have my obsessive limits. (Although if you’d seen me scouring my hotel bathroom for any drop of saliva left lying around, you might question that claim.) In fact, I get anxious at the mere thought of my secret identity being found out.

  Oh, and let’s not forget my campaign against the sprang-a-langs. These devilish, coiled deviants have threatened to betray me in the most embarrassing places. Not on my watch, you little bastards! You can’t be too careful, after all; my friend the rogue NYC art dealer got nabbed on a murder charge thanks to his sprang-a-langs . . . Those creatures, they are all so different from one another—and each tiny curl speaks volumes about its owner. When I find them, I flush them. But I worry about the one that got away.

  Speaking of obsessive creation, No Exit turned out to be pivotal for all of us. That surge of approval and recognition had a big effect on Blondie. On me too. It gave us new life. It fed the beast. Who knew we’d have stayed in the public consciousness after so many years away? But in an odd way, perhaps that long period off was a fortunate bump in the road. We had been forced to stop and when we came back we had to seriously rethink who we were and what direction we should take. I never wanted to make another “Heart of Glass” or “Hanging on the Telephone” and my one main condition for our getting back together was my demand to create new music. In the commerce-dominated pop world, artists are generally pushed to maintain the status quo. Artists who buck the pressure and evolve—like David Bowie or Lou Reed—are often applauded for it in the long run, but not without years of struggle, fighting to convince the moneymen that their new direction is valid and worth it. Getting such a good response to the new songs inspired us to write more. The Curse of Blondie was released in October 2003 and we went back on the road, bouncing back and forth across the globe just like the old days, except that it felt much easier than the old days.

  In 2006 we got news that Blondie would be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I couldn’t believe it. There were so many famous names I thought would have gotten in before us and Blondie was initially never taken that seriously by the music i
ndustry. I had never taken the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that seriously either, but to be honest it felt great to get that validation. We had flown the flag for NYC rock and helped bring our then-underground culture into the mainstream. So we showed up at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York for the big gala ceremony. Shirley Manson of Garbage gave a beautiful induction speech and we went out on the stage to get our statuettes. Each of us had a minute and a half to say something. I sent my heartfelt thanks to the girls who had been part of our musical journey, Tish and Snooky and Julie and Jackie. And then another part of Blondie’s past turned up and all hell broke loose.

  Frankie, Nigel, and Gary had been invited to the ceremony. They were sitting in the audience and decided to come up onstage. Frankie was in the mood for a fight. He grabbed the microphone and thanked the Hall of Fame for not writing him, Nigel, and Gary “out of rock ’n’ roll history.” We had left the awards platform and were onstage about to perform our song, but Frankie wasn’t finished: “One thing that could make it better is if we could perform for you tonight,” he said, “but for some reason some of us are not allowed to do that.” He called out to me, “Debbie. Is that allowed? No? We’d like to play with you guys! Me and Nigel. Not tonight? Pretty please?” Why did he think this was my decision, mine alone? Blondie always operated on a consensus basis.

  “Oh, you guys, it’s too late, please don’t beg!” Chris was furious. “They sued us,” he said, “and they wrote themselves out of the band’s history. You shouldn’t be forced to play with somebody because they did a couple of albums with you back in the past. I worked with Nigel Harrison for maybe four and a half years. Our bass player Leigh Foxx has been working with me and Debbie for twenty years.” The Hall of Fame had promised our manager that they weren’t going to let those guys go up. But maybe someone in the Hall of Fame didn’t think we deserved to be inducted and got back at us in some small way. There’s always politics. Or maybe they just decided that a fight would make good TV. When Billboard magazine did an article on the “ten most controversial Rock and Roll Hall of Fame moments,” Blondie made the cut. So did another band that was being inducted the same year as us. The Sex Pistols had turned down their invitation and Johnny Rotten sent Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone magazine, a letter that called the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame “a piss stain.”