Face It

by Debbie Harry

  We started recording a few weeks before Christmas 2015, then we broke for the holidays. And that’s when David died. January 2016. Going back into that studio having just lost David was more than emotional. David had such a profound effect on us in our early days, giving us our start, taking us out into the real world when he asked us to tour with him and Iggy in 1977. We loved David. He was a visionary and a Renaissance man. He was beautiful and he was fearless. To choose to go out the way he did, by making such a powerful, courageous artistic declaration, is something so rare and so smart, but that’s how he always was. We were all conscious of being in the environment where David had concluded his career with Blackstar. I believe a bit of David’s spirit was there in the room when we made our album.

  Steve Rosenthal, who owned the studio, had told us that we would be the last band to do a full record there. Gentrification and rising prices were forcing him out and the studio would close that March. So there was a kind of an end-of-an-era feeling, but at the same time a real excitement—making this album with all these great musicians and all this fresh new music. Joan Jett flew in to sing backing vocals on a song that Chris and I wrote, “Doom or Destiny,” the most punk rock song on the album. Joan has been a friend since the seventies, when we first went to L.A. and she was with the Runaways. Joan is a true rock ’n’ roll spirit and I love her dearly.

  And our longtime friend Laurie Anderson came in with her violin and contributed all those layers of music on “Tonight,” in a kind of tripped-out homage to the Velvet Underground.

  LATER, WHEN I WAS THINKING OF ALBUM TITLES, A WORD POPPED INTO my head: “Terminator.” Then I thought, No. “Pollinator.” The word had such a nice sound. And several Blondie albums had begun with the letter “P.” But what resonated on a deeper level was the cross-pollination of all these different songwriters and musicians sharing their music and passing it around. So, Pollinator it was. And then the bees swarmed in . . . My name, Deborah, in Hebrew means “bee.” And I had known for a while about the desperate plight of the honeybees and pollinators struggling to live with pollutants and pesticides that were killing them en masse. A guy who has tended hives since he was a kid has been teaching me about the challenges, in addition to conversations I’ve had with two Blondie superfans, Barry and Michelle. Then I started my new pollinator hives. One of the hives died and we had to go out and find a new queen. But one hive lasted throughout the whole winter and still seems to be thriving. Not to sound pompous, but pollination is essential to our planet’s health. I have contributed to many environmental charities over the years, especially Riverkeeper, which is dedicated to cleaning up the Hudson, as well as charities for AIDS, cancer, and kids’ music schools, and I’m very happy to be able to do that. But for such an important cause to be so directly related to what we were doing in music was just fantastic. With the Pollinator album and tour we had a talking point, saving the bees, and we could make money for organizations that were trying to do that.

  I got inspired myself. I had a couple of different bee headpieces made, with designs by Geoffrey Mac, Neon, and Michael Schmidt. I would come out at the start of the show in a cape that said in big letters “STOP FUCKING THE PLANET,” which was made by eco-fashion designers Vin and Omi, who make clothes from fabrics woven from the plastic bags that are fucking up the planet for real. When we were in the UK we played a show at the Eden Project in Cornwall. I was speaking with one of the research scientists there and she told me that they were developing a strain of black honeybee that would be more resistant to these little varroa mites that, once they get into the hive, suck everything out of it and destroy it.

  The bee sitting on the lotus flower on the album cover was designed by Shepard Fairey, a smart, driven, wonderful artist who is just tireless, doing giant murals all over the world, many of them protesting environmental issues. Shepard is pro-ecology and anti-Trump, and I am too. Shepard’s murals are as readable as Guernica, telling stories of political and environmental genocide. They scream at you silently. I had bought some of his work a few years ago and we became friends. Then we decided to work together on a line of clothing. It was just for a short run, a little pop-up thing. From my side, I wanted to do simple, affordable clothing, hoodies, parkas, and leggings, using urban camouflage designs with patterns taken from a variety of surfaces in the city, such as ironworks, gratings, barbed wire, chain link, and walls with shredded posters that had been torn or worn off. Shepard, on his side, was working with some people who were more into doing T-shirts and Debbie Harry imagery. So somehow we combined both of these ideas, a little bit of my thing, a little bit of his. There was one T-shirt we came up with that said, “Obey Debbie,” Obey being the name of Shepard’s company. Excellent slogan.

  When our Pollinator album was released in May 2017, it debuted at number four in the UK charts and made number one in the UK indie charts, and in the U.S. independent charts it was number four. And Rolling Stone magazine, in their annual roundup, named it one of the ten best pop albums of the year.

  I GUESS WE’VE REACHED THE PART WHERE YOU ALL GET ON YOUR FEET in a standing ovation as I take my bow and leave the stage, victorious. Ha! I’m still here. I have had one fuck of an interesting life and I plan to go on having one. We live in a disposable, transient-feeling world and usually after five years you go on to the next thing, maybe now even less than five years. I remember how in the seventies we all admired the old R & B and jazz artists, these old-timers who come to think of it weren’t that old. Our generation was told that pop and rock were for kids. “It won’t last,” was what they told us, and then everyone grew up with it and decided that they wanted to keep that music as their music, and it’s become its own art form.

  Getting older is hard on your looks. Like everybody else I have good days, bad days, and those “Shit, I hope nobody sees me today” days, where you look exactly the same from the outside but you see yourself through different eyes. One thing I have learned is that we are often our own worst enemy. I have never hidden the fact that I’ve had plastic surgery. I think it’s the same as having a flu shot basically, another way of looking after yourself. If it makes you feel better and look better and work better, that’s what it’s all about, so you take advantage of the new possibilities that come into your life. I think I have finally figured out a way of understanding myself. Some days I’m happy with the way I look and sometimes I’m not, and it’s always been that way. But I’m not blind and I’m not stupid: I take advantage of my looks and I use them.

  I just had a visit with my manager Allen, and he told me, “I hope that you say something about how you broke ground as a female artist in a business that was a man’s world, and how difficult it was as a woman to do what you’ve done.” It surprised me that he would say that. I know that it has been difficult but I don’t know if it’s been difficult because I’m a woman. I mean, I know intellectually that being a woman in this business at the time when I started out was not helpful, but in my head I’ve never used it as an excuse. I know there is misogyny and I know there is bias, but I’m more concerned with being good at what I do. It is a man’s world, and unfortunately I don’t think they are going to lose that title just yet even though the number of women in the music business now is enormous compared to the seventies. But for me, in order to survive, I could never put myself in the position of whining about being a woman. I just got on with it. As much as it was possible, I found a way to do what I wanted to do.

  Sometimes I think that I did things backward. In the grand tradition of rock ’n’ roll, when you join a band you are supposed to go crazy and act wild, but I did all that stuff before I met Chris and we formed a band. I was so very happy in my relationship with Chris and really in love, so in a sense I settled down to do music. Another thing: people say that you’re happiest when you are young, but I’m happier now. I know who I am even if I am not more in control. But I’ll never forget those early days in New York. As a rock artist, to be coming out of New York City was the best thing
in the world that could have happened to me. The only other place I can conceive of our coming out of is London, a place with the same kind of sensibility, but I’m an American and I’m an East Coast girl, so it’s simple: it’s New York City for me. Wherever I go I’m always comparing it to New York. It’s not the way it was (none of us are), but it’s still thriving and vibrant. My friends are in New York, my social life is in New York, and everything that I’m attracted to and have ever wanted to be like is in New York. New York is my pulse. New York is my heart. I’m still a New York punk.

  Sean Pryor

  Jonas Åkerlund

  15

  Opposable Thumbs

  Courtesy of Debbie Harry’s personal collection

  I think first of that game where you try to trap the other guy’s thumb under yours while the rest of your fingers are gripping their fingers. Then there is the old saying “I’m all thumbs,” which is a peculiar mental image and is a feeble excuse for clumsiness. At first blush, compared to the fingers, the thumb may seem like the ugly stepsister, but it’s actually the most important digit. What else helped us become masters of the universe, or at least of planet Earth? Okay, so many of the images of sci-fi aliens depict a sort of cloven hand with only two large digits like a lobster claw, yet they seem to have mastered interstellar space travel and have developed mental and physical abilities far beyond anything we humans have evolved. But I still love and cling to my thumbs.

  During the 1960s, for the road warriors, hitchhiking by thumb was a favored form of travel. Douglas Adams had an epiphany one night while gazing up at the starry sky and he stretched it into a glorious, extended metaphor with his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And Tom Robbins turned the thumb into the ultimate totem in his Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. His protagonist, Sissy Hankshaw, is a young woman with two massive thumbs—thumbs with mystical powers, special digits, the thumbs of a lifetime. The girl always gets a ride when she puts her thumb out in the road, with a delicacy that belies the enormity of her appendage. Our heroine crosses the country, searching for her place in the universe and possibly true love, but it is the thumb that leads the way.

  We love our opposables from the pages of history too. Rebels with or without a cause touch hearts as long as they are not mass murderers. “Thumbs-up,” “thumbs-down,” “thumb your nose,” and “rule of thumb” are all creditable phrases that have stood the test of time and are still used today, though maybe not as much as they once were and often with shifted meanings. Thumbs-up originally meant “Yes, kill that losing gladiator.” Thumbs-down meant “Swords down and spare him,” so be careful to whom you give a thumbs-up. Folklore has it that “rule of thumb” referred to the width of the rod you could beat your wife with, but let’s not go there . . . My mother, Catherine, who liked to go by Caggie, was a big advocate of nose thumbing, which she often did instead of saying “Bullshit” or “No way” or “Ha!” Maybe she meant something else entirely but in most cases she accompanied her finger action with a raspberry or fart noise like the cartoon characters in Family Guy, with her tongue sticking out, and this obviously meant “phooey.” Thumbing your nose at someone or something is a bit more playful than giving someone the finger, but it doesn’t seem to have made the cut in our modern world. We may love our middle fingers and there may be nothing more satisfying than flipping a bird, but come on, they don’t quite measure up to the glorious thumb.

  Speaking of history, I have to mention Tom Thumb, who rose to fame as Tom Thumb the Great and also Tom Thumb the Little sometime in the early 1500s. In England’s first published fairy tale, Tom hangs out with King Arthur, after being eaten and then excreted by a series of cows, giants, and fish. Little people were often looked on with great fondness by royalty all across Europe, and the next time I’m in the UK, I’m determined to visit Tattershall in Lincolnshire to see Tom’s grave, where his tombstone reads: “T. Thumb, Aged 101, died 1620.” The grave is sixteen inches long! What a very tiny man he was . . . After this, as far as I know, the next mention of a little person in connection with the thumb is Thumbelina in 1835, in a story by Hans Christian Andersen—whose stories were sometimes condemned as abnormal and immoral. Poor Thumbelina—cast to the dogs for an indiscriminate sex life, I assume—has nevertheless stood the test of time and become a bit of a movie star. So much for misogyny. Then finally, we have P. T. Barnum’s famous performer General Tom Thumb, who was a talented singer, actor, dancer, and comedian, whose marriage to another little person had ten thousand guests and whose funeral was attended by twenty thousand. In other words, General Tom Thumb, all two and a half feet of him from head to toe, was as big as a rock star.

  There is also the “thumbnail sketch,” which means an abbreviation or an outline reduced to thumbnail size. And now we have the online thumbnails—those compressed versions of pictures and videos and memes—which haven’t eliminated the finger reference completely. Enter the androids and bots, who can probably dispense entirely with the thumb. Me? I would miss my thumbs horribly if they were gone. I am a voracious book reader, always have been, always will be. Can’t imagine trying to thumb my way through a book with no thumbs! Yikes. Plus, my side job as a professional knitter would go out the window.

  “Murderer’s thumb” or “strangler’s thumb” connotes a certain size and shape of thumb. The first joint is rounded and wider than usual, so was considered more effective for closing down the poor victim’s windpipe. I don’t know of any other digit that is credited with being able to weigh in so powerfully on the struggle of life and death . . . The index and middle fingers are pretty good also-rans with their “Got my eye on you” or “Poke your eye out” threats, à la the Three Stooges; however, murderer’s thumbs are clearly in a class of their own!

  In line with the grimmer aspects of life and death, I have to mention a medieval method for extracting the supposed truth from prisoners: thumb screws. How dastardly and crude these little devices appear, usually made of iron that has moldered in the dark regions of dungeons deep below castle and prison walls. I know I’d talk, talk, and talk about whatever they asked me even if I didn’t know what the fuck they wanted to hear. All those poor wretched chicken thieves with crushed thumbs . . . But there are other thumb screws that aren’t used for torture. This kind of screw is simply a regular piece of hardware still available today at Home Depot and Lowe’s and Ace Hardware and many other home improvement stores. Those little screws that have a top section that can be turned by using your thumb and index finger. They aren’t made of iron anymore and don’t look at all scary.

  Recently in Mexico I was reminded of another thumb reference by my friend and keyboard player Matt Katz-Bohen. His suggestion was a surprise and I appreciate his contribution to this train of thought: thumbtacks. The tacks designed specifically for application using the thumbs. Which gives us “getting down to brass tacks”—and I’m a big believer in getting down to brass tacks. Are there any other products created for a thumb that have stood the test of time in spite of being replaced in part by the staple gun, but not eliminated from use in today’s world? There might be, but I’m passing the thought on to you for consideration. Hit me up through my publisher. Perhaps I’ll award a prize to the best entry. Or not.

  Once upon a time, when we were wasting time or waiting on something to happen, we would “twiddle our thumbs.” “Twiddle” and “twitter”, are close cousins, and depending on your accent you might mix them up, but in any case, they both involve the use of or passage of time. We live in the age now of joined-at-the-hip devices—taking a piss or walking blindly across the road while stabbing away on our cell phones. What do we call this frenetic thumb action? Typing away at a furious pace using only our thumbs on this tiny keyboard? The popular new term is “thumbling.” But I vote for “twiddling.” This seems appropriate and accurate to me, but also suggests efficiency in the world of communication devices. I’ve seen some of the fastest thumbs in the world and I remember from my typing course days how critical speed was as a ben
chmark for success. I therefore suggest that “thumbling” speed tests become one measure of a person’s aptitude and further, a part of their résumé. “I thumble at 105 tpm. And you, my friend?”

  Recently, I’ve started to drive my car with my thumbs. I use the cruise control on the steering wheel, which lets me thumb my way down the road with just the occasional touch. Truthfully, this only works on freeways, highways, turnpikes, and long stretches of road when there isn’t a whole lot of traffic, but I am kind of excited by this and can envision a time when just thinking alone will operate my vehicle.

  I thought a little bit of levity might be a good way to end my somewhat morose memoir, hence all this thumb business. I wouldn’t want you writing me off as a total sourpuss. Chris and I and many of the musicians I’ve worked with had a lot of laughs through it all, although some of the humor was a bit dark for the general public. After all, it’s what made us the punks that we were then and still are today. We were philosophers more than real musicians at the start. Even while learning how to play and perform, we still managed to entertain thousands of people and create a genre of music. As Mike Chapman said after he first saw us at the Whisky in L.A., he never laughed so much in his life. True to rock history, we follow in the footsteps of the upstarts and rule breakers who stepped away from the niceties of swing and the sadness of the blues into a backlash against the folkies, good ol’ boys, and tripped-out hippies of the more recent past. Even though “punk” has several different meanings and the record labels moved the category over to new wave, we all still know what the fuck it means.