by Dick Porter
“I think it’s more sophisticated. It’s about today. I don’t think that we’re trying to create a Blondie album that would just live on our reputation from the past. We try to make a record that was part of our thinking and lives today. I think that we’re probably all much more capable at what we do in all aspects, so the songs are better, the performances are better,” Deborah asserted. “I thoroughly enjoyed doing it. And I feel that since other things in my life have become focused, that I’ve been able to focus better. It’s funny though because the other day I was thinking that Blondie was sort of like a late bloomer, in terms of all the things that were happening back when. Because we tried to cover a lot of ground and do a lot of different styles, and none of us were really educated musicians. We were all self-taught, so it took us a little longer to get all of that together.”
Due to Beyond Music having gone bankrupt, The Curse Of Blondie was released by Sony subsidiary Epic in the UK, while in America it emerged on Sanctuary Records. Although the album was supported by a European tour on release, it slipped out without a huge amount of promotion and only hit the Top 40 in Britain.
Throughout 2004 and 2005, Blondie settled down into a pattern of regular tours and recuperative breaks. Although there was no sign of any new album during this period, the group appeared to have achieved a mature status as elder statesmen who regularly appeared at festivals alongside bands to whom they had provided inspiration. However, by 2006 the core quartet’s dysfunctional family values sparked into life once again. Jimmy was dismissed from the group on account of his ongoing drug issues.
“I used to do tons of drugs and stuff like that, but I stopped after a while and Jimmy found it harder to pull himself out of all that. Even though he thought he was doing OK, everybody else didn’t see eye to eye with him. We all thought he was fucking up more than he did,” said Chris.
“What they did to me was pretty bald-faced wrong,” insisted Jimmy. “Chris had a very serious drug problem and we helped him through it, I was having some drug problems and I was sort of ostracised for it.”
“There is something really wonderful about him, but there’s also this complete horror,” said Debbie of Jimmy’s cocaine abuse. “And when he lives in the horror side – which he tends to do quite a bit – you can’t be with him, you can’t be around him and you can’t work with him.”
“I think we go through each other like a hot knife through butter, and I can’t see myself ever working with them again. Not on stage. Never again. But what I think they’re missing is a hell of a fucking lot,” Destri concluded.
“We all had to be reassured about everyone’s enthusiasm for the project,” states Deborah. “As it worked out, three of us really had the inspiration and the drive to do it, and the fourth person dropped out.”
Jimmy’s keyboard berth in Blondie was taken by composer and session musician Kevin Patrick – there seemed to be no way he would ever return to the band.
“Jimmy just won’t mend fences with Debbie and Clem. There’s nothing I can do about it,” reveals Chris. “Those guys and him are at odds. It would be up to him to make the overture but he just won’t do it.”
On March 13, 2006, Jimmy was briefly reunited with his former bandmates when Blondie were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Given his unhappiness about how he had been ejected from the group and the presence of Frank and Nigel, who were also invited by the organisers, there was plenty of scope for conflict. As it turned out, it was Frankie who generated headlines by publicly pleading with Debbie to allow himself, Jimmy and Nigel to play with Blondie at the awards show.
“Not tonight,” she answered. “Can’t you see my band is up here?”
“If they’d actually wanted to play they should have called up beforehand, which they didn’t do,” explained Chris. “We would have needed a rehearsal apart from anything else. The idea that they could have just wandered on stage and played like it was the old days again … I’m afraid life is only like that in the movies. Also, if those guys hadn’t sued us we would’ve maybe considered their request more seriously. To this day people ask us how much we paid Frankie to do that! Everybody thought we were going to be eclipsed by The Sex Pistols no-show, but then the headlines were all ‘Blondie Mayhem At The Hall Of Fame!’ It was all nothing really, but the media’s got to latch on to something. I got more congratulations for that than I did for having a kid, so it sunk in by proxy. You can guess which one means most to me.”
Like Chris, Debbie admitted to slight ambivalence about Blondie’s induction. “I didn’t really care at first. Before it all came up, I just thought, ‘So what?’ But after we got it, there were total strangers from all walks of life coming up to me in a big way, so I was like, ‘Oh, gee.’ For some reason people really pay attention to those kinds of things,” she observed. “It’s an honour and it made me feel good, but I think it’s very commercial. It’s like any major awards show for any industry.”
Ever the rock’n’roll enthusiast, Clem’s response was less equivocal. “We were on a sold-out tour in the UK when we got the news. I was in an Internet café with my wife, checking my email, and Yahoo [reported it] … My wife and I began screaming, and all these reserved English folk were looking at us, probably thinking, ‘Oh, those nutty Americans.’ But I was so happy. It legitimises what Blondie did – and still does. But I’m not sure how punk rock it is to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”
Given that 2006 was the 30th anniversary of what was subsequently recognised as ‘punk rock’, there was significant media interest in the scene’s origins. But as glossy retrospectives hit the racks, a link with the roots of punk was irrevocably severed when CBGB’s closed its graffiti-encrusted shutters for the final time, in October. The venue’s final nights featured an acoustic set from Blondie, along with appearances from old hands including The Dictators and Patti Smith.
“At first I didn’t really give a flying fuck,” recalled Debbie in a retrospective feature on the venue. “But CBGB’s was a kind of institution and a worldwide name. So then I did a couple of benefits, in the club itself. That was great, but in the end it just prolonged the agony. Eventually they got their final notice, so we played the next to last night. We played on Saturday and they closed on Monday. It was very moving, I didn’t think I’d feel as nostalgic as I did. But I really did have some great times here, difficult as those times were.”
Sadly, CBGB’s owner Hilly Kristal would die the following year at the age of 75, due to complications arising from lung cancer. “I’m very sorry that Hilly is gone. He was a big help to Blondie and to the New York music scene for many years. His club was a part of New York lore and rock’n’roll history,” said Deborah. “Kudos to Hilly for being such a patron of the underground music scene and being such a father figure in a way. That’s not an easy thing to do, but somehow or another he had this weird temperament and he could handle it. I think we were the lucky ones to have a place like that. Really, really lucky.”
Chapter Sixteen
Much Better For A Girl Like Me
“Most art is analysed after the fact.”
Chris Stein
In June 2007, Debbie Harry took to the road for her first solo tour in almost a decade. Spearheaded by singer and activist Cyndi Lauper, the True Colors tour was devised as a means of promoting human rights with specific emphasis on the civil liberties of the gay community. Visiting 15 cities over a three-week period, the shows featured a diverse range of performers from synth-pop duo Erasure and Brechtian goths The Dresden Dolls to special guests such as The B-52s and Rufus Wainwright.
Deborah became involved in the tour when the organisers contacted her management. “At first I wasn’t really sure about doing it,” she explained. “They kept asking, ‘Well, can’t you play “Heart Of Glass”? Can’t you play “One Way Or Another”, “The Tide Is High”, or something?’ And I kept saying, ‘No, I can’t.’ I would never do that. I feel like it would be unscrupulous to do that without my guys. So there
was a little back and forth about that, but I’m really glad about the way it worked out.”
Debbie’s set comprised solo material, much of which had never previously been performed live, having been written for her forthcoming album. “It was a little scary sometimes. It’s like being an opening band again. But it was good to force myself to do that, to break out of the comfort zone. That’s one of the seductions of being in a group that has a great track record. You’re comfortable. To break out was stimulating for me … When I would finish some of the songs, they would be silent for a few seconds, and then suddenly they would erupt in applause. So they were listening. I was surprised.”
Deborah’s popularity on the gay scene and her support of the American Civil Liberties Union, for whom she had previously appeared in a concert and an advertising campaign, overrode the apolitical nature of her recorded work. “I think I’ve been more political recently, but not in such a way as writing songs about it,” she commented. “I think it is a kind of responsibility, being in a position to make people listen, and I think I can add something. I mean, the more people say about human rights, the better off we all are. I certainly feel that consenting adults should be able to live the life that they choose, and that the law should treat everyone equally. We all pay taxes, so we should all be privy to the same privileges. It’s the logical and fair thing – it’s as simple as that.”
The aftermath of September 11, 2001 had seen the American political mindset move abruptly to the right. The outpouring of grief and anger that followed the atrocity had led to a climate where criticism of the state was often labelled ‘un-American’. “The conservative wave in America right now is really dangerous,” Debbie subsequently stated. “If you criticise the government too much you get called a traitor, you’re not a good American. Part of being a good American is challenging what our rights are according to the constitution. I think people forget that. And this Patriot Act too. Why should they call it that? It has nothing to do with patriotism, it has to do with our basic civil rights. The problem is that smart people aren’t running the government. It’s really nerve-racking.”
The climate of fear brought Debbie’s activism to the fore, inspiring her to use her celebrity status to support some form of positive change. “Issues of humanity and what is fair treatment and good treatment of a fellow human being should not really be based on a personal sense of right and wrong or judgement. Morality should have to do with killing people or hurting them or stealing from them, but when it comes to adult choices, I don’t see it. Basically, Europeans are laughing at us. We’re being laughed at around the world, and it’s pathetic … I feel as powerless as the next person. The best thing I can do is make myself as visible as, say, [actress and liberal activist] Susan Sarandon.”
A week after the True Colors tour ended, Debbie was reunited with Blondie for a string of European shows that began at the Bospop Festival in Holland on July 7, 2007. “It was one of our most exciting tours. I don’t know exactly why, but it was just so much fun,” she declared. “After so many years of playing together, there is a very familial feel. You’re travelling with people and it’s very intimate, so you’re happy when you’re with them and miss them when you’re apart, and sometimes vice versa. Sometimes you just sort of hate everybody, but you really do have to get along with people. You can’t be an asshole. When you’re out there on the road if somebody is really a jerk it ruins the whole scene and the whole picture …”
In September, Debbie’s fifth solo album, Necessary Evil, was released on Allen Kovac’s new Eleven Seven label. The majority of the disc’s 17 tracks were written in the studio by Debbie with production duo Charles Nieland and Barb Morrison. “It was a very small team, a little trio. It was great working like that, very close and very quick,” she explained. “They happened to be very light-hearted people, and they know how to work. When you’re in the studio, every minute counts, every hour counts, and you really want to get it done. There’s also all of this technology that you’re wrestling with, and you really have to keep it light, and they know how to do that. We had a lot of laughs; it was fun.”
In addition to the laconic ‘Paradise’, written by Jazz Passengers Roy Nathanson and Bill Ware, Debbie teamed up with Chris to create two tracks – ‘Jen Jen’, which combined African influences with chorus-infused electronica, and the lilting, tribal-techno ‘Naked Eye’ – which were included on the disc as additional bonuses. “I wanted to work with Chris again, because I’ve worked with him for so many years and I wanted him to be represented,” said Deborah. “I asked him to come up with a couple of tracks. I adore his work.”
The album was heralded by the release of its opener, ‘Two Times Blue’, as a single. “That was the last song we wrote, and it was curious because I woke up with these things running through my head. I was thinking ‘two times two’ and all these other things associated with the phrase, but then I was booked into the studio one night and when I got there I said I’d had a really interesting idea for the hook of a song,” Debbie recounted. “The producer said he’d woken up that day with a song in his head too, so started playing it. I sang the lyrics I’d written along to it, and it all worked. It was very serendipitous.”
The immediacy with which ‘Two Times Blue’ came together reflected the streamlined recording process. “It’s simpler not having so many people involved. With Blondie it’s usually at least four people that have a vote on how things go. That gets a little cumbersome,” Deborah remarked. “It was an effortless thing, it wasn’t like I was under any pressure to do it. It was just something I had time for and was interested in … I think now that I’ve worked like this, I would always like to work like this in the future. I would come in with an idea, a lyric maybe, and some idea of a melody and then we’d work it up in the studio. It was very immediate and Barb and Charlie played all the instruments, except for the drums that we put on later.”
In keeping with Debbie’s eclecticism, Necessary Evil encompasses her customary wide range: from the insistent bittersweet pop of ‘Two Times Blue’ through ‘Charm Alarm’ (a lascivious duet with Toilet Böys frontman Miss Guy), the reflective and expansive ‘If I Had You’ and the sparsely funky ‘Love With A Vengeance’. “It’s that pop spread that I’ve always done with Blondie,” she explains. “I can’t really avoid that because it’s just the way that I think and what I’m attracted to. I want to do as many different styles as I feel apply.”
Neither Necessary Evil nor ‘Two Times Blue’ sold in sufficient quantities to provide Debbie with a solo hit. However, any disappointment was balanced by the freedom afforded by a smaller label. “I feel very good about just being able to keep everything nice and simple, and decision-wise I’m right there for any type of decisions that have to be made,” said Debbie. “And because it’s a much simpler operation, I feel very at ease about it. I don’t feel like things are happening that are way, way out of control [or] maybe a little bit artistically out of line. I feel like this is really manageable and sort of, ‘OK, this is really moving along nicely, and I haven’t had a lot of people sort of breathing down my neck about it.’ It’s very nice.”
At this stage of her recording career she was looking beyond chart statistics anyway. “I want people to enjoy it … Why else would I put myself in a public position with my music, if I didn’t want some kind of acceptance?” The extent to which Deborah enjoyed the process left her open to further solo outings, irrespective of how sales stacked up. “I don’t know about another record just yet, but I don’t see any reason why there wouldn’t be another soon,” she mused. “But then the record industry isn’t what it once was, so I don’t know how the business end of it all will pan out.”
Although she stated she didn’t feel that she was fighting the past any more, her solo career provided her with an escape from the boundaries of Blondie. “I think that’s partly why I did this album. To express myself. To be a part of today. To be exactly who I am at this moment, not who I was 30 years ago, pr
etending. Doing too many Blondie shows makes me bilious; and audiences get stuck,” she verged on complaining. “Blondie was a characterisation. Now I’m better at what I do. I have a more organised vision of it. There isn’t a label for the vision. I just try to communicate emotion and tell stories in music.”
Accompanied by a stripped-down trio comprising Tommy Brislin on keyboards, Mark Malone on drums and J.P. Doherty on guitar, Debbie aired her new material across a 21-date tour during November and December 2007. “I had to work kind of quickly, and I hired Tommy Brislin to be the musical director,” she explained. “He did all the programming. I relied on a lot of programming this time ‘cos I wanted to go out with a small band. Tommy picked J.P. and I had used Mark on the album – so I ended up going on the road with a three-piece male band … Initially, I felt a little strange being on stage with different musicians. Only three musicians as well, usually it’s six. I did a little tour and I felt naked and weird, but I quickly got over that.”
At the same time, Blondie’s back catalogue was represented in a theatrical context as part of a West End musical version of Madonna’s early star vehicle movie, Desperately Seeking Susan. (“I could see that Madonna saw herself as the new blonde in town when I interviewed her in ‘83,” says co-author Kris, “even down to working with Chic.”)
“I was approached with the idea and the script, and my first reaction was ‘Eugh,’” admitted Deborah. “I’m not really a big musical theatre fan, it’s just not really part of my world very much. I’ve seen a couple over the years, and one of my all time favourites is Guys And Dolls, but for the most part I’m not that knowledgeable. But then when I sat down and read the script and actually thought about the whole thing, with our songs fitting in, I thought, ‘Yeah, this is kinda great!’ I was really, really surprised at how well it works. It’s two great elements coming together and it’s just so much fun more than anything.”