CityLife

Interview: Debbie Harry

Blondie’s Debbie Harry

AT 65, Debbie Harry has seen it all, done it all, and wore nothing but the shirt on Top of the Pops. As frontwoman of Blondie, she was responsible for dragging CBGBs punk into Studio 54 and introducing mainstream audiences to rap.

Challenging rock’s phallocracy, the Manhattan Monroe and Warhollian muse paved the way for artists as diverse as Madonna, The Strokes and Peaches.
 
Like all true icons, she possessed the perfect ratio of honed intelligence versus reckless destructiveness – just as likely to have her nose in a book as a line of cocaine – and you ponder why the years of fabled excess haven’t left an indelible mark on her.

“Drugs have probably affected my memory but they’ve given me so much more to remember,” she laughs, midway through a day of interviews to promote Blondie’s headline appearance at Kendal Calling and their ninth studio album, Panic Of Girls.

“Did I just say that? I can’t remember! Overall, I do feel like it was a bit of a waste of time, but of course at my age, my appreciation of time has really changed.

“Ultimately, I can’t really have deep regrets about my life otherwise it would be,” she emphasises the word with a camp flourish, “horrifying.”

This witty exchange, it turns out, is typical of Harry: ineffably cool, and a silky speaking voice you could wrap kittens in, she radiates more charisma than a phalanx of Ke$has.

Mother, the group’s first single since 2003’s Good Boys, contains lyrics that have been misinterpreted as concerning the adopted Harry’s search for her biological  mother (the yearning: ‘Mother’s left the building/we’re the missing children’), yet it’s actually a paean to the Chi Chi Valenti-run cult nightclub of the same name.

“I spent a lot of time there throughout the Nineties,” she remembers. “It was great fun, anything goes. I saw a guy sew his own mouth shut once and that was pretty startling to me. What would you call that? An extreme fetish, I suppose.”

Despite producing a peerless run of singles, coating whatever genre they opted to turn their attention towards – be it disco (1979’s Heart of Glass), hip hop (1981’s Rapture), or reggae (1980’s cover of The Paragons’ The Tide Is High) in their own Midas bleach, the story of Blondie is as dramatic as much for the lows as the highs; with a compelling love story between Harry and guitarist Chris Stein at its core.

The year 1982 would prove the band’s annus horribilis: their sixth LP, The Hunter, was a critical and commercial failure, and heroin use was amplifying the fissures in the band, ensuring that implosion was imminent.

Events reached a nadir when Stein was diagnosed with pemphigus, a life-threatening illness, with Harry diligently nursing him back to health.
 
What’s interesting is that even after the pair broke up, they maintained a prolific creative partnership, co-writing tracks on Harry’s solo albums.

“There were some difficult moments, of course,” she recalls. “But we really cared about each other and still do.

“One of the reasons we were successful in our personal relationship for all those years was we were very good at give and take. We were both able to sort of step back for the other person and that got us through that odd period when we had just separated.” In fact, Harry is godmother to Stein’s two daughters, Akira and Valentin.

After a distressing period in the Nineties that Harry labelled “the ice cream years” (“I honestly think it was a sort of nervous breakdown,” she says today), the classic Blondie line-up – which includes drummer Clem Burke – reformed in 1998, scoring a global number one single with Maria.

Upon hearing the demos, record labels were concerned that the public would have an unyielding frozen-in-time image of Harry and couldn’t cope with the notion of a pin-up ageing.

“I see Debbie as a kind of Nina Simone character,” argues Stein, reasonably. “With what she’s achieved, she should be past all that stuff. If people want to see her looking like she did when she was in her late 20s and early 30s, they just have to look at pictures. It’s still part of sexism.

“When we started out, the music industry was strictly a boys club. Now it’s about 50/50 but we still have these remnants where a woman isn’t allowed to get older. But I mean, it’s okay for George Clooney.”

In conjunction with the music, Harry has realised her original ambition to be a film star, thanks to roles in David Cronenberg’s biotech-horror Videodrome and John Waters’ retro-kitsch classic Hairspray.

“Actually,” she muses. “I was auditioning for the role of the wife in Raging Bull, and I wish I’d gotten that. That’s the one role I’d have killed to have played. But then [Cathy] Moriarty, she was perfect for it…”

Completed two years ago but marooned in limbo due to label wrangling (they’ve since opted to release it independently), Panic Of Girls is the sound of a band determined to push forward, combining Blondie’s nous for a titanic chorus (the adrenalized new(er) wave of Mother and What I Heard) and passion for experimental tangents (the seductive, French Serge Gainsbourg homage, Le Bleu) with modern production provided by Jeff Saltzman (The Killers) and Kato Khandwala (My Chemical Romance).

Already Harry and Stein are enthusing about its follow up, with the artwork set to be provided by J H, Williams III, a DC Comics artist responsible for the current run of Batwoman.

Neither are nostalgic about music – Harry proletyises about The Vaccines and Friendly Fires, while Stein professes a love of Katy Perry. “Although,” he notes. “I feel the lyrics are really dumbed-down.”

Rock and roll is 60 years old, and Blondie are the first generation of artists  to be in the unique position of continuing to make relevant new music when it’s stereotypically expected that the fire in the belly of youth is replaced by heartburn. Just like how they broke down barriers of gender and race, now they’re overturning the last taboo: age.

“Twenty years ago, we didn’t have people in their 60s and 70s working in pop music,” reasons Stein.

“But the relationship to peoples’ lives has changed,” adds Harry. “At one point, it was underground and counter-culture, but now it’s not at all.”

“Either way, people are going to have to get used to it,” says Stein. “I mean, if she keeps it up, Lady Gaga’s going to be 60 one day too….”

Blondie headline the Kendal Calling Festival, on Sunday, July 31. Panic of Girls is available to download and in a physical Blondie fan pack form now. The CD version follows on July 4.