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Fusing art and punk and classic pop in their Lower East Side crucible, Blondie<\/i> became a poster on the world\u2019s bedroom wall, uniquely iconic. But as their revelatory 2022 box set revealed, they were a band for all seasons, with strengths their fame obscured and, perhaps, ultimately undermined. \u201cWe were our own worst enemy once we got success,\u201d they tell Tom Doyle<\/p>\n
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American rock group Blondie (L-R: Gary Valentine, Clem Burke, Debbie Harry, Chris Stein and Jimmy Destri) pose for portrait to promote their debut album ‘Blondie’ in 1976<\/p>\n
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WEST HOLLYWOOD, 1977. BACKSTAGE at the Whisky A Go Go on Sunset Strip, there was a knock on Blondie\u2019s dressing room door. Outside stood two bodyguards flanking a long-haired and bearded Phil Spector. The fabled producer was dressed in black, wearing Gradient Aviator shades and a cape, a crucifix dangling from his neck, and two badges pinned to the lapel of his suit jacket. One bore his sonic motto, \u201cBack To Mono\u201d. The other, \u201cIn The Flesh\u201d, the title of the New York band\u2019s distinctly Spector-esque second single, released the previous year. <\/p>\n
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\u201cHe practically locked us in the dressing room and sort of lectured us at length,\u201d remembers Blondie\u2019s then-bassist Gary Lachman (AKA Valentine).<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess it was already common knowledge that he was kind of out of his mind,\u201d notes drummer Clem Burke.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was fucking nuts,\u201d flatly states guitarist Chris Stein, who recalls that after Spector tried to entice his partner, the group\u2019s luminous singer Debbie Harry, into his limousine, the band warily accepted the unhinged producer\u2019s invitation to follow him up to his walled-off Beverly Hills mansion.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe answered the door to his house with a [Colt] .45 in one hand and a bottle of Manischewitz wine in the other hand,\u201d Stein remembers. \u201cThe whole time he spoke in a WC Fields voice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inside, Spector blasted out rough mixes from the album he was working on, Leonard Cohen\u2019s Death Of A Ladies\u2019 Man<\/i>, before coaxing Harry to sit alongside him at the piano and sing Be My Baby and other Ronettes hits. At one point, he pointed his gun into her thigh-length leather boot and exclaimed \u201cBang, bang!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a little intimidating being there,\u201d says Harry, with no little understatement. There was talk that night of Spector perhaps producing the next Blondie album. But these weird scenes rightly set off alarm bells. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really lucky we avoided Phil, is all I can say,\u201d concludes Stein, drily.<\/p>\n
While superficially a band of scrappy Lower East Side proto-punks, Blondie had already tapped into their \u201960s girl-group influences. Debut single X Offender, released in June 1976, may have been a lurid street tale of a hooker falling for the cop who arrests her, but it opened with a Shangri-Las-echoing spoken-word introduction from Debbie Harry (\u201cI saw you standing on the corner\/You looked so big and fine\u201d), before its propulsive pop thrills rushed in. Elsewhere, Blondie made their love of the Brill Building songwriting tradition explicit on their debut by featuring, on In The Flesh, the cooing backing vocals of Ellie Greenwich, co-writer (with Jeff Barry and George \u2018Shadow\u2019 Morton) of Leader Of The Pack. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the producer of their debut long-player was Richard Gottehrer, writer of 1963 hit My Boyfriend\u2019s Back for The Angels \u2013 a song Harry had loved as a teenager. The location for these first album sessions was half a world away from the scuzzy CBGB habitat where the group had honed their repertoire. Plaza Sound Studios, in midtown Manhattan, sat on the top floor above Radio City Music Hall and was a high-end facility. The members of Blondie were tickled to find themselves sharing the elevator with dancers from Radio City\u2019s high-kicking star attraction, the Rockettes. It was perhaps the first indication that a band that had formed on the dirty, dangerous streets of lower Manhattan were destined for a far brighter and starrier future. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was fun just to travel uptown,\u201d reckons Clem Burke. \u201cBecause we never went above 14th Street prior to that.\u201d <\/p>\n
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Blondie performing at Paradiso, Amsterdam in 1977<\/p>\n
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BLONDIE WERE VERY MUCH A DOWNTOWN NEW York band. In their loft at 266 Bowery, lived in by Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, along with a lodging Gary Lachman, they\u2019d developed their idiosyncratic sound in intensive rehearsals that threw together the loose three-chord sashay of the New York Dolls with \u201960s R&B and bubblegum pop. It wasn\u2019t, however, the most salubrious of settings. <\/p>\n
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\u201cIt was three floors above a liquor store and a restaurant supply place,\u201d recalls Lachman, a London resident since 1996. \u201cSomeone had ingeniously tapped into their sources of electricity, so we didn\u2019t have an electricity bill. Debbie\u2019s cats peed everywhere, so it smelled like cat piss, and we all had this kind of kitschy magic stuff\u2026 upside down crucifixes, and pentagrams.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harry and Stein had met in 1973 when they were in raucous glam rock\/cabaret band The Stilettoes, before peeling off to form their own group, Angel And The Snake, which morphed into Blondie. Bayonne, New Jersey-born Clem Burke had joined as drummer in \u201975, though performed only one gig at CBGB before bassist Fred Smith quit to join Television. <\/p>\n
Straight away, Blondie were in flux. Debbie Harry credits Burke\u2019s cheerleading enthusiasm as the force that convinced her not to give up on the group. \u201cHe really wanted to get out of New Jersey,\u201d she quips.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was calling and saying, \u2018Let\u2019s go, let\u2019s go,\u2019\u201d Stein remembers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tried to get people motivated,\u201d says the drummer today, speaking to MOJO in his LA studio. \u201cI thought there was definitely something there, with the songs, and of course, Debbie\u2019s charisma and talent was obvious to me. We all had a common aesthetic, whether it be the New York Dolls, or the Velvet Underground, or the Shangri-Las. So we had a commonality amongst our musical influences, which was really not the norm at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe tried to sort of illuminate all the different possibilities,\u201d says Harry. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t like it was one person\u2019s idea of what a band should sound like. It was really a group effort.\u201d <\/p>\n
Among the earliest studio recordings featured in 2022\u2019s vast Blondie box set, Against The Odds 1974-1982<\/i>, are five songs committed to eight-track tape in a basement in Queens during the baking New York summer of 1975. These reveal the range of their inspirations and aspirations: a funky early run at Heart Of Glass (written in \u201974 as The Disco Song and retitled Once I Had A Love), a confident stab at the Shangri-Las\u2019 Out In The Streets, and Harry\u2019s mission statement Platinum Blonde (\u201cI wanna be a platinum blonde\/Just like all the sexy stars\u201d). The latter song was, however, dumped by the band.<\/p>\n
\u201cDebbie, would you say that maybe it was a little obvious?\u201d Stein asks Harry; the pair are connected to MOJO via Zoom, Stein at his place in upstate New York, Harry in New Jersey. \u201cKind of an overstatement?\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cFuck off!\u201d the singer snaps back with a laugh. <\/p>\n
In Gary Lachman\u2019s mind, Blondie\u2019s career really took off with their appearance on August 1, 1975, at the CBGB Rock Festival, where they played in between Talking Heads and headliners the Ramones. \u201cI guess it was, \u2018Here we are\u2026 the scene,\u2019\u201d says the bassist. With the addition of keyboard player Jimmy Destri, the line-up was complete. \u201cWe got Jimmy,\u201d Lachman says, \u201cand that\u2019s when that more or less conscious \u201960s retro sound came together with the Farfisa [organ].\u201d <\/p>\n
Further confirmation that Blondie were on the right track came when Clem Burke returned from a trip to London in the winter of \u201975 with a copy of Dr. Feelgood\u2019s second album, Malpractice<\/i>. It soundtracked a welcome home party thrown in his honour in the Blondie loft. <\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone who was anyone was there,\u201d Lachman recalls. \u201cThe Ramones and the Heartbreakers. The Dr. Feelgood album was a big hit, being just stripped-down pub rock. This was before punk, the Sex Pistols or anything.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI related to what was going on in London,\u201d says Burke. \u201cEspecially with the Feelgoods, who kind of dressed like Blondie. Y\u2019know, Wilko [Johnson] in the black suit and all that.\u201d <\/p>\n
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Debbie Harry live at Nakano Sun Plaza, Tokyo, January 11, 1978<\/p>\n
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BLONDIE\u2019S FIRST TRIP TO THE UK SAW THEM landing in London in the spring of 1977 to tour their debut album. Even at their first show, at the Village Bowl in Bournemouth on May 20, it was immediately clear to the band that British punk was a far more physical affair than its more cerebral New York counterpart. Harry, for one, was delighted to see the audience break out in a riot of pogoing. <\/p>\n
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\u201cThere was more of a tribal feel,\u201d she says. \u201cOne of our early intentions was always to have people dancing. Up and on their feet, instead of sitting there being, y\u2019know, erudite or whatever. That added to the excitement for us.\u201d <\/p>\n
But, back in New York at Plaza Sound in the summer of \u201977, making their second album, Plastic Letters<\/i>, the mood within the band turned darker. Gary Lachman had expressed a desire to break off from Blondie and form his own band following the sessions. In the end, the management pushed him out before he\u2019d played a note. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was young, and I was headstrong,\u201d Lachman says. \u201cI got a call from Peter Leeds, who was the manager at the time, telling me my services were no longer required.\u201d Even so, Clem Burke pushed the Lachman-less Blondie to record the Lachman-penned (I\u2019m Always Touched By Your) Presence, Dear, a brilliant, chiming pop song with a bizarre topic: telepathy. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was about these psychic experiences I was having with my girlfriend at the time,\u201d explains the bassist. \u201cWe were having shared dreams and, when I was on tour, we would each know when the other one wanted to phone.\u201d <\/p>\n
Chris Stein remembers the recording of Plastic Letters<\/i> \u2013 the first album to feature second guitarist Frank Infante, also doubling on bass \u2013 as being more fraught than its predecessor. \u201cIt was a little more angsty. There was always a lot of tension in the band and crazy bullshit going on\u2026 egos flying about. I certainly was not the least of it. Everybody was egomaniacal about their roles. But I always thought the tension made for a good result.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d Harry adds. \u201cChris has always liked chaos.\u201d <\/p>\n
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A new bassist for Blondie was found in Los Angeles. British-born Nigel Harrison was living in California and playing in The Doors\u2019 keyboardist Ray Manzarek\u2019s short-lived band Nite City when he was tipped off that the group were looking for a sixth member. After sneaking a cassette recorder down the front of his trousers when he went to see the band perform at the Whisky A Go Go, he went home and learned Infante\u2019s parts note-for-note. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey didn\u2019t know I\u2019d taped the show,\u201d chuckles Harrison, on the phone from Italy. \u201cSo I said, \u2018Why don\u2019t you just do the first few songs of the set from last night?\u2019 The first song was X Offender. Debbie gave me a wink. I think they were stressed out, like, \u2018How are we going to find someone?\u2019 That\u2019s how I got the job.\u201d<\/p>\n
A mere four months later, Harrison was back in his homeland, performing with Blondie for millions of viewers on Top Of The Pops. Denis, their gender-flipped cover of US doo-wop band Randy & The Rainbows\u2019 1963 single Denise, was to be their first UK hit, reaching Number 2. It was a star-making performance for Debbie Harry in particular: a post-punk Marilyn Monroe in a red shirt-cum-mini dress, gazing into the lens with cool insouciance. <\/p>\n
\u201cGrowing up in England,\u201d Harrison says, \u201cI knew how powerful Top Of The Pops was. I said to Debbie, \u2018Everything\u2019s gonna change from now on.\u2019 The song was already brewing on the radio. But once we did Top Of The Pops, and seeing how stunning she was, there was no turning back.\u201d <\/p>\n
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Debbie Harry performs on stage in the UK, January 1980<\/p>\n
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CHRIS STEIN CAN\u2019T DECIDE WHETHER BLONDIE\u2019S next (and pivotal) producer, Mike Chapman, was their George Martin, or their Stanley Kubrick. \u201cHe really guided everything into shape,\u201d says the guitarist. \u201cHe was like the director of the movie.\u201d <\/p>\n
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Australian-born Chapman, the co-writer (with Nicky Chinn) of a raft of glam pop hits for The Sweet (Ballroom Blitz), Mud (Tiger Feet) and Suzi Quatro (Devil Gate Drive) had relocated from the UK to America and was seeking new musical adventures, leading him to Blondie. \u201cHe seized the opportunity,\u201d says Burke, \u201cand saw the potential to take the band further.\u201d <\/p>\n
Chapman flew to New York in the summer of \u201978 to begin working with Blondie at The Record Plant on the album they would call Parallel Lines<\/i>. Along with bringing his pop nous, he proved himself to be a freewheeling individual who liked to party just as much as the band. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe were crazy in those days,\u201d relates Chapman from his current home in London. \u201cThere was a lot of drinking, a lot of drugs, and I was indulging in all those things to excess. That was the \u201970s (laughs<\/i>). But they had all the right ingredients for the songs. It was tough going at first because they were a bit all over the place and had never really had any discipline. So, it was quite a bumpy start.\u201d <\/p>\n
Chapman pushed Blondie hard, employing a Kubrickian method of forcing them to do take after take until he felt they\u2019d achieved perfection. This approach irked Nigel Harrison in particular, his fuse blowing when recording the punky, if tricksily chordy 11:59. \u201cSuddenly, we\u2019re on take 18, and I go, \u2018For fuck\u2019s sake, Mike! How many times do you want us to do it?\u2019 So there was a showdown. After take number 22, I was like, \u2018Fuck it, this is insane.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cIt almost came to blows,\u201d Chapman laughs. \u201cHe\u2019d had enough of me telling him what to play. He said, \u2018I\u2019m gonna do it my way.\u2019 And after about an hour of doing it his way, we did it our<\/i> way. And it worked.\u201d <\/p>\n
As much as Parallel Lines<\/i> was to prove a gold standard pop album, it was also an adventure in sound. The brooding Fade Away And Radiate, as murkily atmospheric as any Berlin-era Bowie track, featured a guesting Robert Fripp in a buzzing guitar cameo. \u201cHe was not only an outstanding musician,\u201d says Harry, \u201cbut he was just a gent.\u201d <\/p>\n
The recording of Fade Away And Radiate also coincided with a surprise visit to the Record Plant by Ronnie Spector, one of Debbie Harry\u2019s formative heroes. \u201cDebbie was out at the mike,\u201d Chapman recalls. \u201cShe said to me (whispers through gritted teeth<\/i>), \u2018I can\u2019t sing in front of Ronnie Spector. I can\u2019t do it.\u2019 I said, \u2018You can do it, honey. Get out there and show her your real stuff.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cDebbie was doing the a cappella thing [at the start of] Fade Away And Radiate,\u201d says Harrison. \u201cShe could see Ronnie Spector\u2019s silhouette through the studio glass\u2026 which is pretty heavy, really.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cShe had to take a couple of deep breaths,\u201d Chapman adds, \u201cbut she sang the song beautifully. Ronnie was sitting there, going, \u2018Oh my God, what a voice she\u2019s got.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
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BUT THE GREATEST BREAKTHROUGH for Chapman and Blondie in their research and development department was Heart Of Glass, the demo of which Stein had played to the producer almost as an afterthought. Harry had expressed to Chapman her love for Donna Summer\u2019s Giorgio Moroder-produced electronic disco wonder, I Feel Love. <\/p>\n
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\u201cI said, \u2018OK, well, then let\u2019s take a bit of that approach,\u2019\u201d Chapman remembers. \u201cBlondie were always, apart from a fight or two, up for experimental sessions. But that was the early days of trying to sync machines with people.\u201d <\/p>\n
The main difficulty came when Chapman realised that the sequencer driving the circular synth pulse of Heart Of Glass kept slipping out of time, requiring many punch-ins on the master tape, as Clem Burke thumped away at the four-on-the-floor bass drum part to keep time. \u201cI wasn\u2019t a big champion of Heart Of Glass,\u201d Burke admits. <\/p>\n
\u201cClem had to go in there and just put the bass drum on, like, boom boom boom boom<\/i>,\u201d Harrison recalls. \u201cI was sitting there smoking a cigarette and thinking, \u2018He\u2019s hating it.\u2019 He was like, \u2018What the fuck are we doing?\u2019 It was like a Meccano set, this whole assembly thing. But I don\u2019t think anyone, including Mike, had any idea it was going to be the hit it was.\u201d <\/p>\n
Although buried deep on side two of Parallel Lines<\/i>, when released as a single in January 1979 Heart Of Glass became Blondie\u2019s international breakthrough smash. \u201cChapman flew to Italy just to tell us that Heart Of Glass had gone to Number 1 in the States,\u201d Stein remembers. \u201cIt was very moving, y\u2019know.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThey were part of my life,\u201d the producer says of this grand gesture. \u201cI was so into the project that nothing was too much trouble.\u201d <\/p>\n
Thanks to the success of Parallel Lines<\/i>, and the intensive touring it entailed, by the time Blondie re-entered the studio to make their next album, 1979\u2019s Eat To The Beat<\/i>, the band were brimming with confidence and very much on top of their game. So much so that Mike Chapman approached producing the record in a very different way. Out went endless takes, in came spontaneity. <\/p>\n
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For instance, Clem Burke\u2019s thunderous, Keith Moon-like drumming on Dreaming was recorded in one take. \u201cI think Mike used reverse psychology on me,\u201d says Burke. \u201cWe were just running through the song and that\u2019s why I was playing so over-the-top on it. Then, after the take, Mike said that was it. It was quite surprising because it was the antithesis of his approach on Parallel Lines<\/i>.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI just had the [tape] machine running all the time,\u201d says Chapman. \u201cI captured everything I could.\u201d <\/p>\n
Eat To The Beat<\/i> spotlit Blondie as a rock band, while still yielding sterling hits in the form of Harry and Stein\u2019s Dreaming, the Ennio Morricone-goes-disco vibes of Atomic and the soaring, Springsteen-esque Union City Blue which (like One Way Or Another on Parallel Lines<\/i>) was a Debbie Harry\/Nigel Harrison co-write. Both Union City Blue and Atomic (Harry\/Destri) highlighted how different members, or groupings of members, brought different flavours to the band\u2019s biggest songs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would have a cassette of, like, four or five ideas, and give it to Mike,\u201d says Harrison. \u201cHe would listen to everything and then go, \u2018OK, those first two,\u2019 and give them to Debbie. It wasn\u2019t like anyone was sitting around the campfire writing songs. But I knew once we fired up Union City Blue, it felt good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Come the end of 1979, with Dreaming sitting at Number 2 in the UK chart, the band stumbled into full-blown Blondiemania. Appearing for a record signing at the Our Price store in Kensington, they were mobbed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cops were there, and they had to shut the street down,\u201d Stein marvels. \u201cA year or so earlier, we had gone to Our Price for the same autograph signing thing and hundreds of people showed up. The second time we did it, it was thousands.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe weren\u2019t the Stones or The Beatles, who probably had that happen every single time they appeared in public,\u201d Harry points out. \u201cSo, for us, it was really a moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just insanity,\u201d says Harrison. \u201cI was stuck in this crowd. It was like every fantasy of being a pop star.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was all going according to plan as far as I was concerned,\u201d Burke laughs. \u201cI was like, \u2018Yeah, this is it.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
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BUT THEN, FOR BLONDIE, THINGS STARTED TO get tougher, the direction forward less clear. Having made two albums in New York, the band agreed to meet Mike Chapman on his home territory for the recording of 1980\u2019s Autoamerican<\/i>. They flew into a Los Angeles that, even to Lower East Side habitu\u00e9s, seemed edgy. <\/p>\n
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\u201cIt was the Wild West,\u201d says Stein. \u201cWe landed and the hills around the Hollywood sign were on fire.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWe were at these short-term apartments called the Oakwood,\u201d says Burke. \u201cOne night there was a shooting in the parking lot, so we left and went to the Chateau Marmont. That was a bit more glamorous.\u201d <\/p>\n
In LA, working at United Western Recorders \u2013 the legendary studio that had birthed key records by Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and The Beach Boys \u2013 the intra-band grievances that had been bubbling began to spill over. \u201cEveryone was strong-headed and stubborn,\u201d Harrison says. \u201cThere was always underlying tension constantly, between Jimmy and Clem, and Debbie and Chris, even. Y\u2019know, all of us.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was unmanageable,\u201d says Chapman. \u201cIt truly was. There were attorneys and managers and all sorts of weirdos coming and going from the studio. Just getting their attention and their focus at times was terribly hard, \u2019cos they had problems with each other within the band. And all those little problems sort of turned into rather large problems. They weren\u2019t listening to each other.\u201d <\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t help that Autoamerican<\/i> was by far Blondie\u2019s most ambitious musical project, involving a parade of name session musicians including saxophonist Tom Scott (Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits), double bassist Ray Brown (Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald) and The Turtles\/Flo & Eddie\u2019s Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan. The album opened with Stein\u2019s orchestral opus Europa, moved through the \u201940s jazz of Here\u2019s Looking At You and ended with a big musical theatre closer, a cover of Follow Me from Lerner and Loewe\u2019s Camelot.<\/p>\n
Not everyone in the band seemed to be digging this particular brand of eclecticism. At the very end of the latter song, just as the track is fading out, Clem Burke can be heard muttering, \u201cYou\u2019re not really gonna put this on the album, are you?\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cI thought, Well, he\u2019s got to listen to that now for the rest of his life,\u201d Mike Chapman laughs. \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t have said it, mate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a rock\u2019n\u2019roller at heart,\u201d Burke states in his defence. \u201cY\u2019know, I would have been happy to carry on with \u2018Oh Denis, ooh be doo.\u2019 But Autoamerican<\/i> is actually my favourite record now. I really think it stands up as an entire album.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eight tracks into Autoamerican<\/i> lay Rapture, Blondie\u2019s groundbreaking meld of rock and hip-hop. Debbie Harry and Chris Stein had witnessed the evolution of rap first-hand on the streets of the Bronx in 1978.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just super-exciting,\u201d Stein says. \u201cThe DJs would switch, and the MCs would switch, and it was non-stop. This whole group of kids literally finding their voice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very much like a happening or a be-in from the \u201960s,\u201d adds Harry. \u201cA lot of it was really big ego tripping. It was kind of amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following its January 1981 release, Rapture was absorbed back into hip-hop culture when Grandmaster Flash scratched it into the sonic collage that was \u2026On The Wheels Of Steel (along with Chic\u2019s Good Times and Queen\u2019s Another One Bites The Dust). Having been key participants in punk, Blondie were helping to grow the commercial fortunes of rap.<\/p>\n
The band then went on a sabbatical that saw Harry release her Nile Rodgers\/Bernard Edwards-produced solo album, KooKoo<\/i>. By the time Blondie regrouped in December \u201981 at The Hit Factory in Manhattan, focus and momentum had been lost. Harry has said that it was a case of \u201cproblems converging\u201d and \u201ca lot of things crumbling at the same time\u201d as the band made their final album of the 1980s, The Hunter<\/i>.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was wintertime in New York,\u201d says Harrison. \u201cDrugs, dark times.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a very, very hard record to make, because it was obvious that Blondie was falling apart,\u201d says Chapman. \u201cThe Hunter<\/i> was a very, very sad and somewhat depressing record to work on. They never knew how to negotiate. These are not people who negotiate\u2026 they just yell and scream (laughs<\/i>).\u201d<\/p>\n
The resulting album was Blondie\u2019s weakest. Even today, the calypso pop of Island Of Lost Souls (UK Number 11, US Number 37) sounds strangely listless, while wobblily retracing the Heart Of Glass blueprint on War Child effectively snuffed the band\u2019s singles career when it struggled to Number 39 in Britain.<\/p>\n
For his part, Chris Stein considers The Hunter<\/i> to be \u201ca little light\u2026 it could use a couple of heavier elements\u201d. Harry instantly agrees and adds, \u201cIt\u2019s so funny, because that whole theme of not being exactly what we intended, or what we were capable of, becomes very explicit in the cover art.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, the cover sucks,\u201d Stein reckons. \u201cIt\u2019s just a non-event. We were supposed to get one of these great makeup guys, and everybody would be half animals and half human. We just couldn\u2019t get it together. The record company couldn\u2019t figure out how to pull it off for us, y\u2019know.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the end, Blondie fizzled out, and broke up in 1982. Their fate was sealed when Stein became acutely ill after developing pemphigus vulgaris, an autoimmune disease causing chronic blistering of the skin.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt hit me hard that the band was no more,\u201d Burke admits. \u201cI mean, I was kind of washed up at 26. We were our own worst enemy once we got success, in a lot of ways.\u201d <\/p>\n
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SINCE RE-FORMING IN 1996 (WITH HARRY\/STEIN\/Burke\/Destri as their core), Blondie have enjoyed a second act that first involved a comeback UK Number 1 hit (their sixth) with \u201999\u2019s Destri-written Maria and has continued through years of arena-level touring.<\/p>\n
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\u201cMusically, there was a dynamic there that still existed,\u201d says Burke. \u201cAnd it sounded like Blondie. So, we kind of went from there with it, and added a few different people.\u201d <\/p>\n
In 2006, however, the ongoing enmities between Blondie members past and present caused an ugly scene on-stage in New York when the group were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Disgruntled ex-guitarist Frank Infante announced into the microphone, \u201cOne thing that could really make it better is if we could actually perform for you tonight. But for some reason some of us are not allowed to do that. I\u2019d like to play\u2026 Debbie, is that allowed?\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to run away,\u201d says Nigel Harrison. \u201cMy heart was beating so fast, I was thinking, \u2018I\u2019m gonna faint here\u2026 this is a fucking disaster.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was one of those moments where nobody could figure out whether it was a joke or not,\u201d says Gary Lachman. \u201cThe place did go quiet. It\u2019s a shame that it turned into something like that. But there you go. I mean, Blondie was a dysfunctional family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Accordingly, perhaps, Blondie\u2019s line-up has shapeshifted in recent decades. Jimmy Destri quit for good in 2004, and Chris Stein has this year been forced to stop touring with the band due to the energy-sapping side effects of the medication treating his heart arrhythmia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not writing it off,\u201d Stein says of a potential future return to the stage with Blondie. \u201cI\u2019m just dealing with some health bullshit at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe,\u201d says Harry, \u201cwe\u2019ll figure out a way for Chris to play, but not travel.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a new album in the can (produced, like 2017\u2019s Pollinator<\/i>, by John Congleton) and due for release in 2023, Blondie are keen to look forwards. But compiling the material on the new box set has inevitably forced them to reconsider the dizzying highs and plunging lows of their past.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think, oddly enough, I was happiest in the very early days,\u201d Debbie Harry concludes. \u201cWhen everything was new and sort of a challenge and we were, y\u2019know, scuffling about, I was kind of happy.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then the workload became pretty intense, covering many continents. There was a lot of demand<\/i>. It was rigorous and didn\u2019t really give you a chance to step back and collect yourself. We were at the head of this projectile.\u201d <\/p>\n
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This article first appeared in the January 2022 issue of Mojo<\/I><\/p>\n
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Getty<\/p>\n
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Blondie were a band for all seasons, with strengths their fame obscured and, perhaps, ultimately undermined. \u201cWe were our own worst enemy once we got success,\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":3043,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mojo-presents"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"kschwarz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3038"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3100,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3038\/revisions\/3100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}