Debbie Harry and Chris Stein
Emerging from the New York punk scene, Chris Stein and Deborah Harry took the world by storm with their innovative production, sharp image and tales of urban heartbreak. As the songwriting partnership at the heart of Blondie, they penned some of the most definitive songs at the turn of the ’80s, mixing spiky guitars, raw synths, and driving drums that enraptured and inspired kids and rebels around the world. With classic songs like “Hanging On The Telephone,” “Heart Of Glass,” “Rapture,” and “The Tide Is High,” they created their own sound from New York’s melting pot of punk, wave, reggae and hip-hop, all shot through with Deborah Harry's cool soul.
In their 2013 Red Bull Music Academy lecture, the duo recalled New York in the ’70s and ’80s, CBGB, their rise to pop stardom, and more.
Hosted by Benji B All right, it’s a very exciting one today. I’m super excited, I’m sure you are
too. It’s a true New York moment right now. Please join me in welcoming the
amazing Chris Stein and Debbie Harry. [applause] How’re you both feeling? Chris Stein Fine, thanks. Thanks for having us. Benji B It’s our pleasure. Debbie Harry I guess you should turn that off. Chris Stein This place is so opulent. Is all of this paid for by the proceeds of
caffeinated sugar beverages? Benji B Pretty much. Chris Stein Amazing. Benji B Yeah. What did West 18th Street used to look like? Debbie Harry 18th Street? Benji B Where we are right now. Chris Stein He means here. Debbie Harry Oh. Chris Stein Physically, it wasn’t that different. Debbie Harry It was pretty much the same. Chris Stein Yeah, but it’s just the interiors have changed and the quality of the cameras. Debbie Harry Yes, Chris is very impressed with the cameras. Chris Stein You see that red camera? Yeah, those are not cheap. Benji B You were sort of a pioneer of early New York camera stuff, weren’t you? I
mean, you did one of the first, almost like, pirate TV [programmes]. Chris Stein We did this thing called TV Party, which was on
cable TV once a week. Benji B Amazing. Chris Stein And I guess it started in, I don’t know, 1980, ‘79/’80. It went on for four
years. At that point cable TV was only available from 14th Street – no, 23rd
Street uptown, so if you lived below 23rd Street you couldn’t see it anyway.
It was only for the well-to-do. Benji B And what did you do on TV Party? Chris Stein We smoked a lot of weed and went crazy and, you know, just carried on. It was
kind of like going to a club once a week, but everybody just gathered in this
TV studio. Debbie Harry Well, we would start out in the bar across the street and then work our way
across into the studio, so that was always nice. Benji B And what kind of characters did you get to meet on TV Party? Chris Stein Well, everybody was on the show at one point.
Iggy was on and The
Clash, I think. Mick
Jones was on. (video: excerpt from TV Party) Yeah, there we have TV Party outtakes. It’s very entertaining. That’s Glenn
O’Brien, he is the host of TV Party. He’s trying
to revamp it now, it’s out there, and he’s an old guy. Debbie Harry Didn’t Nile [Rodgers] go on one time? Chris Stein Nile was on. Debbie Harry Nile was on. Chris Stein George Clinton, one of his very few TV appearances, was on TV Party. Benji B Didn’t you have a [Basquiat] interview on there as well? Chris Stein Basquiat was on frequently, he did the camera, and those things that Glenn his
holding up, those scribbles are by Jean-Michel probably... Debbie Harry Yeah, those are Jean-Michel. Chris Stein ...are in Glenn’s archives and worth millions of dollars. Benji B So Jean-Michel Basquiat did the titles for TV Party. Chris Stein Yeah, he typed in that stuff. He was frequently typing in that. This was all
very hi-tech at the time. Debbie Harry Typing? That doesn’t look like typing. Chris Stein The stuff, the... Debbie Harry Those are scribbles. Chris Stein No, the overlay. Debbie Harry Oh, that. [laughs] Chris Stein It’s Jean typing that stuff. That was Richie Fliegler, he was in a lot of
bands. That was me with a hood on. This might have been medieval night or
something. This is the compilation that some of these guys from Brink Films
have thrown together. It’s entertaining. Nobody’s familiar with it. Benji B And there was always the famous phone-in part of the show as well, right? Chris Stein We had phone calls, yeah. Debbie Harry And what kind of phone calls would you get? Chris Stein A lot of rude phone calls, but it was great. Debbie Harry Yeah, it was very funny. Benji B So, I mean some of the names that you casually mentioned as we were talking
there, obviously sort of New York legends, folklore almost. Do you want to
paint a picture of what this town was like at the period you were shooting TV
Party? Chris Stein Well, as I was in the car coming here, I looked up the glamour of decay and I
found a lot of different things but no linking theme. I didn’t have enough
time to look on my phone for literary references to the glamour of decay, but
I’m sure they’re out there, and there was something very glamorous about being
in the midst of this, just rot that we were all in, in New York City at the
time. New York city has become the complete opposite animal of what it was. Debbie Harry Yeah. Everywhere I used to go on tour, people would ask me with, you know,
tremblingly ask me, how can you live in New York City? Chris Stein I was hearing that Detroit is going to... they’re actually talking about
selling off the public art collection because they’re in such bad shape, so if
you want to get a glimpse of what urban decay is like now... Debbie Harry ...move to Detroit. Chris Stein Detroit is in kind of poor condition. Debbie Harry There’s a lot of great music there. Chris Stein Yeah, Detroit is awesome. But New York was in the throes of, you know,
everything, back in the late ’70s. Benji B And it was famously declared bankrupt. Chris Stein And famously Gerald Ford, was it, there was a headline that said, “Ford to
City: Drop dead.” Hell, we have the headline, you guys really did your
homework, that’s great. I guess he was refusing some benefit that the
government was supposed to supply, some aid or something was nixed. Debbie Harry It really was like another country. It was a different place than any place in
the States, and now it’s sort of become very acceptable and people come here
to raise families, which was unheard of, really. Benji B Chris, you’re from Brooklyn, right? Chris Stein Yeah, Brooklyn. Benji B And Debbie, you’re from New Jersey originally? Chris Stein North Jersey, yeah. Benji B So what were those sort of original forays into voyaging into New York like
for you as a young person? Debbie Harry It was very exciting. I always wanted to be a part of it and it was an escape
route for me. I always knew that I was not cut out for suburbia and I really
had no interest in that kind of life, although I had great friends there and
lots of good times, lots of laughs, but I always intended to move to New York. Chris Stein When we first started coming in, in the ’60s, it was even before the decline
and the Lower East side was still neighbourhood-y and had immigrant
descendants and it wasn’t the Wild West yet, as it became later in the ’70s. Benji B So when did you first move here, Debbie? Debbie Harry I first moved here in the mid-’60s. Benji B And what were the first kind of jobs that you did when you arrived in New York
to make it? Debbie Harry I just did anything, really. I worked in retail, or actually I worked in a
wholesale market for - I forget the name of the companies - Hold Howard and
Colonial Candle. I sold candles to department stores. I was terrible at it but
they kept me on. [laughs] Chris Stein Didn’t you work for the BBC at some point? Debbie Harry I worked for the BBC after that, as a secretary, and then I worked in the
first head shop in New York City and that was a lot of fun, to meet all the
downtown people and have all of the great psychedelic posters and pipes and
all that stuff. I fit right in over there. Chris Stein The first head shop was on 9th Street and off 2nd maybe? Debbie Harry Yeah, it was right around the corner from where Veselka is now. I think
Veselka might have actually been there. Chris Stein Yeah, I hear it’s been there for a long time. I remember going into the first
head shop. We overlap before we met later on and we both were at Woodstock, at
the festival. Debbie Harry Yes, we’re old people. [laughter] Benji B So the precursor to you meeting, what’s the musical backdrop at this point? Debbie Harry Then? Benji B At that time, yeah. What was the music that you were inhaling and digesting as
a young person? Debbie Harry Oh, everything. We listened to everything. I think radio was very homogeneous.
They played everything, really. Chris Stein Everything wasn’t as genre-specific as it is now, so on the same radio station
you’d hear James Brown and then you’d hear The Rolling Stones. Now it’s gone,
all that, the days of everything being played together, certainly, but that
started going out a long time ago. And we liked the Velvet Underground, we
were all aware of those guys. They showed up in the midst of the flower power
era with this dark record about heroin and death, and it got everybody’s
attention, certainly. Benji B So tell us, how did you guys first meet. Chris Stein You know, it was kind of incestuous, everybody was somehow related to
everybody else on the scene, and I just went to their first show with The
Stilettos, she was doing this
girl trio thing. I ended up going to the first event of theirs and was very
taken with Debbie, I thought she was terrific, and that was it. Then I became
the first non-regular member of the band after that. Benji B Of a band called The Stilettos, right? Chris Stein Yeah, a sort of girl, campy cabaret, R&B thing. Benji B And when you referred to the scene, you said everyone knew each other on the
scene, what was the scene? Chris Stein Just the art scene and the spillover from Max’s Kansas
City, CB[GB]’s hadn’t really started up. It was
going when we first met but it hadn’t really started the ongoing band
situation that came later. The art scene was heavily mixed in with the music
scene. The music scene was still coming out of the West Village with the
remnants of the ‘60s bands, like The Night Owl [Cafe] and The Lovin’ Spoonful
and all that stuff, and the folk music scene. It was maybe more of a small-
town thing. Benji B And there seemed to be sort of a video and film thing happening at the same
time in downtown. There was almost a mini-Hollywood effect going on within
your community, with people like Amos Poe, Jim Jarmusch. Do you want to talk about that
whole scene and how music and film was connected? Chris Stein Well, to me the central milieu was always Max’s. Everything sort of radiated
out from there, because that’s where all the people in the arts met and
collected. Debbie Harry And that was the Max’s from before the ’70s, that later evolved into pretty
much a rock place. Chris Stein A rock & roll club, yeah, when Mickey Ruskin originally owned it. He’s the
guy who invented the velvet rope situation, he was the first one to have
people waiting outside and go, you can come in, you can’t come in. Benji B Is now the right time to show a little clip from one of the films you were in,
Debbie, or do you want me to not do that? It’s Unmade
Beds, one of those movies, just to give an idea of the time. Debbie Harry Amos Poe, yeah, Unmade Beds. Oh, is that Duncan? Chris Stein Duncan Hannah, who was a painter. Debbie Harry Yeah, Duncan the painter. Chris Stein Curse you, YouTube. Debbie Harry We were all such brats, you know? (video: excerpt from Unmade Beds) Debbie Harry Amos thought that he was Godard. [laughter] Chris Stein We got to meet Godard around this period a few years later. We had this idea
to remake Alphaville, so we got to hook up with Godard and he sold us the
rights for a thousand bucks, which we later found out he really didn’t have.
[laughs] I think Amos actually has the contract somewhere, but it never got
remade. Benji B He was talking about pictures in that. You, of course, were a keen
photographer as well, Chris. Chris Stein Yeah, I was at the School of Visual Arts, and I started shooting when I was a
little kid with my little dinky cameras and then I started more seriously
around ‘68. I was just always dragging a camera around. Benji B And you brought some pictures in as well. Chris Stein I have some old pictures here. Benji B These are the pictures you brought in for us today. Chris Stein Yeah, that’s Debbie and Iggy on the Idiot tour in ’77. That’s Debbie in
front of CB’s. Debbie Harry Did we ever find out who owned that car? Chris Stein Nah, I never found any backstory. Debbie Harry That car was always parked in front of CB’s and nobody knew whose car it was. Chris Stein That’s Devo in our hallway. That’s a shot I took with a timer. Debbie Harry Yeah, 105 Thompson Street. Chris Stein Yeah, on Thompson Street, and Clem really doesn’t like that because he has
long hair and he decries his days as a Deadhead. That’s Kim Fowley in Los
Angeles, of The Runaways, the guy who invented The Runaways and many other
things. That’s Lester Bangs in an outtake from ‘Mutant Monster Beach Party’,
which was done for Punk magazine. Debbie Harry That was at Coney Island. Chris Stein That was at Coney Island, yeah. And that’s Eric Emerson and Cecil Coleman;
these guys were in a kind of bridge band that went from the glam New York
Dolls era into the punk era. Eric died early, he was a terrific character. He
was in a bunch of the Warhol films, he was one of the superstarts, sort of. He
was in Heat and Lonesome Cowboys and those suckers. Benji B Debbie’s got the T-shirt. Debbie Harry Yes, I came right from the gym and I loved to work out in my Ramones shirt. It
gives me... something. Chris Stein Richard at his last gig with The Heartbreakers, that’s upstairs at Max’s. Debbie Harry Richard Hell, yeah. Chris Stein And that’s Walter Lure’s hand, that’s one of my favourite pictures of mine.
It’s very noir. And The Screamers from LA. The guy on the left, Tomato, we
knew from the weird sort of shock rock drag scene in New York much earlier,
even before the CB’s scene. He was in New York. And that’s Stiv Bators just a
couple of weeks before he died in Paris. Benji B Going back to The Ramones, and you’ve mentioned “CB’s” at least five times
already, let’s define. You’re referring, of course, to the legendary club
venue CBGB’s in New York. I think it’s worth having a conversation about
CBGB’s and what it meant to you and what it was like. Chris Stein I spent a lot of time there. I have a thing there tomorrow, like I’ve got some
interview with German TV. You know, I haven’t even set foot in the Varvatos
store ever. I will in go in there tomorrow. Benji B Just to define, what are you talking about when you say... Chris Stein Well, CBGB’s is now a clothing store, a high-end men’s clothing store, which
is John Varvatos’s. He’s a really nice guy, actually, I just haven’t gotten in
there. It’s kind of mind-boggling to walk on the block. I used to spend so
much damn time there and now when I walk there it’s kind of disorienting,
because it’s just so different. It’s even hard to see where you are
physically. Benji B So it’s fair to say CBGB’s was really a hub for your scene at that particular
time, I mean your peers? Who were some of the other artists and creatives who
would just be hanging out there every night? Chris Stein Lance Loud, do you know who I mean? Lance Loud was the victim of the very
first reality TV show, I dare say, which was called An American Family,
whereby the cameras followed this family around for years at a time. In the
midst of this show the son came out as gay and this was a real big deal. I
don’t have a timeframe, I haven’t really thought about this, but that was
Lance and he wound up in CBGB’s with a band called The Mumps, right? Debbie Harry Yeah, I think so. It eventually tore up the family, broke up the marriage.
[laughs] Perfect ending, cataclysmic ending. Chris Stein I think they did an HBO documentary about the show, but I’m not sure. It’s kind of obscure stuff. Benji B And everyone refers to CBGB’s as famously being stinky, nasty, smelly, dark. Chris Stein It was pretty nasty and stinky and there were dogs who used to poop around and
stuff, yeah. Debbie Harry I wonder, I’ve heard that there’s a lot of areas or potentially the creativity
of the time in Berlin now. Does anybody know about that, is that reality? Chris Stein Yeah, it’s all happening over there. Debbie Harry It’s pretty cool. Benji B It must have been amazing to feel that momentum. Were you aware of how
significant the momentum that was going on, in and around the orbit of that
club, was at the time? Or was it just a club that you used to hang out in? Chris Stein I think everybody was pretty much in the moment, I don’t think I was thinking
that. Debbie Harry Yes, I think it was a love/hate relationship, and as they say, the best bar or
club is the one closest to home. So, you know, for many of us that was the
truth, that was the reality, that we lived within a five- or six-block radius
of the club. It started out really as a local phenomenon and it just grew,
because we built it through the press. It was very kind of intimate and
personal and the newspapers started covering it and then fledgling managers
would come in and they would try to promote people. It just sort of built up,
it was sort of a natural build, which worked to all of our benefits, because
we were allowed to develop our sounds, our act, our artistry, our thinking in
veritable privacy. We would face the criticism of our contemporaries, which
was often very extreme, but important. That was kind of a real plus. Chris Stein What I’ve always said is, the scene there and in Seattle and in Liverpool and
a few other places really got to ferment for a while before it was jumped on
by the media. Nowadays, as soon as something rears its head even that much,
it’s out there for everybody to see, so I don’t know if that situation can
ever really happen again. Debbie Harry Yeah, this was before cell phones even. Chris Stein Let alone all the rest of this stuff. Certainly, the love/hate thing is,
everybody back then had a real love/hate relationship with the city in
general. I remember everybody was always going, “Oh, I can’t wait to get out
of here, it’s so crummy, it’s so dirty.” That was a constant theme, and now I
wish it was that crummy and dirty again. Benji B Was everyone broke back then? Chris Stein Yeah, the main thing is, it was so easy to live here for no money, it didn’t
cost anything to live here. In the ‘60s there were still apartments, you had
new people who had apartments that cost $20 a month, for a tub and kitchen on
the Lower East Side, single room. You could get $20 a month. It might as well
be 1888, you know? [laughter] Benji B Famously, when you started Blondie you had this top to bottom house almost,
right, you had a creative space that you could rehearse in? Chris Stein We had three floors over a liquor store that we moved into, this crazy friend
of ours was the proprietor. It’s another long incestuous story. So, he wound
up with this three-story loft which he invited us to move into, which was
really nice. Benji B And cheap? Debbie Harry It was cheap, yeah. Chris Stein What was it, like 300 bucks a month or something? Debbie Harry No, it was 100 and a quarter. Chris Stein That was our share. Debbie Harry Yeah, that was our share. Benji B And where was that? Chris Stein 266 Bowery. There’s no landmarking on it. [laughter] Benji B And what kind of area was that, back then? Debbie Harry The guy from The Marbles lives there now. Chris Stein We were in there a few years ago. They sectioned it all off and... Debbie Harry ...ruined it. Chris Stein It’s still kind of wrecked. The top floor... Debbie Harry The top floor is still wrecked. Chris Stein Yeah, it’s still destroyed, do you remember? We wound up in there doing some
TV thing. It’s like some Chinese absentee landlord who doesn’t give a fuck and
is not... Debbie Harry Oh, I thought that woman owned it. Chris Stein Nah, somebody else owns it, some guy. But now it’s right across the street
from the museum of something or other. What is that, down there on the Bowery?
The New Museum, OK, that, so it’s not what it used to be. Across the street
there were just derelict, empty storefronts that all the homeless guys would
live in. Only, in those days you didn’t call them homeless, they were just
bums. Debbie Harry Yeah, they were bums. [laughter] Benji B So you were cold, probably, not much central heating when you were in this
kind of empty space, but what did this space give birth to creatively
speaking? Chris Stein Well, we rehearsed there and did a lot of stuff for the build-up to the first
album. Then we would just go across the street to CBGB’s. It was like one
block below Houston Street and we would just drag this stuff to CBGB’s. At one
point we played at CB’s every weekend for seven months in a row. I remember
noting that at the time. Benji B As Blondie, was your first gig officially at CB’s? Chris Stein No, the first gig with Gary was at...ah, shit, some bar? Debbie Harry The Mushroom? Chris Stein Nah, I can’t remember what the hell it was called. It’s in the book, it’s in
Making Tracks,
there’s actually a photo from it. It was another bar, because there were a
bunch of other places that people played at alternately. Benji B And when you finally did perform at your, sort of home club, CBGB’s, and
you’ve got people like The Ramones or Talking Heads in the audience or
whatever, what did they say after you performed and was that a bit nerve-wracking for you, performing in front of your friends? Debbie Harry No, the band people weren’t that critical. Chris Stein It was just nerve-wracking performing. Debbie Harry It was the other assholes that hung around, they always had something to say.
The band guys were all paranoid about what they were doing, I mean, everybody
was sort of staggering around and trying to figure it out and everybody’s
like, “Oh, yeah, yeah. Nice show.” Chris Stein It’s kind of amazing when you think about going on in this dark, crappy bar
for 20 people and being uptight and worrying about how you’re going to come
off. Benji B So somehow it went from being as hip and cool as you could possibly be, to
now, where we can say that you’ve sold 40 million records, I think the
official statistic is. Debbie Harry That’s a drop in the bucket. Chris Stein We remember what records were. We don’t know what to call it any more. We call
it a collection. Benji B What was the tipping point, the moment when you went from playing for your
mates, basically, in a bar to suddenly being asked to go abroad or being on
tour or having a hit record? Chris Stein It took a couple of years to build up. We went to LA, that was a big deal,
going to LA for the first time. The first gigs we did out of town were Boston
and Philadelphia. Going on tour with Iggy was a big deal. That was pretty
awesome, the Idiot tour. It included Bowie backing up Iggy on keyboards and
singing back-ups, and that was an amazing moment. We were suddenly out in
America in 1977 with that and that was terrific. Benji B And then you had a hit in Australia, right? Chris Stein The hit in Australia probably predated the Iggy thing, maybe. I don’t know the
dates of this shit. Maybe ’76 was the hit and then the other stuff really
started kicking on in ’77, I don’t know. Debbie Harry Well, I’m not good at that. Chris Stein Somebody has to look it up and put it as a crawl, you know? Debbie Harry I mean, it’s important that it was this gradual build-up and I think that’s
what we’re trying to talk about, is that there was this – as Chris says –
fermentation for us and not instant exposure, this kind of worldwide,
manufactured exposure. We really understand how important that was for us. Benji B You had the privilege in a way of controlling your image as well. You seemed
to be aware of the aesthetic of what you were doing through your photography
and presenting that to the world in a way that you wanted it to be
communicated. Chris Stein To a certain extent. I mean, that is the do-it-yourself theme that we’ve
always applied to ourselves. We never had stylists and we never had anything
like that, certainly. Debbie Harry Well, basically it was because it was pre-easy technology. I mean, technology
now has become easy and everyone can experiment and that’s the way that the
process of learning, it’s about experimentation. So we did that in a quiet way
and now people do that in front of millions of people. Whatever you feel
comfortable with or whatever’s available, it’s just part of what we do and the
creative process, or in the process of communication. Communication used to be
very localised in the major cities of the world and now it’s not, it’s
everywhere. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, does anybody? Benji B When you were putting those images out into the world, Debbie, when was the
first time that you realised that you were gaining momentum as this almost
iconic figure in rock & roll, and that the image was a huge part of what you
were doing as well? Debbie Harry I always knew about image being important and was very attached to that as a
kid, looking at other artists and film stars. I always thought, “Well, gee,
that’s great looking, and especially in rock & roll.” It was very visual. If
you didn’t have the visual content, for me, it didn’t really add up. I think
the first time that I ever really realised that this had become something was
not until in the ’80s, when I tried to re-establish my recording career. The
late-’80s, early-’90s, it really was sort of staggering to me that this had
become bigger. I mean, it was just ridiculous that this image thing had really
worked. Benji B A lot of people famously say that without Debbie Harry you wouldn’t
necessarily have Madonna or Gaga or people who have been very image conscious
in the future. But for me, it’s like the music with you guys always came first
and it seemed like the image was an amazing, powerful tool in getting the
music to people. Is that a fair thing to say? Debbie Harry Well, I don’t think one would have worked without the other. For sure the
music was the basis for it, so I think we were dedicated to that. I mean, it
was a struggle to bring the music to the public, so that was actually the
driving force. Benji B Talking of the music, what’s the first song that we should play? Chris Stein Of this stuff? Benji B Is it “X Offender” or “In The Flesh”? Chris Stein The old stuff? Debbie Harry I don’t want to hear it. Benji B You don’t want to hear that? Chris Stein Can you input it later? [laughter] I mean, I like that the stuff doesn’t sound dated, necessarily. Debbie Harry Yeah, it’s OK, it’s cute. Benji B Maybe we should fast forward to “Denis,” which was massive in the UK. No? Debbie Harry No, no, it’s all right. It’s just, you know... Chris Stein “Denis” is always a thorn because it has “Oo-be-do” in the lyrics and it’s
really difficult to go out and sing “Oo-be-do,” for anybody. [laughter] But you could play it, I mean, what the fuck. Debbie Harry You guys sing “Oo-be-do” and see how you feel about it. Benji B What shall we do, “Denis”? When I find the... Debbie Harry No, no, no. Benji B No? Chris Stein She’s not going to want to hear anything. We don’t sit around and listen to
this stuff. Debbie Harry I’ll leave the room and you guys get tortured. Benji B Well, this is significant for more than one reason, because I think it’s fair
to say that this moment in the UK was explosive. (music: Blondie – “Denis”) Debbie Harry [comments over music] Recently I was asked why I didn’t dance, “Why didn’t
you dance on stage on Top of the Pops?” I said, “Well, when we got to Top
of the Pops they would point to places where we should stand and then the
cameras would do all the movement.” So it wasn’t like they would really tape
or film a video performance or any kind of real performance. It was their
performance, it was a Top of the Pops performance. Benji B The clip we’re watching is from a programme in the UK called Top of the
Pops. What’s the US equivalent of that? Chris Stein American Bandstand, at this point American Idol, but everything was always
lip-synced on Top of the Pops. But there almost was no equivalent, because
in the States there’s no national anything, really. I mean, there’s a couple
of TV shows, but there certainly is no national print media the way in the UK
you have Melody Maker and NME and all those things. Everybody in the country
read the New Musical Express, the NME, and it was a taste-making device for
the whole country and everybody saw it all at the same time. There was no
equivalent in the States, certainly, of that. Benji B Well, certainly, the power of the NME in the UK and, of course, Top of the
Pops, which is 7pm on a weekday night. Did you feel the impact of that
straight away when you started touring England? Chris Stein Oh, yeah. At first there was this Blondie-mania moment, with people rushing
the cars and buses and stuff like that, which hadn’t happened in the States. Benji B And did you enjoy that level of attention, Debbie, that sort of cult status
that happened immediately? Debbie Harry I wasn’t really used to it and I had led a much different kind of life. I
wanted to be famous but I wasn’t really aware of what it meant in terms of
curbing my activities. I was used to a much freer kind of life. Benji B And did you find, like lots of musicians and creatives, that it was only when
you left your home town that you were able to really, quote/unquote, ‘blow
up’, as it were? Debbie Harry You mean from New York? Well, you know, it was pretty interesting. We had this
weird thing happening in Australia and we went down there with two guys as our
crew, no manager, no production, and it was pretty funky, it was pretty wild.
We had at that time the hit song of “In The Flesh,” which was a sweet little
old-fashioned song, almost like an Everly Brothers song. (music: Blondie – “In The Flesh”) That’s too loud. [laughter] Anyway, so we got to Australia and they were expecting Olivia Newton-John
singing this sweet little song and various other sweet little songs. It
wasn’t. The whole audience just sort of sat there like this [mouth open],
which was very interesting. We were highly entertained as well. Benji B You mentioned management. Was this the beginning of your career getting
managers, getting record deals and that kind of thing? And what was that
experience like at the height of the mania worldwide? Debbie Harry Well, we did have a manager when we went down there, only... Chris Stein ...he didn’t come. Debbie Harry He just threw us out there with these two guys. Chris Stein But that said, the music business, the touring business in those days was
nothing like it is now. Debbie Harry Now it’s much different. It was going somewhere and just doing a bunch of club
dates, but in another country. Benji B Then famously, once you were with - was it Crysalis, you record label? Chris Stein Chrysalis we wound up on. We were first with a smaller label in the States
called Private Stock,
which was... Debbie Harry ...a hobby, a hobby label. [laughs] Chris Stein Yeah, what do you call it? A vanity project for this guy... Debbie Harry ...Larry Uttal... Chris Stein ...who had been partners with Seymour Stein, and Seymour went on to be much
more of a visionary than Larry. They had been part of, I don’t know, Bell or
Buddha Records and they split up and formed their two labels. Then we got
bought off Private Stock by Chrysalis. Benji B And then the whole A&R thing comes into play and you get sent to a
producer, right, for the first time? We should mention, actually, the other
people in the group at this point. How many are you? Chris Stein Well, we already had a bunch of turnovers, initially. I mean, there’s been a
lot of people in Blondie over the years. We started out with
Fred [Smith] and - Jesus, I mean
there was a lot of people even before the success - and then
Gary [Valentine] is on the first album, and he was a very
charismatic kid by his own right. Then
Frankie [Infante] came in halfway through
the second album, just a lot of people. The main line-up from those days was
Gary and Nigel [Harrison], Nigel who had
played with Ray Manzarek in Nite City, the now-late Ray, who was a really
lovely fellow. Nigel had been in his band, Nigel played bass on the Runaways
record even though it’s not supposed to be him. Jimmy [Destri], who was there early on;
Clem [Burke] who was there very early on, with his drumming. Benji B Talking of drumming, we should talk about the “Heart Of Glass” moment. Is that
the first time you were playing to a click track, right? Chris Stein Well, I don’t know, maybe some of those other songs on the record. That was
the first deconstructed song, I think, as such, probably. I think all the
other songs may have had a full kit and at least a bass and/or rhythm guitar
with it. Benji B And what was the process of making that song? Chris Stein It was just the way people make records now, in pieces. You do a bass drum one
track and you do toms on another track and it’s all pieced together. So it was
challenging, to say the least. (music: Blondie – “Heart Of Glass” live) Benji B This was produced by Mike [Chapman]. How did that work out? Chris Stein Mike is terrific. Mike, I am told, is involved with 70 number one records in
his career, which is a lot. Debbie Harry And many of them he wrote. Chris Stein Yeah, so he was great and it was an eye-opener working with him, certainly. Benji B Is it fair to say it had a bit of a disco-era tinge to it, that record, right? Chris Stein Well, we really thought we sounded like Kraftwerk. We weren’t thinking of
disco at all and it just kind of slotted in there. Benji B But it did become a big record at [Studio]
54
and some of those clubs as well, right? And was it your first number one? Chris Stein In the States, yeah, it was the first American number one, so that was a big
deal. Debbie Harry Yeah, it was a big deal. Mike came to Italy, we were in Milan, and wanted us
to come down to the bar and have a drink and didn’t say why he was there. We
didn’t want to go down to the bar, [laughs] but he insisted that we come
down to the bar. That’s when we found out. Chris Stein Because America is, with all its little regional markets and different tastes
all over the country – it’s still like that – it’s hard to have one thing rise
to the surface, it’s difficult. (music: Blondie – “Heart Of Glass”) Debbie Harry [comments over music] Weren’t we inspired by Giorgo
[Moroder]? Chris Stein We were talking about Giorgo when we did this. We can’t remember, but we
certainly were aware of it. Debbie Harry I know you did a programme with him, right? Benji B Yeah, we were lucky enough to hear from him last
week. He joined
us last Monday, so it’s interesting to join the dots in this era of music.
Obviously, he was doing his work with Donna [Summer]. Debbie Harry Well, the thing that was interesting when we finally met Giorgio and talked
about the writing and the music and everything; he said he had written “I Feel
Love” about five years before he could actually record it and it would be
accepted. Chris Stein In the ’60s no one was ready for it. Debbie Harry And that was the truth for us with “Heart Of Glass.” “Heart Of Glass” had been
around, for us, for over five years. That’s sort of funny. I mean, there was
always this sort of time thing that would happen that doesn’t happen today. Chris Stein But you give us too much credit here. This version we kind of put together in
the studio. Debbie Harry Yeah, this version for sure, but I’m sure that was partially with Giorgo too. Chris Stein I love how this doesn’t sound dated at all. It sounds like MIDI - we all know
what MIDI is? Musical Instrument Digital Interface, which is the language that
all this crap uses to talk to itself and to other things. It sounds like
something like that, only this took days and days to put the track together,
whereas now if you had the idea you could put it together in an hour or so. Benji B How was this received, considering it was a hit at 54 and it was adopted in
much the same way that a Donna Summer record would be, by club DJs? How was it
received by your peers from the CBGB days? Debbie Harry Ah, well... Chris Stein I mean, Joey Ramone saying we sold out is kind of tongue in cheek, really. I
don’t know if he was really seriously pissed off about it. Debbie Harry Did Joey ever get seriously pissed off about anything? Chris Stein That’s something else too. Yeah, you know what. Debbie Harry One thing. Now what was I going to say? Oh well, must have been a lie. [laughter] Benji B I wanted to talk to you about tapping into New York musical culture as well,
because obviously this does have a tinge of that era of club record, and then,
of course, from my generation one of the most famous lyrics of all time is,
“Fab 5 Freddy says everybody’s fly.” I just
wanted you to talk about the
“Rapture” moment, really,
because I think it’s probably fair to say that you’re the first group with a
popular reach that introduced rap on a record. I mean, certainly I think it’s
fair to say you introduced the idea to a worldwide public, or a pop public
perhaps, that hadn’t yet had the opportunity to come into contact with New
York hip-hop culture. How did you meet Fab 5 Freddy? Chris Stein Probably from TV Party, around there maybe. Yeah, I think he showed up... Debbie Harry Either CB’s or TV Party. Chris Stein Yeah, I think it was TV Party. Debbie Harry He was a very entrepreneurial character and just was adventurous and he likes
connecting the dots. He was all over and he is still today, totally. He’ll
call me up and say, “Well, what about this?” and I say, “Fred, how did you
know this?” He’s sort of, two seconds after something happens, he knows. Chris Stein So in 1977 he took a bunch of us uptown to the Bronx, to a Police Athletic
League, which is like a youth centre, a neighbourhood youth centre, and we saw
this big event, this big rap event, which was super exciting. It was just
phenomenal and it was a game-changer for me, certainly. I saw that it was
paralleling what was going on downtown, but we didn’t know much about it. Benji B Can you describe the event, what it looked like? Chris Stein It was like a gymnasium-type thing with a stage and it wasn’t just a gig by
one group, it was a bunch, it was kind of a festival where there were a bunch
of groups, [Grandmaster] Flash and the Funky Four, and maybe Cold
Crush, I
can’t even remember. I was talking to Charlie
[Ahearn] about it, actually, he had a memory of it
too. I think he may have been with us. Debbie Harry Yeah, I think so. Chris Stein I can’t remember what he said now, because it’s also the 30th anniversary of
Wild Style, which was the
first hip-hop film ever made. And it was just terrific, the energy level was
amazing. Benji B Perhaps it’s not for me to say, of course, but I always got the sense that you
were very much respected among the hip-hop community, because you were
celebrating and crediting what you were tapping into as opposed to taking it.
It’s like, you put a lot of people on an international stage, of course,
including Flash, which is probably the first time I saw him in a video. Debbie Harry Well, it’s a double-edged thing. Chris Stein Am I right in thinking you flew out Kurtis
Blow to the UK, as
well? Debbie Harry Yeah, I think so, yeah. Chris Stein You remember that? I can’t remember it. Debbie Harry And we had Funky 4 +
1 on Saturday Night
Live and that was quite an achievement. They were paranoid. [laughter] Chris Stein That was the first rap act on American TV, I think, either national or local,
and they still put them on at the credit crawl at the end of the show. They
didn’t know what to expect. Debbie Harry Then they fell in love with them. Benji B Maybe you can talk us through who’s in this video. (video: Blondie - “Rapture”) Debbie Harry [comments over music] Now this guy was supposed to be - what is his name,
Samedi? Chris Stein I think it was Baron Samedi, lord of the graveyards in voodoo culture. I think
this guy was Haitian and he was actually a great dancer. Debbie Harry Yeah, and he brought in... Chris Stein He had three girls who were... Debbie Harry Two girls, three girls? Chris Stein Three girls, yeah, and one of them sort of became possessed in the midst of
the filming and they had to carry her off and revive her. They were used to
going into that sort of trance state when they were dancing. I think it wasn’t
so much our influence. Debbie Harry OK, that’s enough of this, all right? [laughter] You know, the rap thing is more of a tribute than an actual thing. Chris Stein It’s an homage. Debbie Harry It’s not really very good. I mean, it was interesting to a lot of people, but
I think that the real rappers were a little bit uptight, pissed off about it,
initially. But I will say, this is the first rap song that had its own song,
its own music, because up until then they were scratching and taking licks
from Chic and everything. This had its own embodied theme as well. Chris Stein My wife just told me that the Beastie Boys’ first album, had they had to pay
for the samples, would have cost like $10 million or something like that.
That’s Basquiat. Debbie Harry That’s Jean-Michel Basquiat. Chris Stein Probably his only rock video appearances. Debbie Harry OK, come on. I’ll smash your computer, I will. [laughter] Chris Stein That’s Lee Quinones, also known
as LEE, a really great, brilliant graffiti artist. Debbie Harry I don’t know who that guy is. [laughs] Chris Stein Yeah, I don’t know who that guy is. Debbie Harry Well, it was fun to do anyway. Benji B All right, well, even if you don’t like it, we’re going to give you a round of
applause for that, OK? [applause] Benji B So where are we at in the timeline of Blondie for a moment? Do you mind me
raising the fact that you were also a couple at this stage? Chris Stein Yeah, we were hanging out a lot. This is from
Autoamerican,
which had this and “The Tide Is High” on it, and famously when we gave the
record to Chrysalis they said, “We don’t hear any singles on this record.” [laughter] Debbie Harry They said that about Parallel Lines too. Chris Stein But that’s what record companies do. I mean, record companies were and are
inherently evil. [laughter] Debbie Harry Anybody here from a label? Bless you. Chris Stein I shouldn’t make a broad statement like that, I’m sure there are some indie
labels... Benji B Well, if anyone is qualified to talk about the highs and lows of the music
industry, it’s definitely you guys. I mean, it’s relevant, obviously we’ve got
a room full of musically-minded producers, DJs, singers, artists. You
definitely had a rough ride with management and money and accounting
experiences, is that right? Chris Stein Well, the main thing was that the two years we made the most money, our
accountant decided not to pay our taxes, because those were the days of tax
shelters and loopholes and trying not to pay taxes, even on a non-Apple,
Amazon level. Debbie Harry Also, we were extremely bad business people. We really didn’t pay attention to
it, or were very interested in it, so we trusted our management to take care
of things. I think now people are much more knowledgeable. Record companies
now want a percentage of everything you do, I mean, that’s rough too. They
take a percentage across the board of tours, merchandise, records or CDs.
Whatever income’s coming in, they are entitled to some of it, which is kind of
gross. Benji B It is definitely a relevant subject to talk about, because we mentioned 40
million records at this stage in your career. Definitely, you were hitting 20
million records worldwide, yet parting ways with a manager. How is it that you
can have 20 million records on the board and not be paid right? It’s amazing.
For us, we sit here and go, yeah, Blondie, Debbie Harry, Chris Stein,
superstars, but there’s definitely been low points where you’ve had platinum
discs on the wall I imagine and not... Debbie Harry Even funnier was when “Heart Of Glass” was at number one, we were on
suspension, which means that we hadn’t fulfilled the obligations of our
contract. So we had a number one record and we were also on suspension. The
whole thing of it was mad, it was really mad. Chris Stein It all goes back to the surf mentality. The Brill Building, does anybody know what
that was? It was a building in New York where all the old songwriters would
collect and write and do their work out of. It all kind of represented the
corporate aspect of the music business at the time, with publishing meaning
paper publishing, physical objects and such. It was kind of a surf mentality
where you were working for the record company rather than with them,
certainly. Benji B It might be an oversimplified question, but if you could impart one bit of
knowledge about what you’ve learned from the bad bits. Chris Stein Oh, just don’t trust anybody. I mean, what the fuck. The big thing was having
somebody come along and go, “You can trust me, son,” and do that thing, and
then you’re fucked from there on, you know? [laughter] Debbie Harry There is more information now, so that’s very good. Chris Stein Yeah, at that point the guy we had for a lawyer went on to write textbooks
that are used in entertainment law classes, and I don’t think there were
entertainment law classes in the ’70s, it just didn’t exist. Debbie Harry So you can image how people before us really never saw [proper compensation].
I mean, you hear stories like that all the time, right? Artists from the ’50s
and the ’60s that never saw a nickel. Benji B Talk to me about the cover of Parallel Lines. Debbie Harry Well, it’s what it is. It’s nice. It’s OK, black and white. If the music
hadn’t happened I don’t think it would have stood out particularly as great
art or hugely interesting. It just became very popular, so the artwork meant
something. Benji B I can’t think of another popular rock & roll group that’s a band of guys
with a female front vocalist. Has that ever happened before or since? Chris Stein Gladys Knight & The Pips. Benji B I guess. Rock & roll, though? Debbie Harry Did you ever see when The Pips performed without Gladys? Chris Stein Yeah, they were called And The Pips. [laughter] Debbie Harry It’s great, it’s so great. Chris Stein It’s great, they just do the back-ups for “Midnight Train,” you know? Debbie Harry They just do the back-ups, it’s fabulous. “I heard it...” Yeah, it’s really
funny. [laughter] Benji B So at this point in your career there’s loads of people around you who you
couldn’t trust, but you definitely have always trusted each other. We don’t
want to pry too much, but it’s beautiful to have such a creative soulmate
partnership that’s lasted to this day. Maybe you can talk to us about working
with the person closest to you. Chris Stein Oh, with Debbie, we just have a lot of unsaid communication, a lot of non-
verbal stuff goes on. I don’t have to ask her much because she always will
have the same conclusions. Debbie Harry Yeah, and sometimes he’ll... most recently, there were a couple of lines in a
song that he came up with, and then there were two more lines that had to be
written, and I had already written them. So I mean, it just sort of happens.
It’s easy for us. I mean, we certainly have had our disagreements and battles,
but not so much recently. Chris Stein No, we get along pretty good. Benji B And do you mind, Chris, talking about the period in your life when you fell
ill? Chris Stein No, I just had this weird illness, which is genetic, I’m told. You have to be
of Mediterranean, Eastern European origin, and I was doing so many fucking
drugs I just wore myself out and really lowered my immune system. And this
thing came up and it took a couple of years to get rid of. It was annoying but
interesting. Benji B And am I right in thinking, Debbie, that you put things on hold for yourself
as well in order to...? Debbie Harry Well, I don’t know. I really had no super-ambition to be a solo artist. I
always like the idea of working in a group, in a band, and I loved
collaborating with Chris, so... I mean, simultaneously – let’s figure out the
rest of this now – we got dropped from our label. Chris Stein Yeah, we were at a low point. What is this, ’82? Debbie Harry Chris got sick, our financial manager did not pay our taxes, all of this. The
bottom fell out and so I probably wouldn’t have been able to continue. I was
swamped in this mire of complicated, disgusting issues. Nowadays, one of my
favourite things to say to people is, don’t forget to take a vacation, because
we worked non-stop for seven years under extreme pressure, and Chris started
his own label and he was producing artists, and we were doing a lot of stuff
without stopping. And stopping is very important, so it shows that we were
forced to stop. They said, stop, and that’s basically what happened. Benji B And you’re still sitting on the sofa together. Chris Stein Well, yeah. It is what it is. Debbie Harry Don’t press your luck! [laughter] Benji B I don’t want to cliché too much the ’70s and ’80s drug thing, but it is a
relevant sort of sidebar to the timeline of some of the ups and downs of the
group as well. How much did that have an effect on not just you guys and your
personal relationship together, but the whole ensemble? Debbie Harry I think everybody was taking drugs. It was socially [accepted], that was it,
that was what was going on. I don’t know what’s going on today, really. I
think people experiment and try things. I don’t know, I don’t see people being
constantly involved with drugs. It’s perhaps more of a party thing. Chris Stein I’ve always thought that my parents’ generation had absolutely, really zero
information about drugs, that we growing up never heard anything about it –
except that, OK, this might be fun or it seems like it should be amusing or
whatever – so that was it. The ravages of it weren’t as apparent as they are
now, certainly. Benji B Let’s play another song. Shall we play “One Way Or Another” or shall we play
“Call Me”? Chris Stein Yeah, I mean “Call Me” is good if you want Giorgio. (music: Blondie – “Call Me” / applause) [Debbie and Chris have an aside] We were talking about Liberace and the HBO thing [Behind the Candelabra], that’s all. Benji B Is it good? Chris Stein Yeah, it was awesome. Benji B Michael Douglas, right? Debbie Harry Michael Douglas and Matt Damon. Chris Stein I think I saw people complaining that Matt Damon was too old to play a
teenager, because the guy was like 17. I thought the make-up was fucking as
good as the walking dead, it was amazing, the stuff they did. Benji B What made you think of that during this song? Chris Stein Nothing. [laughter] Giorgio, yeah. Giorgio was the opposite of Chapman. He wanted to just do
everything as fast as possible, so we just went in there, did a couple of
hours with him. I think he redid some of the parts with his guys and that was
it. Benji B Fast-forwarding a little bit, once you’ve got through and you’re back on track
after being sick, you reformed Blondie but with a slightly different cast. I
mean, I don’t want to dwell too much on the negative stuff, but for people who
are just starting out in music it’s definitely worth not ignoring the possible
things that can happen when you fall out with people, or things don’t work out
with other band members and stuff. Maybe you could talk to us about that
experience in a positive way, what you can draw from it? Chris Stein Oh, I don’t know. We had been working with Leigh Fox for years. I mean, he’s
been working with us for 20-odd years at this point. Debbie Harry Really? Chris Stein Yeah, we’ve been working with him since god knows when. So, I don’t know, I
tried to work with Gary again. Gary and I were always friendly except when we
were in a working situation when we would bump heads. It didn’t seem to work
out. Maybe it’s my fault, maybe it’s his fault, it’s hard to say. We didn’t
really think about using Nigel and Frankie again. Debbie Harry It’s very difficult to keep an ensemble together, especially if you’re sharing
a partnership. We were all partners in a corporation as well. Chris Stein The band situation is fairly democratic. You have to have a vote, get out-voted and stuff like that. Debbie Harry It’s one of those things. I mean, when you work on a film you’re working with
people for six weeks, two months, three months at the outside usually. Even in
that short situation, even in the run of a play, there’s things. Egos get in
the way and it doesn’t work. After how many years, forget it. Sometimes it
just wears itself out. I mean, friendships come and friendships go, and you
mature in different ways at different timing. That’s just life, right? Benji B It’s clear that you two are the creative nucleus of Blondie, but what is the
creative process? Do you like being in the studio, do you spend a lot of time
there? Maybe you could just give us an insight into how you make music
together? Chris Stein Well, it’s been changing all the time with technology now. I say I’m glad that
we were at the height of analogue recording and we got to experience that, but
I really enjoy working with the modern stuff, with the computers. Just working
the way it is, it’s much more intuitive once you get it going. There’s a lot
of people involved, I think there are more people involved with this last
thing that we’re wrapping up now than ever before. We have more outside
influences and individuals coming into the whole project. Debbie Harry I will say that Chris was into computers at a very early time, with the Amiga
and Compuserve, right? Was it Compuserve? Chris Stein No. You see, her computer skills are like... Compuserve, no. We had Amiga’s
early on, which was a Commodore, is that what you’re trying to say? Debbie Harry Oh, it was a Commodore, right. But Compuserve was a network, like AOL or
something, right? Chris Stein Maybe. I remember the onset of email. Debbie Harry Yeah, you used to get it on the phone. Chris Stein With dial-up, right. I remember the onset of email, and if I had any brains I
would have bought all those great domain names, but what can you say. Debbie Harry You’re a failure. [laughter] Benji B And what’s the process now? You’re working on a brand new record, what’s the
process? Chris Stein Yeah, we’ve just finished a bunch of stuff. Benji B What do you do in the studio, Chris? Chris Stein Me? I sit there now and I do a lot of programming and I make a version of the
song, somewhat, and then I send it to my producer, and he replaced some parts,
and then we all got together later on in the process, and replaced more parts.
But at this point every song has some of my little synthesizers and things on
it that we started out with. Debbie Harry Yeah, he comes up with some nice sounds. Benji B And Debbie, have you enjoyed this new bout of touring as much as you did the
first time around? Do you still get a kick out of touring and performing? Debbie Harry Well, yeah, I mean, that’s what I do. That’s what I’ve wanted to do and
trained myself to do. And I still learn things from it, so it’s not like I
walk out like a zombie or a robot. It’s something that’s an experience that I
learn things from all the time. I mean, technically it’s become a lot easier
for me, with in-ear monitors and the sound equipment. Everything has improved,
the technology has really improved, it’s great. Chris Stein Yeah, the whole thing is much easier. Benji B Do you want to play something from this new material? Chris Stein Sure. What have you got? Play “Drag You Around.” I’m hearing that radio is
responding to this track. [laughter] Benji B And this is brand new from... when was this recorded? Chris Stein Over the course of last year. (music: Blondie – “Drag You Around”) Debbie Harry This is not mastered. This is a mix, not a master. [applause] [photos show on screen] Benji B I love the way that when I’m playing it, we’re just putting pictures up and
there’s a casual, “Yeah, yeah, that’s the painting...” Do you have that in
your house, the original of this? Debbie Harry I do. Well, he made a lot of them, but I have a copy, yeah, fortunately. Benji B And this is the Warhol photograph of you, right? Debbie Harry Yeah, I think so, one of them. Yes, that’s my ‘secretary with attitude’ pose. [laughter] Chris Stein That song was written by a guy, a friend of ours from New Zealand who’s named
Matt Barus, and he has a group called The Dukes, which is a very cool band
from down there. Benji B Well, I’m conscious that we’re going to run out of time and I know that
there’s going to be a lot of questions from the room, so if you’re happy I
think we should hand over the mic to the floor and try and take as many
participant questions as we can before we run out of time. Audience Member Well, first of all, thank you for being here. Urban folklore has it that Mr
Stein, you were quite instrumental – you just mentioned the 30 year
anniversary of Wild Style – in securing the funding for that project. And if I
heard the story correctly, a German state television agency, which at the time
was probably the most conservative broadcasting entity in the world, was
instrumental too. Chris Stein Now, this is all beyond my ken here. I’ve never really heard any of this
stuff. Debbie Harry This is Charlie’s stuff. Chris Stein Yeah, I’d have to ask Charlie, Charlie Ahearn. Debbie Harry The Akademie der Künste was very not conservative, I found at that time. Chris Stein But I don’t know if that’s what he’s referring to. Participant Apparently the ZDF, the German state television, funded Wild Style and
rumour has it that you were the one making the link. Chris Stein No, I was just there in a musical capacity. That was it for me. Debbie Harry See how these lies start? [laughter] Audience Member But that’s what this forum is for, we can finally get it straight. Chris Stein I don’t think they had too much money at all. Audience Member In a roundabout way it was like, thanks for being somehow involved in that and
bringing that to the world. Chris Stein Yeah, Wild Style is great. Debbie Harry You could look up Charlie. Chris Stein Charlie Ahearn, he’s still kicking it with Wild Style. They have the 30th
anniversary. They’re doing a special pressing – I think they’re pressing each
one of the tracks separately to be used for mixing, scratching, whatever. Audience Member On the rumour note, Mr Moroder last week said that you were not actually quite
happy with “Call Me” and were not really liking to perform it. Debbie Harry Oh, no. Our keyboard player downright flatly refused to play it, because they
replaced his part. He was very insulted by that. Chris Stein Yeah, I mean Giorgio was Giorgio. It was Giorgio and he had two guys, one was
an engineer and the other was a guitar player and keyboard player, and I’m
sure they replaced a bunch of our parts. We may have made up and influenced
the parts, but I think they were refined by some of those guys. Clem is
definitely on there, that’s for sure. Beyond that I can’t say for sure,
because we just worked with him very quickly, worked up a version of the
thing, and then he said OK and the next thing we know we heard the finished
product. I know it’s his synth guys on there, it’s his standard sound. Benji B Next question? Don’t be shy. I was shy at the beginning. Debbie Harry They’re sick of us already. Audience Member This question’s for Blondie. Is it true - and if so, can you talk a little bit
about it - did you once upon a time hitch a ride from Ted Bundy. Debbie Harry So, supposedly, yeah. [laughter] Chris Stein We will never know if it was actually Ted Bundy. Participant Well, I know he had lots of different disguises. Chris Stein The guy she hitched a ride with had the same M.O. Debbie Harry I thought you were going to ask me about my moustache. Benji B Any more questions? Can we go to participants first? Participants, now is your
time. Debbie Harry I have to say that I received a track today from a Turkish couple, sent to me
by Rainer [Lingk] from Die Haut, so I was very excited by that. Chris Stein Did you like that? Debbie Harry Yeah, I’m looking forward to us sort of branching out. I’ve always been
curious about working over there and meeting people from areas of the world
where the music stems from a different place. Audience Member I want to ask about the song “The Tide Is High,” which was originally sung by
a reggae band called The
Paragons, who are actually not
that mainstream. How did you go about picking that song? Chris Stein I had gotten a compilation record from a friend of ours who’s a writer, just a
reggae compilation record. That one track really stood out and the original is
amazing. If anybody hasn’t heard it, I really recommend digging out the old
version. It’s got a violin on it, so all the horn lines are based on the
violin lines. It’s really weird for a reggae track from the ’60s to have a
violin on it. Debbie Harry And it has beautiful harmonies. Chris Stein Yeah, it’s great. Participant Did you have any other reggae interests or artists that you liked at the time? Chris Stein Yeah, I was always a total reggae buff. We were criticised on the last record
for having too many reggae songs. (music: Blondie – “The Tide Is
High”) Debbie Harry Well, I just want to congratulate you all for getting this opportunity,
presented from Red Bull. I guess it was a contest of sorts? Chris Stein Are you guys from out of town? [laughter] Benji B All over the world. Debbie Harry Fantastic. Chris Stein Toots and The Maytals should be in the rock & roll hall of fame, it’s
pathetic. I mean, among many others, but that one is my favourite peeve. Those
guys are so influential, that body of material is amazing. Audience Member Thank you again for being here and sharing with us. I wanted to know, was it
challenging to be a powerful woman in rock & roll, and how did you deal with
criticism over the years? Debbie Harry [laughs] Oh, god, not very well. I don’t know, I probably didn’t feel
particularly powerful. I was struggling with my own inner demons. But I think
that I had determination, I had an excellent partner and friend, so I got
lucky. But criticism, I know that after one of the trips to the UK in the
early days, I think I stayed in bed under the covers for a couple of weeks,
after being written about in every possible way. It was too much. I guess you
learn to deal with it and one of the things I learned was not to read
criticism while I was working or on the road, or just let it go and not be
bothered with it. Chris Stein Yeah, now we’re in the era where there’s no such thing as bad publicity, I
think that’s more in play than ever before. All the people having nervous
breakdowns in the media, and that still manages to elevate them and get them
another 150,000 followers on Twitter. Debbie Harry And I will say, now, that my perspective, if I read some kind of criticism, it
gives me an understanding of the person who wrote it. Chris Stein But that’s it. I think people gravitate towards negativity. I find that if I’m
reading 800 Facebook posts saying how great we are and then one guy writes,
“You suck,” then that affects me more than the other 799 saying how great we
area, so it’s weird. Audience Member Interesting enough, punk is always viewed as being a British thing by
mainstream media and in the reflection afterwards. What would you say that you
guys from New York were different from the lads in London at this time in the
’70s. Chris Stein Well, the British punk scene was genuinely more politically motivated than in
New York, where it was more of a social phenomenon, I think. Recently, we just
saw Vivienne Westwood coming to the Met Ball and she was making a political
statement about some soldier who was being wronged over there, so she has
maintained her [political stance]. Debbie Harry Yeah, it was very political in the UK. Chris Stein To me, that was always the biggest crossover. The Ramones are singing about... Debbie Harry ...mental problems. Chris Stein Mental problems, this and that. Johnny Rotten was singing about anarchy, so
there was a maybe a different worldview from the two things. I’m not sure
which influenced the other, really. We know that Malcolm came and saw the [New
York] Dolls. Benji B Malcolm McLaren? Chris Stein Yeah. Malcolm put some of those elements of the [New York] Dolls and
Television on the Sex Pistols. Debbie Harry In a way I think it’s probably pretty close to being the same thing. I mean,
we approached it from the perspective of social issues, which comes down to
being affected by politics. Chris Stein But also, here in New York it was a musical backlash against all the mediocre,
MOR music that was going on in the ‘70s, too. Benji B And did you see those people as your contemporaries, overseas? Did you have a
creative relationship of any kind with Vivienne and Malcolm and all that? Chris Stein Well, the guys from The Damned we were always friends with, different bands. Audience Member Hello, thank you for being here. So, I came from Chile and in my country one
of the most legendary dance clubs is called Blondie, in tribute to you. Have
you heard about it? And I’m asking, is that a good example of the legacy of
Blondie? Debbie Harry Cool. [laughter] Audience Member Have you heard about this story? Chris Stein That we’re popular in Chile? Yeah. Debbie Harry No, no, this is another band in Chile named Blondie. Benji B A club, a club, a whole venue. Debbie Harry We’re going to have to go get them now. Chris Stein No, I haven’t. What do they do? I’m a big fan of Latin music these days. Audience Member Sorry, again? Chris Stein Is there actually another Blondie band in Chile? Audience Member No. Debbie Harry Ah, I thought you were talking about another band. Ah, the hell with it. Chris Stein We don’t get down there much, it’s ironic. Debbie Harry We’ve been there a couple of times though. Chris Stein We have two Spanish language tracks on this record coming out, so we’ll see
what happens – not completely, but we have Spanish, Latino guest artistes. Debbie Harry From Systema Solar... Chris Stein ...who are from Colombia, and Los Rakas from Oakland. Debbie Harry From where? Chris Stein Oakland.
[laughter] Debbie Harry Oakland? They’re Mexican originally. Benji B Well, it’s been a great privilege for me to sit alongside such legends and for us
all to have such an education today. Thank you so much, Chris Stein and Debbie
Harry. [applause]