Catching Blondie Through The Decades
A celebration of the NYC legends in honor of guitarist Chris Stein’s 75th birthday
It was the summer of 1982, and Blondie — this one-time habitué of CBGB — is on tour for the first time in nearly three years.
They’re playing the Providence Civic Center. A huge venue. Big time success at last. The guitarist-co-leader couldn’t be happier, right?
Wrong. Chris Stein — who turns 75 on January 5th and still co-helms Blondie with singer Deborah Harry — is still angry about the music industry. “But I think I’ve figured things out more — about the industry and about what’s happening in music,” the guitarist-songwriter told me. That is, maybe Blondie made it through the pinhole, but he feels the industry is still blocking the best new music. “The fact is that big business has taken over throughout the ’70s and taken away from the importance of records and music.”
Though his band may be inside the winner’s circle — the mainstream in a sense — but he tells me, “I certainly never want to do mainstream rock. Our thing has always been to look around and see what’s happening and then do something different. I don’t think of myself as a regular pop star. I’m trying to do something with my influence.”
He says Blondie’s music is “less specific now. I’m more interested in archetypes — music that taps into your subconscious and triggers something. I think that’s why the Beatles were so great.”
Does his band consciously try to merge pop and art?
“I’ve never really thought of it. I mean art is what it is, music is art. I’m more interested now in trying to merge Black and white music than I am pop and art. I think what we’ve been able to do is bring the Black musical emotions to a white audience. Somebody like Prince is able to do the reverse; he may bring white music a little closer to Blacks.”
He looks back fondly to the mid-’60s, when Black and white music was all part of one musical stream. “For years I’ve said if ‘Satisfaction’ came out now, it would never get any airplay, and when I finally met Mick Jagger, I asked him that and he said, ‘Oh definitely. It would just die a death.’ It’s true.”
***
Skip ahead 17 years. I’m talking with Stein, Harry and drummer Clem Burke. The latter was home in Los Angeles, scanning one of those celebrity name-dropping columns about which star was spotted at what event. “‘Kirk Douglas, Vince Vaughn, Lauren Bacall and Clem Burke,'” Burke read. And he thought: “What’s wrong with this picture?”
Now, he’s just the drummer in a rock ‘n’ roll band — but America 1999 is Celebrityland, and curiously enough, Burke seems to have been invited back into the club.
Why? Because, after years on the shelf — beset with illness and ill feelings toward each other, lawsuits, and tax trouble — Blondie is a group once again. (At least, four original members are.) And while many a reunion album tanks, there is reason to think Blondie’s No Exit may not only escape that fate, but go big. May go big.
VIDEO: Blondie “Maria”
The radio single “Maria” has been all over the airwaves. In England, always one of the New York-based band’s strongest markets, the song debuted at No. 1. This sixth No. 1 UK hit makes the group the first to go No. 1 in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. The album entered the chart at No. 3. (No US sales figures are available yet.)
So, how does it feel to slip into Blondie mode once again?
“Like wearing an old pair of socks,” says Harry.
“Dirty gym socks,” adds Stein. They duo may not be romantically involved any longer but, from New York, they are sharing both a phone line and a dry sense of humor.
It was nearly two decades ago that Harry was the It girl, the peroxide blonde who beat Madonna to the iconic and ironic Marilyn Monroe pose. Before she was a cover girl for national glossies, she was the cover girl for the classic underground magazine Punk — the sex bomb with a nod, a wink, and maybe a middle finger. She sang these punchy, hook-packed, sometimes risqué pop songs — “X Offender,” “Look Good in Blue,” a cover of the Nerves’ “Hanging on the Telephone,” “One Way or Another” — with a mix of sass and diffidence. Harry was hot ice, enticing and just out of reach. An early advertisement posed a pouting Harry and the tagline “Wouldn’t You Like to Rip Her to Shreds?” — playing off Blondie’s “Rip Her to Shreds,” in which Harry’s character fantasizes about demolishing a rival.
In his book Blondie, the noted late rock critic Lester Bangs wrote: “What — if anything — do these people care about?”
In Blondie’s own book, Making Tracks, Harry wrote: “The initial idea was to be desirable, feminine and vulnerable, but a resilient, tenacious wit at the same time rather than a poor female sapped of her strength by heartthrob and unrequited love. When Blondie did finally hop out on stage as a character, she would try to be bisexual or asexual, and a lot of times she would see and do things from the point of view of a third person.”
Stein’s idea of the band has generally been about the exploration of music, as he explained years ago. In some ways, with No Exit, Blondie has picked up the old ball. Keyboardist Jimmy Destri’s delirious, bells-a-ringing “Maria” harkens back to the early pop.
“I think it’s the most obvious,” says Harry, of its selection as an emphasis radio track. “It ties us directly to our more pop elements.” But the new album also includes forays into ska, reggae, country, rap, and hip-hop. There are some new tricks, including digital recording, which Stein credits for the quickness of arranging and producing as well as the fluid sequencing of the tracks.
So, what brought Blondie back from the grave?
“All the attention the music was getting over the years,” says Stein, who was the primary instigator. “And the fan interest. I could see the songs being used to represent different periods in all the films. Once I thought about it really seriously it seemed like a good idea.”
Initially, they were going to regroup for a song or two to be added to a best-of-Blondie compilation for EMI. Burke put an immediate kibosh on that idea, and the others agreed.
“It was important to make a new record and new music,” he says. “We agreed if we were going to put this time and energy into it, it wouldn’t be for one new song. Let’s be a band, not just a business venture.” Being a band, Burke believes, means writing new material, not just coasting on old hits in concert.
Consider Blondie’s groundbreaking history. In 1978, the band brought a pure pop/girl group sensibility to the harder-edged punk world. With “Heart of Glass” and “Call Me” they scored by grafting the once-hated and verboten disco pulse to their own style. Their sly “Rapture” was one of the first rap hits by a white act. With “The Tide Is High,” Blondie brought slinky island rhythms and untainted optimism to the mix.
Now, can Blondie — which has been away from the scene twice as long as it was a working band — keep breaking ground? Says Stein: “There are all sorts of reunions, but they all have this cashing-in {feeling}, and if people are concerned with credibility, maybe that is what is groundbreaking.”
***
Back to 1982, where we started the story. It’s Aug. 12 and Blondie is nearing the end of a tour at the Providence Civic Center. Once a punk rock group, it has crashed the mainstream, but now it’s going down in flames. Success is leaving a sour taste. You might quote one of the hits: Once they had a love and it was a gas; soon turned out to be a pain in the ass. Onstage, they give the impression of a band that does not want to be there.
During “The Tide Is High,” Burke starts winging his drumsticks at keyboardist Destri, who retrieves them and shoots them back at Burke.
VIDEO: Blondie “The Tide Is High”
“It was terrible, it was towards the demise of the band,” says Burke, recalling the date.
What triggered the assault? “It could have been stress. Things were not going well. We took two years off from the road, we went into large venues and these {separate} limousines and a private jet, where we were all on top of each other. People had different agendas; Chris was ill; the business was in disarray.” Blondie had been together eight years.
The band splintered. Harry helped get Stein through a debilitating skin disease called pemphigus vulgaris. (The disease is sometimes fatal, but Stein is well.) They continued to work together musically, but they split as a couple. Burke did session and tour work for Eurythmics and Bob Dylan, among others. Blondie’s bassist at the time, Nigel Harrison, went into the business side of music. Guitarist Frank Infante had fallen out with the band a long time before (he was not on the last tour). Destri did limited production and worked as a contractor. Infante and Harrison are not part of this reunion; they weren’t invited and are, in fact, suing the others. (Stein calls it a personality clash; Burke opts for the other usual suspect: artistic clash. Neither care to expound.) The touring band includes bassist Lee Fox Boston and guitarist Paul Carbona.
***
Now, it’s 2017. I’d never asked any of the Blondies about this rock ‘n’ roll urban legend and thought it was time.
Stein is on the line. Here’s the urban legend: That Blondie took its moniker, not from the blonde locks and alluring look of singer Deborah Harry, but from what Adolf Hitler named his pet dog.
Chris Stein says it ain’t so. In fact, it’s a rock ‘n’ roller’s example of Occam’s Razor.
“It was just from what people yelled at Debbie,” he says. “Debbie came home one day with her hair dyed blonde and then told me within a week or so truck drivers were yelling “Hey, Blondie!” at her all the time. The Hitler’s dog thing? I don’t know if I knew about that [then]. There’s no “e” on Hitler’s dog’s name; it was B-l-o-n-d-i.”
Not that Blondie exactly distanced itself from the legend or didn’t have some fun with it. “I’m fascinated by the Third Reich,” Stein says, “and we did a cover of one of Iggy Pop’s songs, a semi-ballad-y ‘Ordinary Bummer,’ under the name Adolf’s Dog, which was a reference to that.”
Thinking back to where it all began … Forty years ago, the Ramones blitzed through sets at CBGB and Television played bruised, twisting, artful music, Blondie played witty, hooky pop. They took the “girl group” pop sound of the mid-’60s and gave a knowing ’70s twist.
“Everybody influenced each other in the New York scene,” Stein says, “and it was great. Television, the Ramones and Talking Heads, the people around us. There was a nice back-and-forth that went on for four or five years before there was any attention [was paid].”
When Blondie first got rolling, to counter the misperception that Blondie was a solo act — i.e., Harry — their record company, Private Stock, rolled out a “Blondie is a Group” campaign.
“Everybody kind of thought that was an overstatement,” says Stein. “That didn’t really originate from us; that was from management. We could’ve done without it. I really felt that it was obvious or should have been obvious and didn’t need to be stated, but who knows?”
I didn’t ask the cliché question, but Stein beats me to it, just in case it was bouncing around my brain.
“The biggest question we get these days,” Stein says, “is ‘Did you think you’d be doing this in 40 years back then?’ To which the answer is, ‘Nobody thought about it.’ It was always in the moment. Maybe I think of that stuff now, but we’re in a different period. Maybe there’s a little more cognizance and awareness of the historical aspect of everything now, but back then, no.”
The downside to life on the road at this age, says Stein “is just physical shit, getting older and having it be more tiring. But beyond that, I like it. I like the digital era and I like modern pop music. I don’t know if I would trade all my experience necessarily for being 20 if it meant losing all the experience, but I certainly if I could be 20 and have all this experience, it’d be really great.”
As to Harry on stage these days, Stein says. “Debbie doesn’t throw herself around as much, but she’s still really selling it. I feel like a lot of our other abilities are better than ever, too.”
Stein notes the added pressure Harry has long had. “Being constantly asked ‘How does it feel to be a sex symbol,’” says Stein, “that kind of stuff. “Now, I think she’s a little more comfortable with the stuff that gets laid on her than she used to be. I think we just try and present the positive outlook and the fact that Debbie is two years older than the fucking president and still represents the youth culture and the fun outlook on life — [that] means something.”
In concert, Stein promised, Blondie wouldn’t just be bringing nostalgia. They had a new, strong album out, Pollinator, and Stein said they try to work four or five of those new songs into the set.
“We knew going into [making the record] we needed to do a more band-oriented record and [St. Vincent’s 2014 Grammy winning producer] John Congleton was exactly the right guy and had the good grasp of it. We really enjoyed working with him and hopefully we’ll do another project with him. By the way audiences are responding, the new songs seem to integrate well [into the set]. In London at the Roundhouse, people were singing along with ‘Fragments,’ which kind of blew my mind.”
The group has gone on hiatus at various points and has been through many lineup changes. There are nine ex-members and their history is dotted with acrimonious exchanges and lawsuits from former members and management.
Now, the three original members are joined by bassist Leigh Foxx (with Blondie 20-plus years) and keyboardist Matt Katz-Bohen and guitarist Tommy Kessler, the latter two called “the younger guys and tremendous assets” by Stein. The power of Blondie, Stein adds, “is a little more than the sum of its parts.”
AUDIO: Blondie “Fragments”
When you consider a veteran band playing songs from their catalog in concert, you wonder if the songs mean as much as they once did.
“Somewhat,” says Stein, candidly. “There’s different aspects, figuring out the live versions of the songs. It’s different than just trying to replicate what’s on the record. It’s a whole other animal. The live version of ‘Heart of Glass’ went through many different iterations before it ended up where it is. We were playing different things and little guitar riffs got replaced by sort of stadium-rock guitar chords, that Paul [Carbonara], our previous guitar player, invented.
“It’s more of a relationship with the hit songs that everybody knows at this point. Every now and again, we drag up some older, deep album tracks, but at this point it’s more about doing stuff people recognize, songs that they’ve been hearing their whole lives and then putting in the new material in a limited way. The set is always evolving, with us changing things around and seeing how people react. And there’s disagreements about what works and doesn’t work.”
Stein didn’t offer a succinct summation of Blondie circa 2017, so I’ll go back to something Burke told me, about the challenges of keeping it fresh with Stein and Harry at the front of the Blondie brigade, in a 1999 interview.
“It feels like some weird time capsule we came out of,” he said. “We’ve all been through some therapy. We’re still a pop band on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But everyone’s a little older and wiser, and we can tolerate each other and the outside forces.”
***
Blondie lives. In October 2024, Stein posted on Instagram that there would be a new Blondie album in 2025, their first in eight years with John Congleton again producing. A tour? It’s been teased. Don’t be shocked if Blondie doesn’t shake the summer shed scene.
- St. Vincent Goes to the Symphony - June 10, 2026
- A Decade Without Prince - April 21, 2026
- Rob Hirst Was the Engine of Midnight Oil - January 23, 2026
You May Also Like
-
September 2, 2023 -
August 30, 2022 -
May 4, 2024
