Highlights - Muses

Deborah Harry

Born in Miami, Harry was adopted at age three months by Richard and Catherine Harry. She grew up in Hawthorne, New Jersey, and after graduating from high school moved to Manhattan. Harry joined a folk-rock band, the Wind in the Willows, which released one album for Capitol in 1968; she worked as a beautician, a Playboy bunny, and a barmaid at Max’s Kansas City. In the mid-Seventies she became the third lead singer of a glitter-rock band, the Stilettoes, which also included future Television bassist Fred Smith. Stein, a graduate of New York’s School of Visual Arts, joined the band in October 1973, and he and Harry reshaped it, first as Angel and the Snakes, then as Blondie.

By 1975 the band was appearing regularly at CBGB, home of the burgeoning punk underground. Its first single, "X Offender," was independently produced by Richard Gottehrer and Marty Thau, who sold it to Private Stock. The label released Blondie’s debut, also produced by Gottehrer, in December 1976.
 

The group expanded its cult following to the West Coast with shows at Los Angeles’ Whisky-a-Go-Go in February 1977 and opened for Iggy Pop on a national tour. A few months later, they made their British concert debut. In July Gary Valentine (who wrote "[I’m Always Touched by Your] Presence Dear") left the band to form his own trio, Gary Valentine and the Know, which broke up in spring 1980.

After one album for Private Stock and some legal wrangling, Blondie signed with Chrysalis in October 1977. Mike Chapman, a veteran of glitter pop, produced Parallel Lines, which slowly made its way into the Top Five, breaking first in markets outside the U.S. Blondie’s third single, the disco-style "Heart of Glass," hit #1 in April 1979 and established the group with a platinum album.

Blondie maintained its popularity and dabbled in black-originated styles, collaborating with Eurodisco producer Giorgio Moroder for the American Gigolo soundtrack ("Call Me," #1, 1980), covering a reggae tune "The Tide Is High" (#1, 1980), and writing a rap song, "Rapture" (#1, 1981), on Autoamerican. Harry also did the rounds as a celebrity, including an endorsement of Gloria Vanderbilt designer jeans in 1980.

Harry also began acting, appearing Off-Broadway in Teaneck Tanzi: The Venus Flytrap (1983), in the films Union City (1979), Videodrome (1982), and John Waters’ Hairspray (1988), in the television series Wiseguy and in Showtime’s Body Bags.

  
 

Early in 1982 Infante brought suit against the group, claiming they were out to destroy his career by excluding him from group meetings, rehearsals, and recording sessions. The suit was settled out of court and Infante remained in the band. However, by late 1982, following a disastrous tour (Blondie was never known as a great live act), the group quietly disbanded.

Harry and Stein’s planned vacation from the music business stretched to a couple of years after he was felled by a rare genetic illness called pemphigus. Harry’s comeback momentum was again stalled in the mid-Eighties by legal problems with the group’s label, Chrysalis. Rockbird drew critical raves, but neither it nor her subsequent releases have approached Blondie’s in sales or acclaim, although she has had major hits in the U.K. ("French Kissin’ in the U.S.A.," #8, 1986, and "I Want That Man," #13, 1989). She sang a duet with Iggy Pop, "Well, Did You Evah!," on the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Blue.

Harrison and Burke joined a group called Checquered Past, which included ex-Sex Pistol Steve Jones. Later Harrison supervised the music for several feature films, including Repo Man, before becoming an A&R man for Capitol and Interscope. In the early Nineties Burke became one of the Romantics. Stein continued producing acts for his Animal Records label, and Destri began producing.

 

Interesting Links

Blondie Anthology

Pictures by Joe Ryan

Pretty Baby - Legacy of Blondie