13th November 1976
Page 9
BLONDIE COMETH
“I was stoned most of the time” Pic: BOB GRUEN
THE SENSUOUS POUT FROM CBGB
HIGH CHEEKBONES. Exquisitely formed. Dramatically shaded. Extremely photogenic.
High cheekbones helped make enigmas of Garbo, Deitrich, Loren, Nico.
High cheekbones, contemptuous stare and a sullen, sensuous pout are going to make a star of blonde singer Debbie Harry – the focal point and namesake of new wave New York rock band Blondie.
One of the first CBGB-based bands to secure a recording deal with a prominent label (Private Stock), Blondie is the antithesis of such Black & Decker electric power-tools as The Ramones.
Blondie rock is pure ’60s Brill Building pop streamlined for ’70s consumption.
Debbie has had experience singing with girlie groups and it shows. She’s Betty Weiss of the legendary Shangri-Las incarnate, with four guys instead of two beckies supplying back-up. Likewise, her debut disc “X Offender” (a truncation of “Sex Offender”) clearly substantiates that both she and the boys have been listening to the same records as another New Jersey phenomenon, Bruce Springsteen.
Born in Miami and raised in New Jersey, Debbie rebelled against her archetypal middle-class background around the same time as she discovered the difference between boys and girls. Under sufference she went through the whole college indoctrination, from baton twirler to sorority, at which point she got the elbow for hanging out with a gay guy.
With her hair bleached white and black skintight outfits she soon became immune to wolf-whistles and truckers cat-calls of “Hey, Blondie” as she become immersed in her own private world of Ronettes and Smokey Robinson records.
Debbie has made up her mind that upon graduation she was going to split to Europe but parental control resulted in her being enrolled at a finishing school in Hackettstown, New Jersey. After two years forced education, Debbie hot-tailed it to New York City and a succession of super-straight day jobs and mind-expanding nights hanging out with avant garde jazz musicians in St. Mark’s Place.
It was here that she had her first flirtation with free-form expressionism. (Happens to the best of us in the end – Ed.)
Somehow or other, Debbie found herself clinking finger cymbals and chirping back-ups with a Capitol Records 
flower-power band called Wind In The Willows, and anonymous band produced by Artie Kornfield who masterminded the short-lived recording careers of such seminal wimp acts as Every Mother’s Son and The Cowsills. The Summer Of Love found Wind In The Willows opening for Melanie, but problems concerning the unsuitability of the band’s drummers caused a fragmentation.
Within days, Debbie had moved to the East Village where she shacked up with one of the Willows’ drummers and waited tables at Max’s Kansas City in its Warholian heyday.
She hated every minute of it and it appears that the only incident that aleviated her boredom and contempt was getting humped one evening in the minute upstairs phone booth at Max’s.
Maybe one day they’ll put up a plaque!
After eight nightmarish months putting up with what the clientele at Max’s puts the staff through, Debbie fed to Bel-Air as a multi-millionaire’s plaything. Within four weeks, she was back in the Big Apple and part of the city’s drug fraternity.
“I was crazy”, she recollects, “I was completely out of my mind. I was into junk. I was really fucked up. For a time, it was pretty blank. For a long time, I tried to blank out whole blocks of my life.
“I did junk for about three years,” she admits, “that was right after Wind In The Willows broke up. I just couldn’t stand the surroundings. I like the drug. I like the high. There’s nothing better, but I can’t stand the scene. You have to deal with extortionists. For a while, I had this dealer living in my house and I nearly went berserk.
“That really finished me on the whole trip. These 40-year-old guys with guns and infections all over their bodies. I don’t think they ever went to the bathroom.”
At this juncture, Debbie befriended a Central Park South doctor who kept her going on a mixture of vitamin shots and amphetamine.
Three years on drugs hadn’t ravaged her sophisticated good looks and in order to keep her habit going, Debbie went the entire Playboy Bunny route.
“I was stoned most of the time,” is about all she can remember. “I was just there doing it. Some of these girls would make five hundred to a thousand dollars in two nights.”
Whether or not this was just for waiting tables, she doesn’t say. “I wanted the money. It was a goal and something I always had held in front of me in my younger life. When you’re younger, you have idyllic dreams of things to do. I did it and it’s not so good. It’s pretty disgusting work.
“I stopped doing junk and I didn’t need the money as much. In a way, I used drugs to stimulate myself or control my state of mind to help me get through a rough, emotional time in my life. When I felt a little more secure, I was ready to go on as a person without any help, assured of what I was.”
It took another move before Debbie was to get herself straight: first, to an art commune on the outskirts of Woodstock where she went cold turkey and secondly, a period of convalescence with her family. Next came a gig as a physical instructor at a Paramus health spa.
Debbie hadn’t sung a note for three years. The reason was psychological more than physical. “Every time I tried I just couldn’t get it out, privately or in front of people.”
In 1972, Debbie was again back in New York City, this time working as a beautician and hanging around the Mercer Arts Centre where The New York Dolls were the unofficial house band.
Then one day, Debbie heard on the grapevine that some redhead number calling herself Elda had formed a girl group called Pure Garbage with famed transvestite Holly Woodlawn and Doll David JoHansen’s girlfriend Diane.
By the time Debbie affected an introduction with Elda, Pure Garbage had been dumped.
From the remnants, Elda grabbed Rosie Ross and with Debbie formed the original Stilettos line-up. With Tony Ingrassia acting as musical Svengali, the Stilettos soon ran foul of “differences of musical policy”. Elda wanted tack. Tony demanded class.
For the next two years, the Stilettos remained a more off than on going concern. Then when in 1973, Debbie handed in her notice she not only took Chris Stein her boyfriend-cum-guitarist, but the rest of the band. However, they couldn’t decide whether to trade as Angel or The Snakes.
At this point, a couple of chicks – Julie and Jackie – were brought in to sing “oohs” and “ahhh”, but immediately prior to their debut as Blondie, Jackie screwed up the image by becoming a brunette. Four months later there was a drastic re-shuffle of personnel.
Keyboard player Ivan Kral joined, as did two new warblers named Tish and Snookie. Within three months Kral had quit to join Patti Smith as guitarist and bass player and two months later, the girls had also gone.
To make matters worse, bassist Fred Smith left to replace Richard Hell in Television.
In the Summer of ’76, Debbie and Chris hired Jimmy Destri (keyboards), Gary Valentine (bass) and Clem Burke (drums) and together they recorded “X Offender” and “In The Sun” under the watchful eye of Richard Gotteher and The Ramones’ producer Craig Leon.
Aware that blondes have all the fun, Debbie insists. “I want to be a stylist. Certain people are stylists and others mechanics. I really want to do something. We’re struggling to get a sound and a style and make it a whole personal thing.
“Like Patti Smith has her whole trip down pat. She has a very masculine and intellectual approach to music and performing. I don’t want to do that.
“Rock and roll,” she continues, “is a real masculine business and I think it’s time that girls did something in it”.
ROY CARR
