23rd February 2000
Page 74
Debbie Harry’s
passions
Debbie Harry once rolled in the mud at Woodstock and admired Brooke Shields so much she wrote a song about her. The Blondie singer, 54, lives in New York.
I’m a big fan of Brooke Shields, especially in the sitcom Suddenly Susan. A few years ago I did a photo shoot with her and she was such a sweet person. I’d seen her act brilliantly in a film called Pretty Baby, so I wrote a song – also called Pretty Baby – about her.
Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs is one of my favourite books. It’s such a creative piece of work that really fires the reader’s imagination. William was also a dear friend until he died a couple of years ago.
I love Japanese Chin dogs and have one called Chi-Chi. She weights about 12lb and has the flat face of a pug. Her favourite thing is to sunbathe and I love taking her everywhere with me.
I really admire RuPaul. He’s great at presenting his own talk show. I can remember when I first met him. A friend of his tipped him off that I was eating in a New York restaurant and RuPaul turned up with a copy of my latest album asking me to sign it.
Woodstock was an amazing experience. Peace and love was the message and it really was a wonderful event, unlike anything else I’ve ever been to. I think that I actually got to roll around in some mud, too!
Andy Warhol was a talented person who I was lucky to meet many times. I moved to New York in 1965 and wanted to be a painter, so I enjoyed meeting such a one-off character. Fortunately, he did a really nice portrait of me in 1980.
Rear Window is a terrific Hitchcock thriller and was actually written about my New York apartment building. There are about 4,000 apartments and I can see into about 600 of them. It’s a massive place, but recently it’s turned into a bit of a yuppie ghetto.
John Waters is a brilliant director and also an old friend of mine. He’s got such an imaginative mind and has never been afraid of making B-movies like Hairspray, which I starred in, that don’t fit in with that whole Hollywood scene.
