Debbie Harry: FACE IT
Arts & Ideas at the JCCSF – (Conversation took place on 3rd Oct 2019) Posted on youtube 15th October 2019
With Chris Stein & Rob Roth
The name Debbie Harry evokes many images: seminal rock ’n’ roll figure, complex songstress, incandescent front woman, actor and fashion icon. Now, after decades as a vibrant global force and a shaper of pop culture, Debbie Harry recounts her journey from an irreverent Lower East Side punk goddess to a bona fide international ambassador of New York cool in her long-anticipated memoir, FACE IT (Dey Street). Join Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry for an illuminating evening with Blondie co-founder and renowned photographer, Chris Stein, and multidisciplinary artist and director, Rob Roth – accompanied by a visual presentation.
Best known as the face of Blondie, undeniably one of the most trailblazing and influential bands of our time, Debbie Harry and co-founder Chris Stein brought the worlds of rock, punk, disco and ska together with “Heart of Glass” and “Call Me” and broke ground by combining hip-hop and pop on “Rapture.” Blondie was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. As a solo artist, Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards co-produced Harry’s first release, KooKoo, in 1981 and she continued to defy expectations with such genre-busting efforts as “French Kissin (in the USA),” “Rush Rush,” “Rain,” and “The Jam Was Moving.” With more than 50 million albums sold worldwide and acclaimed solo projects, Harry has also enjoyed a successful acting career with over 30 film and television roles to her credit (including Videodrome, Hairspray and Heavy, to name a few). She remains a true national treasure, one whose influence continues to impact the worlds of music, fashion and art. Debbie Harry will forever be synonymous with that punk spirit that lives somewhere in all of us.
Chris Stein is co-founder, songwriter and guitarist of the iconic punk band and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Blondie, whose most recent studio album, Pollinator, was named one of Rolling Stone‘s 20 Best Pop Albums of 2017. Stein is also an acclaimed photographer whose eye for the perfect snapshot has given us some of the most indelible photos of the seminal people and places of New York City’s punk and new wave era. His coffee-table book, Chris Stein / Negative – Me, Blondie, and the Advent of Punk, documents both the private and public moments of his remarkable life. It is also an intimate look at one of the most enduring creative partnerships in pop music: the collaboration between Debbie Harry and Stein, which has continued to enrich the magic of Blondie throughout the band’s illustrious career.
Rob Roth is a multiplatform artist and director based in New York City. He works in a variety of media including theater, video, sculpture and performance. Roth received his BFA from Pratt Institute and has exhibited at the New Museum for Contemporary Art, Performance Space 122, Abrons Art Center, Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.
