Mondo

Winter 1991 – Issue Number 3 – Pages 78-79

Deborah Harry
21ST CENTURY GIRL

Interviewed by Tresca Behling, R. U. Sirius and St. Jude
Photography by: Bart Nagel

Here comes the 21st Century
It’s gonna be different for a girl like me.
from “I want that Man” Deborah Harry, 1990

Deborah Harry is 21st Century Fashion. Getting her to talk about it though is another question, or series of questions. Here then, in the minimalist style of her old pal Andy…
R. U. Sirius.

MONDO 2000: What will you be wearing on New Year’s Eve at the turn of the century?
Deborah Harry: That’s an important night so it’ll have to be something really sensational…

M2: If at some point in the 21st Century it becomes possible to change the way you look in any way imaginable, what do you think you would do about that?
DH: I don’t think I would change anything… When I was younger I would have changed everything every day… Hmmm… A tail might be sexy.

M2: Do you think things like surgery and piercing will become mainstream?
DH: I think it already is mainstream.

M2: You once said that you wish that you’d copyrighted sex. Is there anything you would like to copyright now for the 21st Century?
DH: Well if I told you what it was you’d do it..

M2: Do you have any general ideas about the future? In a lot of your songs you say, “I’ve got a plan.”
DH: (laughing) I used to make lists. I don’t do that anymore. I’d lose them or never complete them.
…Well, Mick Fleetwood has some fabric that makes sound in response to body heat or something (ed. covered next issue). That sounds pretty cool. I don’t really think about fashion or the future or anything anymore. I just try to live. But I guess we’ll all dress like we’re Chinese and we’ll all look the same.

M2: If, in the 21st Century, you got a tail, what would you want Chris to get?
DH: Hooves.

M2: Why should or shouldn’t you get the role of Molly in the film version of William Gibson’s Neuromancer?
DH: I don’t really have an answer for that because the way decisions are made on those things is so bizarre. But from my point of view, of course I should be Molly. My name is Debbie.

M2: You have the opportunity to star in another Kronenberg film but he wants you to have reversible plastic surgery on your internal organs. Would you rather:
A) Have your stomach turned into a pollution-belching urban landscape?
B) Have the collective information of all Haitian voodoo chiefs pass through your subconscious all at once via a tiny microprocessor in the right brain?
C) Have your cervix turned into a mongoose?
D) Shoot R. U. Sirius for asking these questions?
E) Act in Lassie Does Detox instead?
F) Other?
DH: B & D

M2: What would you wear to a Bar Mitzvah on Mars?
DH: Textured spray paint.

M2: If you could wear the greatest acid trip you’ve ever had, what would it look like?
DH: Textured spray paint.

M2: It’s 2025. You walk into the bar and it’s full of exact Deborah Harry replicas. What would you do?
DH: I would sit down and order a very dry vodka Gibson straight up.