10 Magazine

Issue 44 – Autumn 2012

DEBBIE HARRY

I was delighted to speak with my old pal Debbie for 10 magazine. She’s always fun and always tells me things I don’t know about yet. She’s working on lots of new projects and is full of energy and wit. I was also trying to talk her into becoming a neighbour of mine in the country, and into taking over Las Vegas, like Elvis and Liberace. Debbie is looking glamorous lately and doing very interesting work. We talked about that and we couldn’t help but touch on Madonna, whose hit Vogue is in the news again, a song that may have been inspired by a song we wrote called Vogue for the benefit of Aids research way back when…

GLENN O’BRIEN: “Hi Debbie. What are you doing?”
DEBBIE HARRY: “Well, I’m shuffling through some mundane paperwork.”

GO: “Are you urban or suburban?”
DH: “I’m suburban today. I was urban Tuesday and Wednesday. I might be urban again tonight for a little show.”

GO: “I got stuck in the city all week. I’ve been trying to get out of here. It was, like, so unbearably hot the last couple of days.”
DH: “I felt sick from the heat. But it’s really nice today. Are you going back to the country soon?”

GO: “Yeah, tomorrow. It’s nice where my house is because it’s 1,300ft above sea level, so it’s always about 10 degrees cooler than in New York. You should come up and check out our neck of the woods sometime. I think it’s your destiny.”
DH: “Well, I am coming up for a wedding, and I’m going to look at some places. I like where I live a lot, but there are drawbacks to it. My place is an anomaly. It’s close to the city, I’m, like, surrounded by woods that are part of the park system, and I’m on a lake – it’s gorgeous. But there’s nobody in this town that I want to know. [Laughs.] So I’m going to take a look.”

Telephone rings. Glenn takes the call.

GO: “Sorry. That was somebody who works for you.”
DH: “I’m sorry. I got nervous and I called the office, because you were late calling.”

GO: “I was trying to get my kid out of bed. He’s going to be 12 next week and he’s acting like a teenager. He sleeps all the time. We went out for dinner last night and he ordered the truffle macaroni and cheese for $65. I said, ‘That’s the most expensive thing on the menu.’ He said, ‘Well, how much did that bottle of wine you’re drinkin’ cost?’”
DH: “What do you expect, Glenn? Where do you think he got that from?”

GO: “I know, he’s got his mother’s looks and my attitude.”
DH: “That’s okay. He’ll do well.”

GO: “So you’re going to be on the cover of 10 magazine?”
DH: “I think I am.”

GO: “You have to be a perfect 10 to get that.”
DH: “I didn’t know that [Laughs.]. I think they screwed up.”

GO: “No, you look fantastic. I don’t know how you do it.”
DH: “I don’t know either. I guess I’m just lucky. I think you and I have very similar genes.”

GO: “Maybe. I’ve got to say, I feel like I look better than I did 10 years ago, and you do, too. I think we had a middle-aged slump… ”
DH: I definitely did. But I feel good, very good now and I’m enjoying life. There are a few things that I wish I had more control over, but it’s better than it has been for a long time.”

GO: “What’s out of control?”
DH: “Oh… Just business things… It’s the industry. I would have very little control over that anyway.”

GO: “Well, maybe you need to sue more people.”
DH: [Cackles.]

GO: “Did you see that Madonna got sued for Vogue?”
DH: “By whom?”

GO: “By the Salsoul Orchestra. Apparently, they proved that Vogue stole the horns and strings from this song of theirs called Love Break, and actually the producer of Madonna’s Vogue, Shep Pettibone, had worked on mixes of the Salsoul song… But I don’t know if we have a case on Vogue.”
DH: “Well, it would be difficult for us to prove anything. I mean, there’s no harm in talking about it. I just read something that was kind of pathetic but funny at the same time, you know, Madonna and Gaga are having at each other.”

GO: “Madonna, I guess, claims that Gaga copied a riff from her or something like her, but now she’s doing a medley of her song and the song that she claims Lady Gaga stole from her or something like that.”
DH: “Exactly. She’s bookended it with her song. But there’s so much desperation. Why is she so desperate? I can’t figure it out. She’s got billions of dollars, and she can have nothing but fun. She has nothing but control over her whole damn thing, and she’s got a record deal with Interscope. It’s kind of pathetic, really.”

GO: “Yeah. Something must be missing in her life. I think she needs to go see The Wizard of Oz… and get an extra heart.”
DH: “Oh, yes. Well, that could be part of it, huh?”

GO: “I was friends with her for a long time and I always said, ‘Why don’t you do some music for yourself, for people your own age?’ I just think it’s weird when somebody’s trying to have fans that are, like, 30 years younger than they are.”
DH: “Well, that’s part of the industry thing. You have to have a wide demographic, and once you get past a certain age, people stop buying music. They like to sit in their comfort zone of the music from when they used to party, from when they were single. That’s the music that stays with people. I get that all the time. I want to have music that younger people listen to, too. Why wouldn’t I?”

GO: “But not to the point where you’re not being who you are. You did it with The Jazz Passengers and it was great. And Madonna… I loved it when she did those Stephen Sondheim songs around Dick Tracy. I used to give her jazz CDs, Coltrane and Ellington, and say listen to this.”
DH: “Yeah. Well, she probably still feels that she’s pretty young. What is she, 50?”

GO: “Ish.”
DH: “She’s still got a lot of energy there, and she’s very fit.”

GO: “Maybe too fit. Instead of doing all the calisthenics, why not go do a month in Vegas. Sing some hits. Sing some good songs.”
DH: “Well, actually, you’re right about that, and I’m surprised that she hasn’t done that, because she would make a lot more money. I’m sure she’s been given that offer. It’s kind of perfect. I wish that I would get an offer like that. I don’t think I ever will, but… ”

GO: “Why not? I’m amazed that you haven’t.”
DH: “I am, too, but I’m not going to worry about it. It certainly would be easy. She’s overly aggressive personally. But she could do anything she wants. There’s no reason in the world for her to feel like she has to dog it out with Gaga. Really, she should be a little more generous.”

GO: “But I can easily see you in Vegas, doing everything from Rip Her to Shreds to Lerner and Loewe and Burt Bacharach.”
DH: “Well, I’d love to do that. Oh, God, that would be hysterical.”

GO: “I think we’ve got to put that vibe out there because it would be perfect. Then there would be a reason for me to go to Las Vegas.”
DH: “I am going to do a solo show in January and February at the Baryshnikov Arts Centre. Have you ever been there, on 37th Street?”

GO: “No.”
DH: “It’s really nice. Baryshnikov has this great rehearsal space for dancers and choreographers, and he has a small theatre. He endows it personally, and he tries to get corporate sponsorships, and he works very hard at it. He’s really into it.”

GO: “He’s fantastic. Are you friends with him?”
DH: “Yes. I did this choreography thing with Richard Move a while back, based on Greek mythology. I played Athena. I was singing, and there were the dancers, and it was like storytelling and theatre. It was great. Richard has worked with Baryshnikov a lot, so he came to me, and he wanted to know if I wanted to do a solo show. So I’m going to do a solo show that consists of material that Blondie doesn’t perform, and stuff that I’ve never performed from my solo albums, stuff that is darker, more challenging, and more serious in tone. I want to do a really dramatic presentation of that material.”

GO: “That sounds great. Who’s going to do the music?”
DH: “Well, we’re going to work on the arrangements together, but I’m going to do it with Matt Katz-Bohen, who is my keyboard player from Blondie. It’s going to be relatively simple, and I am going to use a lot of synthesizer. I’m sure I’m going to get criticised for this… but I have a limited budget, and we’re going to do everything that we can ourselves.”

GO: “Why would you get criticised for using synthesizers?”
DH: “Well, somebody always has something to say about what you’re not doing. I think it’s going to be fantastic. I’m going to film it. Richard Move is the one who did all the Martha Graham pieces. He’s a very interesting choreographer.”

GO: “Are you doing a Blondie tour, too?”
DH: “Yeah, starting in September, we’re going out with Devo for a few weeks, then we’re with Psychedelic Furs for another couple of weeks.”

GO: “I just met Richard Butler again, the singer from the Psychedelic Furs. Do you know him? He’s great. He lives in New York and he’s really a cool guy. And Devo, that will be fun.”
DH: “Yes. Oh, by the way, Chris sends his love.”

GO: “I need to see Chris Stein, even if I have to drive to Woodstock.”
DH: “He’s back in New York City. He’s got a loft. He’s been organising his photography and writing songs, writing some music. We’ve been doing a little bit of recording. I think we’ve got somewhere between five and six tracks that we’re going to put out pretty soon. I don’t know how we’re going to release them, maybe just on the internet. He’s working hard on his photographs, putting a book together. Other than that, he’s just being a dad and getting ready for the tour.”

GO: “Is it with the same guys?”
DH: “Yeah, same guys as the last time.”

GO: “How did the record go?”
DH: “Well, we broke even. Heh-heh… ”

GO: “How do you promote songs now that there’s no real radio?”
DH: “I work my fucking ass off. I did three trips to England on my own. One of them was with Chris. I would get up in the morning, start at 9, and do press until 8 or 9 o’clock at night – and radio and TV. I did that for about six weeks. And then I did pretty much the same thing over here. I did as much as I possibly could. But there is no radio for somebody like me. I’m totally off the radar as far as labels are concerned. I got some distribution, but the business is a different business now.”

GO: “It’s hard to find music. The only time I ever get anything new is by word of mouth – if somebody tells me, ‘You should listen to this’, or if somebody hands me their iPod or whatever.”
DH: “Well, you should hook up with a DJ, somebody who knows… Because there are all these services that you can get onto that show you what the latest and the greatest is.”

GO: “I’ve got Spotify, but I don’t really know how to use it.”
DH: “There are a whole bunch of them that different DJs use, and it makes it simpler to check out what’s new. Other than radio that’s in the car, which can drive you insane… ”

GO: “I have satellite and I always have NPR on, although sometimes I listen to Little Steven’s Underground Garage. Little Steven is great, and Andrew Loog Oldham has a great show on his network. And Kim Fowley does, too. He’s one of the funniest people in the world.”
DH: “Yes, he is. Years ago he wanted us to do a song called The Rabbit Skunks of Hollywood, and he had it all worked out. I don’t know why we never did it. But it still sounds like a good idea.”

GO: “How did you hook up with Giorgio Moroder?”
DH: “I think it may have been Giorgio’s idea. He wanted to have a rock thing, and we were hot at the time – and he likes girls. He really likes girls! So I guess Paul Schroeder didn’t have any objections, and that’s how it all fell into place.”

GO: “Do girls like Giorgio back?”
DH: “Yes. He did okay, Giorgio. I think he was a real ladies’ man. Just like you, Glenn.”

GO: “I’m retired from all that.”
DH: “Well, Chris is one, too. Chris is a ladies’ man. He’s retired, too.”

GO: “I know. After my last divorce… ‘Okay, here’s a million dollars. You want half the art, too?’ Whatever happened to Mike Chapman?”
DH: “Mike is alive and well and mostly in Australia, I think. Chris has been in touch with him. The thing about Mike that people don’t really realise is the number of great songs that he’s written.”

GO: “Yeah… He must have platinum all over his walls. How come you never, like, did anything with him as producer again?”
DH: “We talked about it, and we tried to. When we put the band back together in the 1990s, we talked with Nigel and with Jimmy, trying to put the whole thing back together, and we got in the studio with Mike and tried to do some recording – but it wasn’t a fit any more. People change. People move on. But I would love to get in the studio and write a song with Mike. That would be fun. You know who I saw? What’s her name, the bass player…?”

GO: “Suzi Quatro?”
DH: “Yeah, Suzi Quatro. I had an interview for the last album, and I walked into a hotel uptown, and walked into this room. They didn’t tell me that it was Suzi Quatro doing the interview. And there’s this woman there, dressed like a normal person, in a skirt and a jacket and blouse. I’m looking at her, thinking, ‘God, who is this? I know who this person is.’ Then I finally got it. She did a new album last year. She sent it to me. It’s pretty interesting. Very introspective. Some nice songs on it.”

GO: “I read somewhere that you just got mobbed by people who thought you were Lindsay Lohan?”
DH: “Not quite. I was doing an interview with Lynn Goldsmith about woman photographers for this little documentary. So we were down in the basement of the Mercer Hotel and we came upstairs. We both had shades on, and I had my hoodie on, and we went walking towards the SUV, and all of a sudden, all these paparazzi are down on the corner, waiting for Lindsay, who’s staying at the hotel, and they see me with some blonde hair sticking out, and they start screaming, ‘Lindsay, Lindsay!’ I thought they were saying, ‘Lynnie, Lynnie’, as in Lynn Goldsmith [Laughs.]. So I just popped into the car, and then she got into the car, and I said, ‘Oh, God, they recognised you, Lynn!’ And then we drove off. That’s all I thought.”

GO: “That’s funny.”
DH: “Pretty funny, yeah.”

GO: “It’s a good thing they didn’t yell out, ‘It’s Meg Ryan! It’s Meg Ryan!’”
DH: [Hearty laugh.]

GO: “Lynn says Meg Ryan stole her personality. She’s actually kind of obsessed that Meg Ryan stole her personality. So if the photographers had yelled out, ‘Meg! Meg!’ that would have been the end.”
DH: “[Laughs.] She would have whipped out her Uzi. Heh-heh. You know who Meg Ryan goes out with?”

GO: “No. Who?”
DH: “John Mellencamp.”

GO: “Really?”
DH: “Yeah.”

GO: “He was married to this model Elaine Irwin, who I had a big crush on. I can’t believe he left her for Meg Ryan. Are you going out with anybody?”
DH: “Well, I do some people. But I can’t really say that I have a boyfriend. But I’m not dead yet. I try to stay fuckable. Yeah, that’s important. You know, I have a good time.”

GO: “I read that they’re making a movie about Hilly Kristal and CBGBs. Did you know about that?”
DH: “I know they’re doing the CBGB movie.”

GO: “Yes, with Alan Rickman as Hilly. That’s so insane!”
DH: [Hearty laugh.]

GO: “I love Rickman, he’s one of my favourite actors, but that’s really a stretch.”
DH: “That’s so strange! The man with the least amount of personality played by someone who has a very, very strong personality.”

GO: “You know who would have been good for Hilly? The guy in Welcome Back Kotter – Gabe Kaplan.”
DH: “That’s it! Yes, he would be very good.”

GO: “Do people send you scripts? You haven’t made a movie in a while.”
DH: “I’d like to make a movie. But they send me things for cameo appearances, and I am no longer interested in cameo appearances. I feel like my fans get very upset when I say that I’ve done a movie, and they go to see it, and they say, ‘Well, you’re only in it for two minutes.’ And it’s dissatisfying for me as an actor to walk on to a set for seven or eight hours, and whip it out, and then go home… It’s not the right thing. To play a character like that, not just appear as myself. If I have to appear as myself in something for a day, okay. But to be a character in a plot, and then just be hired for a day or a day and a half is not what I want to do anymore. I don’t have to prove to myself or to anyone else that I can act. I really would love to do something. But it’s such a competitive business. I understand why actors get upset with musicians who want to act.”

GO: “Fuck that. You’re an actor. It doesn’t matter that you’re a musician. I love that movie Spun, where you play the kick-ass dyke.”
DH: “God, I loved that movie.”

GO: “That’s one of the most underrated films ever. What a fantastic cast, and so funny and crazy.”
DH: “You know, statistically, that movie has the most cuts and edits of any movie ever.”

GO: “That director is genius.”
DH: “Yeah, Jonas Akerlund, the director, is a real talent. I did a video with him, and he’s worked on a lot of really good videos. It’s funny, when I did my video with him, I kept saying I wanted to do a circus thing, like this silent movie I saw – I think it’s called He Who Laughs Last. It was about all these clowns dressed as Pierrot. Half of them were in black, with white balls on them, and the other half were in white with black balls. This clown would come out, and the others would slap him really hard. And the audience would go crazy, laughing at this poor little clown getting slapped and kicked and pummelled really badly. I didn’t know who made this silent movie, but it turned out that Jonas, the guy who directed Spun, was a great fan of his. So we put together this video synchronistically.”

GO: “I wish I had seen you as Athena. You are a goddess.”
DH: “I have to say that it was really beautiful. I did this one song called Night Wind Sent. [Sings.] ‘Your music by the night wind sent/Awakes my quiet instrument/In the shadow of your steps… ’ It’s really pretty. I did all these lush songs.”

GO: “Are you thinking about writing a book?”
DH: “I did start writing a book. It’s so depressing [Laughs.]”

GO: “I’ve been working on a memoir… If you think about the revenge factor, it can be uplifting.”
DH: “[Laughs.] But you’ve written so many books.”

GO: “Not by old-world standards. It’s hard to get a good book deal now. It’s like a record deal. My last book is doing really well. It’s actually going into a fourth hardcover printing. But it’s not easy. I’m writing a memoir that has a lot of juicy stuff in it, though.”
DH: “I like your books. I always laugh.”

GH: “I’d love to read a book by you. I know you’ve got it in you. You’re a wordsmith.”
DH: “I like words. You know, I did figure out a way. I’m not experienced or driven enough to do it, but I figured
out a way that I could do it that would really be appropriate. I have saved a lot of lists, for some reason, and the lists are kind of hysterical. It just leads me into remembering. I can’t just sit down cold and remember things. How do you do it?”

GO: “Did you read the Keith Richards book?”
DH: “Some of it.”

GO: “He interviewed a lot of people, and that jogged his memory. Sometimes people will say to me, ‘Ah, you said the funniest things’, and they’ll tell me some story that I had completely forgotten about.”
DH: “Interview your friends. That’s a good idea.”

GO: “Yeah. I should ask you about the night that I took too many mushrooms and I got possessed by a plant spirit on your terrace. Do you remember that?”
DH: “[Laughs.] Oh. Yeah!”

GO: “No, I’m serious. Do you remember that?”
DH: “On 58th Street?”

GO: “Yeah. I went out on terrace, and I was standing there looking at the skyline, and I caused a very brief power outage in Manhattan. So brief I was the only one who noticed it, and then I was possessed by a plant spirit living in Chris’s pot plant. You were just hovering around inside and I walked in the door, and you looked at me and screamed. I said, ‘Why did you scream?’ You said, ‘You were growing green.’”
DH: “I do remember that! I do remember seeing you green. Isn’t that funny.”

GO: “Yeah. I was possessed by the spirit of Chris’s marijuana plant that was out on the terrace. Walked me right in the door.”
DH: “There were some big plants out there. That was probably the Hawaiian.”

GO: “I don’t know if I ever had any of that.”
DH: “Yeah. You did.”

GO: “Do you do any gardening out in the country?”
DH: “Yeah. I sort of try to take care of the stuff that’s going on, and I have some potted stuff around. There was a big existing garden thing here, kind of massive… When I first moved here, it was overwhelming, and I got real nervous about it, but now I’ve sort of gotten used to it and become better at it. It’s a tremendous amount of work, though. It’s very physical.”

GO: “I planted a tree last weekend. I dug the hole myself.”
DH: “Trees are heavy. And digging a hole isn’t easy.”

GO: “Yeah. I know. I’m glad I’m not a murderer.”
DH: “[Laughs.] Me, too.”

GO: “Have you been doing a lot of interviews?”
DH: “Yeah. I just did an interview and photo session with Vice magazine. They seemed very nice. The writer was telling me about something called bath salts. Have you heard about this?”

GO: “Bath salts? Like Acqua di Parma or Jo Malone?”
DH: “No, bath salts is a drug. It makes people into zombies.”

GO: “Bath salts?”
DH: “Yeah, there’s this whole kick going around. This was all news to me. Vice wanted to know what I thought of bath salts [Laughs.].”

GO: “Well, I buy my bath salts in Paris, darling!”
DH: “She said, ‘Well, it’s about zombies. People take this drug and they become zombies.’ I said, ‘Well, do they stay zombies, or is it just a momentary thing?’ She wasn’t too clear about that. But it’s about people who go around biting people. Like the guy in Florida who ate somebody’s face off.”

GO: “Zombies are really big. I can tell you, the 12-year-olds are really into the zombies. The first book that Oscar actually read from start to finish is Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse? The popular kids’ movies are armies of the living dead biting people.”
DH: “I think the zombie fear is because the world is so overpopulated.”

GO: “And people are kind of zombie-like in a lot of ways now. They’re not thinking too sharply. But I think when the kids hit puberty they go from being into zombies to being into vampires. I prefer vampires actually. They’re more alert.”
DH: “They certainly dress better.”

GO: “Speaking of which, tell me about meeting Stephen Sprouse.”
DH: “I had met Stephen a few times, but I really got to know him when he moved into the building we were living in on the Bowery.”

GO: “I didn’t know you went back that far.”
DH: “Yeah, we did. That was sort of before Blondie really happened. Gary Valentine was the bass player, and Clem was the drummer. It was right after Fred Smith went into Television – 1975 maybe. I think Stephen was still at Halston.”

GO: “That’s where I met him.”
DH: “Somehow or other, Benton Quin brought him around. Remember our landlord Benton?”
GO: “Vaguely.”
DH: “He had sort of long blond hair, dressed like a biker, a skinny biker. He brought Steve around. That’s where I realised what he was about.”
GO: “When did Stephen start making stuff for you?”
DH: “I think when I went out on the first tour he gave me a little black dress and a pair of thigh-high black boots from I Miller, and the black dress was like a matt silk jersey, sort of scoop-necked, little skinny strap dress. I think that might actually have been a Halston, a sample or something that he had put together up there. I had a black trench coat and a black beret, and that was it. That was sort of my first Sprouse look. He would wrap bandages around my arm and stuff. It sort of just became what it was. Then the first dress that he really designed for me his mother put together. It was a boat-neck, three-quarter-length sleeve, yellow dress with a slit up one side, and it was very plain, very 1960s sort of sheath dress. I wore that forever. Actually, it’s in one of the videos, Picture This. I don’t remember exactly what year he went out on his own, but he was always drawing, and his drawings were so beautiful. He would put all of these ideas together in these drawings, and say, ‘Okay, this is a look, this is a look, this is a look.’ It was like I was going to fashion school. It was great.”
GO: “But when you were living in midtown and he was in the same building, did he move there because you guys were living there?”
DH: “We lived together in the Bowery building and he lived on the top floor. But there wasn’t any heat up there, so he had to get out and he got this apartment up on 58th Street, and we went up there to visit him, of course, and it was such a fabulous pre-war building with a great apartment… It was like he had a loft in a prewar building.”
GO: “Yeah, I remember it well. There were these very high ceilings, beautiful woodwork and then nothing in there but a mattress and a colour Xerox copier and Stephen’s art. I thought that you were there first.”
DH: “No. I kept going up there, and telling the super that I really wanted to live there. That penthouse apartment… It sounds like something really special. It was special, but it wasn’t grand. As far as fashion is concerned, I was doing cool things on my own that were, like, funky, but Stephen really was an incredible designer, as we all know.”
GO: “I just remember him making these incredible colour things with the Xerox.”
DH: “Yeah, that’s when he started doing the scan-line stuff. It developed out of that, using that machine.”
GO: “Do you still have a lot of Sprouse clothes?”
DH: “Yeah. I have practically everything. I gave a few things to museums, and a couple of things turned up missing or got destroyed. But I have a whole lot of it. I also have a couple of things I made, like the little zebra dress. The incredible pink dress that Anya Phillips designed and I made has disappeared. It completely vanished.”
GO: “You made it?”
DH: “Yeah. I sewed it up.”

GO: “I didn’t know you could sew.”
DH: “I do, yeah. I sew a lot of stuff. Actually, Pat Thomas… I don’t know if you know him. He’s involved in the Victoria’s Secret shows; he’s a stylist and a designer himself. We’re trying to start our own clothing thing. We have some great ideas. But we’re trying to figure out how to get it launched, how to get backers. We’ve been pursuing that for about a year.”

GO: “People don’t know much about Anya Phillips, who was a designer on the scene and the manager of James Chance and the Contortions, but I think if she had lived, she could have been a major designer [Anya died of cancer in 1981.]”
DH: “Yes. She had so much energy. Actually, there was a cover of a magazine – I don’t know which one it was, Marie Claire or something like that – that had an Anya dress on it. It was all very fine laces up the side. I just saw it at the dentist’s yesterday. So Anya lives. She was very inventive and creative, and she would have evolved, I’m sure. I still have some of her clothes. I think I have the stuff I wore on the cover of Rush Rush, the white pants and little halter top – I think I still have that.”

GO: “Wow. I didn’t know she did that. That was really sexy.”
DH: “Yeah. That was hers.”

GO: “Whose clothes do you like now?”
DH: “There are so many. I love Rodarte, those two girls in California. They’re a combination of art and fashion, like Stephen. I like a lot of things that Marc Jacobs does.”

GO: “Did he ever make something for you?”
DH: “Not exactly, no. But I have worn some of his things.”

GO: “The stuff that Stephen did with the lettering for your solo album Rockbird, the cover is totally like what he did with Marc later.”
DH: “Yeah. It was so nice of Marc and Stephen to collaborate that way. I thought it was really great.”

GO: “It was great for Stephen. He was almost too genius to succeed. His clothes are so amazing, but somehow the business always wound up in the trash.”
DH: “It happens to so many talents. If you look at the history of fashion, someone like Yves Saint Laurent had a business partner, which Steve didn’t have. I think a lot of times it’s partnership that really saves them, and Marc has Robert Duffy. It really works. Sadly Stephen died before he found the right partner.”

1. Coat, dress, trousers and boots by Azzedine Alaïa
2. Coats and boots by Azzedine Alaïa
3. Jacket and dress by Azzedine Alaïa
4. Dress by Azzedine Alaïa
5. Dress and gloves by Azzedine Alaïa
6. Dress and shoes by Azzedine Alaïa
7. Coat and boots by Azzedine Alaïa

Photographer Cedric Buchet
Fashion Editor Sophia Neophitou
Hair Didier Malige at Art Partner
Make-up Lisa Houghton at Time Howard Management using YSL Beaute
Talent Debbie Harry
Nail Technician Tracylee for Tim Howard Management using Sally Hansen
Photographers Assistants Mark Luckasavage, Pavel Woznicki
Fashion Assistant Sophia Van Der Welle
Hait Assistant Charlie Taylor
Retouching Arc Lab
Digital Operator Stowe Richard
Production NEX9
Shot at Fast Ashleys
Thanks to Linda Carbone and Sarah Usher