Blondie: One Way or Another

AUDIENCE CHANT: Blondie! Blondie! Blondie!

Is there a really decent American pop music group since Blondie?

I don't think so.

This programme contains strong language

I mean, to this day I think Debbie Harry is probably the most striking front woman ever.

There've been a lot of Blondie look-alikes, and sound-alikes,

but no-one will ever be Debbie.

Even Madonna hasn't quite been able to be that effortlessly cool.

The only thing wrong with Blondie is they didn't make enough money.

You can make up for that now.

# One way or another

# I'm gonna find ya

# I'm gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha

# One way or another

# I'm gonna win ya

# I'll getcha, I'll getcha

# One day, maybe next week

# I'm gonna see ya

# I'll meetcha meetcha meetcha meetcha

# One way or another

# I'm gonna see ya

# I'll meetcha, yeah... #

They're the most successful pop group fronted by a woman, ever.

Seven number one singles, over 30 million albums sold.

A band that defies categorisation.

Yet the tale of Blondie is as much about low-lights as highlights,

with a powerful love story at its heart.

Blondie formed in 1974 as the union of four people -

guitarist Chris Stein, drummer Clem Burke,

keyboard player Jimmy Destri,

and the singer who made anything possible and everything unforgettable,

Debbie Harry.

Theirs is a real New York story.

The city has been the inspiration and backdrop to everything the band has done.

And the story starts in the 1950s, just over the river, in Hawthorne, New Jersey -

home to a newly adopted young Debbie.

I grew up in suburbia.

New Jersey, metropolitan New York.

This relatively small town.

Debbie was adopted at birth.

She didn't know who her mother was or who her father was.

She did have a radically different look

than the rest of the family. She looked like Marilyn Monroe.

She told me that for quite a long time,

she kept alive the notion that Marilyn Monroe

could have been her mother. In the timing, it was possible.

She wanted Marilyn to be her mother, because it would explain to her

why she herself felt the way she did.

I didn't really feel comfortable. I felt imprisoned.

I think that I just really wanted to have a kind of interaction with other people,

that was different than what was expected of me,

or what was available in suburbia.

So I was 12 or 13 years old,

and I would...on a Saturday morning,

for 80 cents I could get a round-trip ticket to New York City.

I would get on a train and I would go into the city

and I would walk round the West Village,

which was old-time New York, with the little, small streets.

And I would look at all the theatres and the clubs and the coffee shops,

I would look at all the posters and see who's playing,

and it was really exciting for me.

Seduced by the city at an early age,

suburban Debbie became the classic restless teenager,

inexorably drawn to the wild side of life.

She was very hungry for attention and very hungry for love

and hungry for contacts.

-She used to spend weekends going to this place called

-BLEEP

-Mile...

-Oh,

-BLEEP

-Mile?

..which was basically where you went and walked up and down

to have sex with people in the back of cars.

I liked to experiment. You know?

I think I really enjoyed the darker side, the underside of things,

and...I didn't do a great deal of it, but it was very meaningful for me

and I really did see...

I wanted to see a real cross-section.

I wasn't content to be a white, middle-class, you know, girl

growing up and doing what was expected of her.

# ..in the whole wide world

# See you baby with another girl... #

But it certainly was...pretty nice.

Unable to resist the Big Apple, Debbie moved across the water.

She waited on tables, she even worked as a bunny girl,

and found her voice as backing singer in hippie folk group Wind In The Willows.

# Uncle used to love me but she died

# A chicken ain't a chicken Till he's licken good and fried

# Keep on the sunny side

# My uncle used to love me but she died... #

Not surprisingly, the Willows soon wilted,

but it was while singing in her next group, all-girl trio the Stilettos,

that she had a date with destiny

and the man who would change her life.

# One fine day

# You'll look at me... #

Tell us how you met. How you both remember it.

-Well, I went to...

-We met in a bar.

I went to the first Stilettos show.

He was very prominent in the audience to me, for some reason.

And yet, I really... I couldn't really see his face,

but there was something about his...his presence there, that I was very relaxed about.

The fact that they became friends first

deepened the possibilities of the relationship for her

because here for the first time was a guy who seemed interesting,

a decent writer, intelligent guy, who wasn't just trying to get in bed with her.

I don't know how long it was, a few months, before they got involved. A long time.

# One fine day

# You're gonna want me for your girl. #

I probably saw in her what a lot of people saw later on. That was it. But I got there first.

Chris and Debbie had found love,

and together they found the downtown club that would change their lives.

CBGB's, birthplace of the burgeoning US punk scene.

# Hey! Ho! Let's go!

# Hey! Ho! Let's go! #

Well, here we are. I feel like such an old person,

coming in here like this. It's awful.

It was humid. It was smelly.

# The kids are losing their minds

# The Blitzkrieg bop... #

Get a good shot of these walls and we'll go into the wallpaper business.

Because I think we could really sell this.

Beer, dog shit, Chanel Number 5 aroma.

# Hey! Ho! Let's go

# Shoot 'em in the back now... #

Hilly, the owner, had a half a dozen dogs

and he never walked them.

He just took them to the check room.

# ..going through a tight wind

# The kids are losing their minds The Blitzkrieg Bop... #

The toilets is the place you definitely didn't want to go.

# Hey! Ho! Let's go! #

They probably hadn't been cleaned since 1917.

# Hey! Ho! Let's go! #

My former wife, I guess, opened the door,

and there they were -

Chris and Debbie having sex.

They just decided they were going to do it and they did.

So tell us about the famous myth.

What? That we were screwing in the toilet? It's not true.

-It was the alley, back here.

-Yeah.

OK? Happy now?

I think CB's was the most beautiful place I've ever seen in my life.

I really do. Because it was an oasis.

When you want to be a pop star all your life,

and here's a venue that's going to let you do that,

let you go up and play your songs, it's Mecca!

Nobody came here except for people that who were in the bands

or had something to do with the bands, et cetera.

The audience was the other bands, basically.

If you threw a guitar pick in any direction, you were bound to hit

a Talking Head, or a Ramone, or a Heartbreaker,

or somebody in Television or Suicide, or Chris or Debbie.

This was home for a lot of people.

# Psycho killer, qu'est-ce que c'est? #

Everybody in the fucking audience for the first few years was involved with the band somehow.

# Run, run, run, run Run, run, run away... #

The one thing I hated about the scene was the snobbery

of a lot of the people who hung out there.

Everybody was in a band or a critic, so nobody would applaud or go crazy.

You could put on a great show, and hear the crickets afterwards.

It was like the beatnik cafes, where everybody snapped their fingers after a performance.

Chris and Debbie were CBGB regulars,

so it seemed only natural that they should have a band of their own.

But in a world of leather-clad Ramones and Talking Head geeks,

they needed something to help them stand out from the crowd.

# I wanna be a platinum blonde Ooh!

# Just like all the sexy stars... #

When I first met her she had very short, dark hair.

Then she came home one day with her hair dyed, like, blonde,

like Twiggy's haircut.

My understanding about where the name Blondie came from

was that this was what all the truck drivers used to yell at Debbie,

they'd whistle and say "Hey, Blondie!"

and that subsequently became the group.

# ..be a platinum blonde Be a platinum blonde... #

I went into CBGB's and I saw Debbie Harry sing,

and I thought, "Wow, this girl is fabulous."

Debbie was like, "oh, my God."

I had a lovely girlfriend already,

but, I mean...she was stunning.

# See ya later... #

But in a way, she was so beautiful that it would be provocative,

and the intellectual types didn't like Blondie.

Blondie was looked down on back then, as I remember.

# All these men seem nice at first

# After a while they get bad Then worse... #

When we played at CBGB's the first 18 months,

we weren't the most confident of bands.

We weren't very good. We were pretty bad.

Chris would forget what the thing in his hands was.

He would sort of look at the guitar like, "What's this?"

I mean, we sound so good now - we must have always sounded like crap in those days.

We weren't always playing the same song at the same time.

# ..but I shouldn't let you reach me... #

Debbie would forget the lyrics.

# Ah-ah-ah-ah... #

Blondie was sort of a joke band.

And there were repeatedly remarks that Blondie made it on Debbie's panties.

That if Debbie fell over on stage, someone said "Look at her panties."

That would be more interesting than the songs.

# I said a girl should know better I do... #

We weren't taken seriously initially because...

One factor was because we had a girl singer.

And...you know, it was very much a boy's club.

There was really only Patti Smith, and Debbie.

Patti Smith was kind of like the goddess at the time.

# Jesus died for somebody's sins But not mine... #

Debbie was a fan of Patti's. We all were. Patti was remarkable.

Patti went to Debbie and said, "There's not room enough for both of us here," you know,

"and you're no good, you don't have any talent, you can't really sing. Why don't you leave?"

Patti wouldn't even want Debbie on the same bill.

It was the first crisis for the fledgling band,

as Blondie suddenly found bookings hard to come by.

They responded by setting up camp spitting distance from the club,

on the Bowery, a god-forsaken street in a bankrupt town.

It's a long time since anyone has said the streets of New York are paved with gold.

The fact is, New York City is bankrupt,

and if the streets are lined with anything it's pot holes,

so many of them there's a Pot Holes Department at City Hall.

New York was broke. I remember the headline. "Gerry Ford tells New York City 'Drop Dead'"

In Soho when I came here there was not one restaurant. There was no lights at night.

-We used to have to walk by dead bodies lying on the street.

-True.

So you could rent 1,000 square feet

-for 70 dollars a month.

-Here's the place.

-In an artist-in-residence loft area.

-KNOCK ON DOOR

Where they lived was extraordinary.

It doesn't smell like piss any more!

We had three floors, four floors, and we all chipped in.

It was haunted.

Chris and Debbie swore they saw two little children in sweatshop-era clothes holding hands.

So then there was no heat throughout the night.

New York winters can be extremely cold.

This floor here never used to have any heat.

So the coldest days of the year, you know, rehearsing with gloves on,

with little finger holes cut out.

# He don't hang around

# With the gang no more

# He don't do the wild things that he did before... #

If you looked up at the ceiling, there were certain areas

where the ceiling was just gone, and there were rafters,

and our landlord, he'd come home at night and pee in bottles

because he wouldn't want to disturb us by using the bathroom.

And we'd come into rehearsal and wouldn't want to play too loud

to, like, knock the piss over.

It was actually the crucible of Blondie, very much, that loft.

And we had built a tiny little stage sort of thing,

maybe a few inches off the ground,

and set the amps up there.

So we could sort of learn the songs

and also practise performing and how you're going to do it.

We were rehearsing every day.

Not only did we learn material, but we developed an identity.

That identity was refined in the Loft,

thanks to Chris's eye for a photo and the perfect muse.

Chris was always photographically inclined and cinematically inclined.

He had the greatest subject in the world - Debbie.

He definitely knew that shots of Debbie were going to make it to the cover of certain magazines.

The pictures we did of Debbie in the zebra outfit were over here.

I remember I used to set up a site with just white paper.

Somehow this came together, this image.

I sent it to Creem magazine,

and they put it in as the Creem Dreem even though most people hadn't heard the music yet.

I was publishing a magazine called Punk,

and shortly after we published this poster,

Chris said "Thanks to this poster, we got signed to Private Stock Records."

Punk Playmate of the Month got Blondie their first record deal

and the first single was released in the summer of '76.

Gary Valentine, our original bass player,

wrote this song called X Offender which was just a three-chord thing.

And Gary used to hop at that speed.

And Debbie came up with the lyric. It was like...

# You read me my rights

# And then you said "Let's go" and nothing more... #

To know why they wanted me to leave the band, look at that video,

and I'm just jumping all over the place.

They were afraid I was going to decapitate Debbie - I'd jump around and swing the bass.

X Offender was backed with a B-side called In The Flesh,

and the record went out, and when it went to Australia,

In The Flesh became a number one record, much to our surprise,

because the DJ played the wrong side.

So the B-side of our record was a song called In The Flesh, which was a ballad.

It kicks off with the most cliched of drum riffs,

just using the three drums.

# Darling, darling darling

# I can't wait to see you

# Your picture ain't enough... #

Molly Meldrum on the show Countdown,

when he introduced the song he introduced it as X Offender,

and played the In The Flesh video.

# Darling, darling, darling... #

And it went to number one in Australia.

# ..hear you Remembering your love... #

His mistake got us national recognition in that small but large country.

We went there, we got our first gold record award,

our first number one, and our first real tour.

# You know he can't be tested

# He can't be read or found

# Urban grey takes breath away

# He wants to push his pedal To the ground... #

Our biggest exposure to an audience, on stage or anywhere,

was when we were plucked right out of CBGB's and taken on tour with Iggy Pop.

I invited Blondie on my first solo tour,

for the Idiot record, with David Bowie on piano.

He listened to the first record and thought "This'll be a cute act."

But Debbie really stole the crowd.

She'd wear little go-go boots and kick her knees up a lot,

and shake her ponytail, that kind of thing.

Her confidence was improved. I mean, she was growing daily.

An American ponytailed girl as seen through the lens of Roger Vadim, or something.

It's kind of like Barbarella on speed, something like that.

There were Iggy fans there, but Debbie did make an indent.

A band will feed off an audience,

and they'll get better because the audience appreciates them,

and they'll put on a great show as a result.

You never saw that in the mid-'70s in New York City.

When you leave your home spot, where everyone knows you,

you're more easily able to be the person you've made up,

because no-one's going to say, "Bullshit."

So the first time Blondie got outside New York

and had an audience who liked them, they went nuts!

# Baby, baby, I can try with you... #

Bowie and I both tried to hit on Debbie backstage.

We couldn't get anywhere, but she was always very smooth about that.

It was always sort of,

"Maybe another time, when Chris isn't around."

Very cool about it.

But there was nothing cool about the reception they got in the next country they visited,

as the Brits fell for Debbie and the band in a big way.

We happened to have been in England at the same time.

We saw that the press went crazy over Blondie and Debbie Harry.

And it was like, "Wow!" She became an instant sensation.

Blondie blossomed in a very British way.

They had an English bass player, Nigel Harrison,

along with guitarist Frankie Infante,

and major UK label Chrysalis snapped them up

and primed them for their first British single.

The next song that really catapulted us to success in the UK was Denis Denis.

Denis Denis was a great old song.

I remember we got a compilation record of oldies or whatever it was.

And a guy named Neil Levenson wrote this song called Denise

that Randy and the Rainbows recorded in the '50s.

# Denise, doo-be-doo

# I'm in love with you Denise, doo-be-doo

# I'm in love with you... #

Actually, the beginning just kind of has the floor tom...

# Oh Denis doo-be-do

# I'm in love with you Denis, doo-be-doo

# I'm in love with you Denis, doo-be-doo

# I'm in love with you... #

We put footsteps behind it, and made it really loud.

You know, footsteps with the drum kit.

# Oh Denis doo-be-doo... #

Walking, like that. And Clem was like, out of time.

Don't tell him I said that. We were walking, and Clem was clapping on the off.

So guess what? The feet and the handclaps are out of time with the drums.

It'll forever be out of synch, and it'll forever a be hit record, so...

-Sometimes the mistakes are the best part of a record.

-# I'm in love with you... #

# Denis Denis

# Oh with your eyes so blue

# Denis Denis

# I've got a crush on you

# Denis Denis

# I'm so in love with you Oh-oh

# When we walk

# It always feels so nice... #

We did Denis Denis on Top Of The Pops -

you could just see it change overnight.

We were doing the regular gigs, and there was a fan base and stuff,

but for me growing up in England

knowing the power of Top Of The Pops...

We were playing a gig in Dunstable.

People had seen Top Of The Pops and gone up to the gig,

and it was just mania.

DRUMS DROWN MUSIC

There was a great moment in Dunstable,

where this gang of skinheads...

sort of Dawn Of The Dead marched up on stage,

and started just stomping around. There was a big fracas in the crowd.

I remember dragging her off into the wings.

I grew up in Brooklyn,

and there was some situations where Debbie would go, "Jimmy! Get me out of here!"

and I'd just whisk her out, because people were all over her.

On the back of Denis, Blondie scored another three hits in 1978.

Wherever they went, there were men bearing gifts.

Can I just ask you to tell us who is Swapshop's favourite pop star?

Congratulations with your number one record in Holland!

I picked some flowers in my garden.

Debbie Harry from Blondie. AUDIENCE CHEER

Debbie Harry, of the pop group Blondie, arrives to an autograph session.

That was the dream sequence. It was just mania.

Was it High Street Kensington?

It was like Buckingham Palace.

One more wave... It was just nuts.

-Do you want to see Debbie again?

-CROWD: Yes!

We've gotta go in now.

She opened the window and they were all, "Aaaaah!"

Closed the window, open it - "Aaaaaah!"

-One more time?

-CROWD CHEERS

It was a taste of what the Beatles went through. Just a taste.

When we were leaving, they pulled up this bus. In such a rush, all the security on Debbie.

And I, like an idiot, stopped to sign an autograph,

and of course the bus doors closed.

-And I remember Debbie going, "Nigel! Nigel!"

-Nigel!

I had to chase down the street after the bus.

-Let's go.

-See you, guys.

All right!

# Coming into contact with... #

That was kind of knowing that you'd arrived when that was going on.

Cos it wasn't fake. It wasn't a couple of hundred people, it was thousands of people.

# ..with our theosophies... #

Blondie and Debbie just seemed to fit England like a glove,

from the first moment they went there, more than any other band.

I mean, to this day I think Debbie Harry

is probably THE most striking front woman ever.

# All I want is a room with a view

# A sight worth seeing A vision of you

# All I want

# Is a room with a view

# Oh-oh-ooooooh... #

When you think of Blondie at the time, the over-riding image

is obviously the hair, the blondeness.

It was often back-lit, so you'd have this

quite ethereal glow behind the head.

I walked around with a flashlight taped to my back.

Once that glow dimmed or she moved into the light,

you suddenly see that the hair wasn't that perfectly blonde.

There was the blonde, glamour side of her and then black bits at the back.

I think that was very canny, very deliberate -

"I may be this blonde goddess but I'm also something else."

# ..a picture of you... #

Because she was doing her hair herself,

she could only do what she could see.

I couldn't reach it or see it to do it properly.

And when you stand in a mirror and look at the back of your head

and try to go like that, everything is opposite.

Her hair was...

non-conventional, while still looking...

She kinda looked like a Barbie doll, but it was so fucked-up looking

that it had a sort of edge to it and a grime to it

that made her cool.

-How does it feel to be living with a sex symbol?

-I couldn't be happier.

It's great.

As an ego-boost for a man, it's fantastic.

Just about every teenage male of my generation had a picture of her on their wall.

The high boots, the short skirt, the little flash of thigh...

Usually colour-coordinated with the top.

But what was interesting was that girls loved her too.

I think teenage girls found her very empowering.

Great singer. Looks fantastic.

She's funny and she's smart, and her lyrics have a lot of attitude.

I didn't want to take the position of being a victim,

or being pushed around, or being under the gun or whatever it was.

And I said, "Do you know? It's gotta change."

In Picture This she sings about wanting to watch the boyfriend shower...

# I will give you my finest hour

# The one I spent Watching you shower... #

I think at that time the idea of a woman actually looking at a man was quite a new idea.

Women were there to be looked at. Men looked at women.

# All I want is a photo in my wallet... #

But here she was, claiming the right to look back at the other man

and making him the object.

# ..is a picture of you... #

It was a more matured sense of her own identity and confidence in herself.

She wasn't writing little love ballads or anything like that.

She was, you know, basically writing from life experiences.

Debbie wasn't exactly, you know, 21 years old.

She was in her thirties when Blondie became successful.

Even though, of course, she looked exquisite

and I don't think the people buying the records thought too much about her age,

but if she'd been plucked up at 19, things probably would have gone a completely different way.

# ..try to do what you used to do Yeah! #

But things were about to go a different way for the 33-year-old and her band.

In spite of a run of hits, Blondie still hadn't had a number one.

Moreover, none of their first run of singles even charted in the States.

The record company brought in Mike Chapman,

a producer of pure pop and international number ones,

to polish the Blondie sound.

Terry Ellis at Chrysalis Records came to me.

He said, "I want to make them

"into a multi-platinum worldwide success."

And I thought, "Oh, God."

Great music, awesome music, with a wonderful sense of humour,

and...and some very interesting elements,

but...it was all over the place, musically.

CACOPHONOUS GUITAR

Clem had this attitude that he was Keith Moon,

and just wanted to play every drum all of the time.

My first challenge was to rein in Clem.

I don't really have that much recollection of that.

"I don't want you to play straight, I want you to play in time."

-To be honest...

-"Can you do the same thing, IN TIME?"

Maybe I blackened it out of my memory bank as an unpleasant experience.

It was a real challenge to convince them

that this...

OUT-OF-SYNCH GUITAR AND DRUMS

..to convince them that that was out of tune and out of time.

I like the old rough stuff. To me, that's great.

You know what I mean? I almost prefer that on a certain level.

I like the old stuff. The Blondie demos, to me, is like the essence of Blondie.

None of us were musicians. Musicians read music and play the same thing over and over again.

My first intention was to clean the bloody band up.

Chapman saw the potential in Heart Of Glass,

but thought he could only make it a hit by painstaking construction,

-recording it note by note.

-Right, then.

So we had the little... almost metronome thing...

..and then Clem would do the kick drum.

Took three hours to put down the bass drum, I remember that,

because every little thing had to be in synch.

And then I think the following day it was the snare drum and the hi-hat.

Then eventually the breaks.

Then came the guitars.

The guitar that goes bub-a-bub-a-bub-a

was done with a tape-loop echo, so that took hours.

And the vocals. So everything was built up in Heart Of Glass.

It was our first experience of building up a track.

# Once I had a love And it was a gas

# Soon turned out Had a heart of glass

# Seemed like the real thing Only to find

# Mucho mistrust Love's gone behind... #

Then suddenly it got picked up by the dance clubs, I guess,

and it became a disco hit and rocketed to number one!

We were in Italy when we found out it was number one in America.

And we felt so fucking vindicated and so cool!

We were dancing around and popping champagne.

# Seemed like the real thing But I was so blind

# Mucho mistrust Love's gone behind... #

At the time, that New York crowd was looking at them going, "Disco?"

It was a bit disco-y for me.

# In between What I find is pleasing And I'm feeling fine... #

Disco and punk were opposite ends of the spectrum.

I was pretty upset when they brought it out as a disco single.

It put me out of business!

There was a lot of anger towards disco

among the more articulate people on the punk scene.

There were stupid things like Burn A Disco Record Night at Cleveland Stadium,

and, you know, where a riot broke out.

I know, for instance, our friends the Ramones were disappointed in us.

And probably a bit jealous of our success as well.

How do you feel about Blondie and these people

that have, in a sense, commercially eclipsed you?

They took that way, to do that.

Play disco music, things like that, to make it.

We do what we believe in, we have our integrity.

I remember being at a party for one of the gold records they got,

and there were three of the Ramones outside and they couldn't get in.

Well, you know, it put them in a different world.

It put them in a different league from us.

We'd come up together, and the Ramones were the headliners.

You know... And all of a sudden,

there was an instant change.

There was a certain kind of camaraderie that lasted up until...

the reality of getting record deals and making money

entered upon the scene.

Blondie were moving up in the world.

Chris and Debbie moved out of the loft into a penthouse in a swanky neighbourhood.

But the band found themselves under pressure from manager Peter Leeds

to make even bigger changes.

-Do you want to go into any of this?

-Who, Leeds?

-Yeah.

Do I have to?

Peter was getting a little too forceful with everybody.

We weren't his children, you know? We were his clients.

I think that I had trouble...

in terms of the...

the artists, particularly Debbie and Chris,

understanding the game plan. The big picture.

# ..find ya I'm gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha

# One way or another

# I'm gonna win ya

# I'm gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha... #

He was very focused on me, and tried to convince me to drop the band.

That I was the only thing that was important,

they were unimportant, could be replaced,

none of them were worth anything and I should break up with Chris.

# I will drive past your house

# And if

# The lights are all down... #

Peter would leave little notes - "You're worthless, you're not needed," if you disagreed with him.

I got along with him, but I didn't like that.

He told everybody in the band they were replaceable.

And the best thing about it was that when he chose to do this,

we had just left Japan.

So we're all sitting there on this plane, one here and one there,

we'd had a chance to spread out.

And he came round to every single person and told them on that flight,

while we were in the air, captive,

that we were all replaceable.

That we all could be replaced!

My regret, in this case which you're speaking of...

No, we can't talk about this! I don't want to talk about...

telling Chris Stein I'd throw his ass out like I did Gary Valentine.

That's not a good thing to say at this point.

Bells really started to ring with the photo shoot for the album Parallel Lines.

# I'm in the phone booth It's the one across the hall

# If you don't answer I'll just ring it off the wall

# I know he's there But I just had to call... #

When you're doing a group photo with six different people,

it's very hard to get a group shot where everybody likes themselves.

# I heard your mother now she's going out the door

# Did she go to work or just go to the store?

# All those things she said I told you to ignore... #

So each band member had their picture taken separately.

Then everybody got to go through and pick the images that they liked.

When the album comes out Chris Stein goes crazy.

# Don't leave me hanging on the telephone

# Don't leave me hanging on the telephone... #

What Peter Leeds did...he ignored what the band had picked

and chose the pictures he wanted.

Leeds decided everybody should be grinning on the cover of Parallel Lines.

Debbie frowning and all of us smiling...

# Hanging on the telephone... #

I don't ever remember hearing the issue of the band smiling, Debbie not, whatever.

Little things like that, they seem small,

but if you feel like you're not in control of your image,

it's not a good thing.

# Oh, oh, oh Run to me... #

We got rid of Peter - it cost us a lot of money.

As we had negotiations with Leeds,

Heart Of Glass was going up the charts every week,

and at the same time the song would go up he would raise his price.

What did you get, Peter?

Now you know that I'm not going to discuss that.

-OK.

-I'm very pleased to say...

that one of the terms of the contract was...

that the commission would be, in effect, in perpetuity.

Peter did a good job of bringing us to a major record company

and we had to pay a price for that.

I continue to make a nice amount of money which I have no apologies for.

He didn't do good business for us.

He did good business for himself.

Peter Leeds walked away with nearly a quarter of the band's takings,

just as they hit the big time.

Not that the hits dried up, they kept coming and they felt bigger.

MUSIC PLAYS: Union City by Blondie

The video we did of Union City was pretty epic.

It was done on the waterfront in New Jersey

with the Manhattan skyline as a backdrop,

there was even a helicopter shot came in on the band.

The video was inspired by the anthemic quality of the song.

# Oh-ho, oh-ho What are we gonna do?

# Union, Union, Union City blue... #

The sound of that record was enormous.

It was the sound of a successful band, it was the sound of a big band

that were striding the world stage.

Blondie were at the top of their game. Chris and Debbie started writing hits for Hollywood

as Call Me became the number one theme to the film American Gigolo.

# Colour me your colour, baby... #

Debbie sat for Andy Warhol and became a true blonde icon...

and Chris became a chat show host

in the strictly bohemian world of New York cable TV.

TV Party was basically an underground Tonight Show.

Hi, and welcome to TV Party.

I was the host and Chris Stein was the co-host.

We would have some people come on and talk...

-The way I lead my life is I just try not to be a

-BLEEP

-to anybody.

Sometimes we would show clips from the underground movies of the time.

Are you ready to take my picture?

-Why do you want these pictures anyhow?

-To put in the windows and bars

and one for my boyfriend.

Chris' favourite part of the show was always the phone calls.

People could call in and talk to us live on air.

CALLER: I was wondering, do you guys all have poles stuck up your ass?

LAUGHTER

No, just Czechs, we have Russians and Czechs stuck up our ass.

'You could actually curse people out on our show.'

These people would think, "I'm going to... your mother sucks cocks..."

CALLER: Was there a particular moment

when you realised you were a totally moronic asshole?

-Hello.

-CALLER: You're all fags.

They may have been superstars, but it was in this chaotic world

with just a few hundred viewers that Chris and Debbie,

aided by violinist Walter Steding and the TV Party Orchestra,

debuted their next single, The Tide Is High.

FUZZY SOUND # The tide is high but I'm holding on

# I'm gonna be your number one

# I'm not the kind of girl... #

Debbie and the boys, they did Tide Is High

and it was the first time they ever played it outside their bedrooms.

# It's not the things you do that hurt me bad, oh-oh... #

I wish I could have strangled Walter and dragged him off the stage as he was so out of tune in that.

# ..Who gives up just like that Oh, no... #

POLISHED VERSION: # The tide is high but I'm holding on

# I'm gonna be your number one... #

The bohemianism of Blondie isn't apparent on first listen.

VIOLIN SCRAPES # It's not the things you do that hurt bad, oh-ho... #

'The surface is very much the popular,'

but really they were kind of beatniks.

In this veritable melting pot of talent, Chris and Debbie met another key collaborator -

-Fab 5 Freddy.

-We have Freddy - the token black.

'I met Chris and Debbie working on TV Party.'

At the first show we all met and became good friends.

I was one of those guys that painted on New York City subway trains,

as well as the walls and anywhere else I felt that my name,

my signature needed to be - I put it there.

I was into the beginnings of what we now know as hip-hop,

which was still going on just in the streets of New York.

Blondie, they were one of the first ones to pick up on the rap scene.

Freddy took us up to this event in the Bronx.

There was a big gymnasium and they would use this place to give rap concerts...

-We were the only white people and...

-We watched a show...

# Just move your hands in the air... #

All the things I had explained to Chris was going on in this scene.

How these guys were taking these records and doing the scratching thing.

There's rapping and attitude.

They kind of got it all, it put some seeds in their heads.

Chris was a big fan of all types of music, especially black music.

One of the biggest groups at the time was a group called Chic.

Chic's Good Times was the hot record that every DJ wanted to scratch.

# Good, good, good, good times... #

As we did on Heart Of Glass when we did our own take on disco,

I guess this was the logical thing to get into

was to do our take on the Chic thing.

MUSIC PLAYS: Rapture by Blondie

# Toe to toe Dancing very close

# Barely breathing Almost comatose... #

We had the melody and the riff, but I don't think we were conscious,

like, "Whoa, we're doing a rap."

I remember Chris bringing in the idea and not understanding it.

I was like, "You think we could do this?"

We're white guys, how much could we know?

# In Rapture... #

The rap on Rapture got to the point

where everything was done except the rap.

We had this elongated section without a rap.

I said, "Whatever this rap is, now's your chance.

"This is your moment, get out there and do it."

They said, "OK, hang on, we better write it." So they stood there for about 15 minutes, wrote this rap,

and out she went.

Excuse me.

She said, "OK, I got it." I said, "You do? All right. It's a lot of bars"

She said, "OK." She goes out and she starts rapping away and...

All these incredible "eats guitars and eating cars" and all that stuff.

Phew!

What was she on that day? I don't know.

# Fab 5 Freddie told me everybody's fly

# DJ's spinnin' are savin' my mind

# Flash is fast Flash is cool

# Francois sez fas' Flashe no do... #

That was about me describing what was going on in the hip-hop scene

to Chris and Debbie when we would hang out and talk.

She said, "Fab 5 Freddie told me everybody's fly

"DJ's spinnin' are savin' my mind."

Fly was a word used to describe if you were part of the hip-hop scene

and you had the right style, you were a fly guy or a fly girl.

# Flash is fast Flash is cool... #

"Flash is fast, fast is cool."

A DJ named Grandmaster Flash was known as the fastest DJ.

He had perfected his technique of manipulating the beats on the turntables in a seamless fashion.

# And out comes a man from Mars

# And you try to run but he's got a gun

# And he shoots you dead and he eats your head... #

It was the first time, I guess, a mainstream audience had a peek

of what was about to become this huge movement...

called hip-hop.

Rapture completed a hat trick of number ones in only six months.

All entirely different, from power pop, to reggae, to rap.

Blondie were, quite simply, the biggest band in the world.

Chris and Debbie celebrated by moving into a six-storey mansion

in Manhattan.

Nothing could derail them, except themselves.

The drugs were part of... that was part of the deal.

If you work with Blondie, you get Blondie and whatever baggage they're carting around with them.

The '80s - it was sort of like the glorification of cocaine...

For example, we would fly from New York into London,

and stay at our regular hotel and normally you'd go there

and from the record company there would be a display of flowers, a bowl of fruit.

By the time it got to 1980,

there would be an eighth of an ounce of cocaine,

along with the flowers and the fruit.

One of my managers told me that I should always keep a 100 bill on me.

In case I had to roll a bill up to snort some coke.

It would be a 100 bill cos that would be sort of hip.

It got you into the beat. I found my drug, Chris found his drug.

I got a little crazy.

It wasn't hard to see that something was going to go wrong.

# In Babylon on the boulevard of broken dreams

# My willpower at the lowest ebb

# Oh, what can I do? #

The horn section that they brought in to play on the Island Of Lost Souls, they were all a bunch of junkies.

Puerto Ricans, they'd come across and...

Great players and they were all jumped out of their minds...

the whole session, sweating profusely.

Disappearing into the bathroom and coming back and...

I was like, "Even my horn section are junkies. God!"

# Hey, hey!

# Really get away

# Is what he said... #

The whole thing fell into this black hole...

# Where did he go? #

..and we all tumbled in, one after the other.

I think that's probably the main contributor to the band disbanding.

Is probably our drug problems.

The band had pushed the self-destruct button.

And for Chris and Debbie the glamour of the cocaine lifestyle

was about to be replaced by a more dangerous addiction.

It was a period when heavy drug use, heroin specifically,

swept through the CBGB's... downtown scene like a plague.

CALLER: It would be helpful if you got someone

that was able to work the camera.

That means there's a lack of good drugs here

at the studio if the camera's really steady.

Everyone got sucked into it because we all wanted to be like William Burroughs and Lou Reed.

It's funny to think of being a junkie as aspirational.

CALLER: It looks like it's a fucking dope house.

Goddamn! That's a really perceptive fellow.

Drugs were a tremendous downfall for us because we were with management

who were really OK with cocaine use - that was fine -

but once you graduated to heroin use you were fucked.

You could buy a bag of heroin for 10 and get really fucked up.

That was one of the few bargains available to us, I suppose.

Although in the end it didn't prove to be much of a bargain.

# Colour me your colour, baby... #

In 1982, the band announced a farewell tour.

The drugs were taking their toll

and The Hunter, their final album, barely made the top 40.

Jimmy Destri told me that sold 20,000 copies.

The Hunter - 20,000 copies!

It's like, "There must have been a mistake."

# Call me

# When you're ready for some sweet delight

# Call me... #

The tour was a disaster. It was just horrible.

We were booked into gigs that were 20,000 seater places and there's only 9,000 people there.

At that point, that's when Chris really started to look pale, skinny...

I remember it was quite dramatic cos I went to The Hunted tour

and he was standing there dressed from head to foot in black,

but he looked like a ghost.

He really had this white pallor. Unbelievable.

Blondie were losing money on the tour,

but as the band prepared to take their final curtain call,

they discovered they'd been losing money for years.

Some of their advisors had proved less than reliable.

Their rock and roll pension had disappeared.

They attracted people who were pariahs and you could see...

You'd look at them and go, "Oh, man, here we go.

"There goes another fucking shark, another slimeball."

And I assume those guys made a lot of money off us.

We had a letter from our accountant, basically saying, "Don't expect any more money.

"It's all over. There's £25,000 left in the Blondie account.

"Make arrangements, don't count on another penny from Blondie."

We were being attacked on all fronts at that point.

Our label had dropped us, our management had walked out

and the IRS was closing in on us.

We were all in a tax hole. I think Chris owed near a million dollars, I owed half a million dollars.

When you've been a good boy, this is what they give you.

Platinum records - they represent 20 or 30 million album sales.

I think this is probably all that Debbie and Chris ever got.

We sold 20 million albums and we've got 25 grand left in the account.

I don't think there were any dollars and cents that came with it.

After all that work, we wound up in the red.

During all this time, Chris continued to lose weight.

Even the folk at TV Party started to notice.

Chris was always just kind of normal.

He wasn't fat, he wasn't thin,

but then suddenly he was getting thinner and thinner.

It was obvious that something was going on.

-You're tipping the scales at what, Chris?

-140.

-When was the last time you weighed 140?

-Years ago.

The frightening thing was nobody knew what it was.

I remember trying on Debbie's clothes and being really pleased that I could fit into her pants.

I probably thought I looked great and gaunt.

He complained of a sore throat and it became very serious,

he couldn't swallow, he couldn't get any food in.

The next day we called an ambulance and I was, you know....hauled out.

The disease is called pemphigus vulgaris and it's an immune disorder

that manifests itself in a variety of ways.

One of them is these lesions and it's really horrible.

70% of my skin blistered.

Pemphigus is Latin for blisters.

-So I...

-It's like burns.

You want to see it? That's old scars.

DEBBIE: This one nurse came over to me and pulled me aside and said,

"I read this definition of what Chris' illness is."

It's really scary. I thought he was going to die.

It was terminal.

They said that he was dying and that was that.

There was a horrible photo of Debbie in something like the National Enquirer.

One of those horrible magazines. She was photographed in a supermarket

with a wheeled sort of thing buying food

and she'd put a lot of weight on and she really looked like a cartoon waxwork figure.

She just took this attitude that she was going to stay by Chris

and she was going to make it all work out.

I find that incredibly moving cos it's so rare.

I remember Debbie pretty much putting her career on hold

to basically stay and help take care of Chris.

I really think it's inarguable that her career suffered.

# Suddenly Some subtle entity... #

With Debbie by his side, Chris defied the illness and gradually pulled through,

but the cost was considerable.

They lost the uptown mansion

and they were both still weaning themselves off heroin.

Remember everything was sliding downhill. We were running out of money and stuff like that.

We had a really nice place uptown and we had to get a crummier place further downtown.

We were both on methadone, which she went off pretty quickly

and I stayed on because my condition was stress related.

My sexuality went down and we just went out of synch...

I think.

I don't know what her take on it is anyway.

Basically, I think that's really right.

Now that I look back on it, I think that I was sort of having a...

nervous breakdown of a sort.

I think her going off methadone quickly, really,

that's really hard, too.

I think that made her really nuts.

I felt that I had been going like this for so long...

I was just like this crazy, throbbing madness, you know?

I just had to pull the plug...

Debbie left. I thought that was apparent.

..and so that's what I did.

It was definitely her who decided to take a place down the block.

# Fade away and radiate

# Fade away and radiate

# Fade away and radiate. #

After the break-up, times were lean.

Debbie had some success as an actress,

but found it harder with solo records,

while Chris battled drug addiction and serious debt.

Chris was bankrupt...

and Jimmy wasn't far behind.

Completely and utterly broke.

In the late '90s, out of rehab but still a million in debt,

Chris decided to put a new version of the band together

and pinned his hopes on a new song.

Hearing Maria for the first time was very moving

cos I realised that, you know... Even thinking about it gets me emotional

cos I just realised it could be a hit.

I was at the first recording session that I ever did with them and...

The first thing I ever did was play Maria

and I had to come up with this guitar part for the intro.

I was thinking like...

"Blondie, they always do that kind of stuff."

So I just started playing.

It's instantly recognisable as a Blondie record

from the # Doh, doh, doh Doh, doh, doh... #

And yet the voice is so much deeper at the beginning.

# She moves like she don't care

# Smooth as silk Cool as air... #

And because she'd worked in the intervening years with people like Jazz Passengers

I think her voice had grown much richer and she's learnt to do different things with it.

# ..and your heart beats like a subway train... #

I couldn't sing the chorus, so I just did a keyboard line.

# Maria You've gotta see her... #

I did a little demo of it where I slowed the tape down

and did the chorus. # Maria... #

Debbie got it right away, she goes, "This is good."

# Maria

# You've gotta see her

# Go in-sane and out of your mind

# Latina Ave Maria

# A million and one candle lights... #

What was interesting was no-one wanted to sign Blondie.

So we made our own label and they had a number one single in 14 countries.

# Fool for love and full of fire... #

When the record came out, it went to number one in one week.

It was like she'd never been away. The record sounds like a rebirth.

She even sings Ave Maria in the record.

I'm very gratified and happy that Blondie had a rebirth,

you know, and Debbie looks great.

I've done some plastic surgery,

I think it was already at least ten years now since I did it.

Just have really good genetics.

# Maria

# You've gotta see her

# Go in-sane and out of your mind... #

The band were finally in the black,

but this being Blondie it wasn't that simple.

The ex-members wanted their share and decided to sue.

You're all in a boat together and you're looking for that pot at the end of the rainbow.

When it's just in sight, when you're finally out of debt,

"OK, you two guys, you're out now."

# On your own... #

I want that life back like any musician does.

# Maria

# You've gotta see her

# Go in-sane and out... #

2006 finds Blondie still recording and touring,

but with some new family members in tow.

That's Barbara, this is my wife, Barbara.

We've been married for about seven years now.

Or together for seven years, something like that.

And then we had these babies.

And there's another baby floating around, but it's not here.

It's at the hotel. We left her at a bar last night.

CHILD CHATTERS I think early on in my relationship,

I was intimidated and less secure

and sort of wondering about this woman -

his partner.

And they are so close.

-You left your thing.

-What thing?

-Your wireless.

-I left it over there.

-Maybe you lost it.

They have love and it was hard for me a little.

-There, there.

-Daddy, want carry.

-Good girl.

-No cry.

DEBBIE: Hello, Akira.

BARBARA: 'I have a different relationship with him'

and a different relationship with her.

By the second, you get prettier and prettier.

Yes, you do. She does look really cute like that.

Has she got...Chris' ears?

She does.

Hi, Daddy.

I respect what they have because why would I want to deny

people that I love, love for one another?

Debbie is Akira and Valentina's godmother.

Yes, and she gets them if anything happens to us.

CHILDREN CHATTER

I can't believe I didn't want to!

With the age of some of the band touching 60,

there are now health issues to be taken into account.

What we're struggling with is the fact that we have to keep our stage volume really low

because over the years Debbie's developed tinnitus,

ringing of the ears.

So she's extremely sensitive to any kind of loud noise.

There's nothing like playing acoustic...

drums.

I have like this sort of very high-pitched thing and sometimes...

When it started I thought I was getting signals from outer space.

I actually have an elaborate baffling system - I think you call it Perspex over here.

Plexiglas, so the sound is a lot more controllable on stage.

Some band members, however, would like more than Perspex

between them and Clem.

I think he'd be best off behind a big wall of cinder blocks,

which are the things used in construction sites, you know, those big grey things.

If we could have one of those it would be OK.

Clem drives me crazy because he's so completely different than I am.

He's completely on the other side of the universe from me.

This is the kind of stuff that makes me remember why I do this.

I'm not very much interested in fucking reading rock magazines.

Keith Moon was a hero for me early on.

Keith Moon was an idiot.

I always wanted to make it interesting.

I want people to have something to look at.

Showmanship takes away from his playing, we feel.

I want to give people something to have fun with...

when I'm on stage.

DRUM SOLO CONTINUES

CHEERING

Clem is very caught up in his rock and roll star persona.

Probably more so than anybody I know.

It's a great feeling.

Imagine if your whole life was like that -

people cheering and telling you how great you were.

DEBBIE: It was really like a family.

How many brothers and sisters actually...dig each other?

-You know?

-But in the Blondie family there are other issues.

They're missing one key member.

Jimmy, who wasn't allowed on the current tour.

I used to do tonnes of drugs and stuff like that, but I...

stopped after a while.

Jimmy found it harder to pull himself out of all that.

I was having some drug problems.

Even though he thought he was doing OK.

Everybody else, you know, didn't see eye to eye with him.

We all thought he was fucking up more than he did. And obviously...

I think the band kind of...

read him the riot act and said, "We have to do this tour and you're not capable of doing it."

What they did to me was pretty bald-faced wrong.

Debbie feels let down by Jimmy.

Yeah, I do, I feel really let down.

Perhaps more so than myself.

I don't know, I'm just maybe a sucker for that. He just has a lot of demons.

Chris had a serious drug problem. We helped him through it.

I was having some drug problems and I was ostracised for it.

There is something really wonderful about him,

but there's also this complete horror and when he lives in the horror side,

which he tends to do quite a bit,

you can't be with him. You can't be around him and you can't work with him.

We go through each other like a hot knife through butter.

I can't see myself ever working with them again, not on stage.

Never again. What I think they're missing is a hell of a fucking lot.

But in early 2006,

Jimmy is just one of their problems.

The original band is about to be inducted into America's Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.

That means the ex-members who sued are invited too.

It's the first time they've all met up since court.

I don't know what's going to happen. If it was up to me and Debbie, they wouldn't be there.

How can they expect me to want to say, "Welcome back, boys."

You know, I mean it just doesn't... What kind of thinking is that?

The reunion with the others - I doubt they'll show up.

I'm going. I've got my tickets.

You want to see 'em?

Are you going up on stage with Chris, Debbie, Clem and Jimmy?

Possibly.

We don't know.

It has all the potential of being a rather explosive family reunion,

from, you know, past experiences.

-CHRIS:

-It's really relaxing. It's just great to be around all my peers

and fellow band mates once again,

in this friendly and cheerful environment,

devoid of pressure or any kind of angst.

Everyone's nervous and uptight

and we have to brush elbows with the idiots who are suing us.

Look how beautiful I was.

Three of them, Leigh Foxx, our current base player,

has been with us for 20 years and he's not getting inducted,

but Nigel, who we worked with for four and a half years, is!

That's the size of it.

Tonight, New York legends Blondie will become members of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.

CHEERING

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,

thank you is not enough, but...

You know, we do have a long list of people that helped get us here.

I'd like to thank everybody that was responsible for getting us here tonight, both past and present.

I'd like to thank my wife, my two kids

and mostly I want to...

All the people you see behind me. It was a very big band. There's even more than this...

back in the day.

But most of all, I want to thank Debbie for sticking with me...

all through this nonsense.

Thank you.

Former Blondie member Frank Infante begged lead singer Deborah Harry

to let him and Nigel Harrison play, but no dice.

One thing that would really make it better would be

if we could actually perform for you tonight, but for some reason...

some of us are not allowed to do that.

I'd like to do that. I'd like to play, but...

Debbie, is that allowed?

No? We'd like to play with you guys.

-Me, Nigel...

-Not tonight.

-Not tonight, oh.

Pretty please. Pretty please!

-Debbie? I love you.

-Can't you see my band is up there?

Oh, your band.

I thought Blondie was being inducted tonight.

Sorry.

# Once I had a love It was divine

# I soon found out I was losing my mind... #

Frankie pleaded with Debbie to play with us and had she been fast on her feet,

she would have said, "Get down and lick my boots."

But she's not.

# In between

# What I find is pleasing and I'm feeling fine... #

I would have liked to have played with the band tonight, I really would have liked to have played.

Logistically, it might have been impossible.

# It's just no good

# You teasing like you do... #

I have a good life now.

Clean and sober for the longest time and I'm enjoying it.

I miss it, sure.

I saw Chris and Clem and I miss them.

There's an element that I miss and I'm sure there's an element they miss, but this is how it is.

I'm holding on to this in case I see Frankie and Nigel.

Chris wants to get us and bash our heads in with his...

-His award.

-Hall Of...

The thing that made us different and unique was the tension within us.

We're ready. Bring it on.

The reason I brought this

was in case I run into any of those fuckers.

We're not friends so much as a family that doesn't hang out together.

There's been little rays of sunshine where we all laughed and got along,

went shopping together and stuff like that,

but it was always a tense, irritable situation.

And I think that internal tension, that's Blondie.

You know, everybody doesn't mix and that makes the music

in a way, that much more freaky and twitchy.

# Oooh-oo... #

That's what makes the band what it is.

# Oooh, ahh-ahh-ahh-ahh... #

# Oooh-whoa-ho. #

Thank you so much!

It's been a great night for us.

We are the champions.

Wish you all the best.

And, er, maybe we'll see you again sometime.

CHEERING

I have to really say this,

you know, we have had all these,

you know, critical problems.

And somehow I think about God...

I'm going to sound like such an idiot.

-I'm going to sound like a complete moron.

-Where?

-You know, in this documentary, in this whole situation.

-Why is that?

We just sailed into it, sort of, in this dream state, you know,

-expecting everything to just be, you know, perfect!

-What, the band?

-The documentary?

-You and me, babe. You and me.

-Well, yeah. Well, no...