The botched gig that caused Blondie to break up: “Thrown to the lions”
Clem Burke once described going on stage as being “thrown to the lions”, and in a way, it feels like the most fitting metaphor you could think of when it comes to the piercing exposure that comes the moment you step out in front of an audience.
Then again, a band like Blondie were always going to experience this kind of vulnerability tenfold, especially when it came to live audiences, and especially when it came as part of a new wave band finding new footing in commercial spaces. As Burke once reflected, becoming a bigger entity comes with even more risk of “backlash”, but ultimately, that’s all a part of the fun.
And, to put it bluntly, a female-fronted band wasn’t always going to float along tamely. “I love for people to hate us,” Burke once said, saying that while it can be stressful, it’s also a testament to a band that’s doing well, one with a following so big it leaves ample room for sourness. But this also comes with a certain rawness that preludes unpredictability, and, no matter the impact, a band like Blondie was always going to falter eventually.
Weirdly, this sense of foreboding came at a time when it was probably least expected, and that had nothing to do with the fact that their last album, The Hunter, failed in the commercial department. While their indestructible nature at this point probably had more to do with the fact that they were still riding high from their previous successes, a bunch of below-the-radar events eventually pushed Blondie to fracture, culminating in one fatal event in 1982 when things fell apart beyond repair.
Maybe this was particularly surprising to some because the band hadn’t anticipated it at all. “Unbeknownst to us, it was our very last show,” Burke reflected, saying that things went wrong almost immediately because the music was out of time and they had no means to catch up, and also because, well, as he put it, “When you’re in that concert environment, you’re thrown to the lions.” Granted, it probably would have helped had they done a soundcheck, but they also had “no road crew”, and Chris Stein wasn’t well either, causing the whole thing to come to an abrupt halt.
Not literally – the show went on – but Blondie’s reign had come to an end, and the strangest part was that none of them seemed to be all that bothered. Burke called it a “relief”. Debbie Harry even reflected on it as “that fucking tour” in her memoir Face It, saying that it “nearly killed Chris”. Burke once regretted not having their final show on tape because Stein called for the recording to be cut, but in all honesty, it seemed for the best.
Not only does the band’s nondescript end feed somewhat into their broader mythologisation, feeling like something of a blank canvas for a noteworthy swan song, it also feels like a subtler part of their story, one that doesn’t overshadow any of their other achievements, despite being one of the darker ways to bow out at the end of such a successful run.
Musically, the industry was also on the cusp of something different that made it unclear where Blondie would stand: if The Hunter was anything to go by, maybe it’s also best they stopped while their commercial game was still flying high, rather than dissipating with nothing more than the misguided sounds of a band desperately trying to maintain relevance.
