Debbie Harry dissects her Blondie “character”
“Blondie is a group!” That’s the scream that populates comment sections, fan forums, and even T-shirts by their adoring supporters. As one of the most beloved rock troupes ever and one of New York City’s best offerings, fans are always there to remind you that Blondie isn’t just Debbie Harry, but Debbie Harry is Blondie.
But to make things even more confusing, Blondie started before it was Blondie. In the late 1960s, Debbie Harry moved to New York and found herself planted in the middle of the music scene there, but not as a singer. Instead, she was working as a waitress at Max’s Kansas City, the favoured hang-out spot of the Andy Warhol social scene and punk legends like Patti Smith or Lou Reed. From her post there, her desire to be among them, not to serve them, grew and grew.
By 1973, right when CBGBs opened, Harry joined The Stilettos. Then, a guitarist called Chris Stein joined the outfit. As the two fell in love, both musically and romantically, Blondie was born long before the name was. When the couple quit that first band, it took them a few more goes, a number of different lineups, and a few other names before, eventually, in 1974, they performed under that name for the first time.
Blondie has included several members over the years, with names coming and going as the decades rolled on. But at its helm, there has always been Harry. While it’s true that they’re a band, not a solo artist. It would be impossible to have Blondie without their blonde leader. In voice, style and name, the group is centred around her.
Because even though the group isn’t her, the name is. The decision to call the band Blondie connects deeply to Harry’s experience as a woman in music, but even more broadly as a woman in life, existing in a male-dominated society. “Hey, Blondie”, people would yell at her in the streets after she first bleached her hair. The decision to name the band was a way of reclaiming the catcalls she’d heard time and time again and stealing the pet name back as her own powerful badge of honour.
But it also connected to the type of performer Harry was, still is, and always wanted to be. It’s a homage to her idols, including the most famous blonde of all. “My character in Blondie was partly visual homage to Marilyn [Monroe] and partly a statement about the good old double standard,” she said. “My Blondie character was an inflatable doll but with a dark, provocative, aggressive side. I was playing it up, yet I was very serious.”
Harry’s Blondie character sits in a long legacy of sweet on the outside but tough within blondes. Monroe is perhaps the most famous example as she regularly played the role of the ‘dumb blonde’, but played it with real talent and perfectly skill and comedic timing. As she navigated an incredibly difficult life of traumas and tragedies, Monroe was anything but dumb or weak-willed; she just used the assumption to her advantage.
That act of taking societal expectations and reclaiming them for benefit is something Harry has always done and been deeply inspired by. During her earlier years, she worked as a go-go dancer in New Jersey, then as a Playboy Bunny. Using her blonde sex appeal to her own advantage was something she’d always found power in, so the decision to do that on stage, too, makes perfect sense.
