Debbie Harry on the two performers who transformed Blondie
When Debbie Harry decided to move to New York in the 1960s, she set a series of events in motion that eventually resulted in her becoming an acclaimed cultural phenomenon. After forming Blondie alongside Chris Stein in 1974, she and the band were recurring faces at CBGBs. Over time, they crafted a sound that spoke to the eclectic nature of the underground music scene, fusing pop, punk, and new wave.
The media have often touched on her looks, calling her performances sexually charged and writing more about her outfits than her unique sound. While style undoubtedly had a place in the punk scene, she was a part of, their bid to position her as a fashion icon rather than a commanding lead vocalist undermined the forethought she gave to her onstage performances.
As she told Rolling Stone, performing came with its own set of considerations. “I’m not a trained businesswoman, and there are some real complexities with authorship, and publishing, and recording, and the different ways that your recordings can be used or sold,” she said. “So it’s not as simple as I imagined it would be at one time.”
However, Blondie’s first tour was spent opening to Iggy Pop and David Bowie, and the two taught her how to be more present on stage. On what she learned from them, she said: “There was a certain amount of improvisation in their performances. It wasn’t robotic, and the passion was there. Mr. Pop is passionate,” she said, in a massive understatement.
While Harry didn’t share his penchant for stage dives and self-harm, watching the way Iggy Pop used up his frenetic energy was a huge learning curve for Harry. “It’s pretty obvious he’s kind of a wild guy,” she said, “but he has standards; he has a controlled madness, and this is what it’s really all about.”
After that tour, she started to incorporate some of the flair of Bowie and Pop into her own shows. “Experience is everything and I was sort of in an odd position as being a woman in a man’s band, and I tried not to be too coy or too cute – other than the fact that I was cute – but I tried to bring other elements into it,” she said. “Whether I always achieved that is another story.”
In the days before Blondie were providing support for two of the most iconic acts in alternative music, Tony Ingrassia had introduced Harry to Method acting, thinking some degree of depersonalisation might make performing easier. “Initially, it helped me to really bring strong emotional content to songs that I didn’t write,” she said.
“The hard part is, and it’s the same for actors as for singers, to make choices for yourself that are going to resonate within your life experience and your emotional world,” Harry added. “When I started out, [it] gave me that overview kind of thing, where you’re looking down at yourself. This, to me, was a tremendous advantage.”
