The singer Debbie Harry said no one could hate: “A visionary artist”
When punk first emerged from the sticky, rat-infested floors of New York’s CBGB club, it preached the destruction of the musical establishment; taking rock and roll back to its DIY roots and doing away with the superfluidity of mainstream rock.
There were, however, those already established rock stars who seemed to be exceptions to that rule, according to Debbie Harry.
Harry had been a fixture of New York City’s underground since the mid-1960s, working various roles as a waitress, secretary, go-go dancer and, at one point, a Playboy bunny, so she was well poised to witness the emergence of punk during the early 1970s.
It was in 1974 that Blondie was officially born, emerging from the partnership of Harry with Chris Stein, and the band quickly became a fixture of the CBGB club, even if their musical talent during those early days was pretty lacking. Despite being at the epicentre of punk’s sneering safety-pin revolution, Blondie were always a little different from their CBGB contemporaries.
While other bands seemed to pride themselves on their lack of musical ability, limiting their output solely to barre chords and buzzsaw guitars, Harry was always keen to expand the musical repertoire of her group, taking on a vast range of influences from punk’s archetypal enemy, disco, to the emerging landscape of New York hip-hop.
Not only did this expansive sound make Blondie one of the few bands from the early punk scene to reach the dizzying heights of the pop charts, with their unique brand of new wave mastery. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Harry and the band were always natural disciples of another genre-spanning musical maestro, David Bowie.
Bowie seemed to be one of the few figures who received a ‘pass’ from the punk scene, appreciated for his otherworldly output even if he was a regular fixture of the singles charts and was technically a part of the musical ‘establishment’ which punk aimed to destroy. As Harry put it, though, “Who doesn’t love Bowie?”
In a statement released following the tragic death of the ‘Starman’ back in 2016, the Blondie frontwoman espoused the extensive genius of Bowie’s output, calling him, “A visionary artist, musician, actor, a completely renaissance man who has given us a long list of songs like ‘Heroes,’ ‘Rebel Rebel,’ ‘Young Americans,’ ‘Diamond Dogs,’ ‘The Jean Genie.’”
She was also keen to highlight an element of Bowie which is often forgotten. Namely, his film career. Harry continued, “and some memorable film performances like The Man Who Fell to Earth, Basquiat, Labyrinth, The Hunger.” As a fellow musician-come-actor, that was an aspect of Bowie’s career which he shared with Harry.
“I can’t say enough things about David Bowie to show how much I love him,” Harry concluded, with the kind of sentiment that was shared throughout the musical world on the day that Bowie passed. After all, he seemed to unite every faction of the musical realm with his impossibility individualistic sound which reinvented itself time and time again over the many decades of his illustrious career.
