The moment Blondie were bottled off stage while supporting Rush
Prog heroes Rush and new wavers Blondie are two bands you wouldn’t necessarily mention in the same breath, given that they represent opposite ends of the rock spectrum. However, something unexpected happened on January 21st, 1979, as Blondie were recruited in the surprise supporting role. Whilst this seems improbable, it is the first and last time it ever happened, with the crowd of stoned Rush lovers despising the support act and making their feelings known. What unfolded was dreadful for everyone involved.
That day, Rush needed a last-minute opening act for their sold-out Hemispheres show in front of 18,000 fans at Philadelphia’s Spectrum. It remains unclear why this was. Somehow, though, Blondie were made available, and they took the job. However, to say the Rush fans did not welcome them would be an understatement. From the moment they walked on stage, Blondie were in a hostile environment. Impassioned boos rang throughout the venue.
This was not the first time Blondie had played the venue. Strangely, they opened a show for shock-rocker Alice Copper in the summer of the previous year. As is well documented, they were not well received at the start of that performance either, with one Cooper fan reportedly yelling, “Boo Blondie off stage… they’re punk!” However, frontwoman Debbie Harry and the band had won over most people by the show’s end.
The Rush concert was completely different from this experience. After the initial boos, by the second song, a host of missiles were being thrown at Blondie. One account claimed that when the group played their big hit ‘One Way or Another’, Harry leaned into the crowd and was struck by a barrage of glow sticks.
Angered by this point, Blondie retaliated. They started to flip the crowd off. Beginning their third song, Harry only just avoided being hit in the head by a glass bottle. That was beyond the pale. She then retrieved the object and launched it back into the crowd.
Miraculously, Blondie played 13 songs before the show was declared over by drummer Clem Burke tipping over his kit in protest at the violent crowd. In the most vivid scene from the evening, he used his cymbals as shields to protect the band from the myriad of objects thrown at them. The enraged Debbie Harry had the last word, though. She shrieked, “Fuck you, Philadelphia,” as she left the stage.
Interestingly, a local named Marie O’Donnell, who had been at the show, wrote a scathing account of what happened in the Philadelphia Inquirer. She said: “Recently, I made the mistake of attending a Spectrum concert. The first act of the night’s bill, Blondie, was treated in a way I have never before witnessed. The group was pelted with garbage by a drugged, hostile audience. These shows seem no more than mass babysitting for a group of bored pre-teens and high schoolers who feel that their main purpose of their attendance is to get stoned.”
