Why Giorgio Moroder quit after creating one of the biggest Blondie hits
When looking at musicians or bands that could almost never get on, it’s easy to point to forerunners like Fleetwood Mac, The Police, and even The Beatles. Blondie rarely catches the eye of the suspecting, mainly because, for the most part, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein were a match made in musical heaven. However, as with most musicians so commanding of the spotlight, immunity to friction is nonexistent.
What is also compelling is to discuss the ways Blondie caused friction in an external sense. A post-punk rock assemble fronted by a female musician wasn’t uncommon, but Harry was a pariah who reinstated what it meant to infuse rock aggression with feminine dignity. Despite being a part of the same space as many anachronistic people and groups, Harry presented an intriguing dichotomy of conformity and rebellion.
This wasn’t at the expense of outsider criticism, of course. Often, Harry would be objectified by fans, the media, and her musical peers, reduced to nothing more than an object of desire with many of her musical talents and achievements ignored, or at the very least, treated as of secondary importance. Aside from her spotlight, her musical partnership with Stein was acknowledged but rarely understood despite the collaboration working more efficiently than many of their contemporary groups at the time.
However, in 1980, when Giorgio Moroder was approached about producing the soundtrack to American Gigolo, he secured Blondie after noticing they had some free time following the release of their 1979 album Eat To The Beat. The resulting track ‘Call Me’ came to fruition after Harry looked through some images from the film and sought to create something based on its atmosphere and tone. “When I was writing it, I pictured the opening scene, driving on the coast of California,” she explained.
Despite the song’s monumental success, the dynamics behind the scenes were far less effortlessly flowing. In fact, certain fights between the musicians led Moroder to reevaluate his collaborations with rock musicians, frustrated with the ways they often worked in a whirlwind of intense clashes. “There were always fights,” he recalled to Billboard. “I was supposed to do an album with them after that. We went to the studio, and the guitarist was fighting with the keyboard player. I called their manager and quit.”
Thankfully, the hostile dynamics within the band at the time weren’t strong enough to distract from the single’s success, and Harry became the first woman to have three number-one hits in the British charts. Interestingly, Moroder knew ‘Call Me’ would be “a hit” the moment he heard it, and his predictions were absolutely right. Not only this but the negative experience far from tainted his joy about its success, as Harry recalled in her book Face It: “[He] was very enthusiastic and jumping for joy. He had so many hits by then, but this one was important for him, being in the film industry as well.”
Evidently, the ripple effect of the track’s success was far more notable than such arguments, and the song and film went on to gain the recognition they deserved. Even the aesthetics seemed to complement the joy well, with Harry also focusing on the beauty of colour in the song and in the visual design. “You know that palette of colour throughout the film, those beautiful greys, blues, and browns, it was so beautifully done,” she said.
