LONG TIME COMING
Blondie’s Debbie Harry didn’t experience true joy until her 50s
Debbie Harry is surely the most glamorous 71-year-old in music — the Blondie frontwoman is dressed in sporty layers of grey and beige, her bottle-blond hair artfully unkempt, her heavy eyes and cupid bow lips immaculately made up. The effect is icily cool until she laughs — which is often.
Harry admits she’s no stranger to cosmetic surgery. “I’m careful about it, but you need it to stay in the game,” she says. “In some ways I feel better about myself now, more comfortable in my own skin. But it’s a tricky business. You start to think about the value of beauty as you’re growing older. It’s double-edged for sure.”
Sitting beside Harry is Blondie guitarist Chris Stein. At 67, he’s slouchy, silver-haired, unshaven, with a shambling, bookish demeanour. I apologize for not also complimenting him on his appearance. “I’m used to it,” he shrugs. “I’d be quite content to be a brain in a bottle.”
Blondie first emerged in a 1970s New York punk scene that embraced progressive, feminist values — yet Harry’s pin-up appeal was always central to their marketing. “I don’t know if we recognized the feminist aspects of Blondie at the time,” Stein says. “But Debbie had her own style and it made men nervous. The same people cheering Mick Jagger and Iggy Pop could be very critical of Debbie’s overt sexuality”
Stein and Harry were lovers when they founded Blondie in 1974, whose pulsing electro beats, teamed with Harry’s ice-cool vocals, saw the band ride the first wave of American punk. They had hits like Heart of Glass, Call Me and Atomic, before breaking up in 1982 when Stein contracted a rare autoimmune disease. Harry took time off to nurse him back to health and, though the couple separated in 1989, they remain close.
Harry’s solo career never quite took off and she drifted through a series of film, theatre and musical projects. Blondie reunited in 1997 and within two years were back at the top of the charts. Blondie’s latest album, Pollinator, will be released on Friday. Despite selling more than 40 million albums, Blondie’s members insist they have been shortchanged by the music business and are far from financially secure.
“Within my own psyche, I have always felt like an artist,” Harry says. “If I wasn’t still doing music, what else would I do? There are times when you wish you didn’t have to work ... but really, it would be horrible.”
Stein describes the dynamic within the band as being like “a democratic monarchy” in which “Debbie is the queen.”
“Of course, I am,” Harry laughs. But it’s clear that both she and Blondie rely on Stein. “This is an unusual kind of coupling, I know,” Harry says. “Chris has a strong feminine nature. I have a strong masculine side. It was always a good fit.”
Since 1999, Stein has been married to the actress Barbara Sicuranza. They live in New York with their two teenage daughters. Harry lives alone in the city and has no children. “I was afraid of having a family of my own. I didn’t think that I would be a good parent. I came out of such a strenuous home life, the idea of being tied into that was terribly unsettling and made me very unhappy.”
Harry was born in Miami in 1945 and adopted by a New Jersey couple when she was three years old. She left home in the mid-’60s, working as a go-go dancer and waitress in Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club (complete with Bunny ears), while releasing one album in 1968, with hippie collective Wind in the Willows. “I wasn’t going to be the kind of woman who raises a family and lives in the suburbs,” she says. “I wanted to be my own person. That was a big transgression. I guess that’s about as feminist as you can be.”
Of her current romantic life, she will only say “I have my moments.”
On Blondie’s new single, Long Time, she repeatedly poses the question “Are you happy?”
“Big, big question, isn’t it?” she says. So is she? “Sometimes, yes. I sometimes even experience joy, which I found to be miraculous the first time it happened.” This epiphany occurred in 2000, while Harry was appearing in an off-Broadway production of the late British playwright Sarah Kane’s Crave.
“I have a very clear memory of the moment. I was walking in the West Village, and I realized I am exactly where I want to be, doing exactly what I want to do, something that I had longed for most of my childhood and adult life. Oh God, was that great! I don’t expect to experience that all the time. But it makes you feel it’s all worthwhile.”
In some ways I feel better about myself now, more comfortable in my own skin. But it’s a tricky business. You start to think about the value of beauty as you’re growing older.