The Blondie bunny girl
QUESTION I was surprised to learn that Debbie Harry was 31 when Blondie released their first album. What did she do before that? BORN Deborah Ann Harry on July 1, 1945, in Miami, Florida, Debbie Harry was adopted by store owners Richard Smith and Catherine Harry, who raised her in suburban New Jersey.
According to her Desert island Discs interview, she had a happy childhood. Her adoptive parents were devoutly religious, and it was while singing in a church choir that she discovered her singing voice.
After graduating from Centenary College with an arts degree, she moved to New York in the late Sixties and began working in what she calls a ‘head shop’, selling posters, music and smoking paraphernalia.
After a brief period as a BBC secretary in the Big Apple, she made her singing debut on backing vocals for psychedelic folk rock group The Wind in The Willows, who released an album on Capitol.
The band broke up after it, and Harry then spent a year as a Playboy bunny before landing a job as a waitress at Max’s Kansas City, the Manhattan hangout of New York artists, writers and musicians, including Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Philip Glass and William S. Burroughs.
Max’s was the centre of the growing glam and punk scene, and hosted performances by the velvet Underground and the New York Dolls.
it was at Max’s in 1973 that Harry met Chris Stein with whom she forged a longr unning personal and professional relationship. At the time, she was performing with all-female band The Stilettos, but left to form Angel & The Snake with Stein.
By the mid-Seventies the band featured Harry on vocals, Stein on guitar. Clem Burke on drums, keyboard player Jimmy Destri and bassist Gary valentine. in 1975 the group renamed themselves Blondie, because Harry was hailed as such by many.
The band released their eponymous debut the following year to some acclaim but their 1978 release Parallel Lines propelled the band to superstardom.
Cathy Murphy, Cowes, Isle of Wight. QUESTION Did anyone record Henry V’s actual words at Agincourt? SHAKeSPeARe’S rendition of Henry v’s speeches on the eve of battle — at Harfleur and before Agincourt — are some of the most rousing ever produced for the stage. Contemporary accounts of the battles exist, and the most reputable, the Henrici Quinti Angliae Regis Gesta, of unknown origin, doesn’t mention a speech. Thomas elmham, a monk of St Augustine’s monastery, Canterbury, composed the Liber Metricus, a Latin verse account of the Agincourt campaign, a few years after it ended. He gives a remarkable account of what Henry is supposed to have said before the battle: ‘The king said to those remaining, “My fellow men, prepare arms! english rights are referred to God. Memories noted many battles given for the right of King edward and Prince edward. Many a victory occurred with only a few english troops. This could never have been by their strength alone. england must never lament me as a prisoner or as to be ransomed. i am ready to die for my right in the conflict. Saint George, George, saint and knight be with us! Holy Mary, bestow your favour on the english in their right. At this very hour many righteous english people pray for us with their hearts. France, hasten to give up your fraud!”
‘The king, bearing his own arms, put his own crown in his head. He signed himself with the cross, thus giving courage to his men. Now the priests cried out from behind, sighing, “Now have mercy on us, God. Now have mercy, God. Spare the crown of the english.”’
Some believe elmham wasn’t at the battle and that his work is speculation possibly embroidered from eyewitness accounts but based on the Henrici Quinti Angliae Regis Gesta. References to Saint George and King edward suggest a deliberate attempt to create a legend.
Neil Solomon, Cambridge. QUESTION At my school Prebendal, our house names were Achilles, Ajax and Exeter, named after the British ships. What other interesting house names are there? i ATTeNDeD Smallberry Green secondary in isleworth, London, in the Fifties, where houses were named after local firms: Firestone (red trim on gym shorts), Gillette (blue), (yellow), Pears (green).
After leaving school i worked for two of these companies and found both of them to be as ghastly as the school.
Bruce King, Camberley, Surrey.