Flashback

Chris Stein remembers life with Debbie Harry in Andy Warhol’s New York

Andy would come into a party and it was like the Pope had arrived – it was verification that you were in the right place

IN 1980, DEBBIE AND I were in a relationship and living together in a penthouse apartment on 58th and 7th, where I took this picture of her with Andy Warhol. It was just two blocks away from Carnegie Hall, a showbizzy neighbourhood. Our apartment had once belonged to Lillian Roth, who was a big Broadway star in the 1930s, and the actor Peter Coyote lived in our building. Back then, that apartment cost us just $500 a month.

Everybody in New York in the arts was connected to Andy one way or another; either you worked for him, or knew somebody who worked for him – it was one degree of separation. He was the central figure in the New York art scene. He would come into a party and it was like the Pope had arrived – it was verification that you were in the right place. The first time I saw him was in 1965. I knew people who’d worked for him back in the ’60s, and I was a big fan of that first Velvet Underground album when it came out in 1967. We had a lot of people in common, and Debbie and I were often around the last two Factory buildings; the one on Union Square, where Andy was shot, and then the last one on Broadway. Debbie always says that the thing she learnt from Andy was how to listen. He wasn’t the kind of person who was always waiting to speak; he seemed to be genuinely taking in whatever you were telling him.

Debbie and I met playing in a band called the Stilettos in 1974, which then became Blondie. The music and art scene in New York at that time was isolated from the rest of the world. People take for granted the connectivity we have now, but it was different then. It was its own enclave, and the fact that it was isolated made it ferment. Like Liverpool, or the scene in Seattle that Nirvana came out of, bands got to cook in their juices for a while before getting attention. Now any band starting out is capable of getting a lot of attention.

Nobody was giving any thought to the future, or could have anticipated what would happen. Blondie released our first album in 1976, and then it all took off. We had our time, but then it all got f—ed up on many levels, financially and otherwise – we trusted all these people we shouldn’t have. Then there was my health [in 1983, Stein was diagnosed with pemphigus vulgaris, a rare autoimmune disease of the skin]. But having come through all this stuff, we’re in a nice moment now where we have a lot of credibility, being elder statesmen as it were. My relationship with Debbie ended a long time ago, but we’re still friends and see a lot of each other.

New York has changed so much. Back in the ’70s, wherever I lived, without exception, somebody in a neighbouring apartment would be playing a saxophone or a trumpet. I don’t think that exists any more. Things are safer now, but at what cost? The corporate aspect has taken over. Soho used to be a thriving arts community, but now it’s just a high-end shopping mall. I would much rather see the junkies and hookers on Times Square than people dressed up as Spider-man, which is what you see now – but that’s the way it is, the Disneyfication of everything.

— Interview by Mick Brown

Point of View: Me, New York City and the Punk Scene , a book of photographs by Chris Stein, is out now (Rizzoli £40)

Debbie Harry with Andy Warhol in New York, 1980