Recommendations of the Editorial team
Debbie Harry turned 80 on Tuesday (July 1st). The punk icon, which celebrated her greatest success in the early 1980s, has long been looking back on an eventful life.
In an interview that the musician gave the Rolling Stone in 2011 to publish her then comeback record “Panic of Girls” (which was included exclusively to the Rolling Stone), she spoke, among other things, about the nature of Blondie and what it is like to be a cult figure.
Debbie Harry, what makes you most happy about the new Blondie album?
Above all, I am pleased that we finally have new music. It is very important to me to go on and not just to repeat the old one.
What is the new about “Panic of Girls”?
I don’t hear anything new, but I hear how the individual members get involved with their style. In this sense, Blondie always made crossover music-even then when we dealt with synthesizers as a punk band.
You sing a song in French on the new record, which is unusual.
That was Chris’ idea (Chris Stein, guitarist and songwriter from Blondie). He had Gainsbourg in his head and sat down with his buddy Gilles Roberilles to write the song. So the text is real French, even if my pronunciation bumps a bit.
They also worked with Zach Condon from Beirut.
I saw him with his band in Austin and found her insanely good. Chris and I later visited Zach at a show in New Jersey-Chris had already recorded his reggae version of “Sunday Smile”. We then invited him to the studio; Now he is with some songs.
Why did it take eight years to produce a new blondie album?
We would have liked to publish one, but I made a solo album and Chris raises his two small children. The collapse of the record companies in the USA also affected us directly. Because we are a classic band, we only got offers for re -publications of our old repertoire, which of course we had no great interest. It took a bit before we could bring new music onto the market. The whole business has changed enormously; You have to break new ground. The young bands in particular are very much on their own.
Can’t that be a good development too? It is also romantic not to think about the business right away, but simply to play and go on tour.
It was never different. At the time, when there were still real record contracts, we also took a few years until we were able to make a living with the music. But it is true – without the business, for example, the relationship between the audience and the audience to the band is more romantic. I remember how fans complained to us at the very beginning when not five, but twenty -five people came to our shows. They felt cheated.
Do you recognize something like consistent topics in the texts of the new songs?
Not yet, you would have to ask someone else. Usually, pop and rock music is about relationships, a good sex life and great love.
That seems a bit too modest to me. I always had the impression that Blondie has a kind of double floor.
Thank you for the compliment. Of course, I always tried to text that are personal and are in some way intellectual or emotional.
“However, I have only understood how blondie works over the years – we write these beautiful, musically interesting pop melodies, but what we say is punk.”
That’s why we belonged to this scene at the time, even though our music was pop.
She made this tension into an icon.
I don’t like the word icon, it is consumed. I prefer cult figure, that sounds more interesting.
Is it nice to be a cult figure?
The show business lives from such things. You and your music are charged, the audience recognizes something in you. I love what I do and work hard on the public picture of me. But of course there is another side on which I try to protect my individuality. It’s all so fifty, fifty.