Blondie, Parallel Lives Read online

  Flying to London from Australia to hook up with the band in time to film a clip for future Factory Records founder Tony Wilson’s So It Goes TV show on November 7, it was a wonder Deborah even had time to notice the press campaign. After two days at the Montcalm, Marble Arch, Debbie and Chris moved to the Royal Garden Hotel on Kensington High Street, joined on November 5 by the rest of the band. They played their first gig with the new line-up at the famous Aylesbury Friars club, with those bombs strongly in evidence.

  In something of a twist, Nigel’s first gig with Blondie was on November 12 at Friars, previously his local. “It was ironic,” he said later, “Hollywood to New York to Friars!” Priced at £1.75, 1,200 or so tickets sold briskly, promoted in the club’s local record shop.

  It also turned out to be a landmark night for Blondie, headlining to a full house of fans who, although containing a gaggle of gobbing punks who’d read in the papers that this was how they were supposed to behave, went deliriously apeshit, spurring the New Yorkers to storm the place after then-unknown support band XTC.

  Debbie sported a see-through black blouse, black leather trousers and boots, animatedly interacting with one of the most devotional crowds she had encountered. The band were tight and energised as they charged through songs from the first two albums: ‘X Offender’, ‘In The Sun’, a sumptuously soaring ‘In The Flesh’, ‘Kidnapper’, ‘Man Overboard’ and an encore of The Runaways’ ‘I Love Playing With Fire’ a sublime masterstroke.

  Afterwards, the band duly celebrated the tour launching so triumphantly, with Kris Needs joining in enthusiastically and getting caught in a drunken clinch with Debbie by his missus of the time – who he wouldn’t be married to for much longer. “Both of us were pretty euphoric, as it was Blondie’s first headline UK show to be greeted with a hint of the mania to come. Debbie liked to flirt and, like many, I was fairly besotted – but, it has to be stressed, I always had the utmost respect for Chris and their relationship.”

  After dates in Coventry and at the Finsbury Park Rainbow, Blondie played a similarly short run of dates in Paris, Amsterdam and Munich before jet-lagged Debbie made a return trip to Australia for a tour that kicked off with what she described as an “hallucinogenic” opener in Perth on November 29.

  “The first time we came out was really weird, because what we were doing was not really commonplace,” Chris recounted. “When we used to play, it felt like an exam. Those were the days when ankle-length floral dresses were in, and we didn’t really fit in. I remember that the mayor of Perth turned up to our show, and then he never came backstage.”

  Supported by domestic chartsters The Ferrets, Blondie tracked their way across the huge country, visiting all the major cities, plus smaller urban centres such as Wagga Wagga and Wollongong. Generally, the audiences were a mixture of teenyboppers who seized upon ‘In The Flesh’, and hipper teenagers who had heard the album. The group themselves found the five-week Australian sojourn gruelling and dull, the only refreshments on the recreational menu being Fosters lager, very weak weed or heroin – Chris sharing Debbie’s on-off infatuation with the drug. It concluded at the resort setting of Great Keppel Island, nine miles off the Central Queensland coast.

  A brief visit to Bangkok for a quartet of concerts at the turn of the year saw the group play for a total of 8,000 people. “I think we were the second rock group to play there since the end of the war,” remembered Deborah. “They got a PA that was really great. And they had about 50 or 75 men setting up the PA and it took them three days because they had never done it before. There were hundreds of wires and every time there was a mistake they had to totally disconnect the system and start over since none of the wires were marked.”

  “They’d never seen a rock group before. Whole families came to see us; old men in turbans with babies in their arms! They seemed to like it though,” recalls Clem, before recounting how an Australian member of the road crew’s party piece involved biting the heads off of live cockroaches, then washing them down with a refreshing bottle of urine and exclaiming, “Hmm, good piss this, mate.” The group were similarly impressed by Thailand’s nuclear-strength weed, which was available for five pence a stick.

  Next, the sextet flew another 2,500 miles to Japan on January 5, 1978. Starting five days later, six shows in Osaka, Tokyo and Nagoya were followed by another flight back to London for a one-off gig at the intimate Dingwalls club in London on January 24. “We went around the world and I really didn’t know what to expect,” observed Frank, who was dazed but happy to be along for the ride. “With Blondie everything is show business. I was always against show business but everything is show business. But playing the guitar comes first. Everything else, like pictures and interviews, is secondary. Playing is a feeling, a lifestyle. I’m not a model and I don’t want to take over the world.”

  “To tie in with the release of Plastic Letters, I had decided to give Blondie their first Zigzag cover,” says Kris Needs. “Chris furnished me with several transparencies from the famous zebra-striped jungle dress session, which he had also used to land Debbie the ‘Creem Dream’ spot in the irreverent Michigan-based rock magazine [it dubbed her a ‘sweet, young flaxen-haired muffette’ in the playfully salacious caption].”

  As 1978 dawned there was a sea change in the British music scene, as punk charged up a cliché-ridden cul-de-sac and major labels wrenched dry the udders of a happening new trend. When this all proved too extreme, they found a watered-down derivative in the form of ‘power pop’. Blondie had been playing powerful pop music for a few years now, but the most career-stifling thing that could have happened would be for them to become identified with the ‘power pop pioneers’ tag already hampering San Francisco’s beautifully crazed Flamin’ Groovies. The worst aspect of the phenomenon was that herds of no-hopers who had been sporting spike-tops and leathers the previous year began taking their best suits to the cleaners and donning skinny ties, while digging out their dad’s copy of Meet The Beatles. For many labels, power pop represented an innocent, smartly dressed antithesis of punk’s antiestablishment rhetoric and seemed (wrongly, as it transpired) that it would be far easier to market to the masses. It was like heading back to 1974’s post-glitter/pre-punk limbo with more energy and straight trousers.

  Still marginalised by their identification with punk rock in the US, Blondie returned to the UK at just the right time. They had not changed their image or their music, except that the latter had got tighter. They were also in a different league to either punk or power pop: a New York pop band with experimental tendencies and a love of pop music which could be funky but chic, or even downright dangerous.

  Chrysalis’ campaign for its new signing involved lining up cover features in three out of the four music weeklies. It was decided that a whole raft of promotional action would be kick-started at the Dingwalls showcase, packed with media, music-biz bigwigs and celebrity liggers, who would be sufficiently smitten to stoke a huge buzz ahead of Blondie’s first headlining UK tour.

  Unfortunately, the odds were stacked against Blondie from the start, as Chris battled a temperature of 104 on account of the flu he’d picked up in Japan. Once on stage, the band fought to be heard properly over the newly hired PA system (manned by a new sound man who’d been working with Kiss) and the group was exhausted from months on the road. All told, not the perfect conditions in which to face a crowd largely composed of the jaded and cynical.

  The plan was for co-author Kris to spend the day of the Dingwalls gig with Blondie, grabbing interviews at opportune moments:

  Needless to say, this went out of the window from the moment I arrived at an empty club at 2.30 p.m. They were supposed to be winding up the sound check at three, which was when we would have a chat. Eventually, Clem and Jimmy arrive, apologising profusely while explaining about Chris’ flu, which was currently being held at bay with the aid of a monster vitamin B12 shot from a doctor. Will they blow out the show? “No, he says he’ll do it,” says Clem.

  The rest of th
e band arrive: Frank Infante, Nigel Harrison, finally Debbie, dressed against the January freeze in a big, black leather coat (“Do you know anyone who wants to buy it? I can’t stand the sleeves”), scarf and woolly hat pulled down over her face. Roadies are still scampering about and tweaking while the group waits … and waits, although Clem tries out his new drum kit with a dazzling barrage of breakneck paradiddles. Huddled in one of the bar-room chairs, Debbie talks about how happy she is with Plastic Letters and the more enjoyable aspects of the tour.

  It was only just over six months since I’d first met Blondie when they’d first visited Britain with Television, but they were already in afar more positive place with the prospect of real success in the world beyond the nightmare brewing within Dingwalls. Blondie had liked the coverage I’d given them in Zigzag (“You’re the only one we trust!”) and my well-intentioned antics at Friars had seemed to break what was left of any ice.

  The soundcheck actually didn’t start until 7.00 pm, and then when the band clambered on they were greeted by deafening feedback. “That’s just what I needed to clear my head,” rumbled Debbie. They soldier through album tracks until the sound borders on reasonable, then head back in cars to the Royal Garden Hotel, where the group are unamused to find they’ve been asked individually to settle their hotel bills, obviously by Peter Leeds. Even writing at the time, I noted, “A hint?”

  While the band members take off to shower and eat, Debbie says that Chris wants to talk, so I accompany her to their room, where we arrive to find him propped up in bed, still feeling rough, although his fever has broken. “I’ll just wear shades and be cool,” he declares.

  While Debbie has a bath and gets ready for the gig, Chris shows me his portfolio of photos which will show up in Zigzag or, later, Victor Bockris’s book, Making Tracks. We talk about the album and power pop, none of which I’m recording – but this is more of an easy chat anyway. Meanwhile, Debbie potters about, settling on her Dingwalls-friendly outfit of faded denim and gold boots. She’s worried she’s catching Chris’s flu so plans to bring the brandy bottle with her for company. As we’re getting ready to leave, Debbie shows me her trumpet. I never knew! “Oh, I just blast through it and make a noise at the end of ‘Cautious Lip’,” she says, before turning heads in reception as she sashays past the assembled string quartet in a black leather coat with trumpet and brandy bottle in hand.

  Dingwalls is packed with press and assorted hangers-on, plus a few fans jostling for space down the front. Soon, Blondie take the stage, tune up and hurtle into ‘X Offender’. The volume is ear-shattering in the tight space, easily capable of filling Wembley Arena. The sound man thankfully realises this and levels are adjusted, but Blondie didn’t really want to do this gig in the first place, the feedback squeals stoking a gathering onstage tension.

  The set is drawn from the two albums, plus a crunching version of The Stones’ ‘My Obsession’, Chris hanging on beneath his shades, sometimes supporting himself on one of the pillars that are annoyingly peppered through the venue. It occurred to me again how adept Blondie are at choosing cover versions, their stratospheric treatment of the Doors’ ‘Moonlight Drive’ narrowly missing the new album. Even through the morass of feedback squalls, it’s plain to see how much tighter and more confident the band has got. While the fans at the front relish being this close to Debbie in the flesh, not caring about the music’s painful grind, many of the journalists have headed for the bar by the end. The band knows this and the dam breaks after the first encore, ‘Youth Nabbed As Sniper’. Clem dives straight into whatever the next song is: a tad too early for the rest of the band, who are still tuning up. Chris pulls him up, so Clem storms off, trashing his kit and shoving Jimmy on the way. “Er, goodnight,” says a bemused Debbie. Backstage, there’s much shouting, even fisticuffs as the ruckus spills into the outside courtyard, requiring intervention from the venue’s bouncers.

  Not a good night, later described by Debbie as “a disaster” – a textbook case of on-the-road pressure cooker tensions catalysed by problems over which the band has no control. All the same, something special was obviously going on here, the band now ranked among my favourite people and I concluded the Zigzag feature with, “Blondie are gonna be huge … and it’s written in Plastic Letters.”

  As January 1978 reached its frigid end, Peter Leeds’ exhausting itinerary once again sent Blondie zigzagging across Europe, starting with two gigs in the Netherlands. “By the time we hit the Paradiso in Amsterdam we were playing with manic enthusiasm,” recalled Debbie. “We were so ragged and exhausted, but those were some of the most exciting gigs we ever did.” After shows in Belgium, France, Austria, and Germany, the tour reached a temporary halt in Stockholm on February 20.

  While the band had been on the road, Chrysalis had reissued Blondie in December and then released Plastic Letters on February 4. The disc came in a sleeve that features the four full-time members of the group at the time of recording and shows Debbie sitting on a police car in a pink dress designed by Anya Phillips. It had been the second attempt at capturing a suitable cover image after the band’s new label baulked at the results of an initial session. “I made this dress out of gaffer tape and a pillow case,” said Deborah. “It was the way that I looked then – not that unusual. We did a photo-session like that for the cover of Plastic Letters and the record company completely rejected it.”

  The album drew equivocal critical comment from Trouser Press‘s Ira Robbins, who encapsulated much of the mixed press response by identifying Debbie as “a stronger and more capable vocalist” and praising Chris, Jimmy and Clem’s playing, but observing that the disc was “more competent than memorable. The slower the song, the less room there is for Debbie to be at her frolicsome best.”

  Despite mixed receptions, the disc managed the respectable chart positions of number 10 in the UK, and 72 in the US, as well as Top 40 placings in Germany and Sweden. In part, the album was catapulted to these heights by the massive success of ‘Denis’, which reached number two in Britain and saw the group make its debut on Top Of The Pops, bringing them to the attention of the mainstream British public for the first time. “You’d pretend to record your backing track, and they already had this multi-track recorder,” Clem recalled. “I remember the English Musicians’ Union guy in the control room; ‘Can’t you guys stomp in time a little more?’”

  “Unshackling myself from my Zigzag desk, I went along and have rarely seen the band so excited,” says Kris, “especially Clem, who knew too well that he was appearing on the same show that would have hosted so many of his heroes.”

  Still adapting to her new status as a prime-time pop phenomenon, Debbie found she was now instantly recognisable. “It’s really funny, most of the time, going out – the punks, the kids, they’re OK. It’s people like shopkeepers and stuff like that – they have a different attitude, they have a tendency to yell obscene things at me. More so than before.”

  Clem, on the other hand, was already thinking about Blondie’s next move. “I think it’s bad to get trapped into an image as well,” he deadpanned. “Maybe now we should all grow our hair long again.”

  “Don’t use the smiling shot” – Outtake from Roberta Bayley’s Parallel Lines cover shoot. ROBERTA BAYLEY/REDFERNS

  Chris sports one of ‘those’ t-shirts as he chats to Clem, 1978. ROBERTA BAYLEY/REDFERNS

  Debbie on stage at Dingwalls in London, 1979. DENIS O REGAN/GETTY IMAGES

  Punk’s greatest pin-up: Debbie in shorts and thigh-high boots, fronting Blondie at King George’s Hall in Blackburn on February 23, 1978. KEVIN CUMMINS/GETTY IMAGES

  Cooking with gas – Chris and Debbie fool around in their kitchen. ALLEN TANNENBAUM

  “It wasn’t like this with Mud!” – Debbie checks on producer Mike Chapman’s pulse during the Parallel Lines sessions. ROBERTA BAYLEY/REDFERNS

  A cheap holiday? Frank and Debbie at the Berlin Wall, 1978. COURESTY CHRIS STEIN

  The icon adorned by the image – running through n
ew material at CBGBs. STEPHANIE CHERNIKOWSKI/GETTY IMAGES

  New York royalty at the Studio 54 launch for Debbie’s 1979 appearance on the cover of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine (L-R): Lorna Luft, Jerry Hall, Warhol, Debbie, Truman Capote, jewellry designer Paloma Picasso. ALLEN TANNENBAUM

  On home turf – Jimmy Destri captured mid set in Central Park. ROBERTA BAYLEY/REDFERNS

  Bassist Nigel Harrison – An Englishman In New York. ROBERTA BAYLEY/REDFERNS

  The least likely band lays its golden eggs … Blondie with Chrysalis executives Terry Ellis and Arthur Cookson. ALLEN TANNENBAUM

  Blondie pack out their modest hotel room in 1979. VIRGINIA TURBETT/REDFERNS

  A smiling Frank ‘The Freak’ Infante rehearsing ahead of a US tour. ROBERTA BAYLEY/REDFERNS

  The long hair and make-up may have been long gone, but Chris’ devotion to Alice Cooper endured. ROBERTA BAYLEY/REDFERNS

  Meat Loaf and Debbie compare stares during the 1980 filming of Roadie. UNITED ARTISTS/KOBAL COLLECTION

  Ripping it to shreds – Debbie the iconic siren in 1977. SHEILA ROCK

  Chapter Eight

  Wrapped Like Candy

  “We are trying to do what The Beatles did. The Beatles had gigantic mass appeal. They created an identity for a lot of young kids. They created a huge diversity in music. Granted, they had a longer span. Our thing is a lot more compact in a shorter time.”

  Chris Stein

  In England, fate seemed to be smiling on Blondie as they took to the road as a hit band. At Blackburn’s King George’s Hall on February 23, 1978, they steamed into their set after a plea from one of the crew to “stop gobbing”. ‘Denis’ was introduced as “the one that got us on TV tonight”. For the first time, Blondie were playing to a crowd largely drawn by their one hit.