Blondie, Parallel Lives Read online

  “We’ve simply been too busy elsewhere to really start working the States,” explained Chris. “And then our previous promotion company didn’t help. First there was that ‘Wouldn’t you like to rip her to shreds?’ ad campaign which was sexually exploitative to say the least and exploitation is our subject matter, not our trip. Then the ‘Blondie Is A Group’ number which was a defensive campaign. Anybody who knows our music knows we’re a group and whoever cares about the rest will just pick up whatever they want anyway.”

  “We’re sort of tottering on the edge of this pop thing, that’s totally legitimate and commercial, and something that’s totally suspicious,” expounded Debbie. “That’s the line we walk and that’s the image we have. The odd thing that happens is we have this number one hit all over the world. The really radical kids reject us because we’re too smooth and then the people that are too smooth look at us in horror and think that we represent radicals.”

  “The hard part about success is that all these people that you like turn against you,” added Chris. “Here’s the band. They starve. You have no money. You sign bad deals, sign your life away. You spend all your time and unearned money getting out of the bad deals. Then all the people you respect turn around and say, ‘You sold out. You suck. Well, fuck you.’”

  With studio time booked for May and few gigs on the horizon, the band was becoming a little tired of all the promotion. “I suppose I’m just going to have to get used to this,” grumbled Frank. “I really miss playing live, that’s what it’s all about for me. I can’t remember when we last did a live show. And after this we do two weeks’ TV promotion and then back to New York to start work on the new album.”

  While Jimmy occupied himself at Max’s and producing a group called The Student Teachers, Clem kept busy by taking on session work with bassist Phil Chen. Meanwhile, Chris and Debbie blew off steam by appearing on TV Party, a cable access TV show hosted by writer and Warhol associate Glenn O’Brien. Broadcasting from a small studio on 23rd Street, the anarchic show ran for four years between 1978 and 1982. Covering music, art and fashion, the series featured a wide range of guests and a notoriously spicy phone-in feature. Debbie sang and helped out behind the scenes, occasionally manning a camera, Warhol assistant and violinist Walter Steding led The TV Party Orchestra and The Patti Smith Group’s Richard Sohl manned phones, while regular guests included David Byrne, Robert Fripp, The Clash, Nile Rodgers, The B-52’s and local groups like DNA. When Blondie were away, Chris and Debbie sent in video reports.

  “I guess it was punk TV,” stated O’Brien. “We were anti-technique, anti-format, anti-establishment and anti-anti-establishment. We thrived on disaster.” Chat-show heavyweight David Letterman declared, “TV Party is the greatest TV show anywhere, ever.”

  “The TV Party situation was just really great,” enthused Chris. “It was kind of like going to our own club once a week. There was maybe a hundred or so people and we’d gather in this studio. I don’t know who we were actually reaching but it was a lot of fun and enjoyable. The show was a great experiment.”

  “All these projects act as a valve and give us a lot of satisfaction,” Debbie explained. “There are so many strong personalities within the band that you have to find a channel to release the rest of the energy, otherwise you get a lot of bickering.”

  In addition to becoming involved in broadcasting, Chris took his first steps into production, manning the desk for violinist and TV Party regular Walter Steding’s eponymous debut album. “Producing him is great because there are no preconceptions whatsoever, and there are no references to music or anything else that I can think of except to jazz and that isn’t deliberate,” declares Chris. “It’s sorta like psychedelic jazz. It has a good sense of humour, too, which appeals to me. It satisfies my desire for abstraction. Blondie’s music is much more regimented and mapped out carefully.”

  Released on Marty Thau’s Red Star label, the album also featured guitar contributions from Robert Fripp on a radical overhaul of ‘Hound Dog’ and provided Stein with yet another outlet for his creativity. “It’s easier for me to create things now, because I feel like there is really an audience and people will look or listen to whatever I do. We always wanted Blondie to be a multimedia commune. It’s not supposed to be just a band. Actually, we’re gonna go into religion pretty soon,” he grinned.

  In April 1979, work on the album that would emerge as Eat To The Beat began with a series of rehearsals. “Everyone was a little nervous and that was good,” insisted Mike Chapman. “Songs came in bits and pieces, but the bits and pieces were good … This album was going to be a little more pop and a little less dark than Parallel Lines.“

  However, the producer’s optimism was gradually eroded by the ongoing negotiations concerning Peter Leeds. “The meetings started at rehearsals,” recalled Chapman. “Meetings with managers, with record company people, with agents, with tour managers, with accountants, with photographers, with journalists, with fashion designers, with gurus and various artistic vagabonds. They started eating away at my body and my brain. Every door I opened, I was face to face with another strange and pushy individual. Who were these people and why were they at my sessions?”

  For Mike, it seemed that the music business was obstructing the business of making music. “We were looking for new management,” confirmed Debbie. “That was very distracting, I’m sure he hated that.”

  Beset by constant interruptions, Chapman found it difficult to get the band to focus. This situation was exacerbated by the increased expectations that accompanied commercial success. “The record company wanted more of the same, but Blondie was not about that,” asserted Deborah. “It’s a building process, and all of our albums have continued to add new layers of development.”

  “There was a lot less pressure before, and we really thought we could go on living an innocent sort of lifestyle. But that’s not very realistic. You can’t go back to that. It’s ridiculous. I think that’s how a lot of kids are misled,” mused Chris.

  “It’s easier on your conscience and it’s easier on your sense of fair play, when you’re just a low man on the totem pole,” Debbie observes. “It’s more genuine in terms of what rock’n’roll stands for. When you get up to this part it’s so full of hypocrisy. The hustle is on just totally one thing. I suppose the bigger you get the worse it gets. I can’t imagine what it’d be like to be The Who, or The Beatles or Stones. Oh my God! I can’t imagine what those people live through.”

  To further complicate matters, Chris was dividing his time between Blondie and producing French leftfield disco duo Gilles Riberalles and Eric Weber (aka Casino Music) for ZE Records, only working with his own group when absolutely necessary. At the time ZE was the hippest label in town, started by Mothercare heir Michael Zilkha and French punk pioneer Michel Esteban to capture New York’s thriving downtown post-punk scene. The label released August Darnell’s productions, Suicide, The Contortions and what became known as the ‘Mutant Disco’ movement. Chris worked at Bob Blank’s Blank Tapes studio, then the epicentre of the ‘No Wave’/post-punk scene. Taking on this enormous workload set the tone for his next three years, when he would juggle the increasingly successful Blondie with outside productions, collaborations, his involvement with TV Party and, later, running his own record label.

  Unsurprisingly, the stress and uncertainty began to take its toll on the six human beings that made up Blondie. There were arguments and internal divisions started to emerge.

  “As the weeks went by and the meetings went on, we were beginning to submit to the pressure,” remembered Mike Chapman, who also had to cope with a marital break-up during this period. “The group’s attention was less focused on the music, and I was trying to squeeze the sessions in between negotiations. There seemed to be three different camps in the group: Debbie and Chris were – as always – together; Jimmy and Clem had formed an alliance; and Nigel and Frankie were a team. This was beginning to get really unhealthy.”

  As the ne
gotiations and disputes persisted, the album slipped behind schedule, forcing Chapman – who had wanted to record the album nearer his home in Los Angeles – to relocate the sessions from The Power Station on West 53rd Street to Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village. “This was really disruptive,” he added. “Having to break down all our equipment and console set-ups ate away at our time and caused even more disagreements. I was fighting with everyone.”

  To escape the increasingly combustible atmosphere engulfing Blondie in the studio, both band and producer took to hanging out at Studio 54 — just a short walk from The Power Station on West 54th Street. In addition to being the epicentre of New York’s burgeoning disco scene, Studio 54 was where celebrities mixed with the ultra-hip unknown to indulge in lines of white-powdered decadence.

  “It had this sense of danger. It was private and exclusive in a weird way because nobody really knew or cared about it,” Deborah explained. “And yet all these people were being as reckless as they could. People were exotic in their dress. People don’t really even dress that way any more – having a sense of costume and personal style. I don’t mean just going out and buying stuff off the rack that’s glittery.”

  Throughout the seventies, New York had three main underground musical movements gestating within its city limits: punk rock downtown, disco and, later, hip hop in the South Bronx. While the scene attracted by the soiled glamour of The New York Dolls bustled at the Mercer, nearby clubs like the Gallery shaped modern DJ-ing, clubbing and 12-inch remix culture – a world apart from the crass commercialisation which swept the globe after Saturday Night Fever.

  Discos initially appeared at midtown New York niteries such as Le Club (founded in 1961), Arthur, Ondine and many subsequent nightspots, including early super-club The Cheetah on Broadway and Third Street. While operating in midtown, discos were the domain of the elite, the rich and the celebrated. When Salvation opened in the former Café Society space on Sheridan Square, they invaded the downtown area as DJ Francis Grasso became the first to turn playing records into an art form, playing mainly black music. In 1969, Grasso moved to Sanctuary, the world’s first openly gay disco. In a former German Baptist church on 43rd between Ninth and 10th Avenues, he used an early predecessor of the modern DJ set-up to play anything from James Brown and Motown to The Doors, Osibisa and, as the club’s anthem, African drummer Olatunji’s ‘Jin-go-lo-ba’.

  The roots of modern dance music can also be traced back to 1970, at David Mancuso’s hedonistic but musically devotional all-night loft parties at his Broadway abode. These were intimate invite-only affairs which numbered Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles among their acid-guzzling crowd, before both started playing records at the infamous Continental Baths on the Upper West Side. In 1973, Nicky Siano’s Gallery appeared on 22nd Street; like a drug-fuelled younger brother to Mancuso’s loft, it was closest to what would coalesce into the popular notion of ‘the disco’ later in the decade.

  Until the mid-seventies, discos existed as a parallel New York underground movement to punk and the avant garde, but, as hit records were spawned from the enthusiasm of its flamboyant crowds, disco unleashed innovations such as Tom Moulton’s remixing of existing tracks and 12-inch singles improving the sound quality of tunes, as with studio pioneer Walter Gibbons’ sumptuous rework of Double Exposure’s ‘10 Per Cent’. It started cross-pollinating with the city’s other musical strains, slowly infiltrating the mainstream.

  Disco originally attracted the black and gay demographics, but it became a worldwide phenomenon – largely thanks to Saturday Night Fever, which presented the world with a far different picture of how the movement started and operated by homing in on suburban Italian-American enclaves. Consequently, disco was much derided at the time but seems inestimably influential in hindsight – not least on Blondie.

  By 1978, although New York’s most exciting dance inferno was Larry Levan’s Paradise Garage on King Street, its most famous celebrity magnet was Studio 54. It became notorious for co-owner Steve Rubell’s ruthless door policy, which had even excluded Chic’s Nile Rodgers – prompting him to write ‘Le Freak’ (or, as originally titled, ‘Fuck You’) in 1978. Blondie, however, were A-list enough to sail past the velvet rope – especially in the company of Andy Warhol. Inside, the former opera house was cavernously exotic, dominated by a huge hanging moon and coke spoon.

  The venue had also provided the setting for a party thrown to celebrate the success of ‘Heart Of Glass’ by Warhol, who cited Debbie as his favourite pop star. Although she and Chris, in particular, had orbited the fringes of Warhol’s circle for more than a decade, it was only now that both parties got to know one another. Recalling his early impressions of Deborah, Warhol observed, “Blondie – Debbie – was sweet, her hair was fixed up and you’d never believe she’s in her thirties – no wrinkles and so pretty. She spends all her money on make-up. She must not have been pretty all these years, though, or I would have noticed her. She must have tried to look bad or something. But I guess some people look better, actually, when they get a little older. I didn’t know what to call her. I guess I call her ‘Debbie’. But when I introduce her, I call her ‘Blondie’. But Blondie is the name of the whole group.”

  “In the seventies he and I became friends, or I was always on his invitation list at least,” explained Deborah. “The thing is, he was a terrific listener, that was his genius, really. He just sucked it all in, and made a point of never saying too much. That’s a skill.”

  Given Chris and Debbie’s artistic leanings, it’s hardly surprising that there was a natural connection between the couple and the artist who had been among their key cultural influences. “That’s what Blondie came out of – we all had that influence. Chris and I came from an art background, and it’s part of the way we think. There was also our association with Warhol, and Chris was very friendly with William Burroughs. Chris went to art school, and would either have become a photographer or a painter – and then the music evolved,” said Debbie.

  “In the truest sense of the word, pop music is very influenced by cartoon art. That brevity, that abbreviation, the knowledge that everyone understands. I’d say Andy was the Svengali of the downtown scene. He was very in touch with what was going on, and excited by it. He was very kind to Chris and myself, he invited us to a lot of different things. He was a social butterfly, that was part of his ritual.”

  In addition to socialising with the band at Studio 54, Warhol also invited them over to The Factory, by now in its third incarnation at 860 Broadway. “We were in the library and he had these big stuffed dogs. And you’d be there eating a baloney sandwich with Andy Warhol. But it’s ironic that in the Diaries, he’s almost trying to convince himself how well off he is. He’s always dropping names as if he weren’t sure of his elevated status,” Jimmy remembered.

  “The thing about Andy was that he always made parties or events a special thing. And when he died [in 1987], you sensed that the events became much less,” added Clem. “You miss that now in New York. He was like a barometer, a godfather to the whole scene.”

  Debbie, of whom Warhol created a Marilyn-style portrait in 1980, found the artist’s unique personality and detached manner thoroughly magnetic. “Andy was a great guy. He was an amazing listener. Sometimes people want to talk too much but you get more if you listen. He was incredibly casual about everything. I think the best thing he taught me was always to be open to new things, new music, new style, new bands, new technology and just go with it. Never get mired in the past and always accept new things whatever age you are,” she recounted. “Had he lived, we possibly would have become better friends. I looked up to him tremendously. I thought he could do no wrong – he was wonderful, outstanding, a genius. But if there was a relationship between us, I don’t think I really understood it. I guess he could count on me for being straight with him because I was too fractured in my own mind to possibly be devious with him, and he liked that.”

  Back in the studio, it quickly became evident
that, while the group were assimilating new influences from the pounding beats that resonated around Studio 54, they were also soaking up the abundant drugs. “They found their way into the studio and presented us with yet another obstacle,” Chapman opined. “The more drugs, the more fights. It was becoming a real mess. The meetings were still going on and now it had turned into, ‘Just call us when you need us, Mike.’ Hard to make a record under those circumstances.”

  “Drugs were an escapist thing,” Deborah observed. “It just created an alternative universe. I don’t think it produces a new kind of sensitivity; I think it actually dulls your sensations. It doesn’t help you in the long run because of all the complications you have to deal with and it can kill you but it does alleviate. It’s a form of medication.”

  It seemed that the sessions were teetering on the edge of collapse. Compelled to take the expensive option of working up songs in the studio, the band felt the pressure being cranked up yet another notch. “Blondie started out with uniqueness but as soon as it became commercial then it was a routine in a way. We couldn’t really escape it. The demand for the repetition of that same product was ungodly in a way. But I think that’s the problem with art and commerce really,” remarked Debbie.

  “On Eat To The Beat, some of the songs came out really good and some of them were just an afterthought, some of them became just filler,” Chris insisted. “There was a big rush to get it out and then it didn’t matter anyway because it all got tied up with legal things, so it’s ironic.”

  Adopting a looser approach than he utilised for Parallel Lines, Chapman was delighted as the album finally started to take shape. “While we were making Eat To The Beat in New York, I said to Blondie that I felt they were something like the new Beatles, because they came up with these extraordinary ideas, all of which were different, and which produced so many hits,” he recalled.