Blondie, Parallel Lives Read online

  Freddy’s godfather was master drummer Max Roach, the family home often playing host to leading musicians of the day such as Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. He later claimed to have introduced uptown culture, art, hip hop, breaking and rapping to the downtown post-punk and art scenes, his co-conspirators including artists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

  “Freddy brought Debbie and myself to a big festival at a Police Athletic League place in the Bronx; that’s a bit like a community or leisure centre,” recalls Chris. “We were the only Caucasians in attendance; even Freddy was razzed by the crowd for wearing a then-unfashionable porkpie hat and white shirt and tie – a sort of dread style that at the time hadn’t been seen outside of the UK. At the time, the hip hop uniform had to be topped off by a massive wool stocking cap that often had cardboard in it to make it stand up higher. But everyone there was quite polite to us. I overheard some kids talking who thought we were part of Kool And The Gang.”

  Suitably bitten, Chris started writing what would become ‘Rapture’. “‘Rapture’ is not truly rap,” explained Debbie. “It was an homage, dedicated to the form. We were hanging out with Fab Five Freddy. He would come down to CBGB. Some of the taggers would too. We met Grandmaster Flash and some of The Sugarhill Gang. They were all so cute. I remember Chris and I were lying in bed one day. He was smoking a joint, going, ‘We should do a song called “Rapture”.’”

  “The whole rapping thing is totally fresh,” observed Chris. “It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to new wave/punk in a long time. There are millions of one-off singles being produced, the same as rock kids were producing their punk singles. The real stuff is not even available to the general American public.”

  ‘Rapture’ was worked up in the studio. “Debbie and Chris had the verses and choruses written,” remembered Mike. “I was told that a large hole in the second verse would contain the rap and a guitar solo – a guitar solo that Frankie would be flown in to record … Tom Scott came in and wrote the horn parts with us and then played them all.”

  Debbie and Chris lashed the rap together in a few minutes and the song was recorded in two takes. “I’m really proud of my playing on ‘Rapture’,” enthused Clem. “Autoamerican is the album where I gave up wanting to play like Keith Moon and decided I want to play like [jazz and blues drummer] Steve Gadd. Autoamerican was fun; we got to spend two months in California. I’m always up for a free ride.”

  However, in retrospect Nigel was less certain of Clem’s positive attitude. “I think Clem felt a little odd about Autoamerican. After doing Eat To The Beat he couldn’t really lay into it; there’s only a certain way you can play ‘Rapture’.”

  “There was a running joke about Autoamerican in the studio,” Jimmy recalled. “It was going to sell 14 copies and get all these awards from critics, or critics were going to hate it and it would sell millions. There were a couple of hits on the record and the rest was just esoteric and fun. I loved it. That’s one of the few Blondie records I walked away from proud. I thought, finally we took a chance; we did something different. We let go.”

  “I really like Autoamerican,” enthused Chris. “I was heavily involved with that one myself. I had that crazy instrumental at the beginning. Autoamerican was the closest we ever came to a concept album, which is something we had always talked about before.”

  Mike Chapman subsequently compared the album to The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper. “I’m proud of it, I think it’s a wonderful album, and most of those songs were constructed and written in the studio. It didn’t take that long really, and it was only because I had total control over the situation that the record was able to be made as efficiently as it was.”

  Autoamerican achieved Debbie and Chris’s avowed intent of creating a hugely diverse album. It provided Debbie with a variety of backdrops on which to project the full range of her vocal talent. “We tried for that versatility on earlier records, but I don’t think we pulled it off until now. My voice hasn’t changed, but I know I’ve improved as a singer and recording artist. I also believe my attitude and my ability to express moods has really gotten better,” she declared. “It’s like a fuzz box or a wah-wah pedal. You can get all these different qualities and attitudes in your voice by just changing the tone. It’s like the same notes with a different style.”

  However, experimentation and diversity tend to be unpopular with mainstream record companies marketing a new album by a successful act. Ideally, they prefer minimal variations on an established theme. True to this maxim, Chrysalis recoiled from what Blondie and Chapman set before them. “The pressure with Autoamerican came after it was released,” Clem explained. “The record company went through the roof because the album was so weird to them. They didn’t hear any hits. They just heard strings and mariachi horns.”

  When it was released, on November 14, 1980, the press largely sided with the band’s record label. In New Musical Express, Cynthia Rose posted a particularly uncomplimentary review: “The band have drifted steadily further and further into ‘eclectic’ experiments which found them waxing patriotic in the express lane, and treating the world – musical and material – as one vast quarry from which it was OK to take more and more and cool to give less and less. Autoamerican is the reductio ad absurdum of this O Sweet Land of Circuitry-style of New York minimalism and pretension.” She concluded by insisting, “Autoamerican is just a half-baked (cable) TV dinner, and it’s full of unhealthy preservatives and artificial sweeteners. So leave it in the fridge where it belongs and don’t take it out to thaw – no way should this band be taking the temperature of your present.”

  Elsewhere, the album was lambasted for a “fake aesthetic” in the New York Times, Rolling Stone accused Chris of “trying to destroy pop music” and Sounds gave the disc a one-star review, asking, “Can’t someone stop these people?”

  In Trouser Press, Ira Robbins was more balanced. After noting how “Autoamerican displays the band’s basic flaw: lack of direction and a musical confusion that is almost unbelievable,” he recognised it as “the most interesting and (dare I say it?) cohesive album Blondie has made. There’s no logic to it, very little resemblance to previous work, and the only emotional content lies in wry New York lyrics – yet Blondie has reached a new stage in their career: they finally sound at ease on record, and can be counted among the major American rock bands.”

  “This LP’s aimed at the real street people. The hip hoppers and the rappers,” countered Chris. “The new wave is plastic. They’re just our next generation of computer programmers.” Regardless of how something like ‘Follow Me’ might go down in the South Bronx, his belief in Autoamerican was validated by its commercial success. In addition to spawning two US number one singles in ‘Rapture’ and ‘The Tide Is High’ (the latter matching that achievement in Britain), Autoamerican made number seven on the Billboard chart and number three in the UK.

  “We put out a whacko album with all kinds of crazy shit to open everyone’s head up a little bit, and half the critics freaked out,” concluded Chris. “Whatever you do, reviewers are always divided in thirds. They either like it, hate it or have mixed feelings about it. It doesn’t have anything to do with quality. It has more to do with selling advertising.”

  “Chris took some chances with his ideas and his writing. I think a lot of those songs’ popularity is really due to a lot of his ideas. He’s really responsible for ‘Rapture’ and for the sound of ‘The Tide Is High’,” Deborah declared.

  Asked about the impact of ‘Rapture,’ Fab Five Freddie observed, “It was the first time that a mainstream audience had a peek at what was about to become this huge movement called hip hop.”

  ‘Rapture’ subsequently became the first ever rap tune broadcast by MTV in 1981. The video was set in the East Village, with dancer William Barnes (who also choreographed the piece) as ‘The Man From Mars’, while Andy Warhol lends support via his presence and Fab Five Freddy, Lee Quinones and artist Jean-Michel Basquiat all make cameo appearances – the latte
r covering behind the decks for a no-show Flash. The US 12-inch was longer, with a verse in French, while Mike Chapman remixed the extended UK version.

  After the advent of sampling technology later in the decade, ‘Rapture’ would become a target for plundering: including Foxy Brown’s 1996 hit, ‘I’ll Be’, KRS-One’s ‘Step Into A World (Rapture’s Delight)’ the following year and Destiny Child’s ‘Independent Woman’ (2000), while Erasure covered the song on the US version of their Cowboy album, with Vince Clarke rapping. 2005 saw Go Home Productions’ acclaimed mash-up of the song, splicing it with The Doors’ ‘Riders On The Storm’ to make ‘Rapture Riders’ on Greatest Hits: Sight And Sound, after approval by the band. Alicia Keys also covered ‘Rapture’ for the Sex And The City 2 soundtrack.

  “It remains to be seen what effect the record will have,” mused Stein at the time. “We wanted to make music that would cross over. I would like to see the record help resolve racial tensions by bringing different audiences together. When the new wave kids and the rappers get together, that’ll be something. Eventually, they’ll all meet in the middle, where you’ll have a strong race of young people that won’t be divided by stupid racial issues.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Six Like Dice

  “For a lot of bands, the one concept becomes their world. Blondie was all about change.”

  Debbie Harry

  As 1980 gave way to ‘81, it sometimes seemed as if Blondie was everywhere. The US and European chart successes of ‘The Tide Is High’ and ‘Rapture’ ensured the band were constantly on the radio and TV. Debbie and the group looked out from dozens of magazine covers, while their name and image adorned thousands of T-shirts worldwide. In fact, just about the only place one was unlikely to encounter Blondie was in a concert hall. By the third week in January, a year had passed since the band left the Hammersmith stage at the end of their triumphant British tour. Now that they had finished dissecting Autoamerican, the music press noticed that it had been over a year since Blondie last played live and began to speculate. Rumours that the group was divided by internal bickering began to circulate; it was suggested they had already played their final gig and were about to split.

  Blondie were quick to counter. “Any band that’s successful automatically gets break-up rumours,” observed Chris, who also denied that there were any tensions among the sextet.

  “We’re definitely not breaking up,” affirmed Clem. “There’s no reason to break up. The band isn’t divided; there’s a lot of common ground.”

  Jimmy was equally relaxed. “I don’t care about rumours. It’s funny; I was over at Debbie and Chris’s place, sitting around, playing guitar and going through the papers seeing how many times we were breaking up. If only these writers could see us hanging out together. We like each other a lot more since we don’t have to work together as often because of Autoamerican‘s success.”

  “I don’t feel any responsibility to go out and give a bad show right now. We’ll work again, but we’ll only tour where we want to,” Deborah declared. “You get nuts. You do these gigs in the most awful circumstances. You go do a soundcheck and it’s like, ‘Heyyy, maaan, you got an extension cord?’ Somebody’s vomiting; you step in dog shit; you sit in a dressing room with three inches of water on the floor. That’s what makes it so exciting, but that’s why people flip out.”

  However, she did reveal that there had been some personality clashes. “I will admit to certain divisions within the band existing up to and through the last tour and I think cooling it is the answer.”

  “I don’t think we’ve found a communication on stage yet,” observed Destri. “There was too much ego in the group; we were six musicians thrown on stage and blasting each other out … We’ll work again, but we’ll only tour when we want to. We’ve suffered enough.”

  Whether this was a rationalisation or a declaration of unity, it was apparent that the personnel dynamic within Blondie had altered since the release of Parallel Lines in 1979. Successive albums had seen Frank Infante’s role in the studio significantly diminished. Although he had co-written ‘Victor’ for Eat To The Beat, his guitar contributions to the album were reduced and he was only brought in to provide overdubs for Autoamerican, a disc for which he received no writing credits.

  Despite this, Infante remained an important part of the band’s live show. But now there were no live shows. “Debbie and Chris were pulling away from the whole band situation,” Frank later asserted. “I guess Chris wanted to be the only guitar player, I don’t know. There was a lot of friction at the time.”

  “They went through the same thing a lot of groups go through, where there’s success and then everybody’s ego gets inflated,” remarked TV Party host Glenn O’Brien. “In the old days of jazz you’d have a group and there would be a leader and there would be sidemen. But then the whole notion of the pop group came along, and even though Chris and Jimmy were the principal songwriters, and Chris in a way was the musical director, and Debbie the star, all of a sudden Frankie Infante thinks it’s a democracy. And I think that democracy and successful bands is just something that’s never been resolved.”

  “You know how difficult it is to keep a cast of people together without fighting and little bits of ego getting in the way,” said Debbie. “It’s difficult, understandably difficult. And you have this situation with the added influence and destructive element that money can put on your head. Imagine what happens when you’re out there and there are lots of people that are making money off of you. All kinds of things happen. People get weird ideas and paranoia. This is what I mean by this thing that happens in the industry. It happens to bands all the time – it’s very hard to keep groups of young people together and motivated.”

  As is the case with most groups, there was an unspoken hierarchy within Blondie. Frank, like Nigel Harrison, had not been an original member and was therefore at the foot of the totem pole. Unfortunately, he clashed with Debbie and Chris far more often than Nigel, which in turn ensured the group’s principal duo saw him as dispensable when it came to weeks holed up in a studio. Unsurprisingly, it led to Frank feeling marginalised, exacerbated by the lack of gigs and reports of Chris telling Rolling Stone that touring was “for morons”.

  “That was misconstrued,” Stein clarified. “What I meant is that if a band has to tour incessantly, it’s not really for morons but it’s just for people who don’t have the right kind of hook that can be grabbed by the media. Bands like Kiss and Rush have to tour constantly, because they can’t get the right type of media coverage. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s moronic, but it’s a lifestyle that we don’t adhere to. We want to use the media – which is there to be used, after all.”

  But in terms of interacting with the media, the way in which Deborah’s image enveloped the whole band became a bugbear. “There came to be a problem in the sense of ‘Blondie’ – who is Blondie, Blondie, Blondie,” she explained.

  “That’s all the tension ever arose from,” added Chris. “If Debbie was a guy we would never have had the same situation – or if we were all girls.”

  “It’s very selfish for me and the other guys to be part of this group when we’re all equal partners in someone else’s image,” agreed Jimmy. “Debbie’s gotta be the face but we’re all collecting off it anyway. Sometimes I think it’s a little unfair: Why am I sitting at home building plastic models when she’s in LA doing nine interviews in a row? But I never thought she’d be anything less of a star than she is, so I don’t feel confused, upset or pushed aside. Debbie wanted to be the face, the focal point. She’s got it.”

  “Everybody wants to think that they’re what everybody’s coming to see,” said Chris. “Me being together with Debbie and shit, I always had a different perspective on it. I don’t know, maybe if she hadn’t been my girlfriend maybe I would have had the same kind of feelings, I really don’t know. I like to think I’m smart enough to not get absorbed in that shit, it’s hard to say.”

  “The thing
that gets me about it was that I was Blondie. But the group was called Blondie,” Deborah observed. “Now for all the mistakes and all the things that happened within the band, I’m where the buck stops, that’s it. Whether it was my fault or not. Whether it was my decision or not.”

  As Debbie was feeling the pressure of being the focal point while others believed they were being edged to the sidelines, extracurricular activities provided a release. “One night I sat up thinking I was in pretty interesting circumstances,” recalled Clem, who later admitted he saw hardly anything of the group as a whole for long periods during 1980-81. “With the Blondie lay-off, I wound up doing [the Devo song] ‘Come Back Jonee’ on Saturday Night Live with Debbie and Chris, a Michael Des Barres English tour with Nigel, some tracks on Joan Jett’s Bad Reputation album with Frankie, Jimmy’s solo album, and I played on Iggy Pop’s tour last year [1981] with Gary Valentine. I guess that’s the luxury of being a drummer, especially if you’re a very damned good drummer.”

  Aside from working on his solo debut, Heart On A Wall, Jimmy also took time out to produce the Marty Thau Presents 2x5 compilation for Red Star Records, while Clem produced two power-pop singles, The Colors’ ‘Rave It Up’ and ‘Something On My Mind’ by The Speedies, both issued in 1980.

  Ever the polymath, the early eighties found Chris busiest of all. “Everything sort of came at once. I just finished working on Polyester, the new John Waters movie with Stiv Bators, Divine and Tab Hunter. I got into that through the guy who’s sound man on New York Beat, which is Glenn O’Brien’s and [writer/director] Edo [Bertoglio]’s movie. That movie could be really exciting, it’s what should’ve been done in 1975 … I’ve worked on that soundtrack. The idea is to get a lot of people who are in the movie involved in the soundtrack, like John [Lurie], James [Chance].”