How I survived heroin, a serial killer and losing all money - to play Glastonbury... at 68: Debbie Harry on her amazing career



At 68, she’s still got the look and the voice that have kept Blondie on top since they burst on to the British punk scene in 1977. But, Debbie Harry tells Event, a lift from America’s most notorious serial killer almost ended her career before it started...

Debbie Harry is only a month shy of her 69th birthday. 'I can't tell you how strange it feels. When Blondie first made it big, I figured we could get five years out of it, maximum,' she said

She may be 68, but Debbie Harry’s famous cheekbones, blonde hair and pouty lips still spell sexy – loud and clear. She’s one of rock ’n’ roll’s great survivors, but her astonishing 40-year career with Blondie nearly ended before it began when she jumped into the back of a car driven by a serial killer.



‘It was the early Seventies, maybe 72. I was trying to get across town to a party. It was two or three o’clock in the morning and I was staggering around on huge platform shoes.



'This car kept circling around and some guy was offering me a ride. I kept refusing, but finally I took the ride because I couldn’t get a cab.



'I got in the car and the windows were all rolled up, except for a tiny crack. And this guy had an incredibly bad smell to him.



'I looked down at the door to crank open the window, and there were no door handles and no cranks. Then I started scanning the inside of the car and there was absolutely nothing.



'The inside of the car was completely stripped and the hair on the back of my neck just stood up.

'Fame didn't hit me all at once. It crept up on me,' said Debbie

'I wiggled my arm out the window and opened the door from the outside. I don’t know how I did it but I got out.



'He tried to stop me by stepping on the gas and spinning the car but it sort of helped me fling myself out. I fell out and nearly got run over by a cab.



'Afterwards I saw him on the news. Ted Bundy: responsible for at least 30 homicides. I could so easily have been one his earliest victims.’



She often thinks how much she would have missed out on.

‘I don’t take anything for granted. It’s now 40 years since we formed Blondie and every gig is special. Playing Glastonbury [on June 27] is more special than most.



'When we do an iconic show like that, I can’t help reflecting how far we’ve come as a band, all we’ve been through and all that’s yet to come. It’s been some trip.’



It’s hard to believe that Harry is only a month shy of her 69th birthday.



‘I can’t tell you how strange it feels,’ she says. ‘When Blondie first made it big, I figured we could get five years out of it, maximum. I had no idea it would turn into such a journey.’



She left suburban New Jersey in the mid-Sixties, and arrived in New York with vague dreams of stardom, but it would take her more than ten years to make a mark.



Pre-Blondie, she dabbled in painting, took a stab at singing in a folk-rock group and even worked for nine months as a Playboy bunny girl.



Along the way she dabbled in heroin. Her fortunes began to change in the spring of 1974, when she met guitarist Chris Stein, who became her boyfriend and creative partner in Blondie.



They emerged from the downtown New York punk scene, along with The Ramones and Talking Heads, but it would take four years for Blondie to make their international breakthrough with the album Parallel Lines, which spawned a slew of timeless hits including Heart Of Glass, Sunday Girl and Hanging On The Telephone.



‘Fame didn’t hit me all at once,’ she says. ‘It crept up on me. It was only when we first toured the UK in 1977 that I realised something was stirring.



'We were supporting Squeeze, who then had Jools Holland on keyboards. The first town we played was Bournemouth.

'I’d never travelled abroad, so that little seaside town seemed impossibly exotic to me. We had no idea we had any kind of following in the UK, so we were totally unprepared for the crazed reception we got.



'I hated looking in mirrors. I never saw myself the way others saw me,' said Debbie

'The energy coming from that crowd was like nothing I’d ever experienced. It was beyond my wildest imaginings.’



Was there a downside to being in a punk band?

‘Well, I could have done without the spitting at gigs. It was meant to be a compliment but I didn’t like it.



'I’d shout into the crowd, “Hey that stuff doesn’t go with my dress” and they’d stop. They may have been punks but they had manners.’



On the back of the band’s success, Debbie Harry became an instant icon, the Marilyn Monroe of punk. All the girls wanted to be her. All the boys wanted to get to know her. With her geometrical cheekbones, pouting lips and platinum blonde mane, she was impossible to ignore.



But Harry wasn’t just a pretty face. She possessed style and attitude in abundance. It made for an irresistible package.

When Andy Warhol decided to extend his portfolio of portraits of beautiful faces in the Eighties, Harry was a natural choice to follow Bardot, Marilyn and Jackie O.



Harry was single-minded and independent, very much her own woman. Without her example, it’s quite possible that the likes of Madonna and Cyndi Lauper would never have broken through to mainstream success.



The list of female performers who owe Harry a huge debt is legion, right through to contemporary superstars like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Lily Allen and Miley Cyrus.



‘I find it strange to be considered any kind of role model,’ says Harry.



‘I certainly wasn’t the first female singer to have an attitude and do my own thing. But there was definitely a shift around the time of punk and I was part of that shift.



'Along with Patti Smith and Siouxsie Sioux, I was changing the way women in bands were perceived. It was a whole new era and we were like warriors.



‘I wasn’t going to be told by my record company how to look. I didn’t have a stylist advising me what outfit would make an impact.



'I’d grown up with a fascination for movie stars like Bardot and Monroe, whose sexuality wasn’t manufactured in any way. That naturalness was appealing to me. And it worked. Even at the time I could see that the way I looked was crucial to the appeal of Blondie.



‘I think it’s great what the likes of Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus are doing. They take a lot of flak about how they present their sexuality – but we should cherish them, not criticise them.



'Nothing much has changed since the Seventies. These women need to shrug off the criticisms, as I did back in the day.



Debbie and Chris Stein were punk's coolest couple, their relationship rock solid

'The whole point of rock music is the forbidden fruit and the clandestine — that’s what excites youngsters, who want to express themselves and their sexuality. Sometimes they’re not allowed to.



‘I think Miley probably started out with a very, very young audience and she was an easy pill to swallow.



'Then suddenly she became this completely sexual being and unsettled a lot of people.



'But these women are strong and ambitious. They have something to say. They’re willing to challenge conformity. They’ll learn what I had to learn – that you need to risk some sort of emotional exposure and embarrassment if you put yourself on the line.’



Harry was born in Florida to parents who gave her up for adoption at three months, and she was raised by a New Jersey couple who ran a gift shop.



‘As an adopted child, my deep-rooted fear has always been abandonment. It’s always been scary for me to see people leave.

'Death is difficult to deal with. Over the years I’ve lost many great friends and fellow musicians. I would hope that we can turn our fears into something positive.



'Maybe fear gives us fortitude. Maybe pain forces us to change our lives in some way. But it’s never easy.’



I ask her whether being adopted had a profound effect on the direction her life took and she says, ‘If anything, I think it freed me up to become the person I wanted to be.



'I did consider tracking down my birth parents at one time, but it didn’t work out.



'In the U.S., it’s a legal minefield. I’m not sure how it affected me as a kid. I was an odd mix of things. I always had energy.



'Physically, I was something of a wild child, always running around, climbing trees, something of a tomboy.



'Underneath it all I was the oversensitive type. I wasn’t exactly a closet case. I didn’t scare the boys. They scared me.



'But when I became a teenager, boys didn’t scare me at all. I was ready for them. But I never considered myself pretty. I had this blonde hair, pale-blue eyes and these jutting cheekbones.



'I didn’t look like any other kids I grew up with and I felt very uncomfortable about my face. I hated looking in mirrors. I never saw myself the way others saw me.’



She and Chris Stein were punk’s coolest couple, their relationship rock solid. They clicked creatively, too, writing some of the greatest and most enduring songs of the era.



'Even at the time I could see that the way I looked was crucial to the appeal of Blondie,' said Debbie

At the turn of the Eighties, it seemed like they could only go from strength to strength. Then it all started to unravel.



During Blondie’s hit-making heyday, they dabbled with pop, rock, disco and reggae.



1981’s euphoric Rapture became the first song involving a rap to go to number one in the U.S. and the UK.



By the following year, however, the hits had started to dry up.



In 1982, Stein discovered that, despite dominating the charts worldwide for four years, the band were in dire financial straits, which they blamed on their manager.

‘I despise that person,’ Harry says flatly. ‘He treated me and the band despicably.

'In Blondie we were very bad at the business side and we lost a lot of money because of that. It was a hard lesson to learn.’



Worse was to come. In late 1982, during a Blondie tour to promote their sixth album, The Hunter, Stein collapsed after a show and was rushed into hospital.



He was eventually diagnosed with pemphigus vulgaris, an autoimmune disease. He was in hospital for months and didn’t fully recover for four years.

During that time he was faithfully nursed by Harry, who also found time to explore a sporadically successful solo career and take on film roles.



‘People made a big deal out of the fact I took care of Chris when he was ill. But I was doing what anyone would do for someone they loved.



'It was a tough time generally. I made a few bad decisions around that time.



'My biggest regret of all is turning down the role of the blonde robot Pris in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. The part eventually went to Daryl Hannah. My record company didn’t want me to take time out to do a movie. I shouldn’t have listened to them.’



It was during this time that she turned again to heroin.



‘Drugs were a social thing at that time,’ she would later say, ‘and I was a social person. I guess I was a part of that world.



‘I was absolutely a drug addict for a couple of years. It was a depressing time. Everything fell apart and I fell apart along with it.’



Officially, Stein and Harry split in 1989, partly because Stein wanted to settle down and have children.



Harry would later tell Kirsty Walk on Desert Island Discs, ‘Sometimes I regret not having kids. But I guess motherhood is not a way of survival for me as it is for many women.’



They reformed Blondie in 1997. Their latest album, Ghosts Of Download, has been greeted with ecstatic reviews.



In 1999, Stein married actress Barbara Sicuranza; Harry is godmother to their two children. She has since been in relationships with men and women, but none as meaningful or long-standing as that with Stein.

'My biggest dream as a kid was to carve out a niche for myself in some interesting, creative way... I never allowed life to become boring,' said Debbie (pictured with her iconic Warhol portrait)

When Stein’s name is mentioned, her face lights up.



‘He remains my best friend,’ she says. ‘He’s the most creative person I know, the most astute and the bravest. Nobody makes me laugh as much as Chris.’



Does she keep any Blondie mementos?

‘I wish I’d kept some of the outfits I wore on stage, but it never occurred to me at the time that I’d ever miss those things.



'The only object I really prize is the Andy Warhol portrait of me that hangs on the wall in my New York home.



'I sat for Warhol at The Factory in 1980. A little while later, my business manager suggested I buy the portrait. I got it at a reduced price. That would be the thing I’d grab en route to the exit.’



What is she most proud of?

‘I’m so proud of this band’s longevity. The fact that we’re still around I would put down to our dedication, stubbornness and idiocy. I might be approaching 70 but the energy is still there. I just pace myself more carefully these days.



‘My biggest dream as a kid was to carve out a niche for myself in some interesting, creative way.



'Growing up, that often seemed like a far-fetched fantasy. Through all the ups and all the downs, I maintained my sense of adventure.



'I never allowed life to become boring. And we never became a supper-club revival act – we are still playing gigs like Glastonbury.’



Blondie’s latest album ‘Ghosts Of Download’ and greatest hits ‘Blondie 4(O)-Ever’ are out now.

