January 31 – Blondie Found High Tides Soon Ebb

What do you get when you put a Big Apple punk group in Hollywood and have them listen to some music of the Islands? Well, in 1981, the answer was a major #1 hit – “The Tide is High” by Blondie. It topped the charts this day 42 years ago. It was their third American #1 in less than two years.

Of course, calling Blondie a “punk” band is misleading even though many, if not most, music writers and radio people of the day did just that. Despite their CBGB origins in New York, they’d become a fairly talented bunch of players who’d scored major success with songs that varied from straight-out disco (“Call Me”, “Heart of Glass”) to pure pop (“Sunday Girl”) to good ol’ fashioned rock & roll (“One Way or Another”). That in mind, “The Tide is High” might not have been so surprising.

The song was a cover of a 1967 song by Jamaican reggae/rocksteady band The Paragons. It hadn’t received a lot of attention, likely even on their own island, since it was a b-side of a single. But somehow it ended up on a Jamaican music compilation cassette that Blondie’s Deborah Harry & Chris Stein found when holidaying in England. They both liked it straight away and decided to record it.

It made its way onto their fifth album (and third since becoming popular at home in North America), Autoamerican. They’d decided to make some changes for that record, including recording it in L.A., something Chris Stein didn’t like but producer Mike Chapman insisted upon. Drummer Clem Burke on the other hand said it “was fun! We got to spend two months in California.”

They also decided to expand their musical horizons, for better or worse, with an old 1920s-style crooner (“Here’s Looking At You”) , a rap-based song (“Rapture”, the follow-up single and their final #1 hit in many places) besides this tropical-sounding effort. Stein liked the band The Specials and asked them to play with Blondie on it, but they declined. So instead they brought in some extra session players including a trio of percussionists and some unfortunately uncredited horn players to add authenticity.

The album did well, but not as well as the previous pair of hits, going platinum in the U.S., UK and Canada. “The Tide is High” led the way being a #1 hit not only in the U.S. but Canada, the UK and New Zealand as well. It came close, top 5, in most other “Western” countries like Ireland and Australia. It earned them their sixth gold single in Britain and third platinum one in Canada.

However, their time in the sun was running out, figuratively and literally. After “Rapture”, they struggled to get noticed for years and Debbie Harry went solo by the end of 1982, leaving the band on a 15-year break.

One curious bit of trivia about “The Tide is High.” It knocked John Lennon out of the #1 slot which his “Starting Over” had been at for five weeks. That seemed fitting because according to Sean Lennon, it was the one modern track his dad really liked just before his death. He said John “played (it) constantly…when I hear that song, I see my father, unshaven, his hair pulled back into a ponytail, dancing to and fro in a worn out pair of denim shorts with me at his feet.”

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January 5 – Stein Was The Mr. Blondie In Debbie’s Background

One of New York’s most enduring and versatile artists was born 73 years ago today. Happy birthday, Chris Stein!

Stein is a New Yorker through and through, born, raised and living his life there. In the early-’70s, he and his then girlfriend Debbie Harry were in one of the early punk acts in the Big Apple, the Stilletoes, and from there went on to form one of new wave’s first real break-through bands – Blondie. Stein added the guitars and much of the songwriting while Harry added the voice and, of course, the sex appeal. They were regulars at CBGB with the likes of The Ramones and Talking Heads, with whom Esquire recently compared them. They noted Blondie “nailed the midpoint between the glorious trashiness of the Ramones and the arch cleverness of the Talking Heads.”

Blondie’s first success was in Australia where the single “In the Flesh” hit #2 in 1977. A couple of years later, they were big everywhere, with Parallel Lines selling around 20 million copies and “Heart of Glass” (inspired by the sounds of Saturday Night Fever and Kraftwerk, remarkably enough for a band which was branded as “punk”) was a worldwide #1 hit. Blondie’s fortunes dropped not long after, the band split by 1983 but even though Stein and Harry were no longer a couple, they reunited in 1997. The single “Maria” from the late-’90s version hit #1 in the UK, making them the only American act to have #1 hits in Britain in three different decades.

Like many other musicians, Stein loves photography and has been avid in documeting the stars he’s known, including The Ramones, Andy Warhol and of course Debbie Harry. While they’ve not done much of late, Blondie are still together, with Stein, Harry and drummer Clem Burke still present from their heyday.

April 28 – Heart Of Glass, Record Of Platinum

Was it one of disco’s last stands, or the new wave crashing onshore for the first time? Could have been either, or maybe both, but either way Blondie found a way to be cool by trying to be “uncool”. “Heart of Glass” hit #1 in the U.S. this day in 1979.

Blondie came out of the New York City punk scene in the mid-’70s but found their first glimmer of success across the sea in Britain, where their first two albums sold decently and the song “Denis” had been a gold-selling, #2 hit the year before. Success at home however, had eluded them. So Chrysalis Records decided it was time to bring in a “name” producer to help them with their third album, which ended up being Parallel Lines. Chapman, ironically, had also probably had more success in the UK than U.S. through working with acts like Sweet and Suzi Quatro, but was a well-respected presence in music on both continents. What he found when he turned up at the New York studio didn’t please him. They were “a classic New York underground band…they didn’t give a f***…they didn’t want to work too hard.” He saw potential there, but also a bunch of rather lazy, irritable musicians. So “I went in there like Adolf Hitler, and said (or screamed perhaps) ‘You’re going to make a great record and that means you’re going to start playing better!’”

That they did, grudgingly, and quickly put down eight or nine tracks. But they needed more so they played an early demo of this one for him. At the time they nicknamed it “The Disco Song.” They sometimes played it in their set, because as Debbie Harry put it “it wasn’t too cool in our social set to play disco. We did it because we wanted to be uncool.” By then, the song was about four years old and she says “we’d tried it as a ballad, as reggae, but it never worked.” Chapman however “liked it. Thought it was interesting, and started to pull it into focus.” Interestingly, she’d said prior to the album’s release that she really liked the work of European producer Giorgio Moroder, then best-known for working with Donna Summer. “It’s commercial, but it’s good,” she said, “that’s the kind of stuff I want to do.” Which “Heart of Glass” not only turned out a little like, but in time got Moroder’s attention. He worked with Debbie the following year on the hit “Call Me.” 

One of the ways he did that was by getting drummer Clem Burke to use a Roland drum machine for it. It became the one of the first huge hit singles to do so. Eventually, they made some five different versions or remixes of it, with most versions of the album having a full-length 5:50” take on it (which also was the 12” single) and the American 7” single being whittled to 3:22”.

Parallel Lines came out late in ’78, to little initial interest at home, although it did get some notice in Britain again, where “Hanging on the Telephone” had hit the top 10. “Heart of Glass” seemed almost an afterthought, being the fourth song chosen to be put out as a single. Turns out, fourth time was the charm. As Pitchfork put it “after two albums of middling success, a reinvention was in order. ‘Heart of Glass’ came just in time.” They add “by melding disco’s then commerciality with (Harry’s) stunning image and big city cool, ‘Heart of Glass’ propelled Blondie from cult status to household name.”

That it did, though not without a little hesitation. The lyrics (at times Harry’s ascribed to no one in particular, just a general feeling of relationships being tiring but at other times says was inspired by a stalker Chris Stein saved her from) refer to love as a “pain in the ass”…which was rather racy language for mainstream radio in the ’70s. Some radio stations balked at playing it at first, others beeped out the three-letter “four letter word.” Obviously enough played it though; the song hit #1 in not only the U.S., but the UK, Canada, Germany, Switzerland and other lands including New Zealand where it ended up the year’s biggest single (in Canada, it came in at #2 for the year). It earned them platinum singles in Canada and the UK (where they’d not have another one until 20 years later with “Maria”) and a gold one in the States.

If one looks at it as a disco single, there’s nothing surprising about its status. It replaced another disco hit, “Knock on Wood” by Amii Stewart at the top, and followed a string of disco hits at #1 including “I Will Survive”, “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” and “Tragedy.” However, if one considers it a “new wave” or post-punk song, it was breaking new ground – the first such song to top U.S. charts. Making one lean towards the latter is the surprising fact that it wasn’t a dance hit in North America… it only rose to #58 on Billboard‘s Dance Music charts.

Disco, new wave or pop, no matter what you term it, “Heart of Glass” was a shining example of late-’70s hit music at its best. It’s actually risen on Rolling Stone‘s all-time best of charts, being ranked at #138 in last year’s rankings, up by about a hundred spots since the last time they tried to compile such a list. Pitchfork, meanwhile consider it the 18^th greatest song of the ’70s (they had David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” as #1 in case you were wondering.) Meaning, they found a pretty cool way to be uncool!

April 24 – Debbie Stopped Making Plans For Nigel

Blondie were perhaps the ultimate New York band of the late-’70s, but their sound seemed to draw as much from the happening London scene of the time – Elvis Costello, early Joe Jackson etc. – as it did from the American East Coast sounds. Perhaps the reason for that is Nigel Harrison, the only British member of the band. We wish him a happy 71^st birthday today.

Harrison grew up near Manchester and like many young men at the time, was drawn to rock because he loved the Beatles. Or else, loved the way they were swarmed by cute girls! He joined a local band, playing bass because none of his friends had one, so it was an instant invitation to join. To this day, he still can’t read music. But it hasn’t stopped him from becoming a highly-talented and respected four-stringer For Bass Players Only laud for “nimbly intuitive playing” incorporating “elements of funk, country, disco, metal and reggae” (which sounds somewhat like a description of Blondie at the height of their popularity.) He learned to play by ear, copying greats like Jack Bruce, Carol Kaye and “early Motown” – presumably James Jamerson.

His first big break came in 1971, when just out of his teens, he joined a British band called Silverhead. Deep Purple signed them to their label and got them to open a number of shows, but their record never took off. Nonetheless, there he made a bit of a reputation for himself, and met singer Michael Des Barres, whom he’s worked with off and on again to the present day. After Silverhead came an anonymous run with The Runaways. He played bass on their first album when the rest of the band decided that their “real” bassist, Jackie Fox, couldn’t play well enough.

From there came a low-profile band called Nite City. They didn’t do much…except catch the ear of Blondie, who in 1978 were looking for a new bassist after their first two albums. They recruited Harrison just in time for the work on their massive hit Parallel Lines to begin. Harrison played bass and co-wrote the album’s second hit, “One Way or Another”. He’d later co-write “Union City Blue” and a few other songs of theirs. However, the band were at each other’s throats in the studio and Harrison in particular didn’t like producer Mike Chapman, even though he now credits Chapman with producing well. Harrison played more or less ad lib, and Chapman wanted structure, asking for re-takes which Harrison seemingly refused to play the same way twice.

He stayed with them through their brief but very hot career peak, working on Eat to The Beat and Autoamerican (with hits like “Dreaming” and “Rapture”) and continuing on into 1982, with The Hunter. However, that album didn’t come close to matching the success of the past three and their tour ended up playing in venues far too big for the low demand for tickets. That coupled with Harry getting sick, and unspecified drug problems within the group, caused them to quit by year’s end.

Harrison and drummer Clem Burke teamed up with a couple of other musicians including ex-Sex Pistol Steve Jones and Des Barres again to form Chequered Past. They put out one album allmusic gave a “meh” to, calling it “flawed fun”. “’A World Gone Wild’ rocks out nicely”, it said, but soon the songs all came to “sound a bit the same-ish.”

Harrison kept somewhat busy after that short-lived band, doing some record producing and getting into the business end of music. He’s worked as an A&R man for Capitol Records, then Interscope where he rose to the executive level.

As for Blondie… well, they got together again in 1997. They called Nigel who played on some demos for a comeback album, but they quickly fired him. This started a round of lawsuits, which continued for some time. When the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted them in 2006, they listed Nigel Harrison as one of the members, logically enough and he and guitarist Frank Infante “were definitely ready to go” but Debbie Harry wouldn’t allow them to join them on stage “and it just got ugly really quickly.” The pair sued the rest of the band again, unsuccessfully. Harrison calls it “kind of sad” and adds “”the strange thing is we’re all in business together. We still have a corporation together.”

Complicated history with that band, but simple way of making his sound. Harrison says he goes for “a Fender bass and Marshall amp. That’s it. That’s the sound of the ’70s. It’s the sound of Motown.” And as it turned out, it was the sound of the once ground-breaking Blondie.

April 19 – Blondie Heeded The Call

Forty-odd years ago Americans were loving hearing the hottest female sex symbol of the time singing behind one of the hottest male sex symbols on the big screen. Blondie climbed to #1 in the U.S. on this day in 1980 with “Call Me”. The single was the theme to the Richard Gere movie American Gigolo, in which Gere is a (logically enough given the title) gigolo. With Pretty Woman about a decade later, Gere is probably the only prominent actor to have starred in two movies about prostitution. Make of that what you will. 

Italian Giorgio Moroder had been contracted to do the movie’s soundtrack. He was known for largely Euro-style disco which he wrote and often created in his own studio in Munich. But perhaps more famously, he was known for his collaborations with the late-’70s most successful female singer, Donna Summer. He produced (and at times wrote) most of her smash hits like “Hot Stuff” and “MacArthur Park.”

He had the theme music pretty much worked out in his head, but not the lyrics…nor a singer. His first choice was Stevie Nicks, but she declined his offer citing contractual problems. Some reports have said that, not surprisingly, he asked his long-time friend and collaborator, Summer. At some point, he decided on Debbie Harry of Blondie. She/they accepted.

Harry wrote the lyrics fairly quickly, after watching the film without sound. She “pictured the opening scene, driving along the coast of California.”

The song was included in the Polydor movie soundtrack in its full eight-minute plus length, and edited to a little less than half that for release as a 7” single on Blondie’s label, Chrysalis. The music was a little more danceable and disco than Blondie’s usual output, and just how much the guys in the band contributed is debatable. Moroder did much of the music for the rest of the movie himself, with a little help from a few session musicians like Harold Faltermeyer. Regardless, it’s doubtful the lads in Blondie cared too much once the royalty cheques starting coming in. And roll in they did.

“Call Me” went to #1 for six straight weeks in the States, making it not only the biggest-seller of the year but the eighth top single of the whole decade. It also spent six weeks atop Canadian charts later that spring and would be another #1 for them in Britain, where it was their seventh top 10 in under two years.

Blondie would go on to score two more chart-toppers in the States over the next year or so (“Rapture” and “The Tide is High”) but not with Moroder’s help. They had brought him in to produce their next album but he… didn’t like them. “We went to the studio, and the guitarist was fighting with the keyboard player… I called their manager and quit.”

The band called it quits not longer after (although they have rebanded since) but the popularity of their hits from the beginning of the ’80s remains to this day.

 

May 30 – Maybe Debbie Was A Sunday Girl More Than A Saturday Night One

Although New York City had a major, burgeoning new music scene in the late-’70s, arguably nowhere was more amenable to the various new sounds emerging at that time than Britain. Another example of that was 40 years ago, when on this day in 1979, Blondie hit #1 on the UK singles chart with “Sunday Girl.” Although it came a month after they first hit the top at home, with “Heart of Glass”, the upbeat sounding single was already their second chart-topper of the year in the UK and third top 5 single off the most popular album of the year there, Parallel Lines.

Blondie were New York to the bone, being regulars at the legendary CBGB club which the Ramones made famous, and like the Ramones, they were initially labeled as a “punk” act. Blondie’s core has always been photogenic singer Deborah Harry and guitarist Chris Stein, a romantic couple at the time who’d been in the band The Stilletoes together. They left that band in 1974 and formed Blondie. Their 1976 debut didn’t make much of an impact, but their second, Plastic Letters had caught on over the sea in the UK, where it sold to platinum levels and generated two top 10 singles, “Denis” and “I’m Always Touched By Your Presence Dear”.

For their third album, Chrysalis Records wanted a slightly more radio-friendly sound and they brought in a new producer, Mike Chapman. Chapman had been an influential hit-maker in Britain, most notably working with The Sweet and Suzi Quatro. Outside of drummer Clem Burke, no one in the band was excited about the change at first. Chapman didn’t adore the band and said “musically, Blondie were hopelessly horrible when we first began rehearsing.” He said Burke had no timing on the drums, Stein was too stoned to play guitar well much of the time and Jimmy Destri wrote better than he played keyboards. Chapman ranted and railed and drove them to play better because “you are going to make a great record.”

That they did. Parallel Lines mixed new wave, disco, rock riffs and blended it up into an exciting new sound that appealed to all sorts of listeners. Allmusic would later grade it a perfect 5-stars, clearly their “best album”, which they considered a “pure pop” one. “Heart of Glass” was a worldwide smash (and their first #1 hit in the UK and North America) and when all was said and done, the album was Britain’s biggest-seller of ’79, spending 4 weeks atop the charts, hit #6 in their native States and went 4X platinum in Canada. It was full of strong tracks, and the singles released were slightly different in some countries, besides “Heart of Glass” which was a hit everywhere. In Britain, “Sunday Girl” was the fourth single, after “Picture This”, “Heart of Glass” and “Hanging on the Telephone.”

The song with Debbie displaying a good chunk of her vocal range was written by Chris Stein, apparently originally inspired not by a couple of girls gossiping about boys but by Harry’s cat, called Sunday. Although it wasn’t put out as a single in the U.S., it made #5 in Australia and New Zealand and #6 in Canada. Interestingly, Harry also did a French-language version for release in parts of Europe and Chapman remixed the song later to incorporate a French verse in an otherwise English song.

January 5 – Picture This – Stein Overlooked Part Of Blondie

One of New York’s most enduring and versatile artists was born 71 years ago today. Happy birthday, Chris Stein!

Stein is a New Yorker through and through, born, raised and living his life there. In the early-’70s, he and his then girlfriend Debbie Harry were in one of the early punk acts in the Big Apple, the Stilletos, and from there went on to form one of new wave’s first real break-through bands – Blondie. Stein added the guitars and much of the songwriting while Harry added the voice and, of course, the sex appeal.

Surprisingly, although regulars at CBGB with the likes of The Ramones and Talking Heads, Blondie’s first success was in Australia where the single “In the Flesh” hit #2 in 1977. A couple of years later, they were big everywhere, with Parallel Lines selling around 20 million copies and “Heart of Glass” (inspired by the sounds of Saturday Night Fever and Kraftwerk, remarkably enough for a band which was branded as “punk”) was a worldwide #1 hit. Blondie’s fortunes dropped not long after, the band split by 1983 but even though Stein and Harry were no longer a couple, (although even then some insiders suggested they were the only two members of the band who could stand each other) they reunited in 1997. The single “Maria” from the late-’90s version hit #1 in the UK, making them the only American act to have #1 hits in Britain in three different decades.

Like many other musicians, Stein loves photography and has been avid in documenting the stars he’s known, including The Ramones, Andy Warhol and of course Debbie Harry. While they’ve not done much of late, Blondie are still together, with Stein, Harry and drummer Clem Burke still present from their heyday.

April 19 – Blondie Didn’t Just Phone It In 40 Years Back

Forty years ago Americans were loving hearing the hottest female sex symbol of the time singing behind one of the hottest male sex symbols on the big screen. Blondie climbed to #1 in the U.S. on this day in 1980 with “Call Me”. The single was the theme to the Richard Gere movie American Gigolo, in which Gere is a (logically enough given the title) gigolo.

Italian Giorgio Moroder had been contracted to do the movie’s soundtrack. He was known for largely Euro-style disco which he wrote and often created in his own studio in Munich. But perhaps more famously, he was known for his collaborations with the late-’70s most successful female singer, Donna Summer. He produced (and at times wrote) most of her smash hits like “Hot Stuff” and “MacArthur Park.”

He had the theme music pretty much worked out in his head, but not the lyrics…nor a singer. His first choice was Stevie Nicks, but she declined his offer citing contractual problems. Some reports have said that, not surprisingly, he asked his long-time friend and collaborator, Summer. At some point, he decided on Debbie Harry of Blondie. She/they accepted.

Harry wrote the lyrics fairly quickly, after watching the film without sound. “pictured the opening scene, driving along the coast of California.”

The song was included in the Polydor movie soundtrack in its full 8-minute plus length, and edited to a little less than half that for release as a 7” single on Blondie’s label, Chrysalis. The music was a little more danceable and disco than Blondie’s usual output, and just how much the guys in the band contributed is debatable. Moroder did much of the music for the rest of the movie himself, with a little help from a few session musicians like Harold Faltermeyer. Regardless, it’s doubtful the lads in Blondie cared too much once the royalty cheques starting coming in. And roll in they did.

“Call Me” went to #1 for six straight weeks in the States, making it not only the biggest-seller of the year but the eighth top single of the whole decade. It also spent six weeks atop Canadian charts later that spring and would be another #1 for them in Britain, where it was their seventh top 10 in under two years.

Blondie would go on to score two more chart-toppers in the States over the next year or so (“Rapture” and “The Tide is High”) but not with Moroder’s help. They had brought him in to produce their next album but he… didn’t like them. “We went to the studio, and the guitarist was fighting with the keyboard player… I called their manager and quit.”

The band called it quits not longer after (although they have re-banded since) but the popularity of their hits from the beginning of the ’80s remains to this day.

March 28 – Debbie Did It First…And Best?

On this day 39 years back, alternative rock took another alternative music form and made it mainstream. On this day in 1981 the first ever U.S. #1 hit to have rapping on it topped the chart…”Rapture” by Blondie. I’m not sure if we should be apologizing to the hip-hop nation for this or to the rest of if the New York new wavers should be for having introduced “rap” to the wider audience.

Blondie was a part of the New York music scene since 1974 and were, along with the Ramones and Television, regulars at CBGB in the early days of the punk scene but had become a major worldwide success by the time they released their fifth album, Autoamerican. Debbie Harry and company came to international attention with “Heart of Glass” in 1979 and the following year had the #1 single of the year in the U.S. and another international smash, with “Call Me”.

The safe and perhaps “smart” thing for the band to have done was record what people had come to expect from them, a sound that was variously called at the time “punk” , “post-punk” or “new wave”. They could have put out an album of danceable, fast, slightly-edgy tunes with crunchy guitars. Instead they put out a record with a variety of sounds…but little conventional rock or songs that reminded people of “Heart of Glass” or “One Way or Another.” Autoamerican had covers of old Broadway tunes, a Caribbean-flavored slow dance number (“The Tide is High”) … and “Rapture”. The departure for new musical territory wasn’t universally-applauded.

William Ruhlman of allmusic gave the release 3 stars out of 5 noting that Blondie was trying to “expand their stylistic range” but deciding that all in all, it was “memorable only for its hits”. Rolling Stone was decidedly more critical. In a review that has sort of a cult status online, Tom Carson (who evidently really didn’t like Harry’s musical and romantic partner, Chris Stein) begrudgingly gave it one star and called it “a terrible record” in the first line!

July 1 – Debbie Turns Back The ‘Atomic’ Clock

“The Hardest Part” may be believing she’s 74! Happy birthday to Angela Tremble, better known as Debbie Harry. Or, to many people, “Blondie,” although she is quick to point out that there is a difference between the band she fronted and herself!

Debbie was born in Miami but was adopted by the Harry family when young and grew up in northern New Jersey. After getting an arts degree young Debbie had an interesting few years before becoming a musician, working as a secretary, a go-go dancer and a Playboy bunny. After working as a backup singer in a folk band and in the girls band The Stilletoes she met Chris Stein whom would go on to be her boyfriend for over a decade and with whom she founded Angel and the Snake, which soon would become Blondie. They soon became favorites at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB in New York where they were deemed “punk” contemporaries of The Ramones, although Debbie liked the Studio 54 scene as well which perhaps explains the disco-punkish fusion that made them so successful with Parallel Lines. Blondie of course went on to be one of the most popular and influential of the post-punk acts, scoring 4 #1 hits and 4 more top 40’s in the U.S. in the five years starting in 1979.

Although Blondie has been the vehicle to her fame and fortune, she’s been vigilant about also maintaining a separate musical persona, releasing 5 solo albums, one each going gold in the U.S. and UK. She worked with a jazz band fittingly called the Jazz Passengers in the ’90s and in 2007 toured doing only her solo material, which likely disappointed many ticket-buyers hoping to hear “Heart of Glass” or “The Tide Is High.”

Allmusic summed up her popularity thusly: “the ultimate diva and vixen with hypnotically wild stage moves and an edgy cool voice.” VH1 concur and named her the 12th greatest woman ever in rock and roll. Harry still sings and tours with Blondie at times but has turned much of her attention to philanthrophical pursuits, advocating medical charities. “These things are important to me now. I have the privilege of being able…I applaud people like Elton John who’ve used their position to do so much good.”