Which projects that got away – such as the offer to sing the James Bond theme For Your Eyes Only or the chance to appear in Blade Runner – haunt you most? McScootikins A chance encounter at Max’s with singer Elda Gentile, sometime partner of the Dolls’ Sylvain Sylvain, led to her joining Gentile in the Stilettos, a trio “enamored of the Dolls,” which meant Harry was now in a campy girl group inspired by a group of guys who camped it up in makeup and glitter. It was after one of the Stiletttos’ shows that Harry met Chris Stein, a shadowy figure in the audience there with his girlfriend, who’d previously been involved with Dolls’ drummer Billy Murcia. (Here as in other accounts of 1970s NYC punk, all roads eventually lead to the Dolls.) Also, I lost count of how many times she mentions how pretty she is/was. So, here's the deal... she's more than old enough to be my mother but I'm still old enough to have owned at least one album as a kid and one 45 (young people will have to Google that lol) and she was never considered pretty by any means during that time period. Not ugly, just "hard" or "rough". Maybe she was really pretty in the 60s or 70s but, still, who wants to keep reading that? In the early 80s, Harry and Stein – they were in a relationship for 13 years – lost everything. Their debut album, the eponymous Blondie, came out in 1976, and for years they toured the world; they had six No 1 UK hits, including Heart of Glass and Call Me, and sold 40m records. When the US Internal Revenue Service hit them with a huge bill for unpaid tax, they lost their New York townhouse; the IRS even took some of her clothes, she writes. Worse, Stein was in hospital recovering from an autoimmune disease – Harry would spend the next few years looking after him – and they were not sure how they would pay his medical bills. It also meant the end of the band. You enjoy stories – fiction or non-fiction – set in New York during the tumultuous 60s, 70s, and 80s

Face It by Debbie Harry | Goodreads Face It by Debbie Harry | Goodreads

Your enjoyment of this book will increase with each one of the following criteria you can answer “Yes”:I must have been somewhat confident. Our goal was to be as exciting and cantankerous as possible. But I always considered myself in a partnership with Chris [Stein] and that I was trying to express the whole band’s point of view. So in some ways a lot of things that I was saying would be, in today’s world, transgender. Maybe that’s why it works. Blondie in 1976: (from left) Gary Valentine, Clem Burke, Harry, Chris Stein and Jimmy Destri. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images It may be the case, as Harry notes, that some of the Early Era was a blur because the band was so busy. It may be the case, as Harry notes, that this would be a better memoir if she'd kept a journal over the years.

Debbie Harry Is Staying Put The Tide Is High (Really), but Debbie Harry Is Staying Put

I hated my looks as a kid but I could not stop staring.” So says Debbie Harry in her memoir Face It. Well, yes – who could ever stop staring at this extraordinarily beautiful woman? I certainly couldn’t and it is impossible to talk about Harry without discussing her appearance. Thankfully, Harry doesn’t try. Mostly she stands at some distance from herself chatting about how she put together her look. She is always visually hyper-aware. She learns how to be photographed and wonders whether if it’s true that photos steal a part of your soul – for if so she wouldn’t have a soul left. From early on she is seeking to control her image but perhaps it’s only now that she is doing so. I got a job working at a health club and I started dating a guy who was a painting contractor. The normal life.” Although I was a little underwhelmed by the book, and I may have made it sound worse than it really was, I’m still glad I read it. There are plenty of interesting, juicy bits of information, lots of sex and drugs, and it was fun to hear Debbie talk about her hair colors and fashion styles over the years. Her work as an actress was far more accomplished than I realized and I enjoyed hearing about her movies, although I don’t think I’ve seen anything she played in. I think Debbie has lived quite a colorful life and deserves her place in music history and as a pop culture icon. Early in her new memoir— Face It, written in collaboration with Sylvie Simmons—Debbie Harry recounts an anecdote from her childhood: “One visit, when I was a baby, my doctor gave me a lingering look. And then he turned in his white coat, grinned at my parents, and said, ‘Watch out for that one, she has bedroom eyes’.”She knows it may seem hard to believe. “It is ludicrous,” she says, “and it is kind of funny that I would say it, but, truly, I wasn’t physically molested. Afterwards, I was with Chris, and I was, you know …” She makes a sound to signal the horror she must have felt. “I went on with my life. But as I say, I wasn’t beaten or assaulted and I think that, coupled with being sexually violated, is truly awful. Then you are really made to feel powerless.” But she was tied up at knifepoint. Didn’t that make her feel powerless? “Yeah. Not the same. It wasn’t for me anyway.” She didn’t have counselling, and says Stein was supportive “and we moved on”. And of course when I saw this in the bookstore, I couldn't resist - is there any person on this planet cooler than Debbie Harry? Did "cool" as a concept exist before Debbie Harry? The answer is no, friends. No it did not. (Did anyone else watch the Zoe Kravitz-led reboot of High Fidelity? There's an unexpected Debbie Harry cameo in one of the early episodes and that one brief scene is worth the entire price of admission alone.)

Debbie Harry - Wikipedia Debbie Harry - Wikipedia

Is it true that you saw the last Velvet Underground show at Max’s Kansas City [ the New York venue where Harry was a waitress]? nigelbarton She jumps around and and talks about everything under the sun, but without really making much sense at all. In one scene she talks about how Miles Davis was a patron in a bar she worked out and all she says is that his date spoke for him and she (Harry) didn't understand why they sat him in a table upstairs. Um...okay. You start to think about the value of beauty as you're growing older. It's double-edged for sure,” she lamented. There are some good stories here, though you may have heard a few of them before. Drawing on a series of exclusive interviews with longtime music critic Sylvie Simmons, Face It covers much of the same ground as Cathay Che’s 1998 Deborah Harry: The Biography, a book based on interviews Harry did with Che in the 1990s. Che’s bio includes more detailed accounts of recording sessions, film appearances, and the 1970s downtown scene, along with some of the same anecdotes that crop up in Face It. Did she feel objectified? “There was a time in the earlier Blondie years when I was trying hard to perform, sing and write, and all of those contributions would be overlooked [by critics]. And that was, well …” She doesn’t finish the sentence. She was furious when Blondie’s record label put out a poster with a picture of her wearing a see-through blouse. In the book, she writes: “Sex sells, that’s what they say, and I’m not stupid, I know that. But on my terms, not some executive’s.”Some of Blondie’s most celebrated recordings are cover versions, such as The Tide Is High or Hanging on the Telephone. My favourite [cover of a Blondie song] is Ride’s interpretation of Union City Blue with vocals by Alex Taylor from the Motorcycle Boy. Is there a Blondie cover that you are particularly fond of? VerulamiamParkRanger It goes without saying, sadly, that this memoir will NOT teach you how to achieve Debbie Harry-levels of coolness, but we can't expect miracles. All I really wanted, and all I ever want from memoirs like this, is a clear-eyed, no bullshit look at the past while also giving me a good amount of hot gossip. If you think this is a lot of column space devoted to Debbie Harry’s appearance, bear in mind that she leads with her chin: Her memoir’s titled Face It. As an artist, of course she’s much more than her looks, even if the latter are what gave Blondie its name. And, as the 1970s ad campaign reminded the buying public, Blondie is a group, not a woman. She recalls, “I really loved sex. I think I might have been oversexed, but I didn’t have a problem with that; I felt it was totally natural. But in my town in those days, sexual energy was very repressed, or at least clandestine. The expectation for a girl was that you would date, get engaged, remain a virgin, marry, and have children. The idea of being tied to that kind of traditional suburban life terrified me.”

Face It: A Memoir by Debbie Harry | Goodreads

At the time, however, I think us girls did get it. No one else could be Harry. Now ordinary girls look at beautiful celebrities and feel inadequate or try to emulate them. With Harry we just bathed in her light. I guess it hasn’t really been announced, the full list of artists to be playing Glastonbury, but we are going to be playing Glastonbury, so maybe you got an exclusive there,” he said. Hey, Debbie, in Face It [ Harry’s memoir], you discussed the creation of the Blondie persona . How intentional were your choices in character curation, and why did you choose to adopt a persona in the first place? ChloSchmo I suppose she’s still holding fast to her public image and mystique, and maybe she feels like it is still her bread and butter, so she didn't want to shatter that image. So, fans of Debbie Harry, those who will brook no criticism of her, maybe you’ll want to skip this review. I can seem judgmental, more so with a memoir than with a biography written by a third party or a ghost writer.James was constantly making funny remarks, which was a great relief. He was always making suggestions about scenes and was very helpful to me. David just seemed like a dedicated film-maker who found his niche, where his imagination took fire. A History of Violence and Eastern Promises are wonderful pictures. He also takes little cameo roles and he’s actually a really great actor. She was and is one of the most recognizable stars in the world and makes no apologies about taking advantage of her looks throughout her career. She also doesn’t spend a lot of time complaining about the “boy’s club” mentality of the music business, but her determination and drive show clearly throughout the book. She knew exactly what she wanted to do and she worked really hard to accomplish her goals. To me – that is the underlying secret of Debbie Harry and her success.