Dey Street BooksBlondie frontwoman Debbie Harry gives fans an unbridled look at her rapturously fascinating life in her brand-new memoir, Face It. The book follows Harry from her childhood in suburban New Jersey, to her move to New York City in the 1960s to seek adventure as an artist and a musician, to her immersion in Manhattan’s glam, art-rock and punk scene, to her emergence as a pop superstar and beyond.
Harry tells ABC Audio that she initially was apprehensive about digging into her past to write the book, but eventually “warmed up to [the process].”
“I tend to want to go forward and I’m happy to work on new things. New, new, new, you know,” she explains. “And having completed a lot…to think back [wasn’t always enjoyable].”
In the book, Debbie affectionately details her long creative partnership with Blondie guitarist Chris Stein, as well as the romance the two shared for many years.
On the importance of Stein’s contribution to Harry’s success with Blondie, she says, “I don’t know if I would have done it or could have done it without Chris.”
Despite Blondie’s punk roots, the band came to fame by scoring huge hits with songs that explored various genres, from the disco of “Heart of Glass” to the rap of “Rapture” to the reggae of “The Tide Is High.”
“We felt that we were an inner city, urban group that sort of had been influenced by all these different styles of music,” Harry explains, “and they were really a part of our lives.”
Among the interesting aspects of Face It are pages and pages of artwork that fans presented Harry over the years offering loving depictions of her.
“I just thought it was so…beautiful,” she says of the art. “[T]he fans have been really good to us and good to me, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is a great component…Let’s put this in there.”
Harry has been promoting Face It with a U.S. book tour. Here are the remaining stops on the trek:
10/7 — Cincinnati, OH, Walnut Hills High School
10/8 — Philadelphia, PA, Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
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