Brief 52: Facing It

I've just read Debbie Harry's autobiography, which is called 'Face It'. It's a peculiar book, a bit scattershot, somewhat dispassionate and guarded. It isn't looking to endear or engender sympathy. Still, it has many wondrous stories and leaves you with a pretty good sense of someone who is in with a shot of being the greatest rock star of all time...

Or maybe not ... but, yes, maybe. Not greatest in most senses, but in some senses.

I've always loved Debbie Harry - I first started listening to Blondie when I was about 14 and it's, obviously, one of the greatest runs of singles there's ever been, which gives me just as much joy as it did then. There is so much that is rare about her as frontperson - the fact that women leading mainly male bands were uncommon enough at that time in and of themselves, the fact she was already in her 30s when it began, the fact that, in that context, she was a pin-up, the fact that they started as punk, did disco, radio rock, reggae, hip-hop, doo-wop, the fact that she/they barely compromised any iota of cool or self.

There really was not before her, or indeed since, anyone who quite holds the same position. [Perhaps Stevie Nicks, perhaps Annie Lennox, though they're both a bit different]. Not as "diva", whatever that means, but as rock'n'roll bandleader, at that level of pop fame.

When reading the book, I sometimes forgot, in the offhand way she describes things, how huge a band Blondie were, with their 6 UK Number 1s and 4 US Number 1s, or rather, it's hard to make up your mind if she should be talking it up more or talking it down more. Sometimes she's quite starry and sometimes she's completely diffident and lowkey about the whole thing.

I saw a thing going around last week, in the light of Dolly Parton funding the Moderna Covid vaccine, saying that Dolly was a superhero sent to save the world. Which is, funnily enough, what I've always thought about Debbie Harry. With their names both beginning with D and being 11 letters, with them both being stigmatised as blonde bombshells, with their being born within 6 months, with them both having successful acting careers on the side, they make a good "look the other way" quiz question, let me tell you.

Another thing about the book - it is quite the densest book I have ever encountered, literally. Full of pictures and printed on suitable paper, it is as weighty a tome as you'll come across.