Do Greenheads Have More Fun?

LONDON—Like matching Regency minatures, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein sit side-by-side on a two-seater beige couch in the large, subtly opulent living-room of a fourth-floor suite in the Grosvenor House hotel.

A cooling carbon monoxide breeze blows from Hyde Park in through the room’s five open windows, through which also travel the distinct sound of fast-moving early evening traffic on plush Park Lane four floors below.

One imagines that those wealthiest of Arabs who are the hotel’s more usual guests must have been somewhat intrigued by the chin-length purple wig that squats a little awkwardly on Debbie’s head. In the lobby downstairs there is promotional literature for photographer Patrick Lichfield’s book, The Most Beautiful Women, in which Debbie is featured. Yet now her moonshaped head has more of the appearance of an over-ripe plum.

“I figured,” Debbie laughs at herself in her soft, high, casually confiding tones, “that since with Blondie everyone knows me for my hair color, I might as well have a lot of different hair colors and get everyone really confused.