Into The Groove with Debbie Harry

Between 1977 and '82, hers was the face that melted a million hearts and the voice that creamed a string of hits for Blondie, the group she formed with boyfriend-guitarist Chris Stein. She was the face to come out of the punk explosion and mid-’70s New York rock renaissance. Seemingly overnight, lovely club funster Debbie Harry was staring dreamily off magazine covers and bedroom walls all over the world.

But Blondie dissolved after Debbie’s Koo Koo solo album and the group’s rather directionless final effort, The Hunter in 1982. Debbie made a couple of singles—late ’83s’ “Rush Rush” from the Scarface movie and the subliminal dancefloor steamer ‘‘Feel The Spin. ” She also had a stint playing a female wrestler in the offBroadway play Teaneck Tanzi.

Disturbing rumors began circulating about Chris Stein contracting a mysterious illness. As usual, morbid fascination spawned theories of varying seriousness. It was serious and only recently has Chris fully recovered.

Through this long, worrying period Debbie hardly left Chris’s side. Only when he was better did she feel ready to renew her career. November saw the release of a new single, “French Kissin ” and album, Rockbird.

I met Debbie on a Monday morning in the midtown NYC offices of her new manager, lawyer Stanley Arkin. I haven’t seen her in four years and it’s with pleasure that I can say she looks great—bright, positive and in good shape. The first half hour is a crossbarrage of catching up on news. We sort of drift in and out of interview-land and, before I get on to the album, I suppose we’ll do some catching up, too...

THE GROWING OUT OF BLONDIE

The pressures on Blondie were enormous. When they started branching out and breaking out of the expected pop pin-up mold, predictable new icons came along. There were always terrible business wrangles, until they simply called it a day— especially when it became obvious that Chris wouldn’t be able to work for some while. It must have come as some relief to get off the treadmill of tours and publicity, I venture.

‘‘Yeah,” agrees Debbie. “It gets you so you can’t really rest. You just keep running on nervous energy. It’s like being luggage, but I’m looking forward to it again so I must be a glutton for punishment! There must be something good about it.

“Everybody does the same thing. They reach a peak with it and go ‘Enough!’ and shut the door and cool out for a while. Unfortunately, that’s life. When you get somewhere, you have to take advantage of the time you have.”

Then there was Chris’s illness. This has been well-documented elsewhere and Debbie really doesn’t feel the need to relive the past this morning. Suffice it to say, for the way her face clouds over when she goes back to those troubled months, it’s a period which is now firmly in the past. She does talk about what really happened asks me not to write about it—and not from Weekly World News, so I rt.

Chris is doing good—he’s writing in. He did the soundtrack for Tales m The Darkside and some songs my record. You know Chris—he’s ays interested, always doing lething. He’s working on magic Ms and stuff...just kidding!

He’s out and about now. It’s taken tile, the recuperation, but he’s lly back to his former self. He’s got ific ideas, as usual. He’s a very ative person. He’s never really stopped. One of the worst things about being sick is your mind keeps going and you’re so limited. He never stopped thinking about things, so he’s about to carry them out!”

Must have been frustrating for him. “Yeah, sure. It was frustrating for me too. I’ve really felt terrific since I’ve been working on the music again. It’s really...elixir, heh heh heh!”

THE ROCKBIRD FLIES AGAIN

Once Chris was fit, Debbie turned her attention back to her career. At one point she found herself not only minus a band but without a manager and in a “contractual stalemate” with Chrysalis, her record company all over the world. Enter Stanley Arkin, an attorney specializing in litigation, in February of 1985. He met Debbie through a friend, liked her and she became his “sole star.”

“The reason l took her on was because it was something different and l think she’s an extraordinary artist,” enthuses Mr. Arkin on the telephone from Ohio. “Vile have a remarkable relationship and she is one of the great talents in America today.”

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Stanley organized Debbie’s finances, sold her old home and got her out of American Chrysalis before negotiating a new deal with Geffen. (She remains on Chrysalis throughout the rest of the world.) It’s the first time in 10 years I can remember Debbie being happy with her business situation. Stanley is happy too.

FRENCH KISSIN’ IN THE U.S.A

Next step was a new record. Debbie entered the studio under the production auspices of Seth Justman from the J. Geils Band, who also handles keyboards. Other musicians include Jimmy Ripp (who’s played with Tom Verlaine, Kid Creole and Yoko Ono), James White (sax), Jocelyn Brown and Geils’ Magic Dick (dunno about that but he plays a mean harp!).

The record is back in the radio rock-pop marketplace Debbie has handled with ease. No experimention, just down-the-line classy tunes with hints of funk and some of her inimitable sensuality on sultry swayers like the single and “In Love With Love.” The “Rip Her To Shreds” claws are out on “You Got Me In Trouble,” and that wonderful, relaxed popcroon glides over “Secret Life.” It’s a solid return and seems to be doing the trick (especially in the U.K., which picked up on Debbie first, anyway).

She describes Seth as a “misunderstood genius. I really needed to have somebody who would do a lot for me in making this record because I haven’t a band, and not having Chris there all the time to write everything, I needed a lot of different talent from the producer— and he was just perfect.”

Chris does contribute three tracks—“In Love With Love” (an airy “Heart Of Glass” toetweaker). Of course, a “bird” in England is slang for girl. Debbie?

“I just thought of it as a rock singer, a rock bird. Then I started thinking about the lyrics for the song—it’s about a paradox. I felt akin to being paradoxical some way or other...also it’s like this chunk of rock can fly.”

Debbie sees the album as a personal landmark for several reasons other than her “comeback”: her voice has never sounded stronger—“it’s more opened up”—the lyrics are the most personal she’s ever written and “I Want You” is one of the rare songs she cocomposed with another woman (Toni C, who works for “Jellybean” Benitez).

“It’s sort of odd just coming back and jumping in and doing something. I wrote more than ever this time. This is really a solo record for me—other than the fact that I collaborated with different people—it’s really my project. I nailed down everything after we had the basic tracks down. I prefer to work that way.

“I haven’t really gotten full force back into it compared to what was happening, and I don’t expect it to ever repeat itself like that.

I mean, Blondie was a phenomenon—we were riding this wave. I don’t expect that to happen ever again. From my experience of doing that I’d probably be more relaxed about everything and smarter. Our band set-up was very cumbersome to make it work efficiently, because everybody had a say in what was going on. It makes for more problems than really exist because it makes people think they should be saying something when they don’t have to. It broke down because of a combination of things.”

So you decided on a solo album?

“Well, I always intended to do one. I never thought that I had stopped completely. I just thought it was time to take a break. We had a lot of complicated things that happened to us, coupled with the group dispersing, business things, Chris being laid up for a while and me sort of looking to see where I was at and who I was gonna be and what I was gonna do.

“It just took a little bit of time to straighten all that stuff out. It really hasn’t been as long as all that. Some people have said, ‘oh, you’ve been gone for six years.’ I’d say ‘What are you talking about?’ I did a couple of singles—they were only singles, but were music! I’ve been keeping my hand in but I haven’t been hounding the old publicity trail.”

My favorite track off the album is probably “Secret Life,” I tell her.

“That’s odd that you say that, because really it has to do with having a relationship with somebody and...with me and Chris’ it’s sort of like a third personality has developed. We don’t have a child or anything, but it’s like I’m one person and he’s one person, but with the two of us together it’s like there’s this other, third person. That’s what I meant about this secret life—it can’t exist without two people, but there’s definitely another sort of joint personality that comes out. I guess it’s sort of inevitable. Everyone must have that if they have some long relationship or any kind of successful friendship or something.”

“Beyond The Limit” comes with a clipped and hard Nile Rodgers-composed groove and amusing lyrical catalogue of apartment disasters. It was based on the imminent panic caused when Debbie’s landlord was renovating last summer. Even the toast turned green!

“Free To Fall” is continental movies and drowning in the sea of love: “This one’s personal but not personal at the same time. It’s funny because the music suggested this weightless feeling of being in water and space. The chorus implies something about having a relationship you can’t get out of and so on and so forth. It really has a lot to do with...nothing I guess. I don’t know. It’s a sort of combination song. It gets back to the old Blondie perspective of being like the observer, because a lot of the songs I wrote then were done in the third person, being an observer of different situations. This album has the most personal lyrics I’ve ever written. I think it’s because of my personal involvement. I had more total control over choice of songs.I don’t know, maybe I’m more brave now.”

“LISTEN WHILE I TELL YOU OF A SECRET LIFE...”

Debbie Harry has always been a very private person. Although she couldn’t show her nose at the door of a club without a flashbulb popping, she never felt comfortable when the national papers started probing her personal life. That still stands. The last few years have seen her getting her new home together with Chris and, obviously, spending a lot of time at home. The couple still aren’t party-hoppers, but they might show up at a gig—especially the Sunday afternoon Hardcore matinees at CBGBs! Yes, Debbie has a healthy regard for the highspeed punk thrash.

“I like hardcore—it reminds me of punk in the early days. Sort of a cross between heavy metal and punk.”

Debbie’s also gotten into an early-to-bed lifestyle. “I get up early now. That’s one of the nice things about not working at night. I can’t say I’ve been on a health kick for any length of time...lately I’ve fallen into getting up at 7:30. I fall asleep at 9:30, then I wake up around midnight and go ‘What’s happening?’ Now it’s time to do something, so maybe it’s good for New York, J dunno.”

Debbie says she will do live gigs if she finds the right musicians—!‘l don’t want it to be a bunch of backup men doing the Debbie Harry Show...they have to have some kind of identity putting together a band. That would be fun.”

And she’s handling the cameras with customary poise and grace. “I guess it was something I always wanted to do...I used to be shy, but I used to hide it with a certain amount of bravado or whatever. When you have to deal with just the facts of life...”

So Debbie Harry’s back with new product, but more importantly a new-found strength in herself. The wheels start to turn again, but this time she’s got her seat-belt on and she’ll have fun looking out the window. 0