Debbie Harry

In mid-seventies New York, the men driving past in trucks would shout "Hey, Blondie!" at a woman who had bleached her hair platinum. It was a street catcall, the kind thrown without looking at who catches it.

She took it and turned it into the name of her band.

That move — taking what was thrown at her and turning it to her advantage — is, in miniature, the whole story of Debbie Harry.

The girl who invented herself twice

She was born in Miami in 1945 and her name was Angela Trimble. Her birth mother gave her up for adoption at three months; a couple raised her in Hawthorne, a New Jersey town, and renamed her Deborah. Church choir, cheerleading, the standard American childhood. None of it announced what came next.

She went to New York and survived on whatever there was: secretary at the BBC's New York office, waitress at the legendary Max's Kansas City, go-go dancer, Playboy bunny. There she met a guitarist, Chris Stein, who would be the love of her life and her musical partner. In 1974 they put together Blondie, at CBGB, in the most fertile scene rock has ever produced: New York punk, the same dive where the Ramones, Television and Talking Heads played.

And there she invented herself a second time. The platinum hair, the red lips, the sharp clothes: half old film star, half comic-book heroine, half beatnik diva.

What matters is not that she was beautiful — she was. It is that she controlled her own image at a time when women did not control theirs. She decided how she was looked at, and that ownership marked everyone who came after. Debbie Harry was nobody's muse: she was the author of her own icon.

The crossings

What makes her a cult figure, beyond the look, is that her band refused to be one thing.

Blondie came out of punk and immediately escaped it. "Heart of Glass", in 1979, went to number one with a bright disco sound, and the purists cried treason: how dare the CBGB band make them dance. She could not have cared less. Then came "Call Me". Then "The Tide Is High", with its reggae feel.

And then "Rapture", in January 1981: the first American number one with rap on it. That is not a trivia footnote. In 1978 Fab 5 Freddy had taken her and Stein to a rap party in the Bronx, when the genre was a street secret that no radio station played. They were dazzled. Three years later she was naming Fab 5 Freddy and Grandmaster Flash in the song, and taking them to the top of the charts before anyone else did.

Punk, disco, reggae, rap. Debbie Harry stood at every crossing, mixing worlds that were not supposed to mix. She was New York's melting pot in the shape of one blonde woman.

What was underneath

It has to be said, because she said it first, and bravely.

At the peak of her fame, she and Stein were using heroin. She has described it without drama and without excuses, as a self-medication that at some point stopped doing anything for her.

And in her memoir, published in 2019, she wrote that in the seventies a man got into her apartment and raped her at knifepoint. She did not tell it for sympathy. She told it because she decided, at seventy-four, that her whole story — the terrible parts included — was hers to name. It is the same ownership as at the beginning, applied to the worst thing that happened to her.

Blondie split in 1982, at the height of their success, worn down by the strain of all the attention landing on her rather than on the group. Shortly afterwards Stein fell seriously ill with a rare autoimmune disease, and Debbie nursed him through it while the money they had made went on treatment. She kept going: solo, acting, holding on.

In 1997 the band came back, and in 1999 had another British number one, "Maria", seventeen years after the last one. In 2006 they entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They never stopped again.

The one who stayed

And there is what really makes her great, and it is the simplest thing of all: she survived.

The scene she came out of — the New York of heroin and the night — took a great many of her people, young and permanently. Others did not make it through and became legends for it. Not her. Debbie Harry is eighty-one, alive, and still on stage with Blondie.

Somebody once asked her what it felt like to be an icon and she answered, sharply, that an icon is a statue carved in wood and that for that, supposedly, you have to be dead. She refused to be. On ageing she summed up her life in a line worth keeping: that she is one lucky bitch.

If you know her only from a photograph — the perfect eighties blonde — you are missing half of it. Go to "Rapture" and take in that this glamorous woman brought rap to number one when nobody saw it coming. Go to "Heart of Glass" and hear a punk making you dance to disco without asking anyone's permission.

Debbie Harry was not a pretty face from an era. She was the one who walked all its roads at once, who took ownership of her own image, and who, against every expectation, is still here to tell it.

This text mentions sexual violence. If you or someone you know has been through something like this, you are not alone and help is available. In Chile, the SernamEG Gender Violence Helpline is 1455, from 08:00 to 00:00 every day, with a silent WhatsApp service at +56 9 9700 7000. For emergencies during the night there are Carabineros' 149, plus 133 and 134. And in the case of a recent sexual assault you can go directly to any emergency service, without needing to have filed a report: care is guaranteed within the first 72 hours. Seeking support is an act of strength.

Sources

Debbie Harry (born Angela Trimble; Miami, Florida, 1 July 1945), American singer, the voice and image of Blondie. She was given up for adoption at three months and raised as Deborah Harry by Catherine and Richard Harry in Hawthorne, New Jersey. Before turning to music she worked as a secretary at the BBC's New York office, a waitress at Max's Kansas City, a go-go dancer and a Playboy bunny. In 1974 she and guitarist Chris Stein left the band The Stillettoes and formed Blondie; the name comes from the street catcall shouted at her after she bleached her hair. The band emerged from the New York punk and new wave scene at CBGB. US number ones: "Heart of Glass" (1979, with a disco sound that brought accusations of selling out), "Call Me" (1980), "The Tide Is High" (a reggae-flavoured cover) and "Rapture", released on 12 January 1981 and two weeks at number one, the first American single to reach that position with rap vocals; in its spoken section Harry names Fab 5 Freddy and Grandmaster Flash. Harry and Stein came to know the Bronx hip-hop scene through Fab 5 Freddy (Fred Brathwaite), who took them to a rap party in 1978. Harry has spoken publicly about her heroin use in those years. In her memoir "Face It" (2019) she revealed that in the seventies she was raped at knifepoint by a man who entered her apartment. Blondie split in 1982; Stein was diagnosed in that period with pemphigus vulgaris, a rare autoimmune disease, and Harry cared for him through his recovery; the couple separated in 1987, keeping the musical partnership. The band reunited in 1997 and released "No Exit" (1999), with the British number one "Maria". Blondie entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006 and remains active. The quotes about being an "icon" and about ageing come from interviews and her memoir. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of her work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, Biography.com, Rolling Stone and press coverage.