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• Face It: A Memoir - 2019 Dey Street Books, New York, NY

• NME - https://www.nme.com/music-interviews/debbie-harry-face-it-autobiography-70s-bowie-feminism-2552924

  QUOTE:
  "Face It is a rollicking, riotous read, taking in Blondie’s ascent from gritty downtown New York to pop superstars to the band’s nosedive of heroin addiction, bankruptcy and break-up, and phoenix-like return to the top of the charts in 1999. But it’s frequently bracing in its matter-of-fact frankness."
  Debbie Harry on a life like no other: “I have a stubborn will to survive”

  By her own admission, NME Godlike Genius Debbie Harry has lived "a hell of a life" - and now she's laying it all out in the table in Face It, an often jaw-dropping biography. In a candid interview, she tells Gary Ryan about her extraordinary life, Bowie's penis, and modern femininity.

  Gary Ryan

  2nd October 2019
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  ‘When I met you in the restaurant/You could tell I was no debutante” sang Debbie Harry on Blondie’s imperious 1979 single ‘Dreaming’. In her ’30s when fame struck, she always had the knowing air of someone who had seen in all before. Now her new autobiography reveals the – sometimes jaw-dropping – extent to which that was true.
  Watch our video interview with Debbie Harry above
  Face It is a rollicking, riotous read, taking in Blondie’s ascent from gritty downtown New York to pop superstars to the band’s nosedive of heroin addiction, bankruptcy and break-up, and phoenix-like return to the top of the charts in 1999.
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  But it’s frequently bracing in its matter-of-fact frankness. Experiences that would span chapters in other tomes are nonchalantly brushed aside like lint off a jacket. She is stalked by a crazed ex who breaks into her bedroom with a gun – an experience she’d channel into the song ‘One Way or Another’. There’s the time her apartment burns down because the biker gang leader living in the flat above her has been tied-up, tortured and set on fire. Add in a kidnap attempt by serial killer Ted Bundy, Phil Spector pulling a firearm on her, and David Bowie exposing himself, and it’s fair to say it’s a real page-turner.

  Debbie Harry’s autobiography, Face It
  We meet in an upscale room in London’s Savoy hotel. Last night, she caught up with her friend Iggy Pop – who once memorably described her as ‘Barbarella on speed’ – at an awards ceremony (“He seemed in very good form,” she beams). Even at 74 – with signature blonde hair, wearing leather trousers and a chic hoodie – she looks eerily identical to her Warhol screen-print: which means that even though she’s warm and kind (“Have you got a cushion? I love your T-shirt!”) you can never shake the surreal feeling that you’re talking to the most influential frontwoman in music; an ambulatory archive of New York cool.
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  As leader of Blondie, Harry has always been someone who forges forward – they were the first punk band to embrace disco in 1979 with ‘Heart of Glass’ and scored the first number one rap song in the US with ‘Rapture’ in 1981 – refusing to bow to nostalgia, so she admits that looking in life’s rear-view mirror did not come easy to her.

  “At first, it was absolutely hateful,” she says of the process of reflecting on her life. “I’m not the type that likes wandering down memory lane a lot. Overall, I feel pretty good about it and I tried to bring some serious aspects to it and also a bit of humour and I didn’t really want to offend a whole of people – though I’m sure some people will be a little bit offended!”
  “Some people are lucky and find themselves in their late ’20s, but it took me a little bit longer.”
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  Face It is illustrated by fan art she’s collected from over her 40-plus year career. What’s the most unusual thing a fan’s ever given her? “A guy sent me his ponytail – we call it a freak-flag – because he was going to jail,” she remembers. “It was creepy, sad and sweet. It hit me in a lot of different ways!” She notes that fans subconsciously, subtly include references to their own face when drawing her. It may be that she’s easy to project an image onto because in a world of oversharing, she’s often referred to as something of a sphinx.
  Her story begins in 1945. Born Angela Trimble, she was adopted and writes how being separated from her birth mother after three months left its mark: even now, when her band go their separate ways at the airport, she gets “a gut reaction of fear and abandonment.” As a teenager in New Jersey, she felt different and was always trying to fit in. “I’ve been fortunate in the respect that I did find my way,” she says. “Some people are lucky and find themselves in their late ’20s, but it took me a little bit longer.”

  Debbie Harry, 2019. credit: Getty Images for ASCAP
  She paints an evocative image of her teenage years, riding to a street nicknamed Cunt Mile – where she’d walk around looking “as hot and trashy” as possible, waiting for guys to cruise her, which sounds like Tinder before Tinder existed.
  “I suppose, yeah!” she laughs. “It was a little more street-action. So it amounts to the same thing, I think – you know, fooling around, and trying to find friends who are boyfriends or whatever. For me, it was pretty much all fun and kind of naughty – which was great!”
  She laughs. “Tinder! You know, I have friends who do that regularly – I haven’t tried it.” Yet this is pre-the sexual revolution and the signs of the period’s different mores and attitudes are always lurking underneath: a friend says she’s going on holiday to Florida – it turns out she secretly headed to Puerto Rico for an abortion, shrouded in silence and shame. No-one says anything.
  Perhaps the most shocking moment for the post-Yewtree era reader arrives when she’s holidaying with her cousin in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. They head into town. “I don’t know exactly how old we were,” she says. “I know we weren’t teenagers yet. We’d wander up and down the strip and put on make-up and lipstick and be real dangerous. And that’s how we met Buddy!”

  Blondie’s Debbie Harry in the ’70s, New York. Credit: Anthony Barboza/Getty Images
  ‘Buddy’ is Buddy Rich – famous for being Frank Sinatra’s drummer – who was one of a group of men in their late-30s who asked the pre-teens out. They secretly followed them home, rapping on the front-door at around 11pm – Harry’s parents found it “hilarious”, and led them upstairs to see the two of them safe in bed, faces cleanly-scrubbed and very clearly children. Two weeks later, a signed photo of Buddy arrives through their letterbox.
  Harry is still amused by this life-snippet; a reaction which you might not expect.
  “You know, we were flirting and I don’t mean to indicate that he was some kind of predator or anything like that. He was with a friend and you know we were being – not bad girls, but trying to be sophisticated in our own, silly way. He must have known we were quite young and it was all very funny actually.”
  With dreams of becoming an artist, she followed the bright, beckoning lights to New York City, working at a waitress at legendary rock venue Max’s Kansas City – where James Rado and Gerome Ragni would beaver away in the backroom writing the musical Hair – and Andy Warhol (who would later paint her) and “big tipper” Janis Joplin were regulars.

  After a stint in a folk-collective The Wind in the Willows, her music career properly kicked off when she joined The Stilettos – a campy all-girl trio with a male back-up band – and collided with guitarist Chris Stein. They played famous drag bar Club 82 – David Bowie once turned up to watch a performance years before inviting Blondie to support him on tour in 1977 – and friends tell Harry: “You’re definitely a drag queen”. She’s pleased at having seen drag go from being an underground subculture to the point where she was a judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2016. “It’s wonderful that it’s become a thing of its own and its recognised,” she applauds.
  Becoming romantic partners, Harry and Stein broke away and formed Blondie in 1974, marking the start of a prolific and creatively-fecund writing relationship that continues to this day. Inspired by Marilyn Monroe, Harry created the character she played in Blondie as a “cartoon fantasy”. In Face It, she writes: ‘More and more lately, I’ve been thinking that I was portraying some kind of transsexual creature.’
  “Tinder! You know, I have friends who do that regularly – I haven’t tried it.”
  Does she think if terms like genderqueer and non-binary had been around then, she would have identified with them?
  “Perhaps,” she says, chewing over the thought like gum. “I don’t know if I made myself as clear as I possibly could with that because I always felt that lyrically with these songs, I was trying to represent the guys in the band as well as myself. I was trying to speak for all of us.
  “And I always felt that since all my life, I was always called ‘Debbie’ or ‘Harry’ – so I embodied this myself and it’s just the way it was. It probably still is!” She laughs. “Yeah, so I don’t know – I never really had any problems with that and I’m always surprised when people have a fear or frustration about their combination of sexualities – I think we do better recognising both within ourselves.”

  Despite being a pioneer – she was playing up to the idea of being a highly feminine woman fronting a male rock band in a highly phallocentric industry – she swerves taking much credit for breaking new ground.
  “By the time CGBGs came around, there were more girls involved – and over here as well in the UK,” she considers. “It was the beginning of female intervention -“ she laughs dryly – “or whatever you want to call it. I think there was more resistance to having girls in bands towards the end of the ‘60s – Cherry Vanilla and Ruby Lynn were very active early on. They probably had it much harder than I did. Though it just seemed like it was part of evolution as far as I could see. I also felt that way about the gay guys fronting bands and it being very apparent – I think they had it a lot harder than me.”
  “In order to survive, I could never put myself in the position of whining about being a woman. I just got on with it. “
  Written down, it might seem like false modesty: but there’s a part of her book which gives an insight into her worldview: “In order to survive, I could never put myself in the position of whining about being a woman. I just got on with it. As much as it was possible, I found a way to do what I wanted to do.”
  Even so, she faced rampant sexism. To promote Blondie’s eponymous debut album, her record company plastered posters of her solo in a see-through blouse around Times Square.
  “At the time, I was shocked and I was told something different,” she reflects. “I think that’s really what the problem was – that I was reassured that the photo would be cropped and that it wouldn’t be used below a certain point.”
  “The frustration for me was that I hadn’t been treated fairly – they hadn’t said: ‘Oh well, we’re going to use the full shot’ – they said: ‘We’re going to crop it’, and then they didn’t, so that was the rub more than the fact you could see my breasts.”

  Blondie’s Debbie Harry. Credit: Ilya S. Savenok/Getty
  Rightly, she asked the label executive: ‘Well, how would you like it if it was your balls that were exposed?’ “That did not get a good response!” she laughs.
  Over the last decade, Blondie have collaborated with the likes of Gossip‘s Beth Ditto and recorded tracks written by Charli XCX and Sia. In June, Harry was among a retinue of big-names appearing in Halsey’s ‘Nightmare’ video. Witnessing younger artists she paved the way for, does she still see any double standards in the industry?
  “I think it’s opened up so much that I don’t know if I really have any complaints,” she dismisses. “I mean, it can be frustrating. I don’t think that’s particularly about sex so much as that it’s such a competitive industry.”
  On Patti Smith: “I can’t really describe her as being masculine, but I think she definitely embodied a strength that was intellectual.”
  You might readily assume assume someone like Patti Smith be a kindred spirit in understanding the challenges Harry faced; yet there seemed little solidarity there. Instead, she aggressively gatecrashes Blondie’s auditions for a drummer and hawkishly tries to steal Clem Burke.
  “I still don’t to this day know what was going on there,” laughs Harry. “But it was funny and Patti was Patti, you know – I can’t really describe her as being masculine, but I think she definitely embodied a strength that was intellectual, [and both] feminine and masculine – as we all did to survive in that particular period.”
  “I can’t imagine Halsey coming off that way. I think the girls that come out now are pretty overtly women or feminine. St Vincent is one of my favourites. She’s such a talent and so beautiful, but the sophistication that’s come down now is that everybody really has their own sense of balance in their own sexual skin – but I really can’t say that it has anything to do with me,” she demurs.
  “It really has to do with our understanding, and the way that people speak out about who they are and what they are – the standards have changed, and that’s perfectly right as far as I’m concerned.”

  Debbie Harry in the ’70s. Credit: GAB Archive/Redferns
  A month after our interview comes a jolting cattle-prod of perhaps how little has changed: when a US newspaper tweets its review of Face It with the backhanded-compliment, reductive, casually sexist sell: ‘In her memoir, Debbie Harry proves she’s more than just a pretty blonde in tight pants’.
  Never mind the six UK number one singles she racked up fronting Blondie, her five solo albums, the countless collaborations (with artists as diverse as Franz Ferdinand, The Jazz Passengers and Future Islands), or acting career with roles in cult classics such as John Waters’s Hairspray and David Cronenberg’s Videodrome – as one Twitter response succinctly put it, it’s the equivalent of saying: ‘In her memoir, Marie Curie proves she’s more than just a slut with some beakers.’
  “I think the girls that come out now are pretty overtly women or feminine. St Vincent is one of my favourites.”
  Her account of the early days of Blondie is wild. During their initial LA gigs, Phil Spector invites them to his mansion, makes Harry sing Ronettes songs and, at one point, sticks his gun in the top of her thigh length boot and says ‘Bang, bang’.
  “That was sort of I guess his fascination,” says Harry. “It’s tragic the way things turned out for him. And I honestly wish it didn’t happen – he obviously made a terrible mistake.” She’s referring to the 19 years to life Spector is serving for shooting actress Lana Clarkson in 2003. Could she have predicted it would end that way for him? “No. I think he obviously had a wild side to him and a reputation. I think it was sort of like a game for him. And sometimes games turn out badly.”

  During Blondie’s first tour – supporting David Bowie and Iggy Pop in 1977 – she hooks them up with cocaine, and after they do the blow, Bowie flops out his apparently notoriously big dick. What went through her mind?
  “Well, I was surprised and flattered actually and sort of ‘Oh!’. She laughs “I mean, who wouldn’t? This is like the perfect rock’n’roll story really. And if it’s David Bowie, what could be better? I thought it was a very gentlemanly gesture in a way. It wasn’t like he was jumping all over me. He was just like: ‘This is my penis’. Very nice!” One of Harry’s strengths seems to be that she always finds the humour – or absurdity – in any situation.
  On David Bowie: “It wasn’t like he was jumping all over me. He was just like: ‘This is my penis’. Very nice! I thought it was a very gentlemanly gesture in a way.”
  Blondie were post-genre before the term existed, coating whatever musical style they turned their hand to – punk, disco, reggae – in their own Midas bleach. The video to ‘Rapture’ featured Jean-Michel Basquiat and Fab Five Freddy – who had taken Debbie and Chris to their first rap show in the Bronx back in 1977 and was namechecked in Harry’s flow.
  “Many rappers, including members of Mobb Deep, said it was the first rap song they had ever heard,” she says. “I’m very flattered by that.”
  Fast forward to 2019 and Blondie were covering Lil Nas X’s ‘Old Town Road’ on tour. “I guess the parallel of that was that we had combined a rock-pop feel with a rap homage so obviously that [‘Old Town Road’] is the same thing, only it’s supposedly a country song.” Two years ago, Kanye West phoned her up to moot the possibility of working together. “We did speak to Kanye,” she confirms. “He was very sweet and nice and I forget the song that we were talking about of his that we really liked. Nothing ever came of it but it was a nice, friendly conversation and that was that.” Could the collaboration still happen? “Probably not,” she dismisses. “But how can you know?”

  Harry says the most difficult period of the book to re-examine was “between the years 1982 and ’85 – that was a rough patch for all of us”: the band imploded, Stein was diagnosed with pemphigus (an autoimmune disease so rare, hospital nurses assumed he had AIDS and refused to go into his room) and both were numbing the pain – physical and emotional – with heroin.
  Despite selling 40 million records, bad management meant they owed a huge bill in unpaid tax – and lost their house to the IRS. “I think when you look back on tough times, as a way to save yourself, your brain takes you to a safe place so you’re looking back on things that might have been particularly horrible at the time, but it’s made easier with a little bit of distance,” she says.
  Although Harry and Stein split 1987 – on the day Andy Warhol died – they’ve remained close and she is godmother to his two teenage daughters (he married in 1999). And, when the core members of Blondie reformed in 1998, they returned to the top of the charts with ‘Maria’ – which would surely provide the climactic moment in a biopic. But despite the trend (and box-office smashes of Rocketman and Bohemian Rhapsody), she isn’t keen to see Blondie’s life immortalised on the big screen.

  Chris Stein and Debbie Harry met in 1973
  “I’m not so sure that I’m totally fond of them,” she says. “I think sometimes they really miss the mark.” She sees it as being a similar journey for every band: “you start out on one level, your music becomes popular, somebody dies – or keeps on living. You could pretty much take Elton out and put somebody else in and it’s the same story.”
  When Blondie last toured the UK, Harry strode out in a cape emblazoned with: ‘STOP FUCKING THE PLANET’. She describes herself as pro-ecology and anti-Trump. She’s heartened by the rise of Extinction Rebellion. “It’s more on everyone’s consciousness and it’s something kids are growing up to do: talk about necessary evils! I love the Swedish girl who wouldn’t go to school [Greta Thunberg]. I sort of think: well, she probably hates school.” She laughs. “But no, it takes a lot of courage to do that and it’s the ultimate importance.”
  “What can I say? We have to do it. If we don’t, we’re finished. So the sooner everyone gets on board if it’s not too late, we can save the planet. We can save ourselves.”
  On protesting climate change: “We have to do it. If we don’t, we’re finished. So the sooner everyone gets on board if it’s not too late, we can save the planet.”
  The band have seemingly become more overtly political in recent years, albeit with characteristic sly humour rather than tub-thumping. Most recently by covering Matt Monro’s Bond theme ‘From Russia With Love’ in front of a fake presidential seal.
  Stein once recounted a story about how Trump met Harry at a party: and the future 45th president informed her she was too short for him. That’s not true, corrects Harry, setting the record straight. “No! He didn’t speak to me at all. And that’s fine.” She laughs. “I was going out with Penn Gillet from Penn and Teller and he was on The Apprentice. We met at a promotional event for one of the tasks. Our paths crossed ever so briefly – and he completely ignored me. We toured with Cyndi Lauper who did The Apprentice and she said he was constantly trying to get her to change her charity – because it was an LGBTQ charity.”
  “So yeah…,” she purses her lips disdainfully. “He’s one of a kind. Thank God!”

  Now, in 2019, it might seem outrageous that Creem magazine once “outed” Harry for being in her ’30s at the height of Blondie’s success. She’s still striding forward, and is set to record Blondie’s 12th studio album – their first since 2017’s ‘Pollinator’ – in December/January, with John Congleton tentatively lined up to produce again. Johnny Marr has written another track for them, she says – following on from ‘My Monster’, which he penned for ‘Pollinator’. Does she feel that ageism – which gained renewed salience this year when Madonna claimed she was “being punished for turning 60” – is the last barrier in pop to destroy?
  “There’s always been a prejudice against age and ageing and that has to do with survival. It’s an animal instinct.”
  “Yeah – I think we’ve come a long way,” she says. “If you’re a musician and you want to keep working, that’s really up to you. But I mean, there’s always been a prejudice against age and ageing and that has to do with survival. It’s an animal instinct, I think. But our ideas of vitality and age are changing with everything else, because we’re living better, we’re living longer.”
  Harry once said that when she started writing songs, she was “ sick and tired” of tracks by girl-groups “who were victimised by love… I didn’t want to portray myself or women as victims”: hence we ended up with classics like their debut single ‘X Offender’ which rebooted the Shangri Las ’60s pop-pulpy drama with more streetwise, empowered lyrics about a cop who falls in love with a sex worker. That theme of not being a victim seems to extent to her own narrative – no more so than when she describes a brutal attack at knifepoint in the early ‘70s when she and Stein are trailed home by a man who ties up Stein, then rapes Harry. He then steals their cameras and guitars.
  “I can’t say that I felt a lot of fear,” she writes. “I’m very glad this happened pre-AIDS or I might have freaked. In the end, the stolen guitars hurt me more than the rape.”

  Lorna Luft, Jerry Hall, Andy Warhol, Debbie Harry, Truman Capote and Paloma Picasso
  It’s a paragraph that punches in the solar plexus – precisely because it’s dealt with so abruptly and in a straightforward tone; any aftershocks aren’t discussed.
  “Well I think it did affect me,” she says. “I think I have a bit of a stubborn will to survive – for good or for bad. I mean, it could have turned out badly but it didn’t so I think one has to have a sense of relativity,” she says. “I think you can really hurt yourself by carrying around a lot of fear and I realised early on that fear is destructive.”
  “What do I know? This is what works for me and what I’ve learned to live with – or live around – and move on.”
  Harry mentions in her memoir that she thinks she’s “psychic”: which has come to her in flashes like when her fireplace starts talking to her as a child. As one of the last survivors of her era – the book is filled with anecdotes about now-departed friends and colleagues like The Ramones, Bowie, Malcolm McLaren, Warhol, Basquiat, Harry Dean Stanton – has she ever felt any of their presences? “It’s nothing like that,” she dismisses. “For me, it’s more about knowing what things are likely to happen so whether it’s a sense of logic or whether it’s wishful thinking – I’m sure that’s a lot of it. Chris and I went to see a psychic years ago – her name was Ethel Myers – and she had premonitions. Then when her husband died, she became psychic and had that contact. I don’t have anything like that, but I do think there are a lot of things the brain can do that we just don’t know yet.”
  Having blazed a trail for artists as diverse as Lady Gaga, Garbage’s Shirley Manson and Madonna, does she have anything else she wants to achieve? ““I don’t know if I can see anything I haven’t really done except interstellar space travel. And little things like driving a race car or parachuting from a plane – that kind of exciting, adrenaline junkie thing.”
  After all, she concludes: “It’s been a hell of life – and I’m lucky and fortunate it’s turned out like this”

• Wikipedia -

  Debbie Harry
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  Debbie Harry

  Harry in 1977
  Born
  Angela Trimble
  July 1, 1945 (age 74)
  Miami, Florida, U.S.
  Occupation
  Singersongwriteractress
  Musical career
  Origin
  New York City, U.S.
  Genres
  Rocknew wavepunk rockdiscopop
  Instruments
  Vocals
  Years active
  1964–present
  Labels
  Private StockChrysalisGeffenEpicSireEleven Seven
  Associated acts
  Blondiethe Wind in the Willowsthe Jazz Passengers

  Deborah Ann Harry (born Angela Trimble; July 1, 1945) is an American singer, songwriter, model and actress, known as the lead singer of the new wave band Blondie. Her recordings with the band reached number one in the U.S. and UK charts on many occasions from 1979 to 1981.
  Born in Miami, Florida, Harry was adopted as an infant and raised in Hawthorne, New Jersey. After attending college, she worked various odd jobs, including as a secretary, dancer, and Playboy Bunny, before breaking through in the music industry. Harry co-formed Blondie in 1974 in New York City. The band released their self-titled debut album in 1976, and released a further three albums between then and 1979, including Parallel Lines, which spawned six singles, including "Heart of Glass." Their fifth record, Autoamerican (1980), afforded Harry and the band further attention, spawning such hits as a cover of "The Tide Is High", and "Rapture," the latter of which is considered the first rap song to chart at number one in the United States.[1]
  In 1981, Harry released her debut solo album, KooKoo, and, during a hiatus of Blondie, also embarked on an acting career, appearing in lead roles in the neo-noir Union City (1983) and in David Cronenberg's body horror film Videodrome (1983). She released her second solo album, Rockbird, in 1986, and subsequently starred in John Waters's cult dance film Hairspray (1988). Harry went on to release two more solo albums between then and 1993, after which she returned to film with roles in a John Carpenter-directed segment of the horror film Body Bags (1993), and in the drama Heavy (1995).
  Blondie reunited in the late 1990s, releasing No Exit (1999), followed by The Curse of Blondie (2003). Harry continued to appear in independent films throughout the 2000s, including Deuces Wild (2002), My Life Without Me (2003) and Eulogy (2008). With Blondie, she released the group's ninth studio album, Panic of Girls, in 2011, followed by Ghosts of Download (2014). The band's eleventh studio album, 2017's Pollinator, charted at number 4 in the United Kingdom. In October 2019, Harry published a memoir titled Face It - in which she confirms her birth surname as Trimble.

  Contents
  1
  Life and career
  1.1
  1945–1965: Early life
  1.2
  1966–1975: Early projects; formation of Blondie
  1.3
  1976–1980: Global success
  1.4
  1981–1987: Solo work and acting
  1.5
  1988–1996: Blondie reunion, solo, and further acting
  1.6
  1997–2007: Blondie reformation and solo output
  1.7
  2008–present: Further musical endeavors
  2
  Personal life
  3
  Philanthropy
  4
  Discography
  5
  Filmography
  6
  Bibliography
  7
  References
  8
  Sources
  9
  External links
  Life and career[edit]
  1945–1965: Early life[edit]
  Harry was born Angela Trimble on July 1, 1945, in Miami, Florida.[2] At the age of three months, she was adopted by Richard Harry and Catherine (née Peters) Harry,[3] gift shop proprietors in Hawthorne, New Jersey, and renamed Deborah Ann Harry. Harry learned of her adoption at four years old and later, in the late 1980s, located her birth mother, a concert pianist,[4] who chose to not establish a relationship with her.[5] In her memoir, Harry recalled being a tomboy, spending much of her childhood playing in the woods adjacent to her home in Hawthorne.[6]
  Harry attended Hawthorne High School, graduating in 1963.[7] She graduated from Centenary College in Hackettstown, New Jersey, with an Associate of Arts degree in 1965.[8] Before beginning her singing career, she moved to New York City in the late 1960s, and worked there as a secretary at BBC Radio's office for one year.[9] Later, she was a waitress at Max's Kansas City,[10] a go-go dancer in a Union City, New Jersey discothèque,[11] and a Playboy Bunny.[12]
  1966–1975: Early projects; formation of Blondie[edit]
  Main article: Blondie (band)
  In the late 1960s, Harry began her musical career as a backing singer for the folk rock group The Wind in the Willows,[13] which released an eponymous album in 1968 on Capitol Records.[14]
  In 1974, Harry joined the Stilettoes with Elda Gentile and Amanda Jones. Shortly thereafter, the band added guitarist Chris Stein, who became her boyfriend.[15][16][17] In her memoir, Face It, Harry describes having been raped at knifepoint during a burglary of the home she shared with Stein.[18]
  After leaving the Stilettoes, Harry and Stein formed Angel and the Snake with Tish Bellomo and Snooky Bellomo. Shortly thereafter, Harry and Stein formed Blondie, named after the catcall men often directed at Harry after she bleached her hair blonde.[19] The band quickly became regulars at Max's Kansas City and CBGB in New York City.[10]

  Harry performing with Blondie in Toronto, 1977
  1976–1980: Global success[edit]
  With her beauty, daring choice of clothing, and two-tone bleached-blonde hair, Harry quickly became a punk icon.[20][21]
  In June 1979, Blondie was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone. Harry's persona, combining cool sexuality with streetwise style, became so closely associated with the group's name that many came to believe "Blondie" was the singer's name. The difference between the individual Harry and the band Blondie was emphasized by a "Blondie is a group" button campaign by the band in 1979.[22]
  Blondie released their self-titled debut album in 1976; it peaked at No. 14 in Australia and No. 75 in the United Kingdom.[23] Their second album, Plastic Letters, garnered some success outside the United States,[24] but their third album, Parallel Lines (1978), was a worldwide hit and catapulted the group to international success.[25] It included the global hit single "Heart of Glass". Riding the crest of disco's domination, the track made No. 1 in the US and sold nearly two million copies. It also reached No. 1 in the UK and was the second highest-selling single of 1979. The band's success continued with the release of the platinum-selling Eat to the Beat album (UK No. 1, US No. 17) in 1979.[26]
  Autoamerican (UK No. 3, US No. 7) was released in 1980. Blondie had further No. 1 hits with "Call Me" (American Gigolo soundtrack) (US No. 1), "Atomic" (Eat to the Beat album) (UK No. 1), "The Tide Is High" (US No. 1), and "Rapture" (US No. 1).
  During this time, both Harry and Stein befriended graffiti artist Fab Five Freddy, who introduced them to the emerging hip-hop scene in the Bronx. Freddy is mentioned in "Rapture" and also makes an appearance in the video. Through him they were also able to connect with Grandmaster Flash.[27]
  Harry was immortalized by Andy Warhol in 1980, who produced a number of artworks of her image from a single photoshoot at the Factory. The artist created a small series of four acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas portraits of the star in different colors, as well as Polaroids and a small number of rare silver gelatin prints from the shoot. Stein was also present that day to capture Warhol photographing Harry in a series of his own photographs, exhibited in 2013 in London.
  Her collaboration and friendship with Warhol continued and she was his first guest on the MTV show, Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes. The first episode opened with Harry announcing the theme: "Sex, Vegetables, Brothers and Sisters."[28]
  Harry said of her relationship with Warhol, "I think the best thing [Andy Warhol] taught me was always to be open to new things, new music, new style, new bands, new technology and just go with it. Never get mired in the past and always accept new things whatever age you are."[citation needed]
  1981–1987: Solo work and acting[edit]
  In 1981, Harry issued a press release to clarify that her name was not "Debbie Blondie" or "Debbie Harry" but rather Deborah Harry, though Harry later described her character in the band as being named "Blondie", as in this quote from the No Exit tour book:
  Hi, it's Deb. You know, when I woke up this morning I had a realization about myself. I was always Blondie. People always called me Blondie, ever since I was a little kid. What I realized is that at some point I became Dirty Harry. I couldn't be Blondie anymore, so I became Dirty Harry.[29]
  Harry began her solo career with the album KooKoo (1981). Produced by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards of Chic, the album peaked at No. 25 in the US and No. 6 in the UK;[30] and was later certified gold in the US and silver in the UK. The album's cover art was controversial, and many stores refused to stock it.[31] "Backfired", the first single from the album, had a video directed by H. R. Giger (who also created the album's front cover featuring Harry's face with metal skewers through it). The single reached No. 43 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 29 on the Hot Dance Club Songs, and No. 32 on the UK Singles Chart.[30] "The Jam Was Moving" was lifted as the second single and peaked at No. 82 in the US.
  After a year-long hiatus, Blondie regrouped and released their sixth studio album, The Hunter (1982). The album was not as successful as their previous works, and a world tour was cut short due to slow ticket sales. It was around this time that Stein also fell seriously ill with the rare autoimmune disease pemphigus. His illness, along with declining record sales and internal struggles, caused the band to split up.
  After Blondie split up in 1982, Harry's solo output slowed down as she cared for ailing partner Chris Stein. She released the single "Rush Rush" in 1983 (produced by Giorgio Moroder and taken from the film Scarface), but it was commercially unsuccessful. The same year, Harry had a leading role in David Cronenberg's body horror film Videodrome (1983), playing the sadomasochistic lover of a television producer who uncovers an underground video output of snuff films.[32] Harry received rave reviews for her performance in the film.[32] Critic Howard Hampton noted in a retrospective that Harry "carries herself with the wry, burned-out, but still titillated instincts of a voyager buying a one-way ticket for the outer limits. A vivid, smallish part can either anchor or undo a risky, conceptually spiky film like David Cronenberg’s viscerally deranged phantasia: Harry’s presence grounds it in acute, self-aware reality."[33]
  A new single, "Feel The Spin" (taken from the film Krush Groove), was released as a limited 12" single in 1985, but it also was unsuccessful. In 1986, Harry released her second solo album, called Rockbird, which peaked at No. 97 in the US, and No. 31 in the UK[30] (where it has been certified gold for 100,000 sales by the BPI). The single "French Kissin' in the USA" gave Harry her only UK solo top 10 hit (No. 8) and became a moderate US hit (No. 57). Other singles released from the album were "Free to Fall" and "In Love with Love", which hit No. 1 on the US Dance Charts and was released with several remixes.
  In 1987, Harry starred opposite Alec Baldwin in the comedy mystery film Forever, Lulu, playing the title character.
  1988–1996: Blondie reunion, solo, and further acting[edit]
  "Liar, Liar" was recorded by Harry for the soundtrack album Married to the Mob in 1988 and was produced by Mike Chapman. It was their first collaboration since the 1982 Blondie album The Hunter. The same year, Harry starred as Velma Von Tussle in John Waters's satirical dance film Hairspray.
  Her next solo venture was the album Def, Dumb and Blonde in 1989. At this point Harry reverted from "Debbie" to "Deborah" as her professional name. The first single "I Want That Man" was a hit in Europe and Australia and on the US Modern Rock Charts. The success of the single propelled the album to No. 12 on the UK chart,[30] where it earned a silver disc. However, with little promotion from her record company in the US, it peaked at No. 123. She followed this up with the ballad "Brite Side" and the club hit "Sweet and Low". "Maybe for Sure", a reworked version of "Angel's Song" she'd recorded for the Rock and Rule animated film, was the fourth single released from the album in June 1990 to coincide with a UK tour (her second in six months). The track "Kiss It Better" was also a Top 15 Modern Rock single in the US.
  Harry also appeared in film during this time, with a supporting part in Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990). From 1989 to 1991, Harry toured extensively across the world with former Blondie guitarist Chris Stein, Underworld's Karl Hyde, and future Blondie bassist Leigh Foxx. In July 1991 she played Wembley Stadium, supporting INXS. In 1991, Chrysalis released a new "best of" compilation in Europe entitled The Complete Picture: The Very Best of Deborah Harry and Blondie, containing hits with Blondie as well as her solo hits. The collection reached No. 3 in the UK album chart[30] and earned a gold disc. The album also included her duet with Iggy Pop of the Cole Porter song "Well, Did You Evah!" from the 1990 Red Hot + Blue AIDS charity album.
  While recording her fourth album, Debravation, in 1992, Harry collaborated with German post-punk band Die Haut on the track "Don't Cross My Mind" and released the song "Prelude to a Kiss" on the soundtrack to the film of the same name. She also released a cover of "Summertime Blues" from the soundtrack to the film That Night in Australia. Devotion was ultimately released in July 1993. The album's first single was "I Can See Clearly", which peaked at No. 23 in the UK[30] and No. 2 on the US dance charts. This was followed by "Strike Me Pink" in September. Controversy surrounded the latter track's promotional video, which featured a man drowning in a water tank, resulting in its being banned. US editions of the album feature two additional tracks recorded with prerecorded music by R.E.M.: "Tear Drops" and a cover of Skeeter Davis's 1961 hit "My Last Date (with You)". Also in 1993, Harry had a supporting role in a John Carpenter-directed segment of the anthology horror film Body Bags.
  In November 1993, Harry toured the UK with Stein, guitarist Peter Min, bassist Greta Brinkman, and drummer James Murphy. The set list of the Debravation Tour featured an offbeat selection of Harry material including the previously unreleased track "Close Your Eyes" (from 1989) and "Ordinary Bummer" (from the Stein-produced Iggy Pop album Zombie Birdhouse, a track that, under the moniker Adolph's Dog, Blondie covered in 1997). Tentative plans to record these shows and release them as a live double CD never came to fruition. However, covers of the Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses" and David Oliver's "Love TKO" exist as bootlegs. In early 1994, Harry took the Debravation tour to the US.[34] In the UK, Harry's long tenure with Chrysalis Records also came to an end after Debravation's lackluster sales, but the label released all of Blondie's albums and Harry's KooKoo album (for the first time on CD) as remastered editions with bonus tracks.
  In the mid 1990s, Harry worked as a guest vocalist on several projects: She joined the avant-garde jazz ensemble the Jazz Passengers in 1994, appearing on their album In Love (1994). Harry also reunited with Blondie keyboardist Jimmy Destri for a cover of Otis Blackwell's "Don't Be Cruel" for the 1995 album Brace Yourself! A Tribute to Otis Blackwell. During this period, she also recorded a duet with actor Robert Jacks titled "Der Einziger Weg (The Only Way)", a theme for the horror film Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994), which was recorded in German and in English. Harry also served as a vocalist in the Talking Heads' side project the Heads' 1996 release No Talking, Just Head, followed by the Jazz Passengers' Individually Twisted (1997). The same year, she collaborated with Jazz Passengers' Bill Ware in his side project Groove Thing, singing lead vocals on the club hit "Command and Obey". Another Jazz Passengers collaboration, "The City in the Sea", appeared on the Edgar Allan Poe tribute album Closed on Account of Rabies (1997).
  In film, Harry co-starred with Pruitt Taylor Vince and Liv Tyler in James Mangold's directorial debut, Heavy (1995), playing a misanthropic waitress at an upstate New York restaurant. The following year, she filmed Mangold's Cop Land (1997), a neo-noir thriller in which she portrayed a bartender.
  1997–2007: Blondie reformation and solo output[edit]

  Harry performing with Blondie at Roskilde Festival, 1999
  In 1997, Blondie began working together again for the first time in 15 years. The four original members (Harry, Stein, Clem Burke and Jimmy Destri) began sessions for what would become Blondie's seventh studio album, No Exit (1999). The lead single from the album, "Maria", debuted at No. 1 in the UK, giving Blondie their sixth UK No. 1 hit. "Maria" also reached No. 1 in 14 different countries, the top 10 on the US Dance Charts, and Top 20 on the US Adult Top 40 Charts. No Exit debuted at No. 3 in the UK and No. 17 in the US.
  Harry appears on the 2001 Bill Ware album Vibes 4 singing the track "Me and You" as well as on former Police guitarist Andy Summers's album Peggy's Blue Skylight on the track "Weird Nightmare". A techno cover of Stan Jones' "Ghost Riders in the Sky" was featured on the soundtrack to the 1998 film Three Businessmen, and was available on her website to download. Harry sings on two tracks on Andrea Griminelli's Cinema Italiano project: "You'll Come to Me" (inspired by Amarcord's main theme) and "When Love Comes By" (from Il Postino), as well as on a tribute album reinterpreting the music of Harold Arlen, on which she sings the title track "Stormy Weather". In May 2002, she accompanied the Jazz Passengers and the BBC Concert Orchestra in a performance of her jazz material at the Barbican Centre in London. In 2003, she was featured vocalist on the song "Uncontrollable Love" by DJ duo Blow-Up. She also sang on the version of "Waltzing Matilda" recorded by Dan Zanes and Friends, released on the 2003 album House Party. The same year, Blondie released the album The Curse of Blondie (2003).
  In 2006, Harry started work in New York City on her fifth solo album, Necessary Evil (released in 2007). Working with production duo Super Buddha (who produced the remix of Blondie's "In the Flesh" for the 2005 Sound and Vision compilation), the first music to surface in was a hip-hop track titled "Dirty and Deep" in which she spoke out against rapper Lil' Kim's incarceration. Throughout 2006, a number of new tracks surfaced on Harry's Myspace page, including "Charm Alarm", "Deep End", "Love with a Vengeance", "School for Scandal", and "Necessary Evil", as well as duets she recorded with Miss Guy (of Toilet Böys fame), "God Save New York" and "New York Groove". A streaming version of the lead single, "Two Times Blue", was added to Harry's Myspace page in May 2007. On June 6, 2007, an iTunes downloadable version was released via her official website.
  In 2007, she delineated the different personae (Blondie the band, her role in the band, and Deborah Harry the singer) to an interviewer who asked why she played only solo music on the 2007 True Colors World Tour with Cyndi Lauper: "I've put together a new trio with no Blondie members in it. I really want to make a clear definition between Debbie's solo projects and Blondie, and I hope that the audience can appreciate that and also appreciate this other material."[35]
  Harry's fifth solo album, Necessary Evil (2007), was released after she completed the True Colors World Tour. The first single, "Two Times Blue", peaked at No. 5 on the US Dance Club Play chart. The album peaked at No. 86 in the UK and No. 37 in the US Billboard Top Independent Albums chart. Harry performed "Two Times Blue" on various talk shows to promote the album. She also started a 22-date US tour on November 8, lasting until December 9, playing small venues and clubs across the country. On January 18, 2008, an official music video for "If I Had You" was released.[36]
  2008–present: Further musical endeavors[edit]

  Marky Ramone of the Ramones and Harry attend a screening of Burning Down the House, a 2009 documentary about CBGB's heyday.
  Harry contributed to Fall Out Boy's 2008 album Folie à Deux, singing on the chorus of the album's closer "West Coast Smoker". In 2010, Harry began a series recordings (featuring solo songs and duets with Nick Cave and others) for The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project.[37][38][39] Blondie released their ninth studio album, Panic of Girls, in July 2011.
  In 2014, Harry made a guest appearance with Arcade Fire at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival,[40] The following month, Blondie released their tenth studio album, Ghosts of Download (2014). In 2015, Blondie members Debbie Harry and Chris Stein made a guest appearance alongside The Gregory Brothers in an episode of Songify the News, and they collaborated again to parody the United States presidential election debates, 2016.[41][42] In March 2015, Harry held a residency of several weeks at the Café Carlyle in New York.
  Blondie's eleventh studio album, Pollinator, was released in May 2017, and debuted at No. 4 in the UK. In October 2019, Harry released a memoir, Face It, through Dey Street Books.[43]
  Personal life[edit]
  Harry lives part of the year in Monmouth County, New Jersey together with her four dogs.[44] Harry was in a relationship with Blondie guitarist Chris Stein but they split in 1989. She admitted they were both drug users during their relationship but are now clean after spending time in a rehabilitation clinic.[45] Harry is godmother to Stein's two daughters.[46]
  Philanthropy[edit]

  Harry performing in 2018
  In a 2011 interview, Harry said that "After witnessing Elton John and his tireless efforts against HIV/AIDS", she had been inspired to put philanthropy as her top priority. She said, "These things are important to my life now. I have the privilege of being able to get involved, so I do. I applaud people like Elton John, who have used their position to do so much good."[47] Some of Harry's preferred charities include those devoted to fighting cancer and endometriosis.[48]
  Discography[edit]
  Main article: Deborah Harry discography
  For Harry's releases with Blondie, see Blondie discography.
  Studio albums
  KooKoo (1981)
  Rockbird (1986)
  Def, Dumb & Blonde (1989)
  Debravation (1993)
  Necessary Evil (2007)
  Compilations and other albums
  Once More into the Bleach (Debbie Harry and Blondie) (1988)
  The Complete Picture: The Very Best of Deborah Harry and Blondie (Deborah Harry and Blondie) (1991)
  Deborah Harry Collection (1998)
  Most of All: The Best of Deborah Harry (1999)
  Filmography[edit]
  Main article: Debbie Harry filmography
  Bibliography[edit]
  Making Tracks: The Rise of Blondie by Debbie Harry, Chris Stein and Victor Bockris published (1982)[citation needed]
  Foreword to Debbie Harry and Blondie: Picture This (2011)[49]
  Face It (2019) by Debbie Harry, HarperCollins ISBN-10: 0008229422/-13: 978-0008229429[50]

• Amazon -

  The name Debbie Harry evokes many images: seminal rock-n-roll figure, complex songstress, incandescent front woman, actor and fashion icon. As a vibrant global force and a shaper of pop culture, Debbie's chart-topping success, fearless spirit and rare longevity led to an induction into the Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame for Blondie in 2006. With more than 50 million albums sold worldwide and acclaimed solo projects, Debbie has also engaged in a successful acting career with over 30 film and television roles to her credit (including Videodrome, Hairspray, and Heavy to name a few). She has become and still remains a true national treasure, one whose influence continues to impact the worlds of music, fashion and art. With Blondie, undeniably one of the most trailblazing and influential bands of our time, she and co-founder Chris Stein brought the worlds of rock, punk, disco and Reggae together with "Heart of Glass" and "Call Me" and broke ground by combining hip-hop and pop on "Rapture." As a solo artist, Nile Rodgers & Bernard Edwards co-produced her first release Koo Koo in 1981 and she continued to defy expectations with such genre-busting efforts as "French Kissing in the U.S.A.," "Rush Rush," "Rain," and "The Jam Was Moving." Best known as the face of Blondie, Debbie has also had a long running collaboration with the critically acclaimed American jazz group, The Jazz Passengers, stalwarts of New York's free-jazz scene. Her spectacular voice drips with a sophisticated elegance rarely heard in pop music and she continues to infuse her work with an exquisite artistic sensibility. From an irreverent Lower East Side punk goddess to a bona fide international ambassador of New York cool, Debbie Harry will forever be synonymous with that punk spirit that lives somewhere in all of us.

• Morning Edition, NPR - https://www.npr.org/2019/10/10/768835478/blondies-debbie-harry-releases-memoir-face-it

  NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Debbie Harry, the iconic singer of Blondie, about her new memoir, Face It, which shows how her long-lasting music grew out of a specific place and time.

  STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
  Next, we have the story behind some of the most popular songs of the late 1970s. They're the kind of songs that last and last, that people know even if they weren't alive in the '70s.
  (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HEART OF GLASS")
  BLONDIE: (Singing) Once I had a love, and it was a gas, soon turned out had a heart of glass.
  INSKEEP: "Heart Of Glass" was a hit from Blondie. That's the name of the group whose blond-haired singer was Debbie Harry. She was considered one of the most glamorous women of the '70s. And her new memoir shows how her long-lasting music grew out of a specific place and time. Here, she reads a passage about CBGB, a New York City nightclub where punk rock was taking shape.
  (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
  DEBBIE HARRY: (Reading) When we were first there, it was mostly derelict stores and flophouses and a pizza parlor across the road. There was an alley at the back of the club full of rubbish, rats, garbage and shards of broken glass. Inside, the club had its own special reek, a pungent compound of stale beer, cigarette smoke and body odor.
  INSKEEP: Bands like the Ramones and Blondie thrived on this ugliness. When we spoke with Debbie Harry, she told us that she made one particularly ugly incident into an international smash hit.
  (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ONE WAY OR ANOTHER")
  BLONDIE: (Singing) One way or another, I'm going to find you. I'm going to get you, get you, get you, get you. One way or another...
  INSKEEP: Didn't you have a specific, rather negative experience that that song is related to?
  HARRY: Yes. Yes. It did have to do with a stalker.
  INSKEEP: Who was this? Tell me the story.
  HARRY: It was, I guess, sort of a boyfriend who went a little bit haywire.
  (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ONE WAY OR ANOTHER")
  BLONDIE: (Singing) I will drive past your house.
  INSKEEP: This is a guy who started following you?
  HARRY: Well, it was more harassment than following me. And it was very aggressive harassment.
  INSKEEP: He was coming where you were. And...
  HARRY: Yeah. He would come to work - where I worked and call constantly and tie up the phones and just be as pesky as possible.
  INSKEEP: He even came to your apartment. Is this true?
  HARRY: Yes. One night, he broke into my apartment, which was very unsettling. My cat really hated it.
  INSKEEP: I wasn't even worried about the cat. I was worried about you.
  HARRY: (Laughter).
  INSKEEP: Where were you at the time?
  HARRY: Well, I thought I should inject some humor into this. I was so - sitting in bed watching TV, I think.
  INSKEEP: I hate to make you relive this, but what did you do?
  HARRY: I was - tried to stay calm.
  INSKEEP: And then?
  HARRY: And eventually he left.
  INSKEEP: And how did that become the song that I've heard I don't know how many times?
  HARRY: I guess the resolve - one way or another, I'm going to find you. I'm going to get you. So that was the - sort of the action of it. I'm going to find you. I'm going to get you. And that's, you know, sort of the basis. But one way or another, I'm going to lose you. And so that was my resolve.
  INSKEEP: So it was almost like a dialogue going on in that song.
  HARRY: Yes. Yes.
  INSKEEP: It sounds like you lost him. You're still here.
  HARRY: I am still here. And I hope, for his sake, that he is somewhere and having a good life.
  INSKEEP: Debbie Harry, lead singer of Blondie. Her new memoir is called "Face It."
  (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ONE WAY OR ANOTHER")
  BLONDIE: (Singing) One way or another...

• From Publisher -

  DEBBIE HARRY with Blondie has sold millions of albums worldwide and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. Harry had the pleasure of acting in some of the most interesting independent films of the last twenty years. She is devoted to environmental issues such as clean water and saving pollinators as well as the promotion of the LGBTQ community and human rights.

QUOTE:
"wild ride of fame, friendships, music, and drugs sure to appeal to Blondie fans and 1970s rock in general."

Harry, Debbie FACE IT Dey Street/HarperCollins (Adult Nonfiction) $29.99 10, 1 ISBN: 978-0-06-074958-3
The iconic singer reveals her legendary journey.
In this whirlwind tour of her life, Harry, one of the most photographed faces in music, deploys an irreverent style well suited to her story. Her tales of life before, during, after, and beyond her time with Blondie are intermixed with interludes that capture the eclectic and electric passion she has for the creative process. In a narrative that feels simultaneously heartfelt and spontaneous, Harry recounts close encounters with violence and harassment with the same immediacy as the moments that catapulted Blondie to worldwide fame. Harry doesn't focus on the challenges of being a woman in the music industry but rather on the collaborations that fueled her creativity. Though her sound and style influenced rock, and especially women in rock, there's refreshingly little self-congratulation in these pages. Instead, readers will find reflection on life with a budding band and an uncensored view of what it took to succeed. Whether she's recounting her experiences making clothes, waitressing, meeting artists, or playing early gigs at CBGB, Harry's intimate portrait often reads like a love letter to a bygone version of New York City. The narrative reflects the energy of the punk and new wave scene as the author weaves personal stories with entertaining descriptions of partying and playing with the likes of the Ramones, Andy Warhol, Iggy Pop, and David Bowie. There is no shortage of notable cameos in Harry's chronicle of her journey to stardom, and she maintains effervescent senses of humor and grace throughout. From small venues to world tours, bankruptcy to gold records, this account of life behind the fame offers a candid view of the hard work, big breaks, and tough times that came before and after celebrity. The co-founder of Blondie, Chris Stein, provides the introduction.
A wild ride of fame, friendships, music, and drugs sure to appeal to Blondie fans and 1970s rock in general.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Harry, Debbie: FACE IT." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2019. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A594857492/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1e6c14fd. Accessed 5 Dec. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A594857492

QUOTE:
"Harry writes with a certain cool, at times a Warholian blankness. Occasionally she is slightly ditzy. There are long passages about who she met--to be frank, just about everybody. ... Then every so often she pulls out a sentence of absolute self-knowledge. She recalls traumatic events which make us reel but are totally recognisable to any woman who chose to go her own way."

Face It: A Memoir
Debbie Harry
HarperCollins, 368pp. 20 [pounds sterling]
"I hated my looks as a kid but I could not stop staring." So says Debbie Harry in her memoir Face It. Well, yes--who could ever stop staring at this extraordinarily beautiful woman? I certainly couldn't and it is impossible to talk about Harry without discussing her appearance. Thankfully, Harry doesn't try. Mostly she stands at some distance from herself chatting about how she put together her look. She is always visually hyper-aware. She learns how to be photographed and wonders whether if it's true that photos steal a part of your soul--for if so she wouldn't have a soul left. From early on she is seeking to control her image but perhaps it's only now that she is doing so.
The book has a needless, hippyish introduction from Chris Stein, Blondie's guitarist and resident photographer and Harry's former lover. Harry needs no such introduction but it's a reminder that she and Stein are from the LSD-dabbling generation that the nascent British punk scene so deeply rejected. It is worth remembering just how puritanical parts of punk were.
As punk as Harry is--actually pure punk --she is the one who meets, through her boyfriend's mum, Timothy Leary and Alan Watts, author of The Way of Zen. She somehow always manages to be in the midst of where the culture shifts. Sometimes she is fully present, sometimes strung out on heroin, sometimes clearly in need of protection. Stein provided that for her, but if you want more lowdown on their relationship, it's not really here. They would always end up in bed after a photo session, which hardly seems surprising.
Harry writes with a certain cool, at times a Warholian blankness. Occasionally she is slightly ditzy. There are long passages about who she met--to be frank, just about everybody. One day she is serving Miles Davis as a waitress, another she is having a meeting with Jean-Luc Godard. Or she is buying a work off Basqiuat in his first ever sale. Or Bowie is pulling his cock out. Or she is going to rap gigs in 1977. Or even more weirdly she is a secretary for the BBC, excited to meet Malcolm Muggeridge and Alistair Cooke.
Then every so often she pulls out a sentence of absolute self-knowledge. She recalls traumatic events which make us reel but are totally recognisable to any woman who chose to go her own way.
From an early age she attracts unwanted sexual attention. A man masturbates at her when she is eight. She claims to have been approached by Buddy Rich when she was 11 or 12. She is beaten, stalked, threatened with guns. Apartments burn down. She drives her car into a river. She gets away from a man that she later recognises as Ted Bundy. At home she and Stein are tied up by an intruder and she is raped at knife-point. Harry is mostly upset that the rapist stole the guitars and the band has no equipment.
What drives her is not clear as she is a reluctant memoirist. Her honesty about sex and drugs is a relief. Unusually for a sex symbol, she actually likes sex. Her observations on heroin are acute: some people, she writes, take drugs not to feel more but to feel less.

Fame, the intense high of Blondie's global success, from "X Offender" in 1976 to "Rapture" in 1981, is like electricity. She feels it sensually but anticlimatically. The band is defined by her image, regardless of her or their wishes. Blondie as a name was meant to be about the double standard, a play on the whole dumb blonde thing and a homage to her beloved Marilyn Monroe. Like Monroe, Harry was not brought up by her birth mother, and she identifies with Monroe's need for love. Harry claims to remember the trauma of being separated from her mother at three months. All she wants is a picture of where she came from, feeling so often afraid and different.
What she understands brilliantly is that she herself was in "girl drag". Monroe, she says, was a woman playing a man's idea of a woman. Harry did not adopt the masculine look like Patti Smith. She is resolutely female and was heavily criticised for this. But seriously, who else could wear a pillow case as a dress the way she did?
At the time, however, I think us girls did get it. No one else could be Harry. Now ordinary girls look at beautiful celebrities and feel inadequate or try to emulate them. With Harry we just bathed in her light.
I remember a gig in the late 1970s which was a bunch of male musicians telling the audience to fuck off in various ways. Each of them would go on to became famous, though it was quite boring. Then someone put "Hanging on the Telephone" on and all us girls started jumping around. It was a revolt into pleasure and melody and female frustration. Harry did not write that song but she made it hers. And ours.
John Waters, who cast Harry in Hairspray, once said she turned her back and Madonna stole her career. He was referring to the time she was nursing Stein, who was very ill in the 1980s. I don't agree. Harry has done it her way. The book is full of fan art, which is surely part of her looking at her own image and owning it.
Still she remains aloof, made of steel but strangely maternal to all around her. She likes a cigarette these days and appears to be having more fun than at the height of her career. Fame, she says, was about wanting to make things happen--Harry did that all right, with her off-kilter dancing, her ability to radiate cool, her sheer presence.
She is one magnificent broad. The worship continues.
Caption: Picture this: Harry writes with "a certain cool ... then pulls out a sentence of absolute self-knowledge"
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 New Statesman, Ltd.
http://www.newstatesman.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Moore, Suzanne. "Heart of class." New Statesman, 4 Oct. 2019, p. 47. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A603152770/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c59869ce. Accessed 5 Dec. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A603152770

QUOTE:
"The narrative rambles, but Blondie fans will love its piquant atmospherics and the energy and honesty of Harry's take on her singular saga."

Face It
Debbie Harry. Dey Street, $29.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-074958-3
The singer of the new wave band Blondie and star of art-house movies Videodrome and Hairspray looks back on lots of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll in this rough-and-tumble memoir. Harry recounts her plunge into bohemian New York City in the 1960s and her navigation of the music scene as it shifted from hippiedom to disco to punk. It's a story of creative ferment, as she infused the burgeoning punk aesthetic into her own glammed-up style---Marilyn Monroe with "a dark, provocative, aggressive side"--and used Method acting techniques to hone her singing while slogging through gigs in gloriously grungy clubs including CBGB's and L.A.'s Whiskey a Go Go . Her portrait of Blondie's success in the late '70s feels less effervescent, full of wearisome touring and business wrangles. Harry offers a frank look at her life on the edge, including "oversexed" erotic adventures, a mugging and rape that she shrugs off ("the stolen guitars hurt me more"), an attempted abduction by a man she thinks may have been serial killer Ted Bundy, and unapologetic drug use. ("Heroin was a great consolation," she reflects of a period when she supplied herself and her hospitalized bandmate and boyfriend Chris Stein with the narcotic.) The narrative rambles, but Blondie fans will love its piquant atmospherics and the energy and honesty of Harry's take on her singular saga. (Oct.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Face It." Publishers Weekly, 22 July 2019, p. 193. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A595252235/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a24a05d8. Accessed 5 Dec. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A595252235

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition) "Harry, Debbie: FACE IT." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2019. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A594857492/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1e6c14fd. Accessed 5 Dec. 2019. Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition) Moore, Suzanne. "Heart of class." New Statesman, 4 Oct. 2019, p. 47. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A603152770/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c59869ce. Accessed 5 Dec. 2019. Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition) "Face It." Publishers Weekly, 22 July 2019, p. 193. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A595252235/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a24a05d8. Accessed 5 Dec. 2019.

• Glide
  https://glidemagazine.com/236218/blondies-debbie-harry-releases-insightful-memoir-face-it-book-review/
  Word count: 1016

  QUOTE:
  "Going on this written journey with Debbie Harry was eye-opening and intriguing, yet she retains this cool aloofness that makes her still a bit mysterious after all these words and all these years."
  Blondie’s Debbie Harry Releases Insightful Memoir: ‘Face It’ (BOOK REVIEW)
  November 6, 2019 by Leslie Michele Derrough in Other Reviews, Reviews No Comments
  When I was a kid back in the seventies, Debbie Harry was so freaking cool. She was like a sexy glacier drifting across the magazine pages and through the radio speakers. Nothing seemed rushed about her or her music. It just lingered along and stayed in your head all day. A good thing.
  Although Chris Stein – Blondie guitar player, songwriter, keeper of the Blondie flame via his years of photography – has published a few books, it was Debbie we wanted to hear from. Did she know how cool she appeared to all us pre-pubescent girls? Where did her cool outfits come from? The lyrics to the songs? Was there ever a moment when she was just a kid like me? In Face It, her new memoir, Debbie gives us some insight into her life as Deborah and Debbie and Angela … wait, who is Angela? Page 8 answers that question but more importantly, you learn in those early pages that our future punk rock goddess was simply, “A dreamy kind of kid,” a tomboy who played in the woods and loved her pets (still does), adored her baby sister and since she can remember, attracted the opposite sex.
  “How do we edit our life into a decent story,” Debbie ponders in chapter 12. “What to reveal, what to keep hidden, what to embellish, what to downplay and what to ignore?” Throughout 300 plus pages, Debbie shares with readers what she really went through without becoming boring, too bogged down in detail and too, well, stereotypical. Remember, punk is always daring and new and feisty and to the point. And since Debbie remains true to her calling as a punk rocker, she has built her book with the same punk music foundation. She gives you just enough details to satisfy that curiosity before writing about something else. Nothing more to see here, move on, she seems to say between the lines.
  For me, a big plus is in the number of photographs she has incorporated into the book itself, not just in that middle photo gallery common in most biographies. When someone talks about being Gerber baby model material, you’d like to be able to see for yourself. And Debbie has gone one step further by including sections of fan art given to her that she has kept all these years. How many of us have given a favorite star something like this or written a fan letter and wondered if they saw it, liked it? Debbie puts the proof on the pages. It did mean something to her and still does.

  “Memory is subjective. A lot of it depends on the angles you see things from.” Debbie is not shy about broaching the subject of a rape or stalking or criticism about her music and her clothes. It is what it is and she was who she was. The few times she seems to lose her cool is when talking about Stein and his debilitating illness, which took forever to diagnose, and how the IRS swooped in on them at a time when money was virtually non-existent as Stein was finally getting treatment: “The sickest thing of all was that the IRS took away our health insurance while Chris was in the hospital.”
  Debbie also has stories of the famous people she has met along the way, before and after she became famous. While working at Max’s Kansas City as a waitress, she saw Jazz great Miles Davis, “Still as a dead calm, statuesque with his ebony skin shining softly in the dim red light of the upstairs back room.” Walking past the Balloon Farm, she heard the Velvet Underground with Nico, “This haunting, mysterious Nordic goddess.” Famed drummer Buddy Rich spotted her on the street at Cape Cod when she was barely a teen and followed her home, thinking she was older. She went to Woodstock, worked as a Playboy Bunny waitress, opened for Iggy Pop and David Bowie in the early days of Blondie, rubbed shoulders with everyone from Patti Smith to William S. Burroughs to Jean-Michel Basquiat; and she swears she was almost a victim of serial killer Ted Bundy. And when it comes to Andy Warhol, his death was a tragedy that stayed with her for years.
  Blondie the band never falls far from her streams of thought, working on albums, going on tours, dealing with managers and producers. Tom Petty opened for them during their first shows in LA and Phil Spector invited them to his mansion where she sang Ronettes songs with him despite being bone-tired after a performance. The hit singles – “The Tide Is High,” “Call Me” – that took them to Europe and across America are talked about but not as in-depth as some would like; and finally the pinnacle of the band’s fame before the end and the resurrection. She talks admiringly of Stein, giving him the highest of credit for what Blondie, and she, became; and about the 1982 tour for The Hunter, their sixth album, that nearly killed Stein. And did kill the band.
  Overall, the music is there, the fashion is there, the art is there, the acting is there, her adoration for Stein is there and her passion for New York is there. “New York is my pulse. New York is my heart,” Debbie writes near the end. “As a rock artist, to be coming out of New York City was the best thing in the world that could have happened to me.” Going on this written journey with Debbie Harry was eye-opening and intriguing, yet she retains this cool aloofness that makes her still a bit mysterious after all these words and all these years.

• London Guardian
  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/03/face-it-debbie-harry-memoir-review
  Word count: 1443

  QUOTE:
  makes for an engaging and occasionally surprising read."
  Face It by Debbie Harry review – rock'n'roll stories to burn
  Taking heroin, being flashed by David Bowie, and punk-pop brilliance – but in this long-awaited memoir the Blondie singer remains mysterious to the last
  Fiona Sturges
  Thu 3 Oct 2019 07.30 BST
  Last modified on Thu 3 Oct 2019 18.11 BST

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  ‘Ultimately for me, it’s the overwhelming need to have my entire life be an imaginative out-of-body experience.’ Debbie Harry in 1979. Photograph: Mick Rock/Rex Features
  W
  hen Blondie’s singer, Debbie Harry, was crafting her image as a pop star in the mid-70s, she looked first to cinema. Her love of cartoon fantasy figures led her to Barbarella, as portrayed by Jane Fonda in the Roger Vadim film, though her biggest influence was Marilyn Monroe, who she recognised “was playing a character, the proverbial dumb blonde with the little-girl voice and the big-girl body … a woman playing a man’s idea of a woman”. As the only woman in an all-male band, Harry knew she had to make her mark. With her peroxide hair, thrift-store clothes and expression that sat somewhere between a pout and a sneer, she was a pin-up with a subversive streak: “My Blondie character was an inflatable doll but with a dark, provocative, aggressive side. I was playing it up yet I was very serious.”
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  In Face It, Harry, who is now 74, outlines the influences and events that led to her rise to fame. Written with the music writer Sylvie Simmons, the memoir is based on a series of lengthy interviews, which makes for a conversational style, though anyone looking for an excavation of the soul might be disappointed. Harry has rock ’n’ roll stories to burn but the memoir as a confessional isn’t her style. For the most part, the Blondie character remains.
  The music, which merged punk rock with pop sensibilities, is only part of the picture; having been awarded the title “best-looking girl” in her school yearbook, Harry knew the value of her attractiveness early on, and later created an industry around her image. It was she, for instance, who saw an upturned car on a New York street and, rather than moving on, declared it ideal for a photoshoot. Before designers were lining up to work with her, she would find a pillowcase and turn it into a stage outfit; later, years before Lady Gaga’s meat dress, she would step out in a gown made of razorblades. Harry was driven not by a quest for fame but for creativity. “Ultimately for me,” she notes, “it’s the overwhelming need to have my entire life be an imaginative out-of-body experience.”
  We learn how, having been given up for adoption at three months old, Harry was raised by her adoptive parents in New Jersey. Before Blondie took off, she worked variously as a model, a secretary at the BBC’s New York office, a waitress and a Playboy bunny, all the while trying to figure out her next move. When she first moved to New York, she wanted to be a painter but, after seeing the likes of Janis Joplin, the Velvet Underground and, later, the New York Dolls, she decided music was her calling. Harry joined and left various bands including the Stilettos, through which she met Chris Stein, who would become her principal collaborator as the guitarist in Blondie, her partner for the next 13 years and, after their split, one of her dearest friends.

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  ‘Caustic and funny.’ Debbie Harry and Chris Stein in New York, 1980 Photograph: Allan Tannenbaum
  Early on, Harry offers a vivid portrait of a seedy, bohemian scene in late-60s New York in which drugs were “part of your social life, part of the creative process, chic and fun and really just there. No one thought about the consequences.” Describing her first encounter with heroin with her then-boyfriend, she recalls: “It was so delicious and delightful … For those times when I wanted to blank out parts of my life or when I was dealing with some depression, there was nothing better than heroin. Nothing.”

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  A similar matter-of-factness runs through her recollections of the man who approached her and Stein one night outside their front door and threatened them with a knife. When they said they didn’t have any money, he insisted on accompanying them into their apartment. There he tied up Stein and Harry while he piled up their guitars and amps by the front door. He then untied Harry and raped her. “I can’t say that I felt a lot of fear,” she recalls. “I’m very glad this happened pre-Aids or I might have freaked. In the end, the stolen guitars hurt me more than the rape.”
  Her account of the incident indicates the somewhat detached tone of this memoir. Whether reflecting on her fruitless search for her birth parents, or the New Jersey ex-boyfriend who stalked her and threatened her with a gun, or the close shave with a man who offered her a lift, and whom she believes to have been the serial killer Ted Bundy, Harry allows no room for shock, sadness or vulnerability. This is, of course, the author’s prerogative and doesn’t mean that the book is without depth or charm. She can be caustic and funny, and is drily unfazed by the antics of her mostly male peers. While on tour with Iggy Pop and David Bowie, the latter flashes his penis at Harry in the dressing room “as if I were the official cock checker or something”. Noting Bowie’s generously proportioned appendage, she is moved to wonder “why Iggy didn’t let me have a closer look at his dick”.
  As her star rises in the late 1970s, towering cultural figures drift in and out of her orbit, among them Miles Davis, Patti Smith, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol. While playing a series of shows in LA, she and Stein are invited to meet Phil Spector at his mansion. He greets them “with a Colt 45 in one hand and a bottle of Manischewitz [kosher wine] in the other”. Elsewhere, there are forays into film – she played a neglected wife in Marcus Reichert’s Union City, and Velma Von Tussle in John Waters’s Hairspray. She and Stein were keen to re-make the 1965 film Alphaville, and even bought the rights from its director Jean-Luc Godard for a thousand dollars. Only later did they learn that they weren’t his to sell.
  By the early 1980s, band relations were fraught. A last-minute tour cancellation because of Stein’s ill health (he was later diagnosed with a rare auto-immune disease) was the final straw and Blondie fell apart. Shortly afterwards, they discovered they had accrued two years’ worth of unpaid taxes, prompting Harry to lose her house, her car and even some of her clothes. Swallowing her fury, and having nursed Stein back to health, she got back to work.
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  Inevitably, Harry’s tales of her solo ventures and Blondie’s eventual reunion lack the atmosphere and excitement of the early years, and it’s with more than a little awkwardness that she shoehorns in details of her current day-to-day life to spice things up. “Could my routines reveal further insight into what makes me tick?” she asks, treating us to her morning schedule of letting the dogs out and making coffee, to which the answer is: no.
  But when not resorting to padding, Face It makes for an engaging and occasionally surprising read. It’s a shame that Harry passes up the chance to dig deeper into her experiences of objectification and the nature of fame, but more disappointing is that we learn so little about her interior life, and how she really thinks and feels. Perhaps that’s to be expected from a notoriously private star with such an acute understanding of image. Rather than expose her inner workings to the world, Harry has determined to stay mysterious to the last.
  • Face It by Debbie Harry is published by HarperCollins (RRP £20) To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 020-3176 3837. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

• Atlantic Online
  https://www.theatlantic.com/
  Word count: 1356

  Spencer Kornhaber
  Debbie Harry Stares Back
  The Blondie singer’s memoir, Face It, wryly recounts making the most of being ogled.

  SPENCER KORNHABER
  OCTOBER 12, 2019
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  CELESTE SLOMAN / THE NEW YORK TIMES / REDUX
  Face It BY DEBBIE HARRY HARPERCOLLINS
  After speeding through Debbie Harry’s eventful life in just 245 pages, the Blondie singer’s memoir, Face It, in its final chapter, lists stuff about thumbs. “I think first of that game where you try to trap the other guy’s thumb under yours while the rest of your fingers are gripping their fingers,” the 74-year-old Harry writes. “Then there is the old saying ‘I’m all thumbs,’ which is a peculiar mental image and is a feeble excuse for clumsiness.” Opposable thumbs, hitchhiking thumbs, thumbs up, thumbs down, Tom Thumb, thumbnail sketches, strangler’s thumbs, thumbscrews, thumbtacks, twiddling thumbs … each concept gets briefly discussed, making for five pages of thumb content.

  There is no grand point to this exercise. “I thought a little bit of levity might be a good way to end my somewhat morose memoir, hence all this thumb business,” she explains, which just adds more bafflement to the pile. Harry’s memoir is not, in fact, a bummer. It’s true that she’s been stalked, raped, addicted to heroin, and hassled by Patti Smith, but Harry relates each incident, bad and good, with a “that’s life” literary deadpan. The rape, for example—by a knife-wielding home invader in ’70s New York City—did not inspire “a lot of fear” in her because “this happened before AIDS.” The worst thing about the attack, she writes, is that the rapist stole some of her guitars.

  It’s hard to put your, um, finger on the Harry that emerges from Face It. While other aging-rocker memoirs have earned press for the gossip they’ve revealed, so far the biggest brouhaha about Harry’s book has been about a clumsy attempt at summing her up. “In her memoir, Debbie Harry proves she’s more than just a pretty blonde in tight pants,” read a Washington Post tweet that went viral for the wrong reasons. Sibbie O’Sullivan’s corresponding book review began with disdain (“Even if Debbie Harry, of the band Blondie, isn’t to your taste—her voice too thin, her sexiness too blatant, her music too smooth—you can’t dismiss certain truths about her”) and ended with the backhanded praise of the tweet. In the scorn storm that brewed on social media in response, the journalist Alicia Lutes asked, “Legitimately who has ever thought so little about Debbie fucking Harry?”

  One revelation of the memoir is that the public hasn’t been given a ton to think, good or bad, about Harry over the years. Absolutely there’s a well of fervent and uncomplicated admiration for Blondie’s music, which includes some of the most crystalline pleasure-rushes of the ’70s and ’80s: “Heart of Glass,” “Hanging on the Telephone,” “One Way or Another,” “Call Me.” Definitely she’s remembered as a fixture of CBGB, the legendary New York City punk club. But when I went to look up her role in Please Kill Me, the canonical dirt download about that era and place, I found an interview in which she told the writer Legs McNeil, “Supposed to be questions about fucking punk, man,” when he asked about her backstory. Now, with Face It, Harry is here to fill in some of the blanks—briskly, humorously, and mixed in with abstract riffs on appendages and animals.

  Her anecdotes begin with her adoption in New Jersey at three months old. “They claim it’s unusual to have memories of your earliest moments,” she writes, “but I have tons.” Quickly, her life began to be shaped by that which O’Sullivan’s review fixated on: her beauty. “Even as a little girl, I always attracted sexual attention,” she writes, before wryly running through vignettes about the male gaze. A doctor admired her “bedroom eyes” when she was a baby; a stranger exposed himself to her when she was 8; when on vacation as a preteen, the big-band drummer Buddy Rich, then in his late 30s, followed her home. Her early jobs included waiting tables at the rock venue Max’s Kansas City—“It was all such a big flirtation, such a scene”—and being a bunny at the Playboy Club, where the patrons were mostly polite to her.

  Her entrée into rock came through her friendship with the seminal cross-dressing troublemakers the New York Dolls, and her first band, the Stilettos, was fronted by three women. The next band, Blondie and the Banzai Babes, initially featured two female backup singers. By the time it became just Blondie, Harry was the indisputable focal point, though the music was heavily shaped by the other members, including her longtime creative and romantic partner Chris Stein. “My idea was to bring dancing back to rock,” Harry writes of her musical vision. She recalls an early gig in which the opening band, the Ramones, were kicked out by the bar owners, but the Banzai Babes got to stay. Writes Harry: “They liked us because we were cute girls—harmless. Ha!”

  Leveraging sexist condescension to her advantage continued to be integral to her career. Harry’s persona in Blondie paid tribute to the Marilyn Monroe bombshell type, she writes, because Harry “felt that Marilyn was also playing a character, the proverbial dumb blonde with the little-girl voice and big-girl body, and that there was a lot of smarts behind the act.” Over the years, she embraced cosmetic surgery unapologetically: “It’s the same as having a flu shot, basically, another way to look after yourself.” Always, she prized control when it came to using physical appeal. When her record company promoted a Blondie album with an image of her in a see-through top, she was livid. “Sex sells, that’s what they say, and I’m not stupid, I know that,” she writes. “But on my terms, not some executive’s.”

  Despite all this history, late in the book Harry claims to have been surprised when her manager suggested she write about how she “broke ground as a female artist.” She just seems uninterested in being didactic on this subject: “I know there is misogyny and I know there is bias, but I’m more concerned with being good at what I do.” She’s also uninterested in getting very deep on certain personal mysteries, like the question of why she and Stein broke up in 1987 after more than a decade together. Her point of view as a songwriter gets only brief, sporadic treatment, though she does hit some highlights, such as her prescient brush with hip-hop on 1981’s “Rapture.”

  On the final page, she admits, “I still have so much more to tell but being such a private person, I might not tell everything … It’s always best to leave the audience wanting more.” Holding back is an understandable maneuver for someone who’s been stared at so much, and it’s not quite right to call Face It evasive. She always comes off as tough and matter-of-fact and New York–y, very much the voice that complained about love as a “pain in the ass” in “Heart of Glass,” or that facetiously took down some “groupie supreme” in “Rip Her to Shreds.” Knowing that there are still those who expect her to be simply “a blonde in tight pants,” she tells her life story how she wants to tell it. And when she gets tired of sharing, Harry is kind enough not to extend a middle finger.

  We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

  SPENCER KORNHABER is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers pop

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