Everything about Blondie Band totally explained
Harry had been a member of the folk-rock band, Wind in the Willows, in the late 1960s. In 1974, he parted ways with The Stilettos and Elda Gentile, the band's originator. Stein and Harry formed a new band with drummer
Clem Burke, keyboard player
Jimmy Destri and bass player
Gary Valentine. Originally billed as Angel and the Snake the band renamed themselves Blondie in late 1975. The name was taken from comments from truck drivers who called "Hey, Blondie" to Harry as they drove by. Two members of the original lineup were sisters
Tish Bellomo and
Eileen Bellomo (who is more commonly known as "Snooky"), who were both vocalists. The two left the band, and now they're famous for starting the company
Manic Panic., who only perform once a year.
Blondie became regulars at New York's Club 51,
Max's Kansas City and
CBGB. They got their first record deal with
Private Stock Records in the mid-'70s and released their debut album
Blondie in 1976, and observed the eclectic nature of the group's music, comparing it to
Phil Spector and
The Who, and commented that the album's two strengths were
Richard Gottehrer's production and the persona of Deborah Harry, saying she performed with "utter aplomb and involvement throughout: even when she's portraying a character consummately obnoxious and spaced-out, there's a wink of awareness that's comforting and amusing yet never condescending." It also noted that Harry was the "possessor of a bombshell zombie's voice that can sound dreamily seductive and woodenly
Mansonite within the same song".
The band's first commercial success occurred in Australia in 1977, when the music television program
Countdown mistakenly played their video "
In the Flesh", which was the B-side of their current single "
X-Offender". In a 1998 interview, bandmember Clem Burke recalled seeing the episode in which the wrong song was played, but he and Chris Stein suggested that it may have been a deliberate subterfuge on the part of Meldrum. Stein asserted that "X-Offender" was "too crazy and aggressive [tobecome a hit]", while "In the Flesh" was "not representative of any punk sensibility. Over the years, I've thought they probably played both things but liked one better. That's all." In retrospect, Burke described "In the Flesh" as "a forerunner to the
power ballad".
The single and album each reached the Australian top five in October 1977, and a subsequent double-A release of "X-Offender" and "Rip Her to Shreds" was also popular. A successful Australian tour followed in December, though it was marred by an incident in
Brisbane when disappointed fans almost rioted after Harry canceled a performance due to illness.
1977 also saw the release of their second album, recorded as a four-piece band because Gary Valentine had left.
Plastic Letters was promoted extensively throughout Europe and Asia by Chrysalis Records.
Mainstream success
Parallel Lines, Blondie's third album, was produced by
Mike Chapman. Its first two singles were "Picture This" and "
Hanging on the Telephone". "
Heart of Glass" was their first U.S. hit. It was a reworking of a rock song that the group had performed since its formation, but updated with strong elements of
disco music. Clem Burke later said the revamped version was inspired partly by
Kraftwerk and partly by the
Bee Gee's "
Stayin' Alive", whose drum beat Burke tried to emulate. He and Stein gave Jimmy Destri much of the credit for the final result, noting that Destri's appreciation of technology had led him to introduce synthesizers and to rework the keyboard sections. Although some members of the British music press condemned Blondie for "selling out", the song became a popular worldwide success. Selling more than one million copies and garnering major airplay, the single reached number one in many countries including the U.S., where, for the most part, Blondie had previously been considered an
"underground" band. The song was accompanied by a music video that showcased Deborah Harry's hard-edged and playfully sexual persona, and she began to attain a celebrity status that set her apart from the other band members, who were largely ignored by the media.
Blondie's next single in the U.S. was a more aggressive rock song, "
One Way or Another", which reached the top 30. The band's greatest success continued to be in the UK, where an alternate single choice, "
Sunday Girl", became another number one smash.
Their fourth album,
Eat to the Beat, was well received by critics as a suitable follow-up to
Parallel Lines, but in the U.S. it failed to achieve the same level of success. Speaking in 1998, Clem Burke said he'd recognized elements of Blondie in the band
No Doubt, and Harry commented that she began to realize "our reputation had grown since we stopped".
EMI and
Chrysalis Records also released several compilations and collections of remixed versions of some of their biggest hits.
In 1996, Stein began the process of reuniting Blondie and contacted Burke and Destri. In 1997, the band reformed, performing live three times without Harrison and Infante, who had unsuccessfully sued to prevent the reunion under the name "Blondie". An international tour in late 1998 and early 1999 followed. A new album,
No Exit, was released in February 1999; it was described by Jimmy Destri as "15 songs about nothing". It reached number three on the UK charts, and the first single, "
Maria", which Destri had written thinking about his high school days, became Blondie's sixth UK number one single exactly twenty years after their first chart-topper "Heart of Glass", giving the band the distinction of being the only American act to reach number one in the UK singles charts in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
The band released the album
The Curse of Blondie in October 2003.
Curse was Blondie's least successful album since their debut, though the single "
Good Boys" managed to reach number 12 on the UK charts. In 2004 Jimmy Destri retired from touring, leaving only Harry, Stein and Burke from the original lineup appearing at live shows.
Legacy
By 1982, the year the band broke up, Blondie had released six studio albums, each exhibiting a stylistic progression from the last. The band is known not only for the striking stage persona and vocal performances of Harry but also for incorporating elements in their work from numerous subgenres of
popular music, reaching from their
punk roots to embrace
New Wave,
disco, and
hip hop.
In March 2006, Blondie, following an introductory speech by
Shirley Manson of
Garbage, was inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Seven members were invited to the ceremony, which led to an on-stage spat between the extant group and their former bandmates Nigel Harrison and Frank Infante, who asked during the live broadcast of the ceremony to be allowed to perform with the group, a request refused by Harry. On May 22, 2006, Blondie was inducted into the Rock Walk of Fame at
Guitar Center on Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard. New inductees are voted on by previous Rock Walk inductees.
A BBC documentary on the group, aired
July 21,
2006, discussed a new legal battle Nigel Harrison and Frank Infante have undertaken against the present day band.
In January 2008
Heart Of Glass re-entered the UK top 40 at number 38 partly due to frequent use of the song on
Gucci's
Gucci by Gucci perfume commercial directed by
David Lynch.
Discography
Further Information
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