Debbie Harry - Face It

Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction 1. Love Child 2. Pretty Baby, You Look So Heavenly 3. Click Click House Lights 4. Singing to a Silhouette 5. Born to Be Punk 6. Close Calls Curtain Up 7. Liftoff, Payoff 8. Mother Cabrini and the Electric Firestorm 9. Back Track 10. Blame It on Vogue Peekaboo 11. Wrestling and Parts Unknown 12. The Perfect Taste 13. Routines Evidence of Love 14. Obsession/Compulsion 15. Opposable Thumbs Photo and Art Credits Acknowledgments About the Author About the Publisher

Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction 1. Love Child 2. Pretty Baby, You Look So Heavenly 3. Click Click House Lights 4. Singing to a Silhouette 5. Born to Be Punk 6. Close Calls Curtain Up 7. Liftoff, Payoff 8. Mother Cabrini and the Electric Firestorm 9. Back Track 10. Blame It on Vogue Peekaboo 11. Wrestling and Parts Unknown 12. The Perfect Taste 13. Routines Evidence of Love 14. Obsession/Compulsion 15. Opposable Thumbs Photo and Art Credits Acknowledgments About the Author About the Publisher

Brian Aris

Jody Morlock

Copyright Copyright Dedication Introduction 1. Love Child 2. Pretty Baby, You Look So Heavenly 3. Click Click House Lights 4. Singing to a Silhouette 5. Born to Be Punk 6. Close Calls Curtain Up 7. Liftoff, Payoff 8. Mother Cabrini and the Electric Firestorm 9. Back Track 10. Blame It on Vogue Peekaboo 11. Wrestling and Parts Unknown 12. The Perfect Taste 13. Routines Evidence of Love 14. Obsession/Compulsion 15. Opposable Thumbs Photo and Art Credits Acknowledgments About the Author About the Publisher

HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2019

FIRST EDITION

© Debbie Harry 2019

Cover layout design by Rob Roth

Cover photograph © Chris Stein; illustration by Jody Morlock

Creative Direction by Rob Roth

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Debbie Harry asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008229429

Ebook Edition © October 2019 ISBN: 9780008229450

Version: 2019-09-27

Dedication Dedication Introduction 1. Love Child 2. Pretty Baby, You Look So Heavenly 3. Click Click House Lights 4. Singing to a Silhouette 5. Born to Be Punk 6. Close Calls Curtain Up 7. Liftoff, Payoff 8. Mother Cabrini and the Electric Firestorm 9. Back Track 10. Blame It on Vogue Peekaboo 11. Wrestling and Parts Unknown 12. The Perfect Taste 13. Routines Evidence of Love 14. Obsession/Compulsion 15. Opposable Thumbs Photo and Art Credits Acknowledgments About the Author About the Publisher

DEDICATED TO

THE GIRLS OF THE

UNDERWORLD

Bob Gruen

Courtesy of Debbie Harry’s personal collection

Contents

Cover Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction 1. Love Child 2. Pretty Baby, You Look So Heavenly 3. Click Click House Lights 4. Singing to a Silhouette 5. Born to Be Punk 6. Close Calls Curtain Up 7. Liftoff, Payoff 8. Mother Cabrini and the Electric Firestorm 9. Back Track 10. Blame It on Vogue Peekaboo 11. Wrestling and Parts Unknown 12. The Perfect Taste 13. Routines Evidence of Love 14. Obsession/Compulsion 15. Opposable Thumbs Photo and Art Credits Acknowledgments About the Author About the Publisher

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

1.Love Child

2.Pretty Baby, You Look So Heavenly

3.Click Click

House Lights

4.Singing to a Silhouette

5.Born to Be Punk

6.Close Calls

Curtain Up

7.Liftoff, Payoff

8.Mother Cabrini and the Electric Firestorm

9.Back Track

10.Blame It on Vogue

Peekaboo

11.Wrestling and Parts Unknown

12.The Perfect Taste

13.Routines

Evidence of Love

14.Obsession/Compulsion

15.Opposable Thumbs

Photo and Art Credits

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Publisher

Introduction

BY CHRIS STEIN

Courtesy of Debbie Harry’s personal collection

I don’t know if I ever related this story to Debbie . . . or anyone for that matter. In 1969 after traveling around, driving twice cross-country, I was staying with my mom at her apartment in Brooklyn. This was a tumultuous year for me. Psychedelics—and my delayed reaction to my father’s death—caused breaks and disassociations in my already fractured psyche.

In the midst of heightened states, I had a dream that stayed with me. The apartment was on Ocean Avenue, a very long urban boulevard. In the dream, in a scene that referenced The Graduate, I was chasing the Ocean Avenue bus as it pulled away from our big old building. I was pursuing the bus—yet inside it simultaneously. Standing in the bus was a blond girl who said, “I’ll see you in the city.” The bus pulled away and I was left alone on the street . . .

By 1977, Debbie and I were traveling extensively with Blondie. Far and away our most exotic stop was Bangkok, Thailand. The city then wasn’t covered with cement and metal but was fairly bucolic, with parks all around and even dirt roads near our upscale hotel. Everything smelled of jasmine and decay.

Debbie developed a touch of “la tourista” and stayed behind one night in the hotel while the guys from the band and I went to the house of some British expatriate whom we’d met in some bar or other. His old Thai maid prepared a banana cake for us into which she had chopped fifty Thai sticks—the seventies equivalent of modern super-strong “kush” or other intense strains of weed. We’d also just come from a long stretch in Australia, where pot was strictly policed and forbidden at the time. We all got well stoned and somehow led each other back to the hotel.