Debbie Harry on punk, sex at 69 and refusing to retire

02 March 2015 - 02:01 By Sheryl Garratt ©The Sunday Telegraph
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GOING STRONG: Debbie Harry, of Blondie, performing at the Amnesty International benefit concert in New York last year
GOING STRONG: Debbie Harry, of Blondie, performing at the Amnesty International benefit concert in New York last year
Image: CARLO ALLEGRI/REUTERS

In 1980, during a tour with Blondie, Debbie Harry hosted a tea party at a London hotel, gathering together many of the women prominent in music at the time.

Chrissie Hynde was there, Siouxsie Sioux, the Slits guitarist Viv Albertine, Pauline Black from The Selecter, and Poly Styrene from X-Ray Spex.

Chris Stein, Harry's boyfriend at the time as well as the other half of Blondie's creative core, published pictures of it in his recent book Negative, a collection of his photographs from the early years of their fame.

It looks as though there was a lot of laughter. This was a different time for women in music. Two years earlier Kate Bush, who was invited to tea but didn't make it, had become the first female solo performer to reach number one in the British charts with her own song Wuthering Heights.

There was a widespread assumption that there was room for just one main female performer in each genre. If another appeared, they were expected to battle it out for the title of queen of pop/soul/disco/punk.

Harry was keen to cut through that: "I really wanted to get together with all the punk females for an afternoon of celebration," she explained. "It's a great memory. If you did that today, I say, you would need more than a hotel room. You would need a hall!" she said, laughing. "It has changed a lot. It's really grown."

In part, the large number of women now making music is due to the influence of those pioneers. Poly Styrene died in 2011 but, remarkably, the others are all still creating: both Hynde and Albertine have made fine solo albums in the past three years; Sioux never really went away; Black still plays with her band, and last summer Bush returned to the live arena for the first time since she was 20 with a triumphant run of London shows.

As for Harry, I am talking to her in Paris, backstage at a theatre at which she is preparing to play at a party to launch a new perfume. To mark the 10th anniversary of its Black XS fragrance, Paco Rabanne has launched two limited-edition scents called Black XS Be a Legend - one for men, one for women - with a tuxedo-clad Harry and Iggy Pop fronting the ad campaign.

"It was great to work with Iggy again," Harry said.

Though Blondie grew out of the New York punk scene in the mid-1970s, they had an unashamedly pop slant, with their genre-bending music taking in elements of everything that was popular in clubs at the time, from rap to reggae to disco. But they also had a strong subversive streak.

"It was very much about irony at that time. It was about a sophisticated sort of put-down, antisocial but witty. We were always trying for that play on words, for the double entendre."

Forty years on, Blondie seem as relevant as ever. One Direction's cover of One Way or Another for Comic Relief in 2013 introduced their music to a new, younger audience, and last summer Blondie played the Other Stage, at Glastonbury.

There is usually a point in interviews with her at which the writer remarks that Harry is still very beautiful . It is as if we expect a woman's features to rearrange themselves into something resembling a Picasso portrait after a certain age. She was breathtakingly beautiful when she found fame, in her 30s, and she still has the same bone structure, the same features - just older.

On Blondie's latest album, 2014's 4(0) Ever, she is still singing about sex and desire. It is not something that ever really goes away, I say. She nods vigorously in agreement.

"Not at all! And it's funny, the Victorians were very enlightened about that. They are often viewed as being very conservative but actually they were wild. And sex was pretty rampant. There were a lot of goings-on."

Harry will turn 70 in July, but she says she has no thought of retiring: "I guess I'm supposed to be shocked by it," she says of her upcoming birthday. "And maybe I will be. But I'm amazed by ageing and how it happens differently for different people."

She laughs again, eyes glittering with mischief. "All I can say is, I'm a lucky f- bitch!"

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