Debbie Harry

you in. I've always loved Pruce's questionnaire. It was originally a nineteenth century parlor game where players would ask each other thirty five questions aimed at revealing the other player's true nature. It's just the scientific method really. In asking different people the same set of questions, you can make

observations about which truths appeared to be universal. I love this discipline, and it made me wonder, what if these questions were just the jumping off point, what greater depths would be revealed if I asked these questions as conversation starters with thought leaders and trailblazers across all these different disciplines. So I started this podcast because I wanted to put together a kind of cultural anthology where I invite you to explore the questions I think we've all been asking

ourselves lately. How are we similar? How are we individual? Which commonalities surprise us? And why? So? I adapted prus questionnaire and I wrote my own seven questions that I personally think a pertinent to a person's story. They are when and where were you happiest? What is the quality you like least about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you? What question would you most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most?

What would be your last meal? And can you tell me some thing in your life that's grown out of a personal disaster? And I've gathered a group of really remarkable people, ones that I am honored and humbled to have had the chance to engage with. You may not hear their answers to all seven of these questions. We've whittled it down to which questions felt closest to their experience or the most surprising, or created the most fertile ground to connect. And I'm starting season two with legendary

lead singer of the band Blondie Debbie Harry. We don't usually use one of the seven questions as the episode opening, but because Debbie is such a rule breaker, I figured it was only right to break a rule in her episode. I've always felt like Blondie and the Ramones and the New York Dolls were this super creative scream in the face of corporate rock. And Debbie herself has always felt to me to be part of the vanguard of cultural engagement. She is a elective soul and a straight shooter of

the best New Jersey variety. And as usual, it was a privilege to have spoken with a person who has helped shake the cultural conversation so specifically. So the first question is where and when were you happiest. Oh, well, I think that I was happiest in the early days of Blondie. I probably didn't really know how happy I was, but I was very happy. It was a brave new world, and I was struggling, you know, climbing and learning and working,

and it was quite of wonderful. And the reason I know this is because when they flew the planes into the Twin Towers, I went through the series of anger, of grief, of this and of that, and one day, I was just sort of laying there on the couch and I thought, oh my god, I wish it was the seventies again, and the tremendous feeling came over me about how that was a great, wonderful time for me.

So I look at that as being happy. Do you think it's because you guys were part of that van god of that New York scene, that whole music movement that happened. Were you aware of just being at the forefront of something and creating it or were you just too busy being in that whole music scene, in the club scene that you didn't realize that you were at the forefront. Oh, I don't think we've thought of ourselves

as being at the forefront. You know, it was a very creative period for us, and we were Dare Devils, and you know, we thought that we were Dare Devils. I don't know. The scene was very energetic and there was really nothing of value. None of us had record deals or anything like that. We're all scrambling and scuttling around like, you know, a little vermin. But you know,

it was very creative. So we fed off each other's creativity and it was you know, this sort of one optmanship as much as you know, we could figure out how to do and it was a spirited I guess is the best way, you know how people do in music today, there are so many collaborations, like you'll have all these people doing guest vocals on other people's tracks.

Was there a lot of collaboration that that we didn't necessarily get to hear that wasn't necessarily recorded, Like do you remember playing and writing or recording with other people that it was never really for public consumption. The time that I was thinking, I was really kind of before we do any recording, serious recording. I mean later on I sang on something of the Ramones. I think I'm probably the only the only female to saying on a Ramon's record. Then I did something with d D when

DD did his rap Invasion. I remember I am definitely going to listen to that tonight, D D King D D King. So there was some of that, but that that sort of came around later. But I think in the early days people were just maybe swapping back and

forth musician and more than performing officially. Um you know, like for a while, television's current bass player Fred Smith was my bass player, you know, and then Richard Hell broke off and formed the void OIDs and Walter Lore was playing with the void OIDs, or when he was playing with Johnny Thunders. You know, there was sort of this period of time when people were establishing who they were. So I think that that there's sort of an era

that nobody really knows about that much. It was never officially recorded, maybe it was or something, I don't know. Do you think that it was freedom from any kind of pressure that he was just creating in a vacuum outside of like a record label expectation or numbers or money or anything, that that was really sort of unadulterated happiness,

for you is sort of unencumbered creativity. Yeah. I mean we all had the goals and high aspirations of playing for thousands and thousands in arenas, and of course, you know, any buddy who joins a rock band has that dream. You know, that that's really where they all want to go. Very few want to just stay in the clubs. I've always felt out was the underpinnings of it all. So what relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you? My relationship with Chris is definitely a big big love in

my life Chris Stein, guitarist and Blondie. Yeah. Yeah, It's gone through so many different stages and different kinds of love. So I would say that, you know, since I've had intimacy with him and working relationship and a great friendship for all these years, I think he's the only person in my life that I can honestly say that about. Well, that you basically went through the scope of a whole relationship with one person. It is kind of amazing. It's

hard to be friends with excellent us. You have to work on it. You know, it's work, and I mean having a great love relationship is work and sacrifice and being flexible. And that's really what happens, isn't it did do all of the different permutations of love? Did that always feed the kind of creative cabal that you guys had, even if you guys were not getting along, Did it always somehow feed the creativity? Well, we always had a very easy communication with one another. I always knew what

he was saying. I always understood him. He of course is capable of understanding anything. I mean, he's really really smart person. So I think that, as you know, in acting, it's about listening and hearing. We could hear each other. That was a big part of it from the very beginning. Like how old you and you met him? Oh I was old. I was twenty seven seven. Yeah, oh I

love seven. I loved Wow, you were twenty seven when you met him, and like we're right from the offset was immediate, like not just like immediately falling in love, but an immediate recognition that this person was was kind of it. No, we were sort of friends before we

got intimate, and we met through music. He came to one of my very early shows, and then within the next two weeks he replaced one of our backing musicians, and then you know, we worked together in that format for a while, and then we went off on our own because we wanted to do something that was less

cabaret and more rock. That was that I love it, and that was that, Like it's an iconic relationship, and that was that, Like Parallel Lines was the first record I ever bought with my own money when I was nine years old. And the fact that your friendship has lasted through the whole course of my life, like that makes me feel that makes me feel good about the world. Thank you. That's very nice, it's very generous. Well, it's pretty true. There's only one record that you buy first,

like it stays in your brain and your heart. I'm so old that it's it was forty five. It was a single. What wasn't it? Uh, that's Domino. I think Blueberry Hill or something like that. But I used to buy forty five as well. Yeah, forty five was fun an LP, like you had to save up for an LP right in England, that's what an album was going. Okay, yeah, what quality do you like least about yourself? Oh? Well, I've been working on that I have. It's funny you

should ask that, you know. I think I used to if I was backed up again into the wall or something and I felt threatened or paranoid or afraid, I would react with anger and it was an inappropriate reaction. And so I try not to do that anymore. I'm very very aware of it, and I guess I've become too much of an adult. But I mean I do have moments of terrible temper, but not so not so unreasonable as it once was. Would it be an emotional situation like of somebody backing you into a corner like

as opposed to literally, that's what would illicit anger. Yes, sometimes, and I guess you know, anger and fear. You can respond to that in so many ways, so many different ways. You know that it does inhibit you. I think that's really what upsets me about it is that it closes me down, and I'd rather not be closed down. Yeah, that is the thing that comes with having lived a little bit. It's going the reaction that feels good in the moment actually a long term effect. It's so much

worse for you me us. Yeah. Yeah, So what person, place, or experience most altered your life. Well, immediately I think of something as a small child, But I think that's that's a fantasy, you know. I don't think there is one thing. It's always like a chain of events for me. I first started as a backup singer in the sixties with a friend from high school's husband, and I sort

of got bitten. I was terribly shy and was very happy to be a backup singer and marveled at people like Janis Joplin and Grace Slick, and you know, I was just, oh my god, how can they do it? How do they do it? But then you know, I was disappointed. You're learning about human nature all the time, and I was such an idealist, you know, kind of dummy, and so I sort of had a taste of business in the arts and I didn't like it. I didn't like it, and so I left it and I did

other things for a while. But I felt like I was haunted because I couldn't get it out of my mind. So then, do you remember the moment that you really decided to come back and focus on music for yourself. I approached someone who I knew, not very well, but I knew they were on the scene. I was a follower of the New York Dolls at the time, and I was living in New Jersey. I was helping my

mother who was seriously ill. You know. I was hanging around going to these shows at the Mercer Arts Center, and I love the Dolls and everything you know that they represented in it. And many of the people who would go to those shows, you know, I sort of built up a friendship with So I ran into one of those people and I said to her, what's going on, what are you up to? And she said, oh, I have a band, and I said, oh great, what's it called? She said, Pure garbage and I said, oh, great name,

really really great name. She said, oh, and Hollywood lawns in it. And I said, oh good. That must be so much fun. And so I said, let me know, give me your number, let me know the next time you do a show. So I never heard from her, and I called her finally and said, well, when is the show? She said, oh, we broke up. I said, oh, well, let's form a band of our own. You and me, no way. Yeah. What was the name of that band? The still Lettos. Oh that's a good name. Yeah, that's

a really good name. Wow, she still have that music? H I do. Actually, somebody found a recording recently and they're actually going to do something with it. I was amazed. It's not the great fidelity or you know, quality, but it's live. It's good, you know, it's like it has that quality. Oh my god. So was it recorded live in a venue or in the studio? Had to be a venue. I don't remember being in a studio. Well, I couldn't swear to anything. Don't ask me to swear anything,

don't anything. That's pretty cool, I mean, god, I'd love to hear that. That's amazing. Well, I remember the songs that you wrote and where you're playing guitar. I guess, yeah, you were really sincere and saying stuff. You know, you were saying things and you were feeling things. It was obvious. I honestly think that's pretty much all there is to feel stuff. And if you're a creative person and you

make things, you put that into what you do. And it's never going to be for everybody, but I for always felt like that was my job was to do that and you know, take the embarrassment if it doesn't work out, but never really let that stop you, right, And that's that's key, that word, and that meant Yeah, that's a very big part of what holds people back. You get embarrassed. So well, yeah, so what question would

you most like answered? Oh? God, I think that you know as a former that I'm always learning, I'm always learning. It must be the same for you. Yeah, it definitely is. I mean, I'm astonished at how much there is to keep on learning. I have a thirteen year old son

and we have this similar experience. He plays the piano and he kind of writes music and I did when I was really young, and I remember sobbing to my mother and my son didn't come sobbing to me, but he was really glum one day and I was like, what's up, and he was like, just you know, I was just playing the piano and I was just like writing a song. I just I just saw it like by the time I've grown up, like there's going to be no music left to ride. I was like, dude,

I had the same thought. I wept about it, like all the songs are going to get written, And I said, I've got to tell you, like, if anything, that become more songs to write, Like there's more to learn and there's more to do. The older I've gotten, I can't believe how much I missed when I was younger. I can't believe how much I thought I knew everything very true.

When you guys are writing songs, was an organic process of you'd sit down to write a record or did all these songs kind of come out of different situations for all of you? Like how was that process when you guys would write just what you said, you know, out of experience and out of you know, situations, and some grain of truth or absurdity you know, would strike you. And I was always making snippets you know, little little

jots of things. And I still do that, you know, little ideas notes to myself, and then I will organize them and come up with some music or you know, when we start working together as if they and in sessions, you know, and trying to create new material. But it works in all different ways for me. I'm sure it does for you. Yeah. I think it's just about paying attention, whether it's a phrase of music, or whether it's a line, or whether it's something someone says or something that you see.

I think recording it is the most important thing. Like I think it's the only thing I like about my phone is that I can record a voice note kind of wherever I am. It becomes some weird college journal. Did you contribute to your college today? Yeah? You know what I did? I did good. I wrote a book and I worked not just on the writing of it, but the design of like what the book covers going to look like and what that means. And today was sort of looking at it and going, is anything ever

really done? I could carry on writing this book literally for fucking ever. I could carry on tinkering with the phone and the color and the picture. It doesn't ever really end, Did you feel that way about records that like it's like, okay, I guess we should stop. But you could actually carry a roam forever if left to your own devices. Yes, it's a danger zone for sure. Sometimes you just have to back away from the table, drop your fork, walk away, walk away, walk away from

the desk. I know, yeah, I know. But I do try and do something every single day to add to the college. It's good for my mental health, particularly in these days, which is still a little bit more isolated than perhaps they used to be. Do you do you try and do something every day? Well, what I do as I sort of closed myself up in the car and driving in my little sound booth on wheels. I'm very careful not to you know, because you're not supposed

to use your phone, you know, when you're driving. But I have to make notes, so it's always sort of sitting there on my thigh, you know, I'm always pushing the button. You know, something that happens to me a lot. I guess why I'm out with people, if I'm at her show or something, and that's sometimes very surprising that it would be in the midst of all this sort of you know, noise and mayhem and something will you know, sort of pop into my head and I'll try to

record that or scribble it down somewhere. Is there anyone that you listen to you particularly? You know, I am not a listener except when I'm in the car driving and I just cruise and cruise and listened to, you know, all different things. I like to see what's on top ten. I like to know what kisses playing. I like to listen to grunge. I like to listen to rap. But I mean, you wouldn't think that I'm a person who would really love Rage against the Machine, but I do.

I'm actually incredibly glad to know that. But rage against the machine, I'm really interested in what people, particularly musicians, like, what they listened to. I like all kinds of music. Oddly enough, I have to admit it. When I'm in the house, I don't have music on. I am not the person who puts music on in the background. That's the only time that I'm sort of pinned down is when I'm in the cars. That's my that's my listening room,

and I love it. I like that. So in your life, can you tell me about something that has grown out of a personal disaster. I think in terms of the industry, we all go through these rude awakenings, shall we say, and learning experiences that really, you know, shape our sense of worth and our sense of reality, and in actual fact that made me have to plant myself down and say, regardless of this, I will persevere. I've always felt it's

really good to have to push up against something. Yeah, I felt that way too from the very beginning, because you know, having to demand a reaction from an audience is really really important, and it just makes you work harder. Yeah, exactly exactly. Insisting it's funny insisting a lot of women were not raised to insist on people's attention. Where actually told that it's a very bad thing for a woman

to insist on people's attention. I think, yeah, act like a lady exactly exactly what exactly what kind of lady are you looking for? It's tricky because you're such an influential woman at that moment in time, Like, did you feel at a disadvantage being a woman in the industry. I've always felt that it was an idea whose time had come, and I felt that why Also about the gay scene, you know that the time had come for

this to change. You know, I felt that way about women in rock or whatever you want to call it. You say that there were situations where you kind of have to find yourself worth and that you were pushing up against. Was that like within the industry? Yeah, there was really very little else to go, you know, there was nowhere else to go with it because it was always predicated on the next new thing. I think that the boy said really used up, but used up there

a lot of time. Well, I think they have explored a lot. I mean there were always great stars who did exploration, like David Bowie and people like that, and there are still as part of the survival of the industry really is that it's it's the newest, it's the newest, it's the greatest, it's the latest, it's something fresh, and and that can be problematic that, you know, it's like you get this sort of five year plan of possibility. It's the same in Hollywood. It's always like the youngest

and the freshest and the newest. Right, it becomes so myopic because it's just about that particular industry as opposed to being an artist in general, and that constantly evolving I think it's always hard to be a young artist, But it's really about seeing it as a marathon, I guess, and not a sprint, not just a five year but a fifty year. Yeah. I mean that's one of the things that Chris and I always talked about actually many

of the artists that we admired. Of course, we're middle aged and at the time, you know, we were in our twenties. And also you know the fact that the great blues artists and the great jazz artists were fully developed and you know, had been playing for a long time, and it wasn't looked down upon that they weren't in their twenties. But you're right, in Hollywood, it's fierce because it's so built on the fresh, youthful anue or whatever,

young heart throb. Yeah, it's all about merchandising and the mercantile part of of what we do. I think that the youth aspect is like it's an industry of its own. You have to really emancipate yourself unless you're going to go and just sort of sequest to yourself for the rest of your life after you're not super young anymore, which is obviously what Hollywood quite like a lot of women to do. But really those faster faster, and I was just thinking of moving out there. I was just damn.

I was just thinking of love and of loving Hollywood. No. But I mean, it's so weird because it's such a tiny amount of time that you're really super young like that. Yeah, and then you're an evolving artist for much longer. It took me a long time to sort of emancipate myself from outside of that. It's hard, very hard. He said that you were really shy when you were back in singer. How did you shed that shyness? Was it just by doing it? And what made you want to shed the shyness?

I wanted to enjoy myself. I wanted to really be free and loving music the way that I do and the way that it makes me feel. I wanted to make people see that. One day, I did have a revelation, harsh revelation. It was at CBGBs. As a matter of fact, I went on stage and the stage is very small there. It's not like you can, you know, run back and forth and have to do a lot of you know

this or that. You pretty much have to stay in your spot I walked out, and I realized I was waiting for the audience to give me, give it to me, give it me with me. Then I realized that I had to make them. I had to make them, I had to command them. And that was a real revelation. And then shyness sort of said, well, you've had your

day because I've got work to do. Wow, that's pretty amazing to actually walk out on stage and it gets really real and this thing that you've had as a mantle in your life, it's like, Oh, I have no further use for this and I need to shed it. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. It's like it's a decision something else that I had heard that being shy was a form of ego, and I thought, wow, that's that's really crappy. I didn't like that. Do you think that was true?

Well it just sort of made me just even more convinced that I had no time for it. I really like you that you just summoned all your impatience with something that was bugging you about your character and just left it by the wayside. Well, theoretically I did. I don't know if I did completely all at once, but I got the message many people ask me, how do

you not have stage fright? I said, well, I have a job to do, and when I before I go on stage, if I'm too excited or or too nervous, I just say, okay, you know, concentrate on your job and the technical aspects of what you have to do. And that's sad, you know, just go out there, do your job. I like that. I think you're the most practical rock stop in the world. Oh ship, that's horrible, that's horrible. I'm quitting. Well, what do what do wether

rock stars tell you? Well, who else are you talking to? Damn it? I don't know. Like Dave Carl, Dave was just so kind of all it all felt way more haphazard, And I really like the idea to be no nonsense with the parts of ourselves that are difficult and going Okay, well you're feeling really nervous, you're feeling really scary. It all right, Well you've got to go out there and you've got a job to do, so just focus on that and stop thinking about all the other stuff. Like

it's really it's kind of good parenting of yourself. I did get some good advice about that, you know, and how to help yourself. Think about envisioning yourself as a small child, and you take your small child hand in your big child hand, say okay, you're with me, let's go, and I just I love it. I like that too. It's very good to parent ourselves. Yes, I mean, you do that for yourself, right, you have a child. But I've done it more for myself since I did it

for my kids. Parenting him told me how to be a good parent to myself, more tolerant kind of a right, Yeah, take your own hand. I'd like that. Yeah. Oh, Debbie, thank you. Thank you with all of my heart. Thank you for coming and talking to me. I just think you're the absolute greatest. Thank you. I wouldn't have done it if I didn't feel the same way about you, and I keep my eyes out for you. Welcome here. She is, so thank you. Debbie Harry is a rock

icon and her footprint on the industry is deep. I'd recommend if you can to get into a car or as Debbie would say, you're Sam Booth on wheels and blast your favorite Blondie song and don't forget to add every day to the collage of your life. Mini questions is hosted and written by Me Mini Driver, Supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, Producer more Than Lavoy, Research assistant Marissa Brown. Original music Sorry Baby by Mini Driver, Additional music by

Aaron Kaufman, Executive produced by Me Mini Driver. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson, Addison No Day, Lisa Castella and a Nick Oppenheim, a w k PR de La Pescador, Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg, And for constantly solicited tech support, Henry Driver h