The apparent irony of Debbie Harry’s career is that despite
being in her thirties by the time she became a star, despite her classically
fine voice, despite Blondie’s radio-ready pop songs, she and her band got
lumped in with the punks. Look, no one is going to mistake “The Tide Is High” for
“Blitzkrieg Bop”, but Harry’s story is actually pretty punk. She survived in
the heart of infamous mid-seventies NYC when rats and violence were in equal abundance, she survived drug addition and sexual assault and now speaks of both nonchalantly,
she survived a turbulent career at odds with her consistently massive fame, she
survived getting ripped off by music-business weasels, she survived the severe
illness of boyfriend and band mate Chris Stein. Don’t get taken in by how Sid
Vicious’s tragic trajectory is glamorized—surviving is punker than dying.
Harry lived through it all to tell her story in Face It. Through 350 pages, she burns
through uncountable harrowing experiences without ever seeming excessively bothered or bitter about the hard times or overly impressed with the triumphs.
Debbie Harry is nothing if not cool.
Along with discussing her musical career in satisfying
detail, she discusses her troubled personal background and attempts to
reconnect with her biological family, her strange pre-fame encounters with
Buddy Rich and Timothy Leary, her relationship with Chris Stein (though she’s
still mum about the specifics of their break up), her less
celebrated couplings with thPenn Jillette and Harry Dean Stanton, her
film work with David Cronenberg and John Waters, her odd projects (stand out:
attempting to remake Godard’s Alphaville
with a starring role for Robert Fripp), her infatuations with pro wrestling and some weird shit she calls “sprang-a-langs,” her sexual, chemical, musical, and
fashion preferences, and her own iconic status.
Face It is also a
fabulously designed book. Photos are often embellished with cheeky cartoons and
there are several multi-page sections devoted to fan art. It’s a gas to see
that Harry’s style-consciousness is even at work in her autobiography.
