Punk goddess Debbie Harry changed my world.
Boys wanted her. Girls wanted to be her.
With her platinum hair and pouty lips, she exuded an iconic sexiness in the late 1970s that I had only seen on the pages of my mom’s “Cosmopolitan” magazines.
Like a sultry sex kitten, the former Playboy bunny sung about a heart of glass and rapped before most of America even knew rapping existed.
One Sunday afternoon before the days of cable TV, I spotted this woman on some now-forgotten show. She wore a khaki brown fedora and a shiny leather jumpsuit in the same shade.
She sung in a raw breathy tone about a world I wanted to live in.
Forget the woman I had been idolizing – Olivia Newton John. She was gone in a punk-rock flash and Debbie Harry entered my world. I threw down the jump rope that I sung into while pretending I was Sandy from “Grease” and picked up a hairbrush and started singing “Heart of Glass.”
Debbie set me, along with many other Gen X girls, on a punk and new wave voyage filled with musical discoveries, fashion tips and lessons in independence, which threatened men to their core. So we believe.
“I think if most guys in America could somehow get their fave-rave poster girl in bed and have total license to do whatever they wanted with this legendary body for one afternoon, at least 75 percent of the guys in the country would elect to beat her up,” rock journalist Lester Bangs wrote in his biography Blondie, which more or less rips the band to shreds.
Blondie was a band that evolved from the New York punk scene, a world of black leather, deconstructed T-shirts, edgy haircuts and pathed the New Wave path.
It was a universe far away from Pine Bluff, a land where Ralph Lauren polo shirts, preppy plaid shorts and floral sundresses ruled.
In New York, you could wear whatever you wanted and not be judged, I figured. It was a good lesson to adopt at an early age.
Although I was judged as a teenager, I didn’t let that stop me from wearing mini-skirts and fishnets while carving my own fashion, career and life path with Debbie Harry independence.
Debbie could have let the boys write the songs, but no. She co-wrote punk anthems for women such as “Dreaming” with the opening line “When I met you in the restaurant, you could tell I was no debutante” or “Call Me” with the come-hither line, “Roll me in designer sheets, I'll never get enough.”
She also co-wrote "Rapture", the first number-one single in the United States with rap vocals.
Debbie fronted the band with five guys – Chris Stein, Jimmy Destri, Frank Infante, Nigel Harrison and Clem Burke, who passed away last week from cancer.
Unlike most women, Debbie never married, which gave many girls hope that they didn’t have to say “I do” either. (I’ve never married either.) She lived with Chris Stein, the co-founder and guitarist of Blondie, for several years and nursed him back to health when he was diagnosed with a near-fatal autoimmune disease. But they broke up, he married and had children but she never did.
“I’m not the only woman in the world who never had children,” she said in an interview once. “There are many reasons why Chris and I didn’t. We were working very hard, we were happy and we didn’t feel a need. And I always thought: there are a lot of children in the world. I didn’t need to add to that, you know?”
In 1982, Blondie was slated to play in Memphis on the “Tracks Across America” Tour. I saw an ad for the tour in the newspaper and begged my parents to take me. Supportive of my musical fascinations, they balked at that. I was too young to go to such a thing.
Years later, I discovered that the concert was actually cancelled, but a few days later they started another leg with what would become my lifelong obsession – Duran Duran – as their opening act.
Suzi Parker
Years later, I finally saw Blondie in concert in of all places, Tunica, Miss., at a casino.
The punk diva stepped on the blue-lit stage in a black leather mini-skirt at 50-something, so short that my then-boyfriend spent the night looking up her skirt like a 12-year-old.
Debbie still rocked that trademark blond hair, and she exuded a cool that defied age.
And she still does at 79.
(A version of this story originally appeared in 2014 on the now-defunct site The Broad Side.)
