Brian Aris
Jody Morlock
HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 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
DEDICATED TO
THE GIRLS OF THE
UNDERWORLD
Bob Gruen
Courtesy of Debbie Harry’s personal collection
Contents
Title Page
2. Pretty Baby, You Look So Heavenly
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
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.
Our room was also very exotic, with decorative rattan elements and two separate cotlike beds equipped with hard cylindrical pillows.