Face It: A Memoir

Product Information

Although I have fond memories of listening to the music of Blondie and watching the videos of the winsome Debbie Harry prancing in front of the camera, I wasn’t a mega-fan and never followed her career after the break-up of the band. However, that didn’t stop me from anxiously awaiting my early reading copy that promised to be revealing and compelling and I was not disappointed. Still she remains aloof, made of steel but strangely maternal to all around her. She likes a cigarette these days and appears to be having more fun than at the height of her career. Fame, she says, was about wanting to make things happen – Harry did that all right, with her off-kilter dancing, her ability to radiate cool, her sheer presence. Nevertheless, I was enchanted by her girlhood in New Jersey and somehow making the decision after high school to become an artist (of a genre to be determined) in New York in the 1960s--and, despite all odds, actually accomplishing it. I felt moved by her losses over the years and about her coming to terms with childhood trauma. I was entertained by her storytelling and (sorry, Debs!) her inherent nerdiness (comics and the space program, oh my), something you would never think possible in the life of an Icon of Cool like Debbie Harry. I felt pride in her inherent, unapologetic Americanness, a quality as post-modern Americans we dismiss too easily.

Debbie Harry - Wikipedia Debbie Harry - Wikipedia

Hey, Debbie, in Face It [ Harry’s memoir], you discussed the creation of the Blondie persona . How intentional were your choices in character curation, and why did you choose to adopt a persona in the first place? ChloSchmoThis isn’t a question, but in 1978 or 1979 I was a very closeted trans kid watching Blondie on Top of the Pops with my friends. The inevitable question arose about who would like a date with you. I drew a deep breath and said: “I want to be Debbie .” There was a stony silence as I outed myself. I finally came out as trans three years ago so I owe you a lot … rachaeltyrell Excepting that one intensely personal and brave revelation, Debbie remained aloof for the most part. While I realize she plays up her sex appeal, and that is a big part of her stage persona, I was a bit surprised by her strong reliance on her outer appearance, and how, despite believing her music was cutting edge, and that she was standing up to men, and for herself, through her music, she placed a very heavy emphasis on her looks and sex kitten persona rather than on her talent. I was disappointed by that and wish she had relayed a stronger stance against the misogyny in the male dominated and controlled music business. In fact, she went out of her way to avoid that subject, explaining that she just put up with it and got on with what she needed to do- which is a cycle we are desperately trying to break. I’m very flattered. I can imagine how heart-rending and difficult it is to make that stand. The people who do this are very brave and I have tremendous feeling for them and for all of us, because otherwise it’s a denial of the human race. As to the format and organization, Debbie gets off to a good start, talking about her childhood, her road to success, and the atmosphere in New York during the seventies, which was bursting with creativity and artistry, but was also a dark, dangerous, terrifying city that was going broke.

Debbie Harry The much anticipated autobiography by Debbie Harry

Did she feel objectified? “There was a time in the earlier Blondie years when I was trying hard to perform, sing and write, and all of those contributions would be overlooked [by critics]. And that was, well …” She doesn’t finish the sentence. She was furious when Blondie’s record label put out a poster with a picture of her wearing a see-through blouse. In the book, she writes: “Sex sells, that’s what they say, and I’m not stupid, I know that. But on my terms, not some executive’s.” I enjoyed this a lot because I can answer yes to all of these questions. I was pretty young in the 1980s so I did not get into that scene during its heyday. But, in the 90s, my friends and I were all about late 70s and 80s alternative music. I listened to a lot of Blondie and many of the other acts she talks about in this book. I regret that I never got to see CBGBs or witness the late 70s music scene in New York – even though it sounds like it was not an “if” but a “when” I would have been mugged or beaten up! It is amazing how harrowing and interesting day to day life was for Harry as she spent her formative years in New Jersey and New York City – and she mentions several times that this was before they cleaned it all up. She jumps around and and talks about everything under the sun, but without really making much sense at all. In one scene she talks about how Miles Davis was a patron in a bar she worked out and all she says is that his date spoke for him and she (Harry) didn't understand why they sat him in a table upstairs. Um...okay.If you think this is a lot of column space devoted to Debbie Harry’s appearance, bear in mind that she leads with her chin: Her memoir’s titled Face It. As an artist, of course she’s much more than her looks, even if the latter are what gave Blondie its name. And, as the 1970s ad campaign reminded the buying public, Blondie is a group, not a woman. I got a job working at a health club and I started dating a guy who was a painting contractor. The normal life.” The tone is chatty and personal (it read as if the editor let her have reasonably free rein), and I had to take frequent breaks to locate videos and photos mentioned in the narration. And while Debbie is very candid, there is a feeling some of the really good stuff was omitted which is validated near the conclusion when she admits there are more stories to tell but she is a "private person" and unsure if she'll divulge them at some future date. This reader hopes she does.

Face It by Debbie Harry | Waterstones

meh. Debbie Harry is 74 and I'm sure she's lived a colorful and interesting life, but the only real interesting parts of this seem to be made up (she claims to remember being three months old, as a child she "had bedroom eyes" and always "received a lot of sexual attention", she says she was almost kidnapped by Ted Bundy--which has been debunked several times, she's claims to be psychic, she was raped at knifepoint but it didn't really bother her because she was more worried about their stolen equipment, etc. I'm sure there were more, but I can't think of everything right now. Recent years have brought a wealth of memoirs from women who served pivotal roles in the creation of punk and its descendants: Patti Smith, Carrie Brownstein, Kim Gordon, Viv Albertine, Linda Yablonsky, Chrissie Hynde, Alice Bag, as well as associated works like Sarah Marcus’s Girls to the Front and Vivien Goldman’s Revenge of the She-Punks. There are a lot of descriptive scenes of New York in the 70's and name dropping of people of whom some I were familiar with but others that I had to look up. She is honest about the drug scene, her use, and the her life, with Chris Stein, and their struggle to make it without abolishing their punk mentality. And of course when I saw this in the bookstore, I couldn't resist - is there any person on this planet cooler than Debbie Harry? Did "cool" as a concept exist before Debbie Harry? The answer is no, friends. No it did not. (Did anyone else watch the Zoe Kravitz-led reboot of High Fidelity? There's an unexpected Debbie Harry cameo in one of the early episodes and that one brief scene is worth the entire price of admission alone.)

But a fan who knew very little about Ms. Harry post-1990. And even pre-1990. For example, I did not know about her time in New York on the Downtown Scene. Sure, I knew she came up through the punk era, was there at CBGB's, was mentioned in the same breath as Patti Smith and Tom Verlaine, but I really had no idea how deeply involved she was with the people and places of that lost era--her memories of which certainly made me emotional at times.

Face It by Debbie Harry review — the face that launched a

I hated my looks as a kid but I could not stop staring.” So says Debbie Harry in her memoir Face It. Well, yes – who could ever stop staring at this extraordinarily beautiful woman? I certainly couldn’t and it is impossible to talk about Harry without discussing her appearance. Thankfully, Harry doesn’t try. Mostly she stands at some distance from herself chatting about how she put together her look. She is always visually hyper-aware. She learns how to be photographed and wonders whether if it’s true that photos steal a part of your soul – for if so she wouldn’t have a soul left. From early on she is seeking to control her image but perhaps it’s only now that she is doing so. At the time, however, I think us girls did get it. No one else could be Harry. Now ordinary girls look at beautiful celebrities and feel inadequate or try to emulate them. With Harry we just bathed in her light. Some of Blondie’s most celebrated recordings are cover versions, such as The Tide Is High or Hanging on the Telephone. My favourite [cover of a Blondie song] is Ride’s interpretation of Union City Blue with vocals by Alex Taylor from the Motorcycle Boy. Is there a Blondie cover that you are particularly fond of? VerulamiamParkRanger She recalls, “I really loved sex. I think I might have been oversexed, but I didn’t have a problem with that; I felt it was totally natural. But in my town in those days, sexual energy was very repressed, or at least clandestine. The expectation for a girl was that you would date, get engaged, remain a virgin, marry, and have children. The idea of being tied to that kind of traditional suburban life terrified me.”I think it's the same as having a flu shot basically, another way of looking after yourself,” she wrote in her memoir Face It. There is certainly more that I want to know--more details about Parallel Lines and Eat to the Beat, Blondie's two best albums (in my opinion) from the Early Era; more details about the transition from Eat to the Beat to AutoAmerican, which seems drastic even now, although it was probably something completely normal in the evolution of the band; more of her thoughts on the reaction to KooKoo, which even now seems mixed, despite it being something of a quirky, musical milestone in pop history. More, perhaps, about what she likes to read and listen to and whether she still paints. And some pics of her dogs would not be amiss. I hate coyness in memoirs so I appreciated Debbie letting loose with names along with her honest feelings and opinions of her talent, looks, friends, and past relationships. Not being familiar with the punk music scene of the 1970s (I couldn’t name a Ramones song to save my life), some of the name dropping went over my head but I was captivated by her stories that were heartbreaking (Chris Stein's illness), infuriating (bankruptcy due to ignorance), and hilarious (Penn Jillette’s hot tub invention due to Debbie's rant). But, that air of mystery leads me to another qualm about the book. A good memoir gives readers an intimate look at the person and is not just about naming names- which Debbie did a lot of – or an oral history of facts and events.