The CBGB’s alumni list is very impressive considering the overall size and squalor of both the bar and its neighborhood.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. All of that said, Debbie Harry is an icon, and although I didn’t get much of a feel for who she is, deep down, I still love her music and was glad I had the chance to learn a bit more about her history. Rather than expose her inner workings to the world, Harry has determined to stay mysterious to the last. Harry's memoir is divided into many chapters; each read like transcribed interviews, because they are.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. Whatever setbacks she encounters--whether it be an abusive stalker boyfriend who could've killed her (and who inspired One Way or Another! Of course, within a few years Blondie had become a veritable powerhouse of hit songs that topped the charts around the world. True there are not loads of photos from Debbie and Blondie over the years, but there are a few, if you have an open mind about what constitutes art, then you can really appreciate that the book is really well put together. There are books that chronicle those times better ( Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil, Gillian McCain) but hey, it's Debbie Harry - nice to read her perspective of her journey and learn of how some of the band's top hits and records were created.

Noting Bowie’s generously proportioned appendage, she is moved to wonder “why Iggy didn’t let me have a closer look at his dick”. A last-minute tour cancellation because of Stein’s ill health (he was later diagnosed with a rare auto-immune disease) was the final straw and Blondie fell apart. It's reconstructed from a series of interviews she did to reconstruct her memories, so it's a bit jangly and jumpy, but not overly so.

He concludes that in man there is a part of baseness and a part of grandeur, a sign of our decadence in the sense of fallen beings. This is, of course, the author’s prerogative and doesn’t mean that the book is without depth or charm. By the time I went there Patti Smith, the Ramones, the Talking Heads and Blondie had moved far away from this tiny stage. 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.

Even as a teenager, listening to 'Parallel Lines' over and over in a college dorm room, I got an inkling of their cool metropolitan savvy, and an odd 'queer' vibe from them (none of the band members are, though).Shortly afterwards, they discovered they had accrued two years’ worth of unpaid taxes, prompting Harry to lose her house, her car and even some of her clothes. However, along with her courage and talent and happy enduring personal a professional relationship with Chris Stein, her perseverance paid off. 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.