Debbie Harry on Creative Highlights, Her Risqué Run-In With David Bowie, and Why She Didn’t Have Children

Debbie Harry isn’t a fan of nostalgia.

“I don’t like looking backwards,” says Blondie’s legendary vocalist, who turns 80 this month. “I want challenges, I want to look ahead—to expand, or gather my physical, mental state of being and squeeze something out. The way Blondie came to be was sort of wringing something out of desperation, or crazy vision, or comic book life. Just push it out.”

Harry, who has sold over 50 million albums worldwide (11 with Blondie and five solo albums), performed until last year with the band—the first out of the 1970s CBGB’s rock scene that had pop hits (“Heart of Glass,” “Call Me,” “Rapture”). She’s appeared in more than 30 film and TV shows, authored a memoir (“Face It”), and, in 2006, was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with fellow Blondie band members Chris Stein, Clem Burke, Gary Valentine, Jimmy Destri, Frank Infante, and Nigel Harrison.

Here, she talks to Lisa Robinson about legacy, influence, drugs, being propositioned by David Bowie, image, her relationship with Blondie cocreator Chris Stein, and future challenges.

Vanity Fair: Do you think the way you integrated rap and reggae into your songs made Blondie more deceptive and subversive than just a pop-punk band?

Debbie Harry: I hope so. We had adversity and resistance, but what I really enjoyed was the climb. And having to win. Not like an athlete who decided to get into music, but it’s just that the challenge is so important. Even if it was my own boundaries; I had to break out of being a middle class kid who wasn’t expected to do any of this. I had to break out of that suburban training.

You’ve done so many genre-defying things that mattered and lasted: Blondie music, solo albums, movies—what are you most proud of?

I think the things I get most teary-eyed about are the relationships, good fortune, and the luck I’ve had working with some wonderful, exotic, talented people. Great minds. My list is going to sound very short, but having worked with Chris [Stein] and Clem [Blondie drummer Clem Burke, who died of cancer this past April] for years—especially Chris, that’s extraordinary. Keeping a rock band together for 50 years was like a marriage, and it’s sad that with Clem’s passing and without having Chris onstage, I can’t see myself being onstage as Blondie, even though I am the face of Blondie. But I’m proud of the music, and I would still like to do music. Then, [working with] John Waters and David Cronenberg on the film side of things. I feel like a little footnote in terms of how these people have affected culture.

But you’ve influenced so many female music stars who followed, including Madonna, Gwen Stefani and Lady Gaga, to name a few. But you weren’t “androgynous,” you didn’t wear black leather or play guitar; you were very feminine. Do you think that made people think you weren’t as smart as you are?

I was always sort of the pop tart. Whatever it took. We were ready to take what came along. And that’s one of the things I really like about live music.

You once told me—and I quote—“I wore the wedding dress first dammit.” When was that?

At CBGB’s, but I ripped it off and waved it around and did as many obscene things as I could with it.

You put rap in songs early on, your lyrics are clever, but you dealt with jealousy—some people thought you were just the face and Chris was the brains. Did you personally think you got enough credit?

Well fortunately, we both came up at a time when we could experiment and pull resources, pull references and build on that. If something came along that we liked, or that we could use, we applied ourselves in that way. It’s much more of a business now. People want to be fed a format; they want to know exactly what you’re aiming at, and that’s the only way you’re going to get people to notice you. It’s very specific. When I first met Chris, he had just come back from England, he’d been hanging around the end of Portobello Road where they had reggae shows, so he was gaga over reggae. And I had been crazy in love with the Mighty Sparrow—not really reggae but sort of calypso—so that’s how we worked that into “The Tide is High.”

I remember interviewing you and Chris during the ‘80s and you always seemed lucid, but you’ve since spoken and written about how you were on drugs.

Well we were struggling with a lot of stuff. Chris was overcoming something and we didn’t know what it was [the rare autoimmune illness pemphigus]. We needed to do some drugs to stabilize ourselves from some kind of emotional roller coaster. Had we gone to a shrink, we probably would have been severely medicated. But that also was a sign of the times, because drugs were everywhere. In my social circle, people would come over and just do drugs together.

I don’t think I was aware until years later just how much heroin had been around at CBGB’s.

I think a lot of it was going around, but I never got the impression that people were nodding out, sniveling old junkies. It was a different atmosphere. Now, I feel it was a waste of time, but I don’t regret having had the experiences. I can’t go around regretting everything in my life; that would be such a waste.

Did David Bowie really expose himself to you?

Yes. And it was very nice. (Laughs.)

Did he really say “Can I fuck you?” and you replied, “I don’t know, can you?”

Yes. I was such a smartass. I regretted saying that, because he was such a wonderful artist and a wonderful person. I was just being punk; I worked very hard at being punk.

He didn’t say “May I?”

Right, so I answered correctly. He’s British and [I thought] British people have more control and knowledge of proper English.

So many women musicians have told me about their issues having, or not having children, and how it would affect their career or their bands. Do you regret not having had children?

No, I don’t think so. With my background [Harry was adopted], if I had really wanted children, I would have adopted, because I would have known what to say to a child like that. But it’s what I said—wanting to break out of that middle class expectation. I was expected to marry and have children, and that was the furthest thing from my mind. I wanted to be a beatnik. That’s why so many of us gravitated towards New York—we wanted to communicate with other like-minded, artistic people.

What was it about Chris that attracted you—not just musically, but romantically—and kept the two of you together for so long?

He’s a very nice person. And he’s truthful and smart. He’s just a human being. He’s manly, without being a prig.

Do you think that being with him helped shield you from the sexual harassment that was so prevalent in the music business?

That sounds likely. I don’t know what other girls went through; I guess if you’re young and innocent, someone can come and prey on you. But at that time, I was in my late 20s, so I wasn’t exactly a dewy-eyed teenager. Chris and I were partners in many ways, so when we went into meetings, if there was any of that kind of tension, sometimes he would get jealous, but we would deal with it. But we really weren’t that sought after. We weren’t on the “A list” for a very long time. People were curious about us, but we never really pulled it off until after a few years of trying things out and seeing what fit. And eventually, we found a fit.

Do you still have the portrait Andy Warhol did of you?

I actually passed the original on, but I have a nice copy of it.

Didn’t the band go bankrupt at one point? What happened?

We had a business manager who ripped everybody off, and it cost us years—probably up to ten years of financial problems: IRS intervention, loss of property, loss of bank accounts—not that we had big bank accounts, but they closed us down. I had to do everything on a cash basis, which is not easy.

Bands usually break up because of drugs or money. After the first Blondie breakup in 1982, what got you to reunite in 1997?

The problems we had were not as serious as other bands; we were not as successful as some of the other bands that broke up. But we met the right business people who were decent people and who were interested, and they said “You’ve got something good here, let’s do something with it.” Our breakup had been kind of childish really, it was competition and personality driven and none of us knew enough about business. We had a jumble of bad decisions, and a lot of legal things to straighten out – which we did, thank goodness.

How much pressure has there always been on you to look good?

It’s always been a tool for me. It’s not like I started having cosmetic surgery as a kid in school—I think nowadays a lot of girls are getting cosmetic surgery when they’re 10, 11 years old. God bless if it improves their lives and they feel happy. But as far as me having cosmetic surgery, it made me feel better about myself. Maybe it made me feel happy, or more confident. It was just something that I felt necessary at the time. I wanted to work, and so much of women being attractive, and being a selling point, is clearly showbiz. If you’re going to be in the business, be in it.

You were with Chris for so long, now he’s married and you’re godmother to his children. Have you been able to have other romantic relationships?

I think so. I’ve dated, I’ve gone out with people for different lengths of time. But I try to keep my sex life and my romantic life as private as possible.

I remember Stephen Sprouse made a lot of clothes for you when you both lived in a building on the Bowery, and you wore so many cute outfits onstage, in photos, and in videos. Do you still have all those clothes?

I don’t have all of it. I do have the stage stuff and the clothes I made for photography and shows—I’ve been careful about that, even though it’s a pile of rags. It’s in a storage space, because I had it in my house until I couldn’t stand it anymore. But now that I’m not on the road, I’m getting good at deleting it.

You’re turning 80, a new Blondie album is finished and coming out in the fall, and there’s a documentary and biopic coming out about you and the band. Do those present new challenges?

They’re in the works, but I don’t know how a life can be summarized or given a caption. I suppose there’ll be something that’s off the wall but will somehow work. I’m happy to be doing it—it’s helping me to collect my thoughts. I ran into a wall: the tour ended, Clem died, and wow. What is this space I live in now? I’m curing—I’m doing a cure. And part of that is de-cluttering up my space, which is crowded with that life. I need to get some breath, get some air in there. And I want to feel that little spark of creativity, surprise—those things. There’s a little tingle of that, and I hope that will be there for me.