Debbie Harry

Deborah Ann Harry (born July 1, 1945 in Miami, Florida) is an American rock and roll musician who grew up in Union City, New Jersey. Debbie also attended Hawthorne High School and graduated in the 1960s. Was adopted by a couple in Hawthorne, New Jersey as an infant. She originally gained fame as the frontwoman for punk band Blondie, which originated in the mid 1970s and achieved commercial success in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

She was a regular at CBGB's, a famous New York City club that was an early center for punk rock.

Her band Blondie became the epitome of the punk style, and Debbie Harry, with her two-tone bottle-blonde hair, became its best known icon. Launching just on the cusp of MTV, Debbie Harry and Blondie put out some of the first rock music videos, in some cases inventing some of the clichés of the form.

Up to that point, rock had been a heavily male-dominated field. Many female musicians have acknowledged Debbie Harry's pioneering role.

Life and career

Harry was adopted at the age of three months and raised in Hawthorne, New Jersey.

Prior to starting her singing career, Debbie was a dancer in a bar in Union City.

Before Blondie, Debbie was in a folk rock group, The Wind In The Willows. She joined a girl-group trio, The Stilettos, in the early 1970s. The Stillettos' backup band included Harry's boyfriend and Blondie guitarist Chris Stein.

Harry's strong stage persona of cool sexuality and streetwise style became so closely associated with the group's name that many have believed Harry's name to be "Blondie", to her lasting chagrin. To complicate matters further, Harry has sometimes described "Blondie" as the character she plays onstage with the band, as well as the band's name. The difference between Harry and Blondie was famously pointed out by the band with a "Blondie is a Group" button campaign in 1979.

In 1981 (see 1981 in music), Harry began a solo career with the album "Koo Koo" (1981).

In April 1983 she appeared on Broadway with Andy Kaufman in the wrestling play "Teaneck Tanzi", which opened and closed in one night. She also teamed up with Giorgio Moroder that year on the song "Rush Rush", which was featured in the film Scarface.

In 1985 Debbie released "Feel the Spin", which was produced by John "Jellybean" Benitez.

During the years 1983 through 1986, Harry did not appear in public much, because she was caring for Chris Stein, who fell ill with a rare genetic disease called Pemphigus. Stein fully recovered and continued to work with Harry, both on her solo work and as members of Blondie. Their relationship, however, did not survive. The pair broke up in 1987.

On February 23 1999, at the age of 53, Harry became the oldest female singer to reach No. 1 in the UK with Maria (Blondie's first single from their album No Exit); a record she still holds.

Deborah Harry currently resides in New York City. Though she stated that she identifies as mostly heterosexual, Harry has said she has had intimate relationships with both men and women. [http://www.rainbownetwork.com/Music/detail.asp?iData=20714&iCat=111&iChannel=17&nChannel=Music

Acting roles

Some of her notable film roles were in Videodrome (1983), Union City (1980), New York Beat (otherwise knows as Downtown '81, where she plays the angel of the East Village alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat), Rock & Rule (1983) an animated movie where she did vocals opposite Robin Zander of Cheap Trick, John Waters' Hairspray (1988), where she played the big-haired and villainous Velma von Tussle, paired with Sonny Bono, and Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990). She has also had notable roles in such films as Spun, Cop Land and My Life Without Me and is featured in David Munro's upcoming Full Grown Men.

Harry's TV guest appearances include The Muppet Show, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Will and Grace and Wiseguy.

She had a voice role in the video game Vice City as a cab dispatcher, and sang "Ghost Riders in the Sky" over the closing credits of Alex Cox's film Three Businessmen.

In addition, she played the role of "Elizabeth" in the FMV-based game Double Switch, which was released for the Sega CD (1993), the Sega Saturn, Apple Macintosh and Windows 95.

Solo career

Deborah Harry has released four original solo albums. She's also performed with and released albums with the avant-garde jazz group the Jazz Passengers, and done many one-off projects with such diverse artists as Iggy Pop, Blow Up and Die Haut.

She stopped using "Debbie Harry" as her professional name and started using "Deborah Harry" in 1989, starting with the album Def, Dumb & Blonde.

In 1995, she recorded two songs with Argentinian ska band Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, most notably on the Lennon-McCartney song Strawberry Fields Forever.

In May 2006, she released a tribute song to rapper Lil' Kim called "Dirty and Deep" in protest of her conviction. The song is available free from the Deborah Harry Home Page.

Discography

Albums

See also Blondie discography

Koo Koo (1981)
Rockbird (1986)
Once More Into The Bleach (1988)
Def, Dumb and Blonde (1989)
The Complete Picture - The Very Best Of Deborah Harry And Blondie (1991)
Debravation (1993)

Singles

Artist	Year	Song	US Hot 100	US Dance	US Modern Rock	UK singles	Album
Debbie Harry	1981	"Backfired"	43	29	-	32	Koo Koo
Debbie Harry	1981	"The Jam Was Moving"	82	-	-	-	Koo Koo
Debbie Harry	1983	"Rush, Rush"	105	28	-	87	Scarface (Soundtrack)
Debbie Harry	1985	"Feel The Spin"	-	-	-	-	Krush Groove (Soundtrack)
Debbie Harry	1986	"French Kissin' in the USA"	57	-	-	8	Rockbird
Debbie Harry	1986	"In Love With Love"	70	1	-	45	Rockbird
Debbie Harry	1986	"Free To Fall"	-	-	-	46	Rockbird
Debbie Harry	1988	"Liar, Liar"	-	-	14	-	Married To The Mob (Soundtrack)
Deborah Harry	1989	"I Want That Man"	-	-	2	13	Def, Dumb and Blonde
Deborah Harry	1989	"Kiss It Better"	-	-	12	-	Def, Dumb and Blonde
Deborah Harry	1989	"Brite Side"	-	-	-	59	Def, Dumb and Blonde
Deborah Harry	1990	"Sweet and Low"	-	17	-	57	Def, Dumb and Blonde
Deborah Harry	1993	"I Can See Clearly"	-	2	-	23	Debravation
Deborah Harry	1993	"Strike Me Pink"	-	-	-	46	Debravation
Groove Thing featuring Debbie Harry	1997	"Command and Obey"	-	42	-	-	This Is No Time
Groove Thing featuring Debbie Harry	1999	"Command and Obey" (Remix)	-	49	-	-	-
Deborah Harry and Robbie Jacks	1998	Der Einzige Weg (The Only Way)	-	-	-	-	-
Deborah Harry	2001	"Ghost Riders In The Sky"	-	-	-	-	Internet Only Release
Deborah Harry	2006	"Dirty and Deep"	-	-	-	-	Internet Only Release

Filmography

Unmade Beds (1976)
Deadly Hero (1976)
The Blank Generation (1976) (documentary)
The Foreigner (1978)
Mr. Mike's Mondo Video (1979)
Union City (1980)
Roadie (1980)
New York Beat Movie (1981)
A New Face of Debbie Harry (1982) (short subject)
Rock & Rule (1983) (voice)
Videodrome (1983)
Forever, Lulu (1987)
Satisfaction (1988)
Hairspray (1988)
New York Stories (1989)
The Movie (1990)
Double Switch (full motion video video game) (1993)
Dead Beat (1994)
Drop Dead Rock (1995)
Heavy (1995)
Wigstock: The Movie (1995) (documentary)
Sandman (1996) (short subject)
Cop Land (1997)
Six Ways to Sunday (1997)
Who Is Harry Smith? (1998) (documentary)
Joe's Day (1998)
Zoo (1999)
Red Lipstick (2000)
The Fluffer (2001)
Deuces Wild (2002)
Spun (2002)
Try Seventeen (2002)
The Story of the Ramones (2003) (documentary)
My Life Without Me (2003)
A Good Night to Die (2003)
Ghostlight (2003)
The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story (2003)
Mayor of the Sunset Strip (2003) (documentary)
Ramones Raw (2004) (documentary)
Picture This: Blondie and Debbie Harry (2004) (documentary)
Honey Trap (2005) (short subject)
Kiki and Herb Reloaded (2005) (documentary)
All We Are Saying (2005) (documentary)
Patch (2005) (short subject)
Face Addict (2005) (documentary)
I Remember You Now... (2005) (short subject)

Upcoming:

Full Grown Men(2006) (premiering at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival)
House of Boys (2006)

External links

Official website
Deborah Harry's page on the official Blondie website
deborah-harry.com, Fan site.
Blondie, From Punk to the Present: A Pictorial History, Debbie Harry & Blondie compilation book.
UnRated Magazine: Blondie Review
- 2005 video

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