H.R. Giger: Debbie Harry Metamorphosis: Creating the Visual Concept for KooKoo

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Chris is convinced that Giger's brand of xenozoology has infected the world, reaching fevered levels. After the album came out, Stein and Harry penned an article for Heavy Metal (which was already intimately familiar with Giger’s work) about working with the artist. In the piece, which is called “Strange Encounters of the Swiss Kind” and is coauthored by Harry and Stein, the following observations are registered: Debbie [Harry] and I met him right after he won the Academy award for Alien," Chris says. "The original prints of Blondie co-founder, songwriter/musician and long-standing photographer, Chris Stein has put together an art book documenting the collaboration between himself, Debbie Harry and artist H.R. Giger on Debbie’s solo album KooKoo.

Especially for Giger, because he has been such a major influence on modern style in general, in art and design and mutual," Chris remembers. "It just came up. He actually did paint on her face, I think, but I don't really remember, you'll

I was introduced to H.R. Giger by Chris Stein at the opening of the Giger Room at New York's Limelight club. Chris has Yes," she says. "For some things he painted on photographs, but for the video he used different stencils and A beautiful coffee table art book chronicling the extraordinary collaboration between Debbie Harry and H.R. Giger for Harry’s 1981 solo album KooKoo. Not that the ban mattered. Virtually the whole of Britain was now aware that Debbie Harry had an album due. It appeared in the shops on July 27 and steadily made its way up the charts. “A chic concept,” is how label Chrysalis described their controversial delivery, which couldn’t fail to excite interest whatever the problems of marketing. For Debbie and Chris Stein’s musical collaborators on the project were Nile Rodgers And Bernard Edwards, at that time pop’s sharpest razors in the producers’ box. The pairing stemmed from a time when Blondie and Chic were recording in adjoining studios, in 1979. The idea of a joint project was mutually appealing, and Edwards and Rodgers were commissioned to both produce and co-write the album. “We all admired each other’s work for a long time,” Debbie confirmed, setting the seal on the get-together.

SINCE I HAD JUST HAD AN ACUPUNCTURE TREATMENT FROM MY FRIEND AND DOCTOR, PAUL TOBLER, THE IDEA OF THE FOUR NEEDLES CAME TO ME, IN WHICH I SAW SYMBOLS OF THE FOUR ELEMENTS, TO BE COMBINED WITH HER FACE." My paintings seem to make the strongest impression on people who are, well, who are crazy,” Giger said in a 1979 interview, according to the Associated Press. “If they like my work they are creative … or they are crazy.” More recently, in October of 2019, Debbie became a best selling author with the release of her memoir, FACE IT. In an arresting mix of visceral storytelling and stunning visuals including never-before-seen photographs, bespoke illustrations and fan art installations, FACE IT upended the standard musical memoir while delivering a truly intimate portrait of an iconoclast. With all the grit, grime and glory recounted in intimate detail, FACE IT recreated the downtown scene of 1970s New York City, where Blondie played alongside The Ramones, Television, Talking Heads, Iggy Pop and David Bowie. Following her path from glorious commercial success to heroin addiction, the near-death of partner Chris Stein, a heart-wrenching bankruptcy and Blondie’s break up as a band, to her multifaceted acting career, a stunning solo career and the triumphant return of the band, FACE IT is a cinematic story of a woman who made her own path, and set the standard for a generation of artists who followed in her footsteps.You’ll know H.R. Giger’s work even if you don’t know his name. You’ve seen Alien, obviously. The monster was his work. In fact, he was clutching an Oscar for Visual Effects the night he met Debbie and Chris at an exhibition of Alien paintings in New York. Perhaps slightly less iconic, the cover of Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s 1973 album Brain Salad Surgery was his first LP design. KooKoo – Debbie Harry’s first solo album, released in 1981 – was the second. The album, was produced by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards of Chic. It was largely ignored by all but devoted fans and the media elite. Chrysalis records advertising campaign, with posters of Harry’s skewered face, were deemed too disturbing, and were subsequently banned from being displayed on London’s Underground network. H.R. Giger’s Tarot Cards: The Swiss Artist, Famous for His Design Work on Alien, Takes a Journey into the Occult A new book, Giger: Debbie Harry Species – Creating the Visual Concept for KooKoo, will document the early Eighties collaboration between the Blondie frontwoman and artist H.R. Giger. Harry commissioned Giger a couple of years after he achieved international fame for designing the phantasmagoric “xenomorph” in the movie Alien for the cover art of her 1981 solo debut, KooKoo. The album will be reissued in late September, and the book will come out via Titan Books on November 11.

However, Giger was a fan of jazz rather than pop music, so he didn’t know much about Blondie, Harry, or their sonic output. As such, perhaps it was a strange and conflicting choice to select Giger for the promotional material design. Yet, the outcome was absolutely glorious; the cover art sees Harry’s face pierced by several spikes whilst retaining her striking beauty. Undoubtedly, the 1981 image would go on to play its hand in influencing Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, its race of antagonistic Cenobites, and particularly their leader, Pinhead. The image was disturbing enough that advertisements featuring the image were banned by British Rail, and they weren’t the only ones. One might say that the public really didn’t want the era’s reigning sultry pop-disco queen to enter the scary and forbidding world of Giger’s art, but Harry and Stein have never exactly been afraid to take a risk, so the die was cast on that, for better or for worse. Piss off, I love that record,” she later replied to a reader’s criticism in Q. “The mix is bad but the material is great.”

Also in Blondie

There I was introduced to a very beautiful woman, Debbie Harry, the singer of the group Blondie, and her boyfriend, Chris Stein. They were apparently excited about my work and asked me whether I would be prepared to design the cover of the new Debbie Harry album. I found both of them immediately likeable; so I readily agreed and was greatly pleased to be allowed to create something for such an attractive woman, although I had never heard anything from the group. This was due to the fact that I was more interested in jazz. The album was panned, but the cover ended up being as prescient as the film that preceded it. It would “see its influence in films like Hellraiser, the rise of what was called the ‘modern primitive’ movement, and help cultivate the dark masochistic character Harry would play in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome,” writes Ted Mills in an earlier Open Culture post. “It was a feeling that would flourish in the decadent ‘80s.”