Face It: A Memoir

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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. 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.) At first, I enjoyed listening to Debbie's narration. Being from Texas I don’t get to hear accents like hers too often, and she narrated the book with such an unusual cadence, I was mesmerized by her voice for a while.

Face It by Debbie Harry | Waterstones

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). Just a few months later, she reflected on having a facelift, and confessed she felt under pressure to cave into the pressure from today’s beauty standards. 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.”

Her biggest mistake, she says, was money. “That I didn’t pay more attention to business, and that I was really only interested in making music and performing.” 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. But by the second full day of audio, her tone seemed flat and impersonal with little or no emotion or inflection. I really struggled to stay focused on it at times. 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: ‘It wasn’t a great idea to be as Blondie’s Debbie Harry: ‘It wasn’t a great idea to be as

Note: I couldn't comment on the promoted artwork and photos as they weren't part of the advance copy.) Your enjoyment of this book will increase with each one of the following criteria you can answer “Yes”: Which projects that got away – such as the offer to sing the James Bond theme For Your Eyes Only or the chance to appear in Blade Runner – haunt you most? McScootikins 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? ChloSchmo Is it true that you saw the last Velvet Underground show at Max’s Kansas City [ the New York venue where Harry was a waitress]? nigelbartonI’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.

Face It – HarperCollins Face It – HarperCollins

Few women have been objectified as much as Harry. Her face – those killer cheekbones and heart-shaped mouth – is immortalised on Blondie album covers and in Warhol’s famous portrait. Was she always aware of men’s reaction to her? “I think we all have issues of self-esteem and I’m not clear of that,” she says, by way of an answer. “I also think that because it’s my occupation – to be a performer and to attract attention and to appeal to sexuality – it’s sort of a given in showbiz.” Harry had first tried heroin with an old boyfriend, but judging by old interviews it doesn’t seem to have been a problem for her. How would she describe her relationship with it? “I don’t actually regret taking it, but I do regret the amount of time … it’s a time-consumer. But I think at that point it was a necessary evil. To some degree, it was self-medicating. It was a rough, depressing time of life and it seemed to suit the purpose, but then it outlived its benefits.” Although I was a little underwhelmed by the book, and I may have made it sound worse than it really was, I’m still glad I read it. There are plenty of interesting, juicy bits of information, lots of sex and drugs, and it was fun to hear Debbie talk about her hair colors and fashion styles over the years. Her work as an actress was far more accomplished than I realized and I enjoyed hearing about her movies, although I don’t think I’ve seen anything she played in. I think Debbie has lived quite a colorful life and deserves her place in music history and as a pop culture icon. 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. I always liked Blondie. The music was catchy with a crossover appeal and I thought Debbie Harry was the perfect front person for the group. I can’t say I was a super fan and up until now I knew very little about Debbie from a personal standpoint. I had heard she had a drug addiction, but other than that I couldn’t have told one other thing about her.

If you can answer all of these yes – then this book is a must read. If you can’t answer any of them yes, then there is no reason to even try this one. If you can answer one or some of them yes, you may enjoy this book, but you may find some parts uninteresting. Early in her new memoir— Face It, written in collaboration with Sylvie Simmons—Debbie Harry recounts an anecdote from her childhood: “One visit, when I was a baby, my doctor gave me a lingering look. And then he turned in his white coat, grinned at my parents, and said, ‘Watch out for that one, she has bedroom eyes’.” Getting older is hard on your looks. Like everybody else, I have good days and bad days and those, ‘S***, I hope nobody sees me today’ days,” she quipped.