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MUSIC FEATURE

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BLONDIE PARALLEL LINES In AlbumTales, Bryget Chrisfield hits you with some juicy nuggets of wisdom surrounding classic records.This month it’s NYC NewWave icons Blondie with their third album (and home of international smash-hit Heart of Glass ), Parallel Lines.

Year 1978

“The embryos of a musical masterpiece” During Chapman’s initial meeting with Blondie’s Chris and Debbie, the producer sat on their bed at the Gramercy Park Hotel and listened to some demos they’d put forward as potential album tracks. “In the next half hour I heard one creative and beautiful song idea after the other,” Chapman recalled in the liner notes for a 2001 remastered reissue of Parallel Lines . “They were all there: the embryos of a musical masterpiece.”

Debbie’s two-tone hair a DIY ‘accident’ The story goes that since Debs couldn’t reach the back of her head to apply peroxide evenly, she embraced the patchy dye job – dark at the back, bleached blonde at the front – which would become an important trademark of her distinctive look.

Predating Call Me (the biggest selling single of their career), Blondie’s third album Parallel Lines finally broke the band in the States. Parallel Lines established Blondie’s winning creative partnership with Mike Chapman as well; this Queensland-born songwriter/ producer polished Blondie’s spiky pop smarts to perfection – undoubtedly contributing to the hip, underground NewYork outfit’s transformation into global hitmakers – and was invited back into the fold to record three more albums. But Debbie Harry’s irresistibly aloof vocal delivery is the real star here: each of her extraordinary characterisations – which range wildly from lovelorn chanteuse ( PictureThis ) to unhinged stalker ( OneWay or Another ) throughout Parallel Lines – remain boldly identifiable and unmistakably badass. Parallel Lines endures as a thrilling listen to this day.

Spector wanted to produce Blondie

“[Mike Chapman] came around to see us at the Whisky, and he liked us a lot, and he seemed to ‘get’ what we were doing,”

Debbie Harry performing live, 1978

Blondie cofounder/guitarist Chris Stein has explained, of how Chapman got the Parallel Lines gig. “Phil Spector came to see us and wanted to produce us. That was in one of his manic periods. We went to his house one night, and he was waving a .45 around. Anyway, that relationship never went anywhere.”

Chapman found wrangling Blondie “chaotic” “Musically, Blondie were hopelessly horrible when we first began rehearsing for Parallel Lines , and in terms of my attitude they didn’t know what had hit them,” Chapman has revealed. “I basically went in there like Adolf Hitler and said, ‘You are going to make a great record, and that means you’re going to start playing better’.” Later on, during a 2006 radio interview, Chapman blamed the drugs: “[Blondie] were chaotic. The drugs obviously had a lot to do with the monsterism. The more coke, the more heroin they put in there, the more monstrous they became.” Lennon rated Heart of Glass It’s said that John Lennon described Heart of Glass as “great and simple” on a postcard addressed to Ringo Starr. Originally demoed by Blondie in 1975 as a relatively slow, bluesy reggae number, Heart of Glass was reimagined as a disco version after Debbie became obsessed with Giorgio Moroder (who would later work on another iconic Blondie moment: Call Me ) whilst on tour in Europe. Blondie had previously covered Donna Summer’s I Feel Love , which was co-written/co-produced by Moroder, on the CBGB stage...

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Blondie, 1979

16 AUGUST 2022

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