Blondie

“Parallel Lines” belongs to that select circle of records that defined an era, one of those classics no true music fan's collection can do without. Spending two years on the American charts, it was one of the bestsellers of the first wave of punk & new wave, and it turned Blondie into bona fide global superstars, cementing Debbie Harry's status as one of the era's ultimate icons of beauty and style. With tracks like “Heart Of Glass”, the New York band revolutionized pop music, influencing a countless number of artists who came after them. But the road Blondie traveled before reaching their well-deserved consecration was long, arduous and full of obstacles.

In 1974, when they made their debut at CBGB, few would have bet on them. Things began to change two years later, with the release of their debut album, a successful mix of Sixties-tinged melodies that winked at girl groups, garage rock rhythms and punk attitude; but the pivotal year was 1978, when Blondie proved to be far more than just a band fronted by a pretty blonde. A first turning point had already come with the release of their second record, “Plastic Letters”, propelled up the European charts by the singles “Denis” and “(I'm Always Touched By Your) Presence, Dear”. In England, alongside the media and the public, the record industry itself also began to take notice of Debbie Harry & co.: Chrysalis, in order to secure Blondie (who had previously come close to being produced by Phil Spector himself), shelled out half a million dollars.
For production duties, the choice fell on hitmaker Mike Chapman, an Australian who had struck gold in the UK, making the fortune of glam artists such as Suzi Quatro and Sweet. “I was the one who approached Blondie,” Chapman recalls. “I first saw them at the Whisky a Go Go in '77, and I couldn't believe my eyes: they were fun, they played with incredible intensity, and they were making new music without disowning the past. I immediately sensed they had enormous potential. About a year later I went to see them in New York, but I wasn't exactly welcomed with open arms: they eyed me with suspicion, convinced the label had sent me there to manipulate them. To ease the tension, I asked Chris Stein to play me some unreleased material. The songs weren't finished yet, but I was lucky enough to witness a genuine explosion of creativity — he showed me one original idea after another. I immediately understood I was looking at the embryo of a masterpiece.”
The general impression gathered from the various accounts is that, at the time, Blondie were like a rough diamond, a band on the verge of exploding, but still missing something needed to make the definitive leap in quality. And that something was discipline: before meeting Mike, they simply weren't used to working professionally, playing and recording in a spontaneous way, with no clear direction. Chapman, even more than for his meticulous care over the arrangements, proved decisive in the process that led the band to achieve an enviable studio maturity. With a perfectionist like the Australian producer at the helm, the sessions were intense, but all that hard work — carried out, moreover, during a scorching New York summer — paid off in the end. “Parallel Lines” reached number one in Britain, number two in Australia and Canada, and number six in the United States, and no fewer than six singles were lifted from the album, five of which were massive hits. Equally famous is the cover photo, imposed by the controversial manager Peter Leeds and loathed by every member of the band (Debbie in particular), yet destined to become one of those covers that leave a deep mark on the collective imagination.

“Parallel Lines” opens with a ringing telephone, and the one who picks up the receiver is none other than Deborah Harry: the irresistibly catchy “Hanging On The Telephone” is the best possible preamble to the record. It's a cover of the Nerves, the cult California band led by Jack Lee, which Debbie and Chris discovered thanks to a tip from one of their biggest fans: Jeffrey Lee Pierce, president of the LA Blondie Fan Club and future leader of the Gun Club. Barely time to catch your breath before the famous riff of “One Way Or Another” materializes, dreamed up by bassist Nigel Harrison and played by the band's other guitarist, Frank “The Freak” Infante. With a frantic, over-the-top delivery (perfectly captured by the brazen “I'm gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha”), Harry tells the story of having been stalked by an ex-boyfriend. The track also stands out for its wild, frenzied ending, which catches the listener off guard. Next comes the anthemic “Picture This”, the only song credited to the prolific trio of Harry-Stein-Destri, embellished by a splendid Infante solo. The lyrics, written by the iconic frontwoman, are particularly suggestive and explicit — too much so for American radio at the time. In particular, the line “I will give you my finest hour/ The one I spent watching you shower” is a startling reversal of roles: now it's the woman looking at the man, turning him into the sexual object.

But it would be a huge mistake to think of “Parallel Lines” as merely a lethal singles-spitting jukebox, because — even among its lesser-known tracks — there are several gems of absolute value hidden away. Such is the case with the seductive “Fade Away And Radiate”, one of the earliest compositions by the Harry-Stein duo, which had sat in a drawer for a long time. The platinum-blonde singer silences the critics with a stunning vocal performance, delicate and intense at once, enchanting and tinged with decadence. The lyrics are also intriguing, containing what American critic Rob Sheffield considers the greatest line in the history of rock 'n' roll (“dusty frames that still arrive/ die in 1955”, a tribute to James Dean), addressing an infatuation with deceased movie stars. It's a theme very close to Harry's heart: adopted as an infant by a family from New Jersey, as a child she had convinced herself that Marilyn Monroe was her real mother. The rest is handled by the icy guitar of Robert Fripp, a friend and supporter of the band with whom he performed live several times in those years, elevating the track and transporting it into a dreamlike dimension. After such a dark song, the mood immediately turns joyful and carefree again with “Pretty Baby”, a delightful, retro-flavored pop gem dedicated to the very young (and controversial) actress Brooke Shields; in its brief spoken interlude, Debbie's voice sounds at the peak of its sensuality.

Blondie keep hopping unpredictably from one song to the next, and here we get to the energetic "I Know But I Don't Know", which puts guitarists Stein and Infante front and center and seems to anticipate a good deal of the alternative rock of the following decade. "11:59" and "Will Anything Happen?", two irresistible power-pop hooks with instant knockout appeal in pure Blondie style, could easily have been singles in their own right. No matter, since the choice eventually fell on "Sunday Girl", one of the biggest UK hits of 1979 and still one of the fans' best-loved classics, which opens with an almost imperceptible nod to the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" and unfolds into a melody made for singing along. Legend has it that Chris Stein wrote it to cheer up a heartbroken Debbie after the death of their cat (named Sunday Man); Jimmy Destri, however, finds that story hard to swallow, and has no doubt it's simply a declaration of love ("I know a girl from a lonely street/ Cold as ice cream but still as sweet").

"Heart Of Glass" inevitably deserves a section all to itself: the disco/new wave crossover that turned Blondie into a global phenomenon and Debbie Harry into the forbidden dream of an entire generation of teenagers, a kind of musical answer to Marilyn Monroe. It's also the album's most innovative — and, why not, experimental — track, as well as the one with the longest gestation period. "Heart Of Glass" was actually born back in 1975 under the working title "Once I Had A Love (Aka The Disco Song)", though contrary to what one might expect, the disco element was originally absent. When, during the recording of "Parallel Lines", Mike Chapman asked the band if they had another song to offer, Debbie and Chris remembered that old composition of theirs with its nod to black music. It was the Australian producer himself who suggested making the song more electronic, gifting keyboardist Jimmy Destri a Roland Rhythm Machine he'd just bought in Japan.
Influenced by Kraftwerk and by "I Feel Love" by Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder, Blondie completely overhauled the old version of "Heart Of Glass", starting with the unusual choice to have both drums and a drum machine playing at once. Clem Burke, who considered himself a reincarnation of Keith Moon, was the most reluctant of all: stubbornly, he wanted nothing to do with playing a disco track, and it took a while before he came around. But the meticulous work Burke put in is remarkable, and together with Nigel Harrison's supremely elastic bass and the pulsing "heartbeat" coming from Destri's synths, it forms a stunning rhythmic backbone. Just as striking is the otherworldly sound of Frank Infante's guitar, which seems to come from another galaxy entirely. The vocal part was added last: somewhere between a siren's song and a lullaby, Harry's voice fits perfectly and acts as the classic cherry on top. In short, a song meticulously polished down to the smallest detail, with every piece falling exactly into place; the end result is one of the highest peaks pop music has ever reached. A smash hit that topped the charts in more than ten countries, including the UK, Australia, Canada, Germany and, above all, the US (in Italy it stalled at number 3).
The iconic video made for "Heart Of Glass" has likewise become the stuff of legend, needing nothing more than a few knowing glances from a radiant, luminous Debbie Harry to unleash all its erotic charge, while the rest of the band have fun messing around with a mirror ball. MTV didn't exist yet, but there's no doubt Blondie were among the first to grasp the potential of the music video.

At this point, the record could easily have ended there. It's hard, after all, to follow a track of such magnitude. And indeed the only flaw in "Parallel Lines" is its slightly underwhelming close. "I'm Gonna Love You Too" is a Buddy Holly cover that could probably have been left out, adding little to the original. Strategically pushed by the record label as the album's lead single in the States (since a lot of the unfortunate rock'n'roller's material was being reissued at the time), it flopped on the American charts in the autumn of '78. "Just Go Away", one of the very first songs Deborah Harry ever wrote, dating back a full four years earlier, closes the album with the usual self-deprecating wit that's such an essential part of Blondie's music. A fun, breezy ending, neatly summed up by Clem Burke's words: "It was just like — bye bye — we'll se ya!".
Critics and audiences alike greeted it with unanimous acclaim, and it was immediately clear this was an album destined to go down in rock history. The New York Rocker crowned it "the most inspired album of the last five years", while the famed critic Robert Christgau, who had been fairly lukewarm on the band's first two records, wrote: "'Parallel Lines' comes closer to God than any pop-rock album before or since". There was no shortage of detractors, though: punk purists who never forgave Blondie their supposed "betrayal", and plenty of early friends who accused them of selling out. The usual old story, in other words. The truth is that Blondie, unconcerned with punk dogma, had set out to avoid any rigidly fixed style, choosing instead to keep evolving and roam freely across any musical territory they pleased.

In any case, to fully appreciate Blondie's music and step into their world of parallel lines, it's essential to understand the close bond between Debbie Harry's band and the city they come from: New York City. Because everything about Blondie, from their wildly varied sound to their always-so-cool sense of style, is damn New York through and through. "Parallel Lines" pulls off the difficult feat of packing in much of the musical spirit that had defined the Big Apple throughout the '70s. There's room for the refined disco sound of "Heart Of Glass", of course, but also for the Broadway-musical flair of "Picture This" and "Pretty Baby", for the jazzy atmospheres of "Fade Away And Radiate", for the punk urgency of tracks like "Hanging On The Telephone" and "One Way Or Another", and for the urban alienation of "I Know But I Don't Know" and "11:59". An eclectic process Blondie would bring full circle two years later with "Rapture", adding into the mix another cultural revolution just then taking shape, once again out of New York: hip-hop. So it's no surprise that in a popular 2012 poll run by the Village Voice, Blondie were voted the band that best symbolizes NYC (alongside John Coltrane, the Velvet Underground and the Wu-Tang Clan), nor that Rolling Stone recently claimed that "no other band has managed to distill the essence of Downtown New York quite like Blondie". "Parallel Lines", then, can be seen as a honeymoon with a city Blondie have never stopped calling "home".

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21/06/2015