Debbie Harry: Face It

Hardcover | 16.2 x 3.1 x 24 cm | 368 pp

Harper Collins | 2019 | 9780008229429

Debbie Harry is the international ambassador of New York City cool. Best known as the face of Blondie, Debbie Harry and her cofounder, Chris Stein, brought the worlds of rock, punk, disco, reggae and hip-hop together to create some of the most successful and beloved pop songs of all time. As a musician, an actor, a muse and an icon, the breadth of Debbie Harry's impact on our culture has only been matched by her almost Sphinx-like reticence about her inner life.

In an arresting mix of visceral storytelling and stunning visuals that includes never-before-seen photographs, bespoke illustrations and fan-art installations, Face It upends the standard musical memoir while delivering a truly intimate portrait of an iconoclast. With all the grit, grime and glory recounted in intimate detail, Harry recreates 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 Blondies breakup as a band, to her multifaceted acting career in more than thirty films, a stunning solo career and the triumphant return of her 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.

Peppered with many of the colourful characters with whom Debbie has collaborated over the years - everyone from Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Marina Abramović to David Cronenberg and John Waters, Face lt is a heady mix of entertaining, shocking, moving, humorous and eye-opening, a memoir as dynamic as its subject.

'I was saying things in songs that female singers didn't really say back then. I wasn't submissive or begging him to come back, I was kicking his ass, kicking him out, kicking my own ass too. My Blondie character was an inflatable doll but with a dark, provocative, aggressive side. I was playing it up, yet I was very serious.' Debbie Harry