Face It: A Memoir

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It goes without saying, sadly, that this memoir will NOT teach you how to achieve Debbie Harry-levels of coolness, but we can't expect miracles. All I really wanted, and all I ever want from memoirs like this, is a clear-eyed, no bullshit look at the past while also giving me a good amount of hot gossip. She knows it may seem hard to believe. “It is ludicrous,” she says, “and it is kind of funny that I would say it, but, truly, I wasn’t physically molested. Afterwards, I was with Chris, and I was, you know …” She makes a sound to signal the horror she must have felt. “I went on with my life. But as I say, I wasn’t beaten or assaulted and I think that, coupled with being sexually violated, is truly awful. Then you are really made to feel powerless.” But she was tied up at knifepoint. Didn’t that make her feel powerless? “Yeah. Not the same. It wasn’t for me anyway.” She didn’t have counselling, and says Stein was supportive “and we moved on”. Debbie, you were ahead of your time when you became famous and yet you appear to have been a supremely confident woman in what was arguably a man’s world. Where did that confidence come from? DeborahGeller I think it's the same as having a flu shot basically, another way of looking after yourself,” she wrote in her memoir Face It.

Debbie Harry shares secrets to youthful looks after comparing Debbie Harry shares secrets to youthful looks after comparing

I suspect the revelations from the #MeToo movement can’t have come as any surprise – her book is full of incidences of being abused, stalked and generally mistreated by men – but she says incidences of harassment in her career were rare. “I was working as a team and in a relationship. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable being a solo artist and I’m sure that those girls have a lot more to say about that than I do. I never went into meetings trying to get a record deal by myself, so it’s a little bit different.” The most important part of the #MeToo movement, she says, “is that it makes men stop and think about their accepted behaviour”.

It is only recently, she says, that she has thought she might have liked to have had children (she is godmother to Stein’s two daughters.) “I sort of thought: ‘Gee, maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad to have kids.’ But I don’t know if I could have done it while I was working so much.” Because she would have had to give up some of her freedoms? “My natural inclination is to really throw myself into things. It wouldn’t be like I could hand over the baby. I would really want to be involved.” 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. In the early 80s, Harry and Stein – they were in a relationship for 13 years – lost everything. Their debut album, the eponymous Blondie, came out in 1976, and for years they toured the world; they had six No 1 UK hits, including Heart of Glass and Call Me, and sold 40m records. When the US Internal Revenue Service hit them with a huge bill for unpaid tax, they lost their New York townhouse; the IRS even took some of her clothes, she writes. Worse, Stein was in hospital recovering from an autoimmune disease – Harry would spend the next few years looking after him – and they were not sure how they would pay his medical bills. It also meant the end of the band.

Debbie Harry Is Staying Put The Tide Is High (Really), but Debbie Harry Is Staying Put

James was constantly making funny remarks, which was a great relief. He was always making suggestions about scenes and was very helpful to me. David just seemed like a dedicated film-maker who found his niche, where his imagination took fire. A History of Violence and Eastern Promises are wonderful pictures. He also takes little cameo roles and he’s actually a really great actor. What she understands brilliantly is that she herself was in “girl drag”. Monroe, she says, was a woman playing a man’s idea of a woman. Harry did not adopt the masculine look like Patti Smith. She is resolutely female and was heavily criticised for this. But seriously, who else could wear a pillow case as a dress the way she did?So, fans of Debbie Harry, those who will brook no criticism of her, maybe you’ll want to skip this review. I can seem judgmental, more so with a memoir than with a biography written by a third party or a ghost writer.

Face It: Debbie Harry’s cool and forthright memoir

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.” Was it painful to revisit that in her book? “Not at this point in my life because I’m an adult. I think we all have a little area of clutter that’s nagging sometimes and it’s often hard to get rid of. Maybe this is my purge.” Did it feel cathartic? “Well, you know,” she says with a sigh, “I think I’ve solved a lot of those problems that were hanging on and I’m glad it’s sort of done.”It may be the case, as Harry notes, that some of the Early Era was a blur because the band was so busy. It may be the case, as Harry notes, that this would be a better memoir if she'd kept a journal over the years.