Face It

July 22, 2019
The singer of the New Wave band Blondie and star of art-house movies Videodrome and Hairspray looks back on lots of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll in this rough-and-tumble memoir. Harry recounts her plunge into bohemian New York in the 1960s and her navigation of the music scene as it shifted from hippiedom to disco to punk. It’s a story of creative ferment, as she infused the burgeoning punk aesthetic into her own glammed-up style—Marilyn Monroe with “a dark, provocative, aggressive side”—and used Method acting techniques to hone her singing while slogging through gigs in gloriously grungy clubs including CBGB’s and L.A.’s Whiskey a Go Go . Her portrait of Blondie’s success in the late ’70s feels less effervescent, full of wearisome touring and business wrangles. Harry offers a frank look at her life on the edge, including “oversexed” erotic adventures, a mugging and rape that she shrugs off (“the stolen guitars hurt me more”), an attempted abduction by a man she thinks may have been serial killer Ted Bundy, and unapologetic drug use. (“Heroin was a great consolation,” she reflects of a period when she supplied herself and her hospitalized bandmate and boyfriend Chris Stein with the narcotic.) The narrative rambles, but Blondie fans will love its piquant atmospherics and the energy and honesty of Harry’s take on her singular saga.

September 1, 2019

Blondie lead singer Harry's (Making Tracks) memoir is a rambling mess with questionable reliability, proclamations of clairvoyance, obvious memory lapses, and a heavy thread of sexual abuse that leaves readers feeling as if they have intimately experienced trauma. For every moment of positive sexuality, there are horror stories about the men surrounding her. From the pediatrician who said she had bedroom eyes to drummer Buddy Rich following a preteen Harry home to Joey Skaggs and his filmmaker friend flat out assaulting her, we see a pattern of constant exploitation. Her treatment of the subject is equally horrifying. When she doesn't gloss over the events with a sort of nihilistic detachment, she makes excuses for her assailants, blames her irresistible sexuality, and, in one passage, attributes her abusive ex-boyfriend's possessive and paranoid behavior to his previous girlfriends. Harry is at her best when talking about the New York of her youth and the fashion and music she loved and worked on throughout her life. That's where readers will connect with her. VERDICT Harry indicated that she didn't want to write a memoir, and it shows. Not recommended.--Melissa Engleman, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2019
The iconic singer reveals her legendary journey. In this whirlwind tour of her life, Harry, one of the most photographed faces in music, deploys an irreverent style well suited to her story. Her tales of life before, during, after, and beyond her time with Blondie are intermixed with interludes that capture the eclectic and electric passion she has for the creative process. In a narrative that feels simultaneously heartfelt and spontaneous, Harry recounts close encounters with violence and harassment with the same immediacy as the moments that catapulted Blondie to worldwide fame. Harry doesn't focus on the challenges of being a woman in the music industry but rather on the collaborations that fueled her creativity. Though her sound and style influenced rock, and especially women in rock, there's refreshingly little self-congratulation in these pages. Instead, readers will find reflection on life with a budding band and an uncensored view of what it took to succeed. Whether she's recounting her experiences making clothes, waitressing, meeting artists, or playing early gigs at CBGB, Harry's intimate portrait often reads like a love letter to a bygone version of New York City. The narrative reflects the energy of the punk and new wave scene as the author weaves personal stories with entertaining descriptions of partying and playing with the likes of the Ramones, Andy Warhol, Iggy Pop, and David Bowie. There is no shortage of notable cameos in Harry's chronicle of her journey to stardom, and she maintains effervescent senses of humor and grace throughout. From small venues to world tours, bankruptcy to gold records, this account of life behind the fame offers a candid view of the hard work, big breaks, and tough times that came before and after celebrity. The co-founder of Blondie, Chris Stein, provides the introduction. A wild ride of fame, friendships, music, and drugs sure to appeal to Blondie fans and 1970s rock in general.

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September 1, 2019
She remains the enigmatic face of the band Blondie: the cool, elusive beauty with the punk attitude. After reading her conversational memoir, readers may still not really know what makes her tick? I still have so much more to tell but being such a private person, I might not tell everything, she coyly writes, but it is a start. She describes her birth parents?a Scottish-Irish girl and a French boy, and her New Jersey adopted parents. Right from the start, Harry was blessed with good looks and abundant sex appeal. As soon as she could, she moved to New York with the idea of being an artist, before turning to music. First, though, she worked as a waitress at the influential rock club Max's Kansas City, then as a Playboy bunny. She writes candidly about her drug use, the madness of Blondie's salad days, and the Blondie character she played with the then-controversial idea of a very feminine woman fronting a macho rock band. Harry sees Blondie as an inflatable doll but with a dark . . . side. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)