Debbie Harry on Blondie, Bowie, and Bees
The Mother Jones Podcast
Mother Jones
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 July 2020
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Debbie Harry is an icon, punk rock star, and self-proclaimed spokesperson for bees. As the frontwoman of Blondie, she came up through the avant-garde art scene in 1970s New York, trading artistic inspiration with Andy Warhol, Basquiat, and Patti Smith. After breaking into the mainstream with its 1979 album Parallel Lines, Harry and the rest of the band have been bending musical genres ever since.
In this raw and in-depth interview with Mother Jones DC Bureau Chief David Corn, Debbie Harry opens up about her past and her compulsive creative drive. She shares stories about what it was like breaking into the male-dominated music industry, why she loves David Bowie, and how she came up with her alter-ego Blondie. Plus, she shares how she is using her fame to protect the honeybees.
Corn’s interview with Harry is one in a series of several notable guests featured over three episodes of the Mother Jones Podcast. It’s a special summer interview series with a very “2020” origin story: Earlier this year, the coronavirus pandemic stalled work on a new podcast, co-produced by Mother Jones and the Comedy Cellar, but not before three fascinating guests joined Corn for in-depth interviews about art, politics, comedy, and the philosophies that infuse their work. These chats were too good to simply shelve; last week we heard from actor and comedian John Leguizamo, and next week we’ll hear from talk show host Samantha Bee.
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| 0:00.0 | This special limited series of the Mother Jones Podcast is brought to you by our presenting partner Raycon, |
| 0:07.6 | premium audio inspired by your ambition. |
| 0:10.6 | Get 15% savings off your order of sleek, comfortable, and affordable wireless earbuds at |
| 0:16.7 | buy Raycon.com. .com. pod. Seven months ago, I was preparing to bring you a brand new podcast called |
| 0:34.4 | Let's Go There, produced jointly by Mother Jones and the comedy seller, |
| 0:38.8 | the Historic Comedy Club in New York City. |
| 0:48.0 | Each episode would feature an interview with an artist, writer, musician, actor, comedian, or anyone else I find fascinating for smart takes and personal stories about culture, politics, and their own work, all recorded on stage at the comedy cellar. |
| 0:58.0 | But then the coronavirus pandemic hit and we put this new project on hold. But before that happened, |
| 1:04.4 | before our world changed, I recorded interviews with several cultural heroes. |
| 1:09.2 | We'd still like to share those with you because they're fascinating. So on the Mother Jones |
| 1:14.1 | podcast we're bringing you this special limited summer series, a diversion from the |
| 1:19.1 | news and tweets of the day and a taste of what's to come when we get back to this new podcast. |
| 1:24.4 | On this week's show, a woman who didn't leave us hanging on the telephone when we called. |
| 1:35.0 | She's one of the most well-known and influential singers, songwriters, and rockers of the past four decades, |
| 1:41.0 | Debbie Harry. |
| 1:42.0 | One of the things that sort of saved me from being a complete asshole was that I started a little |
| 1:48.0 | bit later in life. |
| 1:49.0 | Fronting the iconic band Blondie, she recorded multiple hit songs and albums, bending and blending genres |
| 1:56.3 | and defying and subverting stereotypes. She is an original punk rocker who has also conquered |
| 2:01.6 | the worlds of pop, jazz, and disco. |
| 2:04.0 | And she recently told her story of a woman busting through barriers in the male-dominated |
| 2:09.6 | music world in her engaging memoir, Face It. Today, Debbie Harry. |
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