I feel a lot more settled today that I did yesterday; I had a bottle of wine for a kick off last night and the resulting morning fug is both pleasant and heimlich.
Last night was a festival of TV, a daisy chain of delights, Dragons Den, Then Grand Designs, Buzzcocks, Newsnight and the highlight, a documentary on Blondie on BBC4. Throughout all of this I ate roast chicken, salt and vinegar ‘chipsticks’ and a packet of Bassett’s Sour Worms, which are fucking ace. I drunk wine, water and tea, smoked at will and even found a quiet spot for a wee explosion of creamed beef.
Grand Designs wasn’t as good as last weeks, I liked the couple enough but they sort of had their aesthetic wires crossed and the resulting building was a mess of old and new, neither aspect working. Subsequently the high octane Pathos-Factor was reduced to a mere trickle of vague concern… I think Pathos-Factor™ would make a good Saturday night TV show actually, I’ll get back to you on that one.
Anyway, Blondie. However thick/ignorant/musically-retarded/a cunt you are everyone knows Blondie. What you may not know it from whence they came. Last Autumn (or ‘Fall’ as they say out there, yeah) I was fortunate enough to visit CBGB (my apologies to friends who read this as they know of this to the point of wanting to cut out my tongue and use it as a peenie pad) in New York which is the birthplace of Punk, a lovely sleazy little place (go online if you don’t know about it, and think twice about reading this blog again) which sadly closed last October. Yours truly went to one of the last ever shows.
Blondie were famous through a mixture of luck and hard work, as is usually the case, they were seen as somewhat as a joke by their contemporaries (Ramones, Talking Heads, Patti Smith in particular didn’t like Debbie Harry) but the lead female was so utterly beautiful, in my opinion one of the most beautiful women to have ever fucking breathed, how could they go wrong? They came to mass public attention when there video for ‘In the Flesh’ was played on Australian TV by mistake, they became huge in the UK and the rest, as they say, is history. I’m not fluffing the story as the success part of the story, whilst interesting, isn’t as fascinating as the relationship between Chris Stein, the founder member, and Debbie herself.
Iggy Pop recalled a moment in the mid 70’s when both he and David Bowie were in CBGB trying to fuck her and even back then she’d politely decline on account of her relationship with Chris. Cut to 40 years later and there is Chris and Debbie being interviewed as if husband and wife, he looking dishevelled and aged and Debbie a shadow of her former beautiful self but still very attractive.
Physically she still has that classic beauty but something has burnt out, gone. It transpires that Chris and Debbie aren’t an item anymore, well, put it this way, Chris has 2 young kids with a female Joey Ramone look-a-like half his age, and Debbie tags along like a nanny or Auntie, trying to hide her apparent dislike of the mother of Chris’ children, the latter appears resigned to their relationship.
As far as I could work out, Debbie’s biological clock had been and gone (she was in her mid 30’s when Heart of Glass was number 1) Chris had wanted kids and being a man with a never ending stock of usable nut-cream had decided to make his genetic move with a subservient, leaving the love of his life in the unenviable position of just being there, tagging along.
As the credits rolled there was a little more of the film to go, an afterthought, perhaps shot even after the interview had officially ended. Debbie turned to Chris and said ‘We could’ve made it…’ he turned to face and said, ‘what, the band?’ she rested her hand on his shoulder and said ‘no, you and me’
It was heart breaking stuff and somewhere within a dreadful lesson about love and life.
