"Face It," Blondie's Book Reviewed

 

Sexual exploits of Blondie were filmed once in the 1960s, and what happened to that footage is perhaps absorbed in the cosmic ether of the 60s, Blondie said.

Debbie Harry, aka Blondie was 15-years-old in 1960, and her October, 2019 book “Face It” is a morose memoir of her life, she said.

“Face It” was marvelously morose to me, and very seldom, was it morose. Debbie Harry candidly talks about her sexuality and drug use in “Face It” and eloquently details living and working with all male bandmates in New York during the decade of the 1960s and mid-70s.  

Blondie showcases a lot of artwork, all from her fans in “Face It.” People have been sending her artwork since the infancy of her musical career, which she saves, and she pays tribute to many of these artists in this book. She was given a “Vultures” T-shirt in the 1970s, pictured below, and she still has the same shirt.  

Debbie Harry has a fascinating way of explaining the general facts about herself, her parents and her upbringing. Debbie Harry’s life is more than book worthy, and she seized my attention with her poetry and unique writing style.

Debbie Harry referenced childbirth from the baby’s perspective, as forcing your way into the world. Harry was born in 1945 and adopted by Richard and Cathy Harry when she was six months old. They changed her name to Deborah, which prior was Angela Trimble. The way Harry describes herself as a being a Love Child is incredibly positive and inspiring. Read “Face It” if you want to experience the full fragrance of fascination, generated from the chapter, “Love Child.”  

“The Blondie Loft,” 2,000 square feet was where she and the band lived, rehearsed and even did a show. The bands 1970s and 80s hits, Call Me,” Heart of Glass” and One Way or Another,” have definitively withstood the test of time, along with numerous other songs.

Psychedelic events were merely induced delusions, Blondie was a fractured psyche in the midst of heightened states, guitarist Chris Stein said.

It’s no surprise a young band in the 60s was in a musical culture of getting high. Despite the occasional abuses of heroin, LSD and cocaine, Debbie Harry not only survived the 60s, she thrived through it.

Even if your unfamiliar with Blondie’s music, writing, or acting, “Face It” is a mind adventure in the life of the musical icon, we call Blondie.

The fervent details of her own intrigues and obsessions omitted passion to the reader. Blondie’s natural beauty catered to the camera’s eye and her penchant detail to music spawned a musical revolution, or at least provided the world with timelessly fun music.

In “Face It,” Blondie talked about the sexuality of women in pictures, and even the dark side of mainstreaming actual girls as sex objects. When Brooke Shields was 10-years-old, her mother signed a permission document allowing Shields to pose nude and oiled in a bathtub for a Playboy press publication, “Sugar and Spice.”

Does a picture reveal the darker secrets of our souls? Blondie is clear and concise when she details the beliefs of the Aboriginal people, who claim a photograph is part of some mystical image bank, a type of Akashic record.

Blondie reveals some extremely personal secrets about Phil Spector and what David Bowie enjoyed showing off to men and women when his senses were heightened by cocaine.  

“How do we edit our life into a decent story? What to embellish, what to downplay? What’s going to compel, what might bore?” Blondie said in “Face It.”

Five stars for “Face It.”     

Mark Izzy Schurr