In love with love ... and Debbie Harry

Face It by Debbie Harry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I confess that I am puzzled by some of the Goodreads reviews I have read of this book. Lackluster? Unemotional? Really?! This is a memoir by *Deborah Harry.* There is nothing lackluster about her! Some of us are more expressive than others, and I've always thought (rightly or wrongly) that Ms. Harry had a sly, ironic, even Cheshire Cat-like quality that perhaps is read as "flat affect." But it's all in the arch of her eyebrows, the curl of her smile. The quip. The wry observation. It's subtle. It's sublime.

And, yes, I am a fan.

But a fan who knew very little about Ms. Harry post-1990. And even pre-1990. For example, I did not know about her time in New York on the Downtown Scene. Sure, I knew she came up through the punk era, was there at CBGB's, was mentioned in the same breath as Patti Smith and Tom Verlaine, but I really had no idea how deeply involved she was with the people and places of that lost era--her memories of which certainly made me emotional at times.

And I didn't know as much about her career after Blondie broke up in the early '80s, despite owning copies of KooKoo and Rockbird, despite watching her in concert at Gay Pride in New York in 1990 (at least that's what I recall--she sang "Sweet and Low," I'm fairly certain), and despite seeing and hearing Blondie in concert at the Palace Theater in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, for one of my birthday celebrations in the early 2010s. (Debbie, the gods bless her, actually smiled for the camera when I tried to take her picture!) There have been movies, plays, and TV shows; recordings with the Jazz Passengers; the showcase at the Carlyle (for which I would have moved heaven, earth, and Delta Airlines to have been in the audience); the activism; the friendships.

And while reading this book, I couldn't believe that it's already been 20+ years since Blondie regrouped in the late 1990s and recorded the album No Exit (an album that now appears to be out of print). Time flies when you're sleepwalking through life in pointless meetings and unsatisfying relationships. (Thankfully, one of those scenarios has changed over the years. Hint: It's not the pointless meetings.)

There is certainly more than I want to know--more details about Parallel Lines and Eat to the Beat, Blondie's two best albums (in my opinion) from the Early Era; more details about the transition from Eat to the Beat to AutoAmerican, which seems drastic even now, although it was probably something completely normal in the evolution of the band; more of her thoughts on the reaction to KooKoo, which even now seems mixed, despite it being something of a quirky, musical milestone in pop history. More, perhaps, about what she likes to read and listen to and whether she still paints. And some pics of her dogs would not be amiss.

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.

Nevertheless, I was enchanted by her girlhood in New Jersey and somehow making the decision after high school to become an artist (of a genre to be determined) in New York in the 1960s--and, despite all odds, actually accomplishing it. I felt moved by her losses over the years and about her coming to terms with childhood trauma. I was entertained by her storytelling and (sorry, Debs!) her inherent nerdiness (comics and the space program, oh my), something you would never think possible in the life of an Icon of Cool like Debbie Harry. I felt pride in her inherent, unapologetic Americanness, a quality as post-modern Americans we dismiss too easily.

So if you found this book "unemotional" or "lackluster," I don't know what to tell you. I rarely give a book 5 stars, and the rational being in me might not award this one with that many. But my emotional self values this book and Debbie Harry's revelations more than 4 stars, maybe even more than 5 stars.

Maybe you had to be there--and I really wasn't, as I was marooned in Mayberry in the '70s and early '80s. Maybe you had to want to be there, which I most certainly did but didn't know how to. So this memoir is one way to get a taste for an era I lived through and yet still somehow don't know very well at all. As a result, I'm grateful to Debbie Harry for sharing her life stories with us.

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