Fashion Neurosis with Debbie Harry

0:09Hi, come up.

0:15Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Debbie Harry. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose these particular clothes? You know, I've watched several of your interviews, and, you know, it's always intriguing to hear what people were wearing. So I wore, I guess, a strange combination of elements. The shoes are from Comme des Garcons, and they're sort of a mashup that they did with Nike. And I think they've done several of these. So I love these platforms because they're ridiculous and clever and fun. Yeah, that's great. Also extremely practical somehow because I like to wear platforms, but yet these are also trainers with a platform.

1:18So I thought, oh, this is just for me, really. Yeah. And the pants are Y3 from years ago, but some of my favorites and they're so comfortable. the sweater is sort of a non-denominational sweater but it's it's an argyle and I I love argyle and then the t-shirt is from Zach Posen oh I love Zach Posen and it's a just real standard reliable you know white t-shirt and then my little bag over here on the side also comes from Comme des Garcons. And it's what I'm using for my makeup bag. I put all my stuff in there and it's just a nice little velvet sack and it's such a beautiful colour. And it's got this rose configuration.

2:15It's all fabric on one side. So that's my combination for today. It's really cool. It's quite parallel lines, your colour scheme today, actually. It's like the black and white and yes I think it is parallel lines and in many ways um so I like that you use that because uh you know of the black and white the color scheme but also by the way that some of these you know pieces of clothing have come into my life and for a long for a long time I lived on 23rd Street and on 22nd Street there was a Comme de Garçon store and when I first started living in that area there were no stores there that were interesting or you know they had real real fashion real clothes in them and Comme de Garçon was the only one so of course I would I was fascinated and I would wander in there just to, I don't know, steal ideas, get clothes.

3:27You know, it was a beautifully designed store. I don't know if you've ever been there, but it was sort of like walking into the mouth of a fish. Oh, really?

3:40So eccentric. It was so beautiful. You know, I would pick up little things there. And I don't know, just was a part of my routine. If I was to go out walking, that would be one of the places that I would definitely want to go to. Yeah. I love the bag as well because it's kind of so feminine, all the red velvet. And then it's like a container for femininity. It looks really good with the black and white. Right. And I, you know, I found honestly, that when you're going on the road a lot, that having a good black and white wardrobe is so reliable. You don't have to have a lot of different outfits, but you can have a good basis for many outfits.

4:33And, you know, sort of always look kind of, even if your clothes haven't been to the laundry for a while, you always sort of have a fresh look. Yeah. You know, so I'm used to that, you know, after all these many years of traveling and touring. I think you find that in a lot of our wardrobes, you know, of people that are in bands, a lot of black and white, very clear-cut, you know, kind of looks. The only person I know who travels with an extensive, well, that I know, Cindy Lopper, who travels with many, many bags of wonderful, wonderful clothing. She's practical and flamboyant and impractical all at the same time.

5:22That's a very good mixture. She's so fantastic. And you are the legendary Debbie Harry. You were the lead singer of Blondie, one of the most successful bands in the world. And people are obsessed with you as a sex symbol. And you said sex appeal comes from a person, not a body. It comes from the power of positive thinking. And I wondered, what is sexy to you? I think it has to do with, oddly enough, with kindness and generosity.

6:06And also something that's very animal, animal, you know, that just radiates from a person. and it is about generosity I don't know I guess there are a certain sense of simplicity and I don't know it can be a lot of things I I don't know if there's a simple way to to describe that kind of sexuality yeah I think generosity you're I agree with that because it's to do with kind of being disarmed by people's good qualities, isn't it? Like kindness and humor and then the animal comes out and then it's all happening. And you were adopted at three months and in your memoir, Face It, the doctor said you were a very attractive baby, which is a kind, seemed like a really weird remark, but maybe a premise of what was to come.

7:10I wondered how you are at taking a compliment? I guess I've learned, you know, as a professional person, as a, you know, I've had to learn to be gracious. I'm not always sure that compliments many times are double-edged. But being gracious has saved me from some, you know, perhaps situations that were unkind or perhaps, I don't know. I think it's always better to sort of rise to a level of having some of that graciousness somehow. Because I've noticed in your interviews, you've always been very polite to people, especially men who ask quite invasive questions. And I really noticed how you deflected the invasiveness of that with your gracious kind of elegance.

8:30And it was like a kind of a transparent shield that you kept around you, but very sort of southern, just sort of good manners. and you said you used to fantasize about Marilyn Monroe being your mother and I wondered what kind of relationship did you fantasize about having and what were you doing together? I don't know if I ever went that far with my fantasy But I think what I enjoyed about her was her, you know, her silliness, you know. And here she was in this highly pressurized position in a very competitive industry. And a little girl from nowhere, pretty much. Yet she was always sweet and childish in many ways, but yet very sophisticated.

9:42And she would come up with some real crackling responses, but they were delivered well. They were delivered nicely. And I always thought this was a genius, you know, a sign of genius. Is that where you took some of your kind of way of handling people's comments about you in interviews? I think I can only aspire to that, you know, and I think it's hard not to respond, you know, with your initial emotional responses to sort of defend yourself or to scratch back. but to you know to be to make the best of a situation I have to also give a lot of credit to my partner and former intimate partner Chris Stein because he's such a wit and you know he can just do this he seems to have an endless way of deflection and making something cool out of something that could really turn into something very ugly.

11:09Yeah. So I've had some good teachers. Yeah. And you strike me as someone with a lot of courage. And does that come from nurture or from having to fend for yourself? I think there's a lot that goes into courage, and it has to do with a defense mechanism, a sort of desperation to understand and know yourself.

11:55stubbornness, a good amount of stubbornness, and curiosity. Yeah.

12:10I worked for Vivian Westwood in Seditionaries when I was a teenager, and I remember one day we saw you walking past and we so wanted you to come in. And did you ever shop there? Down at World's End? Before when it was seditionaries back in the punk days because I remember seeing you and we were like, there's Debbie Harry. And I think you were even wearing a beret. Talk about courage or lack of courage. I mean, I was completely in awe of Vivian Westwood and the shop. And I did eventually go into the store. And, you know, I was just like getting a wonderful eyeful, you know, it was just like eye candy to walk in there and to, you know, see what was going on.

13:10see all of her wonderful things. Did you buy anything? No I never had any money in the early days so I would just go in and I would drool over everything. It was it was really intimidating that shop. Totally. And we were kind of you know kind of a bit smug about being these scowling figures because you had to walk right into the shop to get to the to the reception and there was you know three sulking teens waiting to actually we were really friendly when someone actually walked through the door but um so many people reference you as a fashion inspiration and your way of dressing has always been so imaginative and inventive and I read you made a dress from a zebra print pillowcase once and I was there someone you first looked to for style ideas who influenced your kind of the beginning of your curiosity I think my relationship to clothes started quite young, when I was quite young, especially to color.

14:34And originally, my mother dressed me as a boy. Really? Yeah, so I was always a little girl sort of dressed in overalls and little T-shirts and rugged shoes. I wasn't dressed as a girly girl. I was dressed as a sort of a cute boy. And that suited me. Yeah. I never even noticed it. I never even thought about it until I was much older and, you know, talking with people and my friends and realizing that, oh, I was always dressed as a cute boy, a little boy. And then I think it didn't really start until, you know, when I guess I was in grade school and I started getting girly clothes that were given to me by my mother's friends who had daughters that, you know, outgrew their clothes.

15:42And so I started that sort of really scared me, actually. That scared me. What scared you? Why did it scare you? Yeah, yeah. Because it was a new aspect of my own self. And who was that? Who was that? Wow. It was another person. Yeah. So it was thrilling and wonderful and pretty and wow. You know, I mean, I always admired the girls that I went to school with who were, you know, very girly. Yeah. I always admired them and I wondered, you know, sort of wondered how they did it. And then suddenly I was able to do it. Wow. So it was a bigger world, you know, a bigger world. Wonderful. Because you have the ability to appear very self-contained.

16:45And is that a stance you perfected for self-preservation to deal with people's obsessive curiosity about you? I guess I think of it all as some kind of a survival mechanism.

17:05A girl's survival mechanism. Yeah. Because in your memoir, Face It, you wrote about being raped at gunpoint and in your own home by an intruder. And you write in a detached way as though you're holding it at a great distance. And you said, I don't want to feel like a victim. and I wondered what do you do with traumatic feelings of loss and abandonment and I wondered whether you used heroin to flatten those feelings. I think it is a combination of those things. I think it was sort of a necessary period in my life when I used heroin but I also had a habit of sort of stepping outside of myself and observing.

18:04So I think to people that may have been with me at the time or sort of aware of what was going on, it would seem that I was not really involved. But I think I just took a sort of different perspective for myself to be an observer as well as a participant. And I think as a performer, you know, that this is a safety net or, you know, I guess a tool, I think, to, you know, being able to develop characters and to understand my own character. I don't know if I can really explain it any other way, except that it's always been a way to perhaps just understand myself. But I think as an actor that it is really very natural, very natural.

19:29Yeah. Because people like when I was talking to Kate Moss about when she gets dressed, she says she likes to have a character and then build her look around that. And there is just this quality that you have of detachment that is kind of very alluring as well because everyone is so kind of spellbound and captivated by your amazing appearance. And then it's like you kind of detach from it and what you were describing of being almost an onlooker of yourself. And I know that you've stopped taking heroin, but that's one of its qualities to, you know, stop feeling self-conscious. and how did you manage to stop taking it because it's famously so addictive and so successfully kind of?

20:40How did I manage to stop taking heroin? It was a long process.

20:50I sort of liked the feeling of it and it served me well for a while, But then it started not serving me well. And it was, it sort of destroyed itself. It self-destructed in a way. And it was painful physically to stop, but a great relief at the same time. Because I wasn't getting what I wanted. and all of the pain and pressure of, you know, getting heroin and surviving in that world became worthless. You know, it just was, it didn't work. It was impractical. It didn't work. And as bad as it made me feel to stop physically, It made me, in the long run, just better off without it and smarter. And I really like that.

22:03I like smart. I am not really a super smart person with a great natural intelligence, but I think I can learn things really well. and that's very satisfying, very satisfying. You certainly seem like a smart person. I mean, you are a smart person. I mean, that's dazzlingly obvious to everyone else, but I suppose part of being rigorous is like to be self-censoring in a way. But you've had a few narrow escapes. It was like you were hitchhiking in New York City and got picked up by Ted Bundy. And you managed to escape. And how did you know what to do in such a frightening situation? Because to be in that much danger is often paralyzing.

23:06But you managed to escape from a serial killer. You know, and I've been debunked about this. You know, I've been debunked. I've probably been one of the most debunked people in the world by now. Anyway, no, I guess I have good instincts, you know, And I like animal instincts. I trust them. And I don't know why, but I guess as a survival mechanism, I think it really goes back to a quite elemental stage in my existence. You know, being adopted as an infant. Yeah. I understand trauma in a very, very personal, deep way. My core, my core of understanding fear and trauma is amazing. It's just totally amazing.

24:17And it's taken me a long time to really understand that. And I don't, I sort of, I sometimes wonder if I'm fantasizing about all of this. but it served me well whether it's fantasy or whether it's truth you know to understand my core and that comes from a trauma as an infant and a great sense of fear of being separated from my natural mother and being put into a situation with different creatures that sounded different, that looked different, that smelled different in every aspect. And this is, I can't explain it any other way that I have learned to trust my animal nature and my senses, my physical senses.

25:17And I think that for the most part, the way that we grow up, we are disarmed. of these instincts. And some of us, myself included, had to have them. Yeah. I fought to have them, and I wish that I had more of them. And I don't know if I could. I've always wanted to be able to study, you know, instincts in a way that I don't know if we're actually taught to, you know, use our instincts. Because we don't live in a primitive world. We live in a very complicated, technological, sophisticated world. And a lot of, we don't need them. We don't need these instincts, but I think they're really important in ways that really affect intelligence and human nature.

26:35Human nature is very, very important. I don't know. I could ramble on about this, and it's all guesswork, really. but I feel like this is something that I think is very beautiful and wonderful. Yeah, well it's true. I think, you know, that's interesting that thing you said about I don't know if I'm imagining it or not but it doesn't almost really matter because it makes complete sense about what your experience of being taken through or your mother giving you up. And that was after three months, so you were already attached. So, I mean, I suppose what's good is that you had the fight and flight alive in you and not the freeze.

27:29so you managed to escape and you managed to achieve all these incredible things. And then I also read that you shot guns with William Burroughs. Yeah. I wondered how that came about. Well, we lived on the Bowery. Chris and I lived on the Bowery. And we had a, I don't know, we got very lucky in some odd circumstances. And we met a writer from sort of, you know, the scene, Victor Bacris. Oh, yes. Yeah. And he's quite a wonderful character and terrific writer and great conversationalist. And, you know, he invited us over to John Giornal, the poet, to his loft, which was down on the Bowery, a few blocks south of where we were.

28:32And it was in this wonderful old building that at one time was a YMCA. and it was an odd building that was made with very thick, thick, thick cement walls and floors because it was shower rooms and gymnasiums and all kinds of, you know, floors and activities that needed to have a superstructure. And so John lived in one of the floors that was, you know, and they called it the bunker. Right. So we went down there to meet William, and Chris was in heaven. I mean, he was just in heaven. And he and Bill had a lot of similar fascination with weapons. And Chris had a marvelous edged weapon collection.

29:29and so he had swords and knives and guns and all of them. Well, not the guns or etched weapons, but he loved weaponry. And so he and Bill had a lot of the same interests. And of course, Burroughs, fascinating character, wonderful, intelligent person. And he and Chris got along wonderfully well. They became friends, very good friends. And so I guess we were out in Kansas for a show. And I don't know. I don't remember the exact chronology of events, of how whether Chris had gone to Bill's place in Kansas many times or whether it was just that one time when we were playing with Blondie and we got invited over.

30:24And that's how we started shooting. We went into Bill's barn and, you know, he hung up some targets and we got to go shooting with Bill. God. Pretty fabulous. Yeah. Yeah. My ex-husband, James, he has a target practice where he went shooting with Bill and they both signed it and there's some holes in. It's really great. Yeah. I have my sign target somewhere. Yeah, yeah. At this stage, actually, since I'm not on the road so much and I'm trying to wade through, you know, volumes of things that I've, you know, saved, you know, through the years. It's a challenge. Yeah. And Andy Warhol made some of his most beautiful work featuring you.

31:29And I actually own a Polaroid of you that he took. Oh, wow. Yeah, I have it. And you said he was a tough nut to crack. And I wondered what he talked to you about. Well, I mean, that's one of the things that I really learned from Andy is that more than a talker, that he was a great listener. And that is a really, really valuable asset. And I think that that's another thing that I learned from my small brush with acting, is that to listen is probably the most important part of acting, is the listening part, and to let that really soak into you and to respond. So Andy, famous for saying, oh, really?

32:33Oh, really? That was one of his phrases, right? Yeah. His phrase, oh, really? And how many ways you can say that. and, you know, be present in a great conversation by just saying, really? And wanting to know more. Yeah. Was there an expectation on you to tell him interesting things? Did it make you more imaginative and more kind of mischievous in your stories? yeah yeah i mean a little i feel like i i don't really know that much about andy and i i wish that i had had a chance to become um more of a friend and more of an intimate friend i feel like i was um an acquaintance with a view to becoming a friend and um

33:38I think he was terrific for me. Yeah. He was always wonderful.

33:48And I would have loved to hear him talk a little bit more. But he was also, like you, very soft-spoken. and um but again very uh you know I know he was very chatty with a lot of people but um he was also a tremendous listener and um that I found that very valuable yeah I love his work I find it endlessly inspiring and interesting and yeah I really love um the way he catches light in all, like in his paintings. And you described how he'd made your pupils the light reflection in the portrait he did of you, and he'd made your pupils into hearts. I didn't realize that, the thing about the reflection in the pupils, I didn't realize that until much later on when there was a big show downtown at the Whitney, and I was shocked.

35:00I was, you know, gobsmacked, as they say. And then I started really investigating, and I realized then also that in all of his portraits, every single one, the whites of the eyes were not white. Oh. What were they? Flesh. Gosh, really? I'm going to have another look. I know. And when I told this, I told this to my friend Johnny, and he said, oh, no, that can't be right. And, you know, of course, then he went and looked, and he came back and said, you're right. And you, for years and years and years, I mean, you never even thought of it. And then all of a sudden I realized it was all the same. God, I can't wait to look now.

35:57That's fascinating. Well, I mean, if you find some that are white, please tell me because I have to know. You sort of sometimes you think about, you find something like that and you think, oh, I must be wrong. I must be wrong. Yeah, because there's something about the hair in all of Andy Warhol's films and photographs and his paintings. And he has this thing, especially in the black and white, those short films that he did, which I particularly love. And there's this kind of this reflection on blonde hair, especially. And one of my favorite lines from one of your songs, Atomic, is your hair is beautiful.

36:49And then you have this amazing hair and you had this blonde hair and also with this black hair in the back. And Anita Pallenberg had that too. And I wondered how you came up with that look. So silly. It really is so silly. How? Well, I mean, I was always fascinated with the silver screen thing, you know, the image and the blonde and the sexuality and how exciting it was and how beautiful it was and yet how innocent it was. Yeah. And the black in the back, I think during the punk era, you know, in the early on, people were much more creative with it because it was a free-for-all, basically. It was just some kind of madness and rebellion and all of this mixture of things.