A L S O_.T O D A Y

Blue Glow
Monica Lewinsky talks to Barbara Walters: Has anybody invented a drinking game for this?

Blondie: Where are they now?
By Johnny Angel
The reunion is a love-fest. So why are two ex- members of New Wave's biggest band hopping mad?

----------•   ••    •    •    •  •    •  Behind the music   •    ••    •    •    •    •   •    |
The members of the reborn band discuss their past, their reunion and their first recording in 17 years, "No Exit."

BY MICHELLE GOLDBERG
There's hardly a single major '90s pop music phenomenon that doesn't have its antecedent in the sugary, ironic, thrilling pastiche of Blondie. Madonna's obvious inspiration was Debbie Harry, not Marilyn Monroe ("Everybody admits that but Madonna," says Blondie keyboardist Jimmy Destri). The Spice Girls, too, are Harry's daughters. An ex-Playboy bunny, Harry perfected the marriage of airbrushed, blow-up doll glamour and tough, me-first attitude that every MTV nymphet strives for -- the insistent, carnally aggressive chorus to "Call Me" prefigured do-me feminism by a decade. Even hip-hop, which everyone from Vibe to Time magazine acknowledges as the music of the '90s, has a few blond roots, for while Grandmaster Flash and Kool Herc invented it, Blondie brought it to the masses -- "Rapture" was, after all, the first No. 1 rap song ever. The sweet and sour harmonies of critical darlings Sleater-Kinney follow straight from songs like "In the Flesh" and "X Offender," Blondie's punk takes on the girl-group sounds of the Shangri Las and the Angels. The Beastie Boys are often credited for merging punk, funk, hip-hop and dance music, but again, Blondie did it first, pumping out disco hits and keeping their CBGB street cred at the height of the "disco sucks" backlash. This remarkable genre diplomacy was made possible by the band's sophisticated use of parody and winking exaggeration (especially the bitingly blasé lyrics to "Heart of Glass") and by Debbie Harry's indomitable coolness -- a glamour that, at 53, still seems to burn as intensely as it did two decades ago.

When Blondie announced that they were reuniting, 17 years after their less-than-mediocre final album, "The Hunter," and subsequent rancorous breakup (two ex-members have recently filed a lawsuit against the band), even loyal fans might have groaned a bit, picturing the pathetic recent Sex Pistols tour or the geriatric, increasingly self-parodic Rolling Stones. Once again, though, Blondie amazes, producing what may be the most triumphant comeback record ever. Unlike the desultory greatest-hits packages of Blondie's past-their-prime peers, "No Exit" has all the manic energy and confectionery gloss of classic albums like "Parallel Lines" and "Plastic Letters." "That's why we tried to work on all new music. We didn't want to do this retro trip. We felt it was really important that we do something fresh," says Harry. "I don't think we would have done it otherwise -- we couldn't ever have pulled it off."

Says drummer Clem Burke, "I'm friends with Glen [Matlock, the Sex Pistols' bassist] and Steve [Jones, the Sex Pistols' guitarist], and they both seem to have regretted that they weren't able to make new music during their reunion. We didn't want to do this as a business venture, like 'Let's go out on tour and make a whole bunch of money.' If we were going to put all this time, energy and emotion into it, we had to become a band again. That's the difference between a Blondie reunion and a Sex Pistols reunion or a Kiss reunion. Those were more nostalgic, and they disappointed fans because they didn't make any new music. We all feel very credible now that we've made the new record."

The reception of the new album has been almost uniformly ecstatic. "Maria," the deliriously catchy, operatically passionate first single -- a pop gem as perfectly crafted as any in their oeuvre -- debuted at the top of the charts in Britain, making Blondie the first band ever to have a No. 1 U.K. single in the '70s, '80s and '90s. No one in the group ever expected to be so prominently back in the pop spotlight again, but at the same time they say there's no feeling of disorientation or déjà vu. "It really does feel like just the next Blondie album. It could have come between 'Eat to the Beat' and 'Autoamerican,' or after 'The Hunter,'" says Destri. "My thing is that, even though I got married and started a really wonderful family and am happy being at home, the 16 years I was at home were the surreal years. Doing this feels right. There was no death after Blondie for me, but I felt incomplete, even with a family and everything. Now I feel very much at home, like ahhh yeah, where did we leave off?"

If anything, "No Exit" is the most ambitious Blondie record ever, tighter and more wildly eclectic than anything the band has done before. There's a whiskey-rough country tune on "No Exit," "The Dream is Lost on Me," as well as a noirish ska song, "Screaming Skin," and the title track, a Gothic rap featuring a furious cameo by Coolio. It all works, probably because it's the kind of experimental fare Blondie have tackled from the beginning. And while "No Exit" is in no way a retrospective, there is a sense that Blondie are consolidating their influences, making a statement about their own inventive legacy. Hearing them pull off ska, rap, pop, country, jazz and old-fashioned torch songs on the same album gives a contemporary listener a new appreciation how visionary Blondie were in fusing hip-hop, punk and disco, three genres that appeared eons apart in the late '70s and early '80s.

"We've just done a remix of 'No Exit' with Wu Tang Clan and Mobb Deep. They say the first time they heard rap was with 'Rapture' -- it's funny, you'd think they'd cite NWA or Public Enemy," says Burke. "Had we not done 'Rapture' back then, I don't think it would have rang true to work with rap now. There is an acceptance of Blondie [in hip-hop], and people recognize Debbie as being, in a way, the first female rapper."

Coolio got involved with "No Exit" after Harry sent him a tape of the song -- he responded by recording his own rap to go along with it. "His performance was extraordinary," says Harry. "We really didn't have any intimate collaboration working in the same room. He liked the song and he did his thing and sent it to us. The process was kind of existential, which sort of fits the title."

N E X T_P A G E _| Maturity born of experience and loss