Being Cute Does Not Make You an Idiot, or "Face It"by Debbie Harry

Debbie Harry was my first crush. Well, her and Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman. This just means I came of age in the late '70s and had a functional heart as well as eyes and ears. I don't remember exactly where I encountered her first - possibly the Muppet Show, but I do remember being struck by both her physical beauty and a slight sense of iciness that kept me a little off-balance and intrigued, as much as a 9 year old can be intrigued.  Later, when I heard her say "ass" in "Heart of Glass," I fell a little harder.

Yeah, this probably did it.

"Face It" is Harry's first memoir (which is sort of nuts, considering Moby has two and is plotting more) and that sense of remove is still there. Sure, she's gonna tell you all about the sex and drugs and gossip and scandal, but she's not going to get too deep about it.

Which can be a bit annoying, because Harry had a crazy life, even pre-Blondie. A dreamy kid who fled to New York City as soon as she could, Harry worked as a backup singer, Playboy waitress, and a variety of mind-numbing jobs to support herself as she yearned for some sort of career in the arts. Navigating a run-down NYC, she created her own fashion, trying to emulate classic movie stars with the discarded materials and thrift store dresses she found on the streets. She created her singing voice and stage persona through studying Method acting, which led her to world-wide fame with Blondie.

Along the way she meets her bandmate/partner Chris Stein, endures a psychotic stalker, revels in the NY art and music scene, and reveals the drudgery behind major label stardom – an endless cycle of making albums, defending songs to clueless execs, touring non-stop, then starting the process again once you get home.

Harry is an engaging writer, even if she tends to go off on tangents about walking her dogs or the importance of thumbs, and can be maddeningly distant sometimes. There’s a pretty harrowing rape that she just sort of …reports, as well as heroin addictions that don’t get brought up again, and her breakup with Stein just kinda happens as well.  There’s a mention of the art/pop divide in the NY music scene, with bands like Patti Smith and Television on one side and Blondie and the Ramones on the other which I would have liked to seen fleshed out more.

“Face It” includes four sections of fan art, which might have been included to increase the page count, but still comes across as charming, much like Harry’s digressions into thumbs* and dog walking and buying cigarettes. She also recounts a story about almost getting abducted by Ted Bundy that she admits probably didn’t really happen the way she remembers, since Bundy was creeping around Florida at the time, but still comes across as innocent – sort of like your aunt or uncle telling you a story that you’re pretty sure is made up, but you laugh at anyway, either through their storytelling prowess or your love for them. And yes, I’m giving Debbie Harry the benefit of the doubt over her made-up Ted Bundy story when Moby’s lies drove me insane. Probably because I never had a crush on Moby as nine year old.

Drugs/Sex/Bad Behavior  - 8/10  Plenty of drugs, although not excessive. Of course, excessive in a rock memoir is different than for normal people. As for sex, I’ll let Debbie tell it: “I really loved sex. I think I might have been oversexed, but I didn’t have a problem with that; I felt it was totally natural. But in my town in those days, sexual energy was very repressed, or at least clandestine. The expectation for a girl was that you would date, get engaged, remain a virgin, marry, and have children. The idea of being tied to that kind of traditional suburban life terrified me.”

Opens in media res - Nope. Starts with her parents. Weird. Has she never read a music memoir?

Namedropping - 8/10. Is it really namedropping if you actually knew the people? As always, I gave Harry the benefit of the doubt, since her stories were woven into the narrative more gracefully than Moby's. Everyone from Buddy Rich, Timothy Leary, Muhammad Ali, to Miles Davis shows up - and these are all before she got famous with Blondie.

Percentage Ghostwritten  - Let's say 60 percent. There's a definite feeling that she told her stories to someone who put them into a coherent form.

Buy, Borrow from the Library, or Pass - If you're a Blondie fan, you probably need it, if only for the picture section. Everyone else should probably borrow it from the library.


* Seriously, there's a whole thing on thumbs. Really.