Face It: A Memoir

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My hope is that she is financially set for her work that is way more important that most newer acts that get paid off the backs of older acts that actually break ground. she's more than old enough to be my mother but I'm still old enough to have owned at least one album as a kid and one 45 (young people will have to Google that lol) and she was never considered pretty by any means during that time period. She jumps around and and talks about everything under the sun, but without really making much sense at all. I couldn’t wait for my library to get a copy, so I listened to the audio on Scribd without the benefit of having a digital or print book to complement it- something I rarely do. I can’t say I was a super fan and up until now I knew very little about Debbie from a personal standpoint.

I suppose having had a long and eventful life it's difficult to choose what to include and what to leave out! What I got was a book with uninteresting random facts that had no bearing on Blondie and a bunch of weird fan art.Secondly, the book was more like a list of random facts (which had no bearing or importance in regard to Blondie the band, or Debbie Harry as the face of Blondie) just sprinkled on the page and interspersed with, "and boy was I pretty. As a vibrant global force and a shaper of pop culture, Debbie’s chart-topping success, fearless spirit and rare longevity led to an induction into the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame for Blondie in 2006.

There is certainly more that 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. Readers will find reflection on life with a budding band and an uncensored view of what it took to succeed.Of course, within a few years Blondie had become a veritable powerhouse of hit songs that topped the charts around the world.

The scope of Debbie Harry’s impact on our culture has been matched only by her reticence to reveal her rich inner life – until now. I wanted an emotional biography about one of the coolest bands of that era, with personal details about how they and Debbie Harry herself came to be. Photograph: Mick Rock/Rex Features View image in fullscreen ‘Ultimately for me, it’s the overwhelming need to have my entire life be an imaginative out-of-body experience. Unfortunately, after getting off to such a good start, Debbie occasionally lost her train of thought, and her tight chronological format unraveled, and she started to insert odd little antidotes and wandering off course, playing around with timelines, which is something that rarely works for me with a biography or memoir. Their early struggling years, and rock and punk and art world friends are a Who's Who of Andy Warhol's 'Interview' and the Bowery/East Village scene, CBGB's in particular.It’s a shame that Harry passes up the chance to dig deeper into her experiences of objectification and the nature of fame, but more disappointing is that we learn so little about her interior life, and how she really thinks and feels. In an arresting mix of visceral, soulful storytelling and stunning visuals that includes never-before-seen photographs, bespoke illustrations and fan art installations, Face It upends the standard music memoir while delivering a truly prismatic portrait. In an arresting mix of visceral, soulful storytelling and stunning visuals, Face It upends the standard music memoir while delivering a truly prismatic portrait.