Once more into the bleach

They didn’t incite any lorry drivers to stick their feet through televisions or spout radical left-wing rhetoric, but in their own way Blondie were as revolutionary a punk force as the Pistols and the Clash.

“People remember American radio in the ‘70s as being dominated by Journey and Foreigner, but that was the good stuff,” Blondie guitarist Chris Stein winces. “For every soft rock band, you had ten Captain and Tennilles whose muzak was designed by record company committee to appeal to middle-class parents with 2.4 kids and a station wagon. As for hearing a ‘black’ artist on ‘white’ radio – or vice versa – forget it. It was conservatism bordering on racism, and it stunk.”
September marks the 30th birthday of Parallel Lines, the album which catapulted Blondie and their streetwise Noo Yawk attitude into the American mainstream.
“If my memory serves me correctly, we started 1978 with a UK tour that included a gig in the London Roundhouse with the then not particularly well-known Bob Geldof and the Boomtown Rats,” Stein resumes. “We’d already broken Britain and Germany but gotten to, I don’t know, number 70 in the States. That all changed with ‘Heart Of Glass’, which wasn’t released as a single until Parallel Lines had been on the shelves for six months. ‘Picture This’ and ‘Hanging On The Telephone’ had been out before it and done nothing in America. (Parallel Lines producer) Mike Chapman said on TV that ‘Heart Of Glass’ started out as a reggae song, which was news to me! We’d actually gone into the studio with Kraftwerk in mind, but then the disco vibe kicked in.”
Was this as a result of them propping up the VIP bar in Studio 54?
“We were only in Studio 54 a handful of times, but knew a lot of people who were immersed in that scene. What I do remember very clearly is Fab Five Freddy taking us to a big rap event in The Bronx, which was a real eye-opener. Clem was like: ‘This must’ve been what Bob Dylan felt like the first time he heard ‘All Along The Watchtower!’”
Parallel Lines was belted out in seven weeks – the same amount of time that Fleetwood Mac took the previous year getting the Rumours drum sound right.
“They were very rigorous weeks though!” he laughs. “Unlike now when you could record it in a day using MIDI and other electronic devices, ‘Heart Of Glass’ had to be pieced together track by track in real time. If looping had been invented we didn’t know about it, so everything was done manually.”
Does Stein wish they’d had those short cuts available to them, or does he prefer traditional rock ‘n’ roll methods?
“It’d be a good experiment to try and duplicate it now but, no, I don’t think we’d have got that distinct ambience using MIDI.”
At what point did they realise they were making a stonewall classic?
“Back then we tended to do rather than think! While I’m a little annoyed that he portrays us as this bunch of maniacs he had to rein in, the first bit of alchemy was being teamed up in the studio with Mike Chapman who was like the gym instructor who gets you to do a hundred repetitions – and then one more! He wouldn’t let you go home until something was completely nailed.”
What it’s been like revisiting the album for the upcoming Parallel Lines anniversary tour which, lest we forget, takes in the Galway Arts Festival (July 24) and Vicar St., Dublin (25)?
“Even though I’ve played it a hundred thousand times, I still have a big emotional attachment to ‘Heart Of Glass’,” Chris concludes. “That’s always been a staple of Blondie shows whereas we probably hadn’t performed ‘I Know But I Don’t Know’ as a band for 28 years! We just couldn’t bring ourselves to play the last fucking track (‘Just Go Away’) – Debbie and me hated it so we turned it into an instrumental!”