Forty years after Blondie found fame on the New York scene, Debbie Harry is
still waving the flag for women in the music business – of every age
 |
Debbie Harry at 69: 'You have to keep new influences coming in' Photo: MIKE MCGREGOR
|
In 1980, during a tour with Blondie, Debbie
Harry hosted a tea party at a London hotel, gathering together many of
the women prominent in music at the time. Chrissie Hynde was there; Siouxsie Sioux; the Slits guitarist Viv Albertine; Pauline Black from The Selecter; and Poly Styrene
from X-Ray Spex. Chris Stein, Harry’s boyfriend at the time as well as
the other half of Blondie’s creative core, published pictures of it in
his recent book Negative, a collection of his photographs from the early
years of their fame.
It looks as though there was a lot of laughter. This was a different time for women in music. Two years earlier Kate Bush,
who was invited to tea but didn’t make it, had become the first female
solo performer to reach number one in the British charts with her own
song (Wuthering Heights).
There was a
widespread assumption that there was room for just one main female
performer in each genre. If another appeared, they were expected to
battle it out for the title of queen of pop/soul/disco/punk.
