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Blondie’s loft

Blondie’s loft

266 Bowery, New York, NY 10012


“The Blondie Loft,” as it was known on the scene, was a place for the band to rehearse and their friends to hang out before heading a block away to CBGB (it also served as the residence of Debbie Harry, Chris Stein, and Gary Valentine).

Stories

The Shangri-Las Make an Impression

People

Debbie Harry loved songs like “My Boyfriend’s Back” when she was young, and learned a lot about singing from listening to them. “Their lyrical themes were a little bit different than sort of what I ended up with,” she recalled. “They were all sort of a smitten and slightly abused from love, relationships. And I think my position was a little bit more sneering.” One group she was drawn to was the Shangri-Las, a 1960s girl group from Queens who became punk favorites (they even reunited for a show at CBGB later in the 1970s). They sang gum-smacking odes to rebel boys, eschewing feminine clothes and copping some serious ’tude in their tunes—which often strayed into unladylike territory. “When I was a kid I thought the Shangri-Las were too commercial,” Blondie’s Chris Stein said, “but then later on it just clicked and I realized how awesome it was. I still think they’re incredible.” That 1960s girl group was one of the common musical denominators that Blondie shared, and drummer Clem Burke explained the Shangri-La’s proto-punk appeal: “They had their black leather vests and their tight black leather pants, and they sang ‘Give Him a Great Big Kiss.’ They sang about dirty fingernails, wavy hair, and leather jackets, and things like that.” The Shangri-Las cast a long shadow over glam and punk rock. The New York Dolls’ “Looking for a Kiss” borrowed the spoken word intro from their “Give Him a Great Big Kiss,” and another Dolls song, “Trash,” copped the campy “How do you call your lover boy?” line from “Love Is Strange,” a catchy 1956 hit by Mickey & Sylvia. The group’s final album, Too Much Too Soon, was produced by Shadow Morton, who had crafted the girl group classics “Leader of the Pack” and “Remember (Walking in the Sand)” for the Shangri-Las.

From Chapter 4 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Gary Valentine Writes “(I’m Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear”

People

Another connector figure in the downtown scene was Benton Quin, an Off-Off-Broadway performer who rented Harry and Stein a loft on the Bowery where the couple lived and the band rehearsed. “Benton is the person who gets credit for all that,” Lisa Jane Persky said of the way he helped spark many artistic relationships. “He masterminded a lot of the stuff, even though he was a bit cuckoo in many ways.” Quin was also a very literal matchmaker for Persky and Gary Valentine. After Quin appeared with her in Harry Koutoukas’s Grandmother Is in the Strawberry Patch, they remained close; and when Valentine moved into the loft, he realized the bassist was perfect for Persky and insisted that the two should meet. “Benton must have been persuasive, and so she came over,” Valentine said. “We later consummated our first meeting after a Vain Victory performance, the one Blondie appeared in. There was a party in the Upper West Side somewhere, and so a lot of people from the theater scene—Divine and all that—were there. That was a special night for Lisa and I.” He later wrote the early Blondie hit, “(I’m Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear,” about their relationship.

From Chapter 30 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Blondie’s Style

People

By late 1975, Gary Valentine was the first to cut his hair short; then Stein and Burke did the same and adopted a retro 1960s style. “There’s a picture of Debbie and me walking down Fourteenth Street,” Clem Burke said, “and everyone is looking at us, and I’m wearing what you would call a slim-fit suit. They weren’t looking at us because we were famous, because we weren’t yet. We just didn’t dress like everyone else then.” During the early years of the CBGB scene, no one had Mohawks or any of the other styles that are now punk clichés. The people on the scene mostly took their inspiration from Beatlemania-era fashion: black jeans and skinny ties. It was a pronounced contrast from the prevailing trends of the time, when earth tones, blue denim, and bell-bottoms prevailed. Designers weren’t in the habit of making black slim-fit jeans and suits—and even if they were, the members of Blondie didn’t have the money to buy new clothes. Instead, Burke purchased thrift store suits, wore them in a tub full of water, and then walked around in the summer so that the clothes would shrink around his body. “Everybody loved the skinny ties,” Lisa Jane Persky recalled. “There was a place in New Jersey where they had brand-new ‘old stock.’ It was all these old peg-leg pants from the early sixties, and they were brand new. We used to go there and get stuff all the time.” Burke once bought a bunch of unworn 1960s clothes from that store—such as Levi’s Sta-Prest jeans and button-down collar polka dot shirts—then lugged them to the Blondie loft. Some of those items ended up on the cover of the band’s debut album, because the guys in the band often shared clothes.

From Chapter 31 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Clem Burke and Gary Valentine Join Blondie

People

Blondie’s fortunes began to turn around soon after Clem Burke joined the band. “He definitely was a wannabe rock star,” Debbie Harry recalled. “He came in looking cool to the audition and he played well. He seemed to know a lot about music, and he was into the Shangri-Las, the Ronettes, and the Ventures, all the stuff we were into.” As for Burke, he said it wasn’t really much of an audition. “We just talked, more or less,” he said. “I just knew that she was it. I was looking for my Bowie, my Mick Jagger, my Bryan Ferry, and it just turned out to be a woman instead of a guy.” Burke’s first Blondie gig was the same night bassist Fred Smith announced he was leaving to play with Television, and the despondent group fell apart again. “I kept in touch with Debbie and Chris, trying to keep the band going,” Burke said, “and then I brought Gary in. To me, that was the beginning of Blondie.” Roberta Bayley also recalled that the band finally gelled with the addition of keyboardist Jimmy Destri and bassist Gary Valentine, who moved in with Debbie and Chris. “They were more cohesive,” she said, “and they started rehearsing and trying to be a little bit more professional, and writing new songs.” Valentine taught himself how to play bass after seeing Television and other new downtown bands perform around town. “They weren’t great musicians,” he said, “but they were inventing themselves in front of you. Then you felt like, ‘Well, I could do that, too.’ And that’s what got me going.”

From Chapter 31 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Stephen Sprouse Moves Into the Blondie Loft

People

This interest in fashion intensified when designer Stephen Sprouse moved into the building’s top floor. “I invited Stephen to live there sometime after I met him at Reno Sweeney, when Holly Woodlawn was performing there,” Benton Quin said. “Stephen began designing and making a few things for Debbie, and also loaned her things. She was just basically wearing a lot of thrift shop stuff, so Stephen ramped up her glamour several notches.” Sprouse had a professional background working for Halston, a major designer at the time, and he created clothes for everyone in the band. “He was very much an artist who was aggressive about how he would cut up materials,” Chris Stein said. “He was just so far ahead of his time.” “Stephen would find things for me to wear,” Debbie Harry recalled, “or go through my collection of rags and put them together so that it had a strong visual look. He had all that experience at Halston of creating collections, so he was able to compile things.” Roberta Bayley added, “Dressing Debbie was probably inspirational for him, and it was great for her because she really developed her look—going from a thrift shop look, because nobody had money, to actually having dresses that were made for her to be onstage.” Sprouse did other graphic design work for the group, and in 1976 he was tapped to be the art director on the first two Blondie videos, “X Offender” and “In the Flesh.” From the very beginning, Blondie understood that visuals matter. The group started making music videos five years before MTV debuted in 1981, and photos of Harry circulated widely well before the band ever had an American hit, which undoubtedly laid the foundation for their later success. Although Blondie began as the runts of the CBGB scene, the group became its biggest global export by the end of the decade.

From Chapter 31 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


The Blondie Loft

People

The Blondie Loft was a four-story building on the Bowery with a liquor store on the ground floor, about a block south of CBGB. “We went to CBGB five to seven days a week,” Clem Burke said. “It was a place to go, it was the thing to do, it stayed open late. We would rehearse at the loft and just live there, and sleep on the floor. Or sleep with other girls. Things would happen, you know, anything goes. I was a teenager. But it was primarily Chris and Debbie’s residence.” The building’s unofficial landlord was Benton Quin, whom Gary Valentine described as “a good artist, a flamboyant creative fellow, with all the eccentricities that go with that.” He rented the bottom loft floor to the bandmates and lived directly above them in a space littered with cans of urine (because there was no bathroom on his level). “Benton was a real character,” Chris Stein said. “He made a lot of cartoon-like cutout things that would get pummeled onstage by Debbie, like during ‘Kung Fu Girls.’ He also made the leather briefs that Debbie wore with that ‘Vultures’ T‑shirt in Punk magazine.” Burke recalled, “It was a close relationship with Benton and the band. It was a little micro world of our own in that loft building. Debbie helped Benton bleach his body hair, because he wanted it to be blond, and he had a lot of body hair—you know, he had all these different strange goings on.” The loft was cluttered with Quin’s large paintings, and Harry and Stein placed occult bric-a-brac on the walls. “Chris and I shared some interests,” Valentine said, “like horror films and comic books. He was keen on voodoo and pentagrams. Actually, Chris was kind of a goth in the beginning, wearing eyeliner and silver skulls.”

From Chapter 31 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore