FEATURE:
One Day or Another
Looking Ahead to the Forty-Fifth Anniversary of Blondie’s Parallel Lines
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EVEN if its forty-fifth anniversary…
IN THIS PHOTO: Blondie in 1978: From right - Clem Burke, Chris Stein, Debbie Harry, Jimmy Destri, Frank Infante, Nigel Harrison
is not until 23rd September, I wanted to look to Blondie’s iconic and legendary Parallel Lines. Earlier in 1978, the band released their second studio album, Plastic Letters. That housed many gems – including Denis -, though Parallel Lines took them to new heights! It seems almost like a greatest hits collection! From Sunday Girl and Hanging on the Telephone (a cover of The Nerves’ song, but Blondie’s version is best!!) and Heart of Glass, through to One Way or Another to Picture This, this is an album that will be talked about decades from now. It was wonderfully produced by Mike Chapman. He really got the very best from the band! Led by the peerless Debbie Harry and supported by Jimmy Destri, Frank Infante, Chris Stein, Nigel Harrison and Clem Burke, Parallel Lines is surely one of the all-time great albums. Released in 1978, it arrived at a time when the landscape had very few bands you could compare with Blondie. I want to bring in a couple of features before I end with a couple of reviews for the all-conquering Parallel Lines. Offering more insight and compelling information that I could offer myself, I want to start with Guitar.com’s feature from 2021. They underline how a mix of older sounds like'50s girl groups with the recently-faded Disco and New Wave elevated the New York band to new heights:
“One way or another
Ever since their inception in 1974, Blondie had consciously cherry-picked from a forest of influences. The band first originated when 23-year old guitarist Chris Stein joined former waitress and Playboy bunny Debbie Harry’s female vocal troupe The Stilettos. Stein and Harry shared a love of similar flavours of punk and pop, and soon forged both a tight creative and romantic partnership. “I just love the way Chris thinks.” Harry told The Sun, “He is open to all kinds of music. I think it must be down to his punk spirit.”
Before long, the pair sought to create a new kind of musical vehicle. Appropriating a slur that the Monroe-like Harry had been frequently met with as she strolled around the decaying Bowery neighbourhood in Manhattan, the burgeoning band christened themselves as ‘Blondie’, and eventually settled on a five-piece line up. Joining Harry and Stein came Clem Burke on drums, Gary Valentine on bass and Jimmy Destri on keys. From the outset, Stein’s guitar approach prioritised attitude over technical flair, “Schooling and practice is not a bad thing, but at that time, there was a spontaneity missing on the radio.” He explained to Cryptic Rock.
With an alluring fusion of 50s and 60s girl-group, mod and the ramshackle punk sensibility of Stein’s guitar playing, the band quickly cultivated heady buzz on the cabalistic CBGB-oriented new wave scene. Blondie’s initial clutch of songs bore the same quirky DNA that would be central to their greatest work, from the irresistible lo-fi swagger of X-Offender, to the knowingly kitsch, Phil Spector-aping In The Flesh and their snarlingly cool take-down of high-minded critics, Rip Her To Shreds. Signing to the charmed Chrysalis Records, Blondie were clearly on the path to becoming something special indeed.
Despite their debut self-titled album sporting those aforementioned top-drawer cuts, this opening shot failed to make an impact in the US. But, across the pond in Britain, nods of approval from the likes of David Bowie and Iggy Pop (who would eventually seek the band out to support him on his The Idiot tour), as well as exposure on UK chart shows, enabled Blondie to build a solid core of Brit fans.
It was this odd disparity – commercial and critical favour in the UK but a lack of widespread interest on home soil – that informed the band’s next move. Their follow-up LP, Plastic Letters was released in February of 1978, and though the record further demonstrated Blondie’s inventiveness, and cemented their place as one of the UK’s favourite punk-pop outfits, it did little to wake-up America’s record-buying public. Wasting no time, the band decided to plunge headlong into the recording of another album in that same year. This time, it would be a record that nobody could ignore.
PHOTO CREDIT: Pete Still/Redferns
Will anything happen?
A further, final shake up of personnel took place, with additional guitarist and occasional bassist Frank Infante joining the crew to replace the erstwhile Gary Valentine. Initially enlisted as a session player, Infante would prove a vital creative element as they approached this new record. A full-time bass replacement came in the shape of Nigel Harrison, an English musician who had moved to New York at a young age, bringing with him a love of The Yardbirds and The Who.
To helm the new chart-focused record, the band turned to the well-respected producer Mike Chapman, who had had a string of hits under his belt with glam pop acts such as The Sweet and Suzi Quatro. After being invited to watch the band by Chrysalis Records, Chapman was struck by their potential “I went to New York and met with Debbie and Chris at the Gramercy Park Hotel where they were living.” Chapman recalled with Ultimate Classic Rock, “We sat on the floor together and listened to a few rough demos. I loved the new song ideas and told Terry [from Chrysalis] to book some rehearsal time and I would start the recording process.”
The new song ideas spanned a gamut of flavours, from the immaculate sparkle of Picture This, the melodic, studied sweetness of Sunday Girl and One Way or Another’s mechanical, sludgy grind. There was more than enough for Chapman to sink his teeth into.
Both producer and band agreed to focus on making the record differently to the rawer approach of their previous records, gradually building the tracks up bar-by-bar. “Mike took [our musicianship] to a whole other level of meticulousness, where we were doing stuff over and over again to do it really precise and perfect.” Stein remembered in the documentary, Blondie’s New York.
Mucho mistrust
Entering the Record Plant with Chapman, the principle guitarists Chris Stein and newcomer Frank Infante were largely shepherded by Chapman, who didn’t shy away from admitting that the garage rocking six-piece were initially difficult to corral. “They were, musically, the worst band I had ever worked with.” he told Sound on Sound. ”The only great musician among them was Frankie Infante. He’s an amazing guitarist. The rest of them were all over the bloody place.” Despite these initial teething troubles, the relationship between producer and band softened as Mike got to know them more. “The fact was, Frankie made Chris look like a terrible guitar player. I loved Chris, and I worked very, very hard with him for years and years because I felt he deserved my time. He, to me, was a wonderful songwriter, and he was always so concerned about his playing ability.”
One of the key cuts, the pile driving One Way or Another, had started life as a very basic bass part written by Nigel. “It was just two chords going back and forth with a little riff in it” recalled Nigel in Blondie’s New York, “I was too shy to show it to anyone, it’s thanks to Jimmy (Destri) who said we should make a song out of it”. Worked up by Stein, Infante and Chapman (who usefully, was also a guitar player) the song quickly became one of the favoured songs in the sessions, its D-B chord-oriented foundational riff was laid down by Infante using his overdriven Les Paul Standard, while Stein added some additional harmonic lead flourishes on his Stratocaster, as well as the deranged mania of its middle-eight’s riff barrage in F♯m. The song was perfected by Harry’s threatening, stalker-inspired lyric. It’s a lyric which altered the listeners’ perspective on that bouncy, two-chord riff – transforming its relentless simplicity into the sound of ruthless obsession.
While Infante kept his Les Paul Standard to hand on most tracks, Stein largely stuck to a Strat-centric rig during the making of Parallel Lines, despite a few additions of 12-string Rickenbacker 425 to add a retro-Byrds-like shimmer. As he told Vintage Guitar “I had a lot of Fender amps and a ’56 maple-neck Strat I used all the time that was really great. I mostly used Strats because I was such a Hendrix freak; I referenced that all the time. I used Fender amps and occasional Marshalls.”
While further punkier-edged songs came in the shape of Infante’s demonic-sounding I Know But I Don’t Know alongside the swaggering strut of Harry’s Just Go Away, Blondie’s songwriting diversified with the likes of the gothic, electronic ambience of Stein’s Fade Away and Radiate, which guest-featured the unmistakable squall of their friend, Robert Fripp. Another example of Blondie’s wide-ranging scope was the hypnotic, emotional charge of Pretty Baby. Built around a straightforward G–D-Am–C verse chord sequence, Pretty Baby further expanded Blondie’s musical range, with an almost northern soul-like bassline from Harrison serving as its median throb, while the skating final pained guitar riffs cavort with Harry’s heart-breaking vocal melody. Here was yet another bona-fide classic in the making. But it was by no means the last.
PHOTO CREDIT: Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
Heart of glass
The ultimate example of Blondie’s chart-sighted ambitions, and the album’s signature cut, was the stunning Heart of Glass. Originating as a rather plodding band-demo that had absolutely zero dancefloor appeal, Chapman heard the raw elements of something that could – with more than a little tinkering – inflame the attention of the record-buying public.
Heart of Glass’s production was intended to nod towards the motorik beats of Kraftwerk, infused with Chic-esque funk guitars, vamping largely on a single E note, that would slot into a disco DJs playlist effortlessly. Chris Stein remembered, in an interview with The Village Voice that, “It took us maybe four or five days, and it was all done manually. It’s all completely pieced together. All those guitar parts took four hours just going ‘digga-digga, digga-digga’. Because every 16th note was in time with the [Roland CompuRhythm CR78] rhythm machine.” These slick guitar chops were further augmented by some Space Echo saturated atmospherics around the edges of the mix, and the lush release of the lead riff which danced between the chorus’s triumphant A to E chords. Finally, Nigel’s funktastic bass-line (complete with head-bobbing octave runs before the chorus) was core to this simultaneously innovative yet widely appealing sound.
Though the song was already shaping up into an attractive production, the final stamp of genius came with the application of Harry’s ethereal vocal. “There she is, lullabying to it” remembered Chapman in Blondie’s New York, “I thought, wow, that’s so cool. It’s great, it’s beautiful, it’s so dream-like.” The song would go on to not just be one of Blondie’s best, but one of the defining tracks of the entire decade”.
Actually think I will get to a couple of the glowing reviews now. I might write another feature about Parallel Lines closer to its forty-fifth anniversary on 23rd September. In 2013, marking its thirty-fifth anniversary, Classic Rock Review has the following to say about a masterpiece that has been inspiring musicians since it arrived in 1978. It is an album without flaw or fault:
“Blondie has become one of those groups that is often misunderstood on multiple levels. First, this was a band, not a female solo artist with a common nickname. Next, this was not a disco group but a bona fide new wave, experimental rock band with pop leanings which had started out at CBGBs right alongside the Ramones and the Talking Heads. Blondie just had far better pop success, which started with 1978’s Parallel Lines, produced by Mike Chapman. This third studio album, which masterfully blended bubblegum pop with elements of punk, went on to sell over twenty million copies worldwide and reached the Top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic.
The group’s iconic figure, composer and lead vocalist Deborah Harry, was already age 33 and a seasoned veteran of the New York rock scene when this album was produced. Her artistic and domestic partner in creating the group was guitarist Chris Stein, who brought with him inspiration from the new music scene of the Mercer Arts Center on New York’s Lower East Side. The duo first played together in the group The Stilettos in 1973 and formed many incarnations of a rock group before drummer Clem Burke and keyboard player Jimmy Destri came aboard and formed Blondie in 1975. The group released their self-titled debut album in December 1976 but scored their first commercial success in Australia in 1977, when a music television program mistakenly played their video “In the Flesh”. That song, which has been described as “a forerunner to the power ballad”, went to number one down under. In February 1978, Blondie released their second album, Plastic Letters.
Producer Chapman intentionally steered the band away from their punk and new wave leanings (although much of those elements seeped through) and towards making a pop album. He mixed Stein’s guitar right up beside Deborah Harry’s vocals and navigates from song to song and style to style smoothly. Chapman also imposed a tough rehearsal schedule and tightened up the rhythm and timing on the recordings.
The album begins with “Hanging on the Telephone”, a cover song written by Jack Lee for the new wave band the Nerves. Although this song sounds a bit dated just for the technology references (i.e. “telephone booth”), it does contain a pleasant harmonized guitar lead and is a near perfect setup for the next track. “One Way or Another” was co-written by bassist Nigel Harrison, who joined Blondie just prior to the recording of Parallel Lines. This rock and roll classic is a ballsy female creed of pure will and determination with an infectious cascading guitar lick. The song concludes with a tremendous outro which contains layered vocals and siren effects and it reached U.S. Top 40 in April, 1979.
“Picture This” is another gem on the first side, and the first foray into retro rock. The heavy guitar riffs are masterfully mixed throughout, giving the song a great vibe while maintaining an edge, accented by the profound lyrics;
“all I want is 20/20 vision a total portrait with no omissions…”
Stein’s “Fade Away and Radiate” Sounds like it is influenced by early Alice Cooper with its slow and haunting atmosphere. It kicks in nicely with well treated guitar and synth effects and dry but powerful vocals. “Pretty Baby” follows as a more upbeat rock song with a call and response chorus and great guitar riffs between verses. The group’s final 1978 addition, guitarist Frank Infante wrote “I Know But I Don’t Know” and shares lead vocals with Harry. This song has an intro organ has Latin influence but Burke’s driving drums make it come off more as punk rock, especially when coupled with Infante’s scorching guitar runs.
The album’s second side contains Parallel Lines two biggest hits. “Sunday Girl” almost sounds like a sixties cover, but is really just a masterful composition by Stein with a great vocal melody executed by Harry. The light plunking guitar and gentle cruising rhythms gives the song an air of innocence which is a nice break on this album and propelled it to the top of the U.K. charts.
From pure retro in “Sunday Girl”, the album takes a sharp turn to pure disco of “Heart of Glass”. The song evolved from a very different sounding demo by Stein and Harry, but the studio recording was fused together beat by beat by Chapman, who had lofty goals for this track from the start. It reached number one in both the U.S. and the U.K. (and beyond) and the group has long admitted the song was a flagrant attempt to exploit the then still raging disco scene. Deborah Harry’s vocal reaches a more airy high-pitched level than the more brassy rock numbers, which works perfectly with the band groove”.
To end and round it all off, I will go back a bit further and source a 2001 review from Rolling Stone. I could really have randomly picked two reviews, because I haven’t seen anyone give it anything less than a huge thumbs up! I chose two that were a few years apart, as it shows Parallel Lines never loses its power and importance:
“Blondie's "sellout" record sent punk purists into apoplectic fits: The darlings of New York irreverence had recorded eleven pop songs and a monster disco number. Worse, civilians inflamed by "Heart of Glass" were flocking to buy what masqueraded as a New Wave artifact -- black and white and saucy all over. Parallel Lines didn't drive a stake into New Wave's heart, but it ripped its mask off. Without the cartoonish postmodernist referencing that Blondie excelled at on their first two albums -- the giant ants, spy-film romance, tabloid-headline goofs and French fluff -- the ugly truth was advanced in the prettiest way: This music had never been anything but contagious, glossy melodics ("pop"), some of which one could dance to (argh, "disco").
IN THIS PHOTO: Blondie during the photoshoot for 1978’s Parallel Lines/PHOTO CREDIT: Edo Bertoglio
Parallel Lines made a hash of the genre distinctions that kept snobs warm. Guitar-god posturing is toyed with and discarded on "I Know but I Don't Know," East Village sass spat out like chicken bones on "Just Go Away." The melting, metallic "Sunday Girl" features Debbie Harry's voice at its thickest and most cynically sweet, proving she was always a one-girl girl group in Candie's. "11:59" has the cheesy organ break and fugitive scheme that later became the stuff of send-ups, but its trench-coat posturing is less caricatured than desperate.
Parallel Lines is infused with a new, and appropriate, romantic fatalism. Jack Lee's two songs -- the backstage lament "Will Anything Happen" and the immortal, breathless "Hanging on the Telephone" -- established Harry's persona firmly between vulnerable but skeptical lover and pop tigress. Nice young couple Harry and Chris Stein wrote (with Jimmy Destri) the tenderest New Wave love song put to vinyl, "Picture This," in which Harry smolders with longing by degrees, then crabbily hangs up the phone. In "Pretty Baby," she's already mourning, with infinite empathy, the fleeting blossom of someone else's youth. As for that maddening, damnable disco number, it's not propelled by dithery space keyboards or the inimitable circular rhythm, but by Clem Burke's swishing cymbal work, which hits all the heart-bursting peaks that Harry's ice-cream-cool vocals won't. (RS 842)”.
Actually, as I have come across another review, I want to end with this. Pitchfork take on the Deluxe Edition from 2008. They spotlight a gem of an album that actually has so many great deep cuts. Many of these are rarely played. Parallel Lines is that rare blend of genius singles and interesting and nuanced deeper cuts:
“Blondie is a band," read the group's initial press releases. The intent of this tagline was clear, as was the need for it: "This is an accomplished bunch of musicians, a tight, compact group versed in everything from surf to punk to girl group music to erstwhile new wave," it seemed to say, "but, oh-- I'm sure you couldn't help but focus on blonde frontwoman Debbie Harry." In America, however, people didn't notice the group quite so quickly. Their first two records-- a switchblade of a self-titled debut and its relatively weak follow-up Plastic Letters-- birthed a pair of top 10 hits in the UK but had been, at best, minor successes in the U.S.; the debut didn't chart, while Plastic scraped the top 75. Despite savvy marketing-- the group filmed videos for each of its singles, that now-iconic duochromatic cover photo-- the group's third and easily best album, Parallel Lines, didn't take off until they group released "Heart of Glass", a single that abandoned their CBGB roots for a turn in the Studio 54 spotlight. Though its subtle charms included a bubbling rhythm, lush motorik synths, and Harry's remarkably controlled and assured vocal, "Heart of Glass" started as a goof, a take-off on the upscale nightlife favored outside of Blondie's LES home turf.
The swift move from the fringes to the top of the charts tagged Blondie as a singles group-- no shame, and they did have one of the best runs of singles in pop history-- but it's helped Parallel Lines weirdly qualify as an undiscovered gem, a sparkling record half-full of recognized classics that, nevertheless, is hiding in plain sight. Landing a few years before MTV and the second British Invasion codified and popularized the look and sound of 1980s new wave, Parallel Lines' ringing guitar pop has entered our collective consciousness through compilations (built around "Heart" plus later #1s "Call Me", "Rapture", and "The Tide Is High"), ads, film trailers, and TV shows rather than the album's ubiquity. Time has been kind, however, to the record's top tier-- along with "Heart of Glass", Parallel boasts "Sunday Girl" and the incredible opening four-track run of "Picture This", "Hanging on the Telephone", "One Way or Another", and "Fade Away and Radiate". The songs that fill out the record ("11:59", "Will Anything Happen?", "I'm Gonna Love You Too", "Just Go Away", "Pretty Baby") are weak only by comparison, and could have been singles for many of Blondie's contemporaries, making this one of the most accomplished pop albums of its time.
In a sense, that time has long passed: Blondie-- like contemporaries such as the Cars and the UK's earliest New Pop artists-- specialized in whipsmart chart music created by and for adults, a trick that has all but vanished from the pop landscape. Parallel Lines, however, is practically a blueprint for the stuff: "Picture This" and "One Way or Another" are exuberant new wave, far looser than the stiff, herky-jerky tracks that would go on to characterize that sound in the 80s; "Will Anything Happen?" and the band's cover of the Nerves' "Hanging on the Telephone" are headstrong rock; "11:59" does run-for-the-horizon drama, while "Sunday Girl" conveys a sense of elegance. The record's closest thing to a ballad, the noirish "Fade Away and Radiate", owes a heavy debt to the art-pop of Roxy Music.
Harry herself was a mannered and complex frontwoman, possessed of a range of vocal tricks and affectations. She was as at home roaming around in the open spaces of "Radiate" or "Heart of Glass" as she was pouting and winking through "Picture This" and "Sunday Girl" or working out front of the group's more hard-charging tracks. That versatility and charm extended to her sexuality as well-- she had the sort of gamine, sophisticated look of a French new wave actress but always seemed supremely grounded and approachable, almost tomboyish. (That approachability was wisely played up in the band's choice of key covers throughout its career-- "Hanging on the Telephone", "Denis", and "The Tide Is High" each position Harry as a romantic pursuer with a depth and range of emotions rather than simply as an unattainable fantasy.)”.
Go and get a vinyl copy of Parallel Lines. With its memorable and awesome cover (shot by Edo Bertoglio) to the phenomenal performances Blondie turn in, I hope there will be something released to coincide with its anniversary on 23rd September. Forty-five years of a classic, you can read more about it here as part of the 33 1/3 series. It will never lose its cool or genius. Starting with that dial tone on Hanging on the Telephone and rounding off with the brilliant Just Go Away, there is that bookmark of titles that suggests impatience and rejection. Throughout, the band seamlessly blend sounds and genres without losing their identity and edge. There is no doubt that the phenomenal Parallel Lines is an album…
FEW have equalled.