Deborah Harry still in sync with punk spirit

By Kerri Mason

NEW YORK (Billboard) - With three decades in the business and a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, you'd think the outlaw spirit that once guided Debbie Harry's life and career might have faded by now, replaced by the pragmatic conservatism of a career artist.

But get the eternally young 63-year-old talking about the past, and she still revels in her iconoclastic moments.

"Probably one of the first people to be outrageously inventive in crossing over was (Bob) Dylan," says Harry. "He took electronic instruments into folk. People were completely outraged; they were furious. Really, this was hell. This was committing complete sacrilege. That's the same response we got when we did 'Heart of Glass.' We had committed sacrilege. Rock 'n' roll people were completely offended and wouldn't even talk to us. It was great. We thought, 'My God, we did what Dylan did. That's outstanding. What could be more punk than that?'"

The creative flame still burns bright for Harry, who inspired a generation of frontwomen as lead singer of Blondie, the band that revolutionized music and fashion in the late '70s. And "the most beautiful girl in any room, in any city, on any planet" -- as Shirley Manson introduced her at the 2006 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony -- didn't stop there, extending her career into solo work, jazz collaborations and acting.

CROSSING OVER

When Harry moved to a chaotic, poor and artistically explosive New York in the late '60s, she worked tables at Max's Kansas City and picked clothes out of the trash. She formed Blondie with guitarist Chris Stein in 1975, when she was 30. Combining new wave and punk sensibilities with a varied palette of sounds -- from disco to reggae to rock -- Blondie defiantly pioneered the idea of organic crossover. Harry's commanding alto and sly glam-punk style provided the perfect representation of the ideal.

"Because I was young and cute, I got away with a lot," she says. "Or youngish and cute, I should say."

Seminal songs like "Heart of Glass," "Call Me" and "Rapture" -- the first song involving a rap to go No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 -- changed the idea of what a pop song could be.