FACE IT

DEBBIE HARRY

In collaboration with
S Y LV I E S I M M O N S
and based on a series of recent exclusive interviews

Creative direction by
ROB ROTH
DEBBIE HARRY

H O U S E LI G HT S

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AFTER ROB ROTH HAD SENT ME ALL THE SCANS OF MY FAN ART
collection, he drove off back to NYC in his white pickup truck. Rather
him than me that day—I’d been tiring of my constant commutes to
the city. We had been working on how best to reproduce and organize
the drawings and paintings I’ve accumulated over all the years, while
being Blondie or being in Blondie. I didn’t have a strong reason to save
everything, but I couldn’t just abandon them. Mostly, I kept them all
because I just like them. The sweet and insightful drawings, paintings,
mosaics, dolls, and hand-drawn T-shirts (of which only one remains)
have traveled with me on tours around the world, suffering flight delays
and bad weather and surviving just like me, a bit frayed at the edges, but
still intact.
DEBBIE HARRY

I’ve moved about ten or eleven times over the years and am amazed that
I’ve managed to hold on to my fan art collection for all that time. For a
while, my files were stored in Chris’s basement studio down in Tribeca
where they managed to survive a major flood of the Hudson River,
followed by the destruction of the Twin Towers, which were only two
blocks away. Now that I’ve written a memoir starting with my childhood,
progressing through the years of Blondie almost to the present, I’m even
more amazed.

I know some of the artwork is MIA and I’m hoping that more of it will
emerge as I go through rediscovered boxes and files and whatever. My
methods of preservation were at times pretty much catch-as-catch-
can, so things turn up in unexpected places, like a series of surprise
parties—which are always good for a little laugh. For many years I didn’t
travel with a road or wardrobe case, which in later years has been the
most useful way to keep these artifacts intact and safe. Sometimes I
even wondered why I was doing what I was doing except that I just did it.
Now the fan art collection is giving an added meaning to the title of my
book, Face It . . . (cont.)

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CU R TA IN U P

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NOT ALL THE PIECES OF FAN ART IN THIS BOOK ARE PORTRAITS OF ME.
Some are works created by fans that they simply wanted to give me. I like
to think that while they were drawing and printing, they were listening to
me singing our songs. My old friend Steven Sprouse, who designed many
of my famous looks, used to always listen to music while he sketched.
Without fail the music was blasting away while he worked—which is how
a lot of the artists I know do their work. This may sound like the bragging
of an outsized ego, but it’s not always my music they listen to. And the
influence of any music on artwork is kind of a romantic notion. Still, as I
look at all these interpretations of me, my face, my characters through the
years, I am touched by it. Many of these images are taken directly from
famous photographers’ shots of me, like Chris Stein, Mick Rock, Robert
DEBBIE HARRY

Mapplethorpe, Brian Aris, Lynn Goldsmith, and Annie Liebowitz—yet the

works have something noticeably their own. Something in the eye of the
beholder as they say. The feelings of the artist are present whether from
an accomplished illustrator or drawings from the hand of a younger, less
experienced scribbler and that’s the icing on it for me.

Rob’s additions and overview of the fan art concept are exceptional, like all
his work, and he’s also come up with the idea of starting a website where
fan art works like this can be posted; an interactive book. I LOVE IT!

At the Guggenheim the other night I met up with a producer friend of mine,
Charlie Nieland, who worked on my solo album Necessary Evil. We had
come to see the Hilma af Klint collection on loan from the Swedish Museum
of Art. Hilma started drawing when she was a young girl, then dedicated
her life to drawing and painting and studying art. Who knows if any of my
Fan Art artists carried on into the future with their interests in portraiture
or other schools of art. Most likely I’ll never know. Very likely I’d be glad if
they did.

Every musician, actor, artist I’ve ever met always says, “It’s the fans that
make it happen for us.” So again it’s a chain reaction, interaction, and the
proof is here in my book. For me it’s a way of saying thank you . . . (cont.)

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DEBBIE HARRY

PE E K A B O O

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BABIES LOVE TO PLAY PEEKABOO, RIGHT? YOU HIDE BEHIND YOUR
hands, then quickly open them and squeal to peekaboo, then laugh like
crazy. This infantile little game is probably the earliest recognition of one’s
own face, another step on the road to consciousness and perhaps even self-
consciousness . . . And then come the mirrors and those images gazing back
at you, inevitably inducing a change in you as you view your own reflection.
Imagine the startle and then the fascination when primeval creatures
first caught a glimpse of themselves in a body of water . . . Or remember
Narcissus, the original selfie man, frozen by the beauty of his own image
in a pool . . . And now we hang mirrors along the halls and the bedrooms
and the bathrooms and the living rooms and the dining rooms, so we never
quite lose sight of those precious reflections.
DEBBIE HARRY

So much of what has been written about me has been about how I look. It’s
sometimes made me wonder if I’ve ever accomplished anything beyond my
image. Never mind, I like doing what I do regardless of appreciation and
there really is no accounting for taste. Luckily, the face I was born with has
been a huge asset and I have to admit I like being a pretty person.

I had a few art and drawing courses when I was in school with the study
of portraiture included. What I noticed in my drawings and paintings was
some subtle reference to my own face when I was drawing someone else. I
have noticed the same phenomenon with my fan art.

Before anything, when fans started giving me their paintings and drawings,
I was flattered. After collecting these sweet tributes for a while I wondered
why I was saving these fragile pieces of paper with their often odd-looking
interpretations of me drawn on them. But I just couldn’t throw them away.
Partially because I know how hard it is to sit down and make a portrait and
also how brave, loving, or curious one has to be to give a piece of themselves
to me. Wanting to be known to me but in ways they perhaps never realized.
But when I look at my fan art collection I can see little bits of the artist
drawn into their attempts to reproduce my face that they don’t even know
are there . . . (cont.)

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DEBBIE HARRY

E V ID E N CE O F LOV E

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AS I WAS LOOKING THROUGH EVERYTHING I CAME ACROSS A CUTOUT
of a bee, signed by Jane. I think this must have been given to me recently
because of the Pollinator connection which helps save honey bees. But
if it wasn’t recent, it is so synchronistic, so totally appropriate, I was
overjoyed by how perfect it is, I put it on a new T-shirt, orb-shirt, called BEE
CONSCIOUS.

So here are some, lovingly saved since the 1970s, a gallery of drawings and
paintings done for me, likenesses of me by my fans. You must know by
now how precious you are to me and totally amazed by what you’ve given
me I am, because the act of making art is the important part. The art itself
is just souvenirs . . . and beauty in the eye of the beholder.

So for better or for worse, I have saved face. My collection of Fan Art is not
only portraiture. The works include other things, other subject matter
and figures, i.e., dolls and different ephemera with my likeness on them. It
touched me, touches me still that another person would go to the trouble
and time to create a piece of art and then give it to me. Many of these things
aren’t even signed except for the evidence of love.

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This is a work of nonfiction. The events and experiences detailed herein
are all true and have been faithfully rendered as remembered by the
author, to the best of her abilities. Some names have been changed to
protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

face it.Copyright © 2019 by Deborah Harry. All rights reserved. Printed

in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in
the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway,
New York, NY 10007.

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first edition

cr e at i v e d i r ec t i o n by r o b r ot h

d e s i g n by r en ata d e o l i v ei r a

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-0-06-074958-3

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