Each week, SPIN will dig into the catalog of great artists and highlight songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series.
The conventional wisdom about the late ’70s punk explosion is that it returned rock music to its roots of short, simple songs, in a reaction to the pretentious complexity of progressive rock. There is a little truth to this narrative, and the girl groups, surf guitar bands, and Phil Spector productions of ’60s rock particularly influenced Blondie, whose frontwoman Debbie Harry turns 80 on July 1. But there were figures that bridged the worlds of punk and prog, most notably British guitarist Robert Fripp, who played on Blondie’s 1978 track “Fade Away and Radiate.”
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Fripp founded the legendary progressive band King Crimson in the late ’60s, but after disbanding the group in 1974, he branched out to work with a wide variety of artists, including David Bowie and Brian Eno. In 1977, Fripp moved to New York, and eventually recorded with both Talking Heads and Blondie, joining the latter onstage on multiple occasions for a cover of the most famous Bowie song he’d played on, “Heroes.”
Blondie’s third album Parallel Lines was the record that made the band a household name thanks to the surefire singles “Heart of Glass” and “One Way or Another.” But “Fade Away and Radiate” is the brooding masterpiece from the band’s weirder sci-fi-obsessed side, with one of Harry’s most theatrical vocals, and a subtle, graceful performance from powerhouse drummer Clem Burke, who passed away in April.
“My playing on ‘Fade Away and Radiate’ was definitely informed by art rock, by King Crimson, by Roxy Music, by Robert Fripp’s presence in the studio,” Burke said in an interview for Kembrew McLoud’s 2016 book about Parallel Lines for the 33 1/3 series. “Paul Thompson, the drummer from Roxy Music, is a big influence on me, and Roxy Music as a band was a major influence on me. Between the girl group stuff and the glam rock stuff—and Spector and all that—that’s my drum style.”
Three more essential Blondie deep cuts:
“The Attack of the Giant Ants”
Blondie were the relative late bloomers of the great CBGB bands—their 1976 self-titled debut doesn’t contain a song as iconic as “Blitzkrieg Bop” or “Psycho Killer.” It does have some pretty fun songs, though, including “The Attack of the Giant Ants,” a campy track inspired by the 1954 creature feature Them! that the band often closed their early shows with.
“Slow Motion”
“Slow Motion,” written by Blondie keyboardist Jimmy Destri and his girlfriend, Student Teachers drummer Laura Davis, is one of the most underrated songs on 1979’s Eat to the Beat. Chrysalis Records was going to release the catchy midtempo track as a single, but scrapped those plans when Blondie’s song for the American Gigolo soundtrack, “Call Me,” unexpectedly soared to the top of the charts.
“For Your Eyes Only”
The hallowed tradition of James Bond theme songs includes a long line of great artists whose 007 themes were rejected, including Johnny Cash and Radiohead. Harry and Stein wrote a title song for 1981’s For Your Eyes Only, but the film’s producers preferred a different song written by Bill Conti and Michael Leeson, which was ultimately recorded by Sheena Easton. Blondie released their arguably superior “For Your Eyes Only” on 1982’s The Hunter.
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