Thanks so much for all your questions, and thanks to Chris and Debbie for answering them so brilliantly.
Chris: 'I try not to be too professional'
mattb05 asks:
Do you currently have professional/creative goals or aims in life... and have they changed since the 70’s?
Guardian contributor C: I try not to be too professional, except to turn up on time for things. "Professional" indicates a kind of stiffness.
D: The idea of satisfying yourself in whatever you write... if you write something you're proud of, that's a goal, that's always a goal. You think you are a better songwriter now than back in the day?
C: No, I can't tell.
D: What the hell Chris? You're a better musician, that's for sure.
C: I guess I have better technical skills now.
JJREvans asks:
It sounds like various members of the band were quite into mysticism and the occult (a heady combination!) How did that feed into the music? Is Rapture all about the ‘varieties of ecstasy’ for example?
Guardian contributor C: No, it's about the Second Coming.
D: You bastard!
C: We just had one of the many raptures, that was supposed to come. Snoop Dogg tweeted "Where's Blondie?" We were trending that day. But I'm a huge fan of Austin Osman Spare - Google that. I have a bunch of his works, though Jimmy Page has the best collection of his stuff. He's a great British graphic artist, who died right after the war. He's compared to Durer, but he's a mystic.
Nick Dubulah would like to know:
what was it like recording “zombie birdhouse” with iggy pop?
Guardian contributor C: It was great. Very memorable and weird. The phrase Zombie Birdhouse was completely improvised, just flew out of his mouth. At that point no-one was interested in him, so he went on my little dinky vanity label.
D: [drily] We're going to start a new label: New Music For Old Artists.
C: Billy Joel is our first signing.
MarcoBoi asks:
Do you think that pop music is the domain of young people?
Guardian contributor C: Yeah, but it always has been. The Beatles were 20 years old when they emerged, as was everybody.
D: Pop music has always been the domain of the young - they make the discoveries, and it then becomes multi-generational. Pop is part of the mating game.
C: You have to want to screw whoever is on stage. But when I was younger my heroes were all 60 years old - Miles Davis, Muddy Waters...
D: But you were weird. It's all a mishmash - there was once a time when it was pop, R&B, metal, and now everything is lumped together. There should be five votes for each genre in the Hall of Fame, there are so many that are excluded, it's so limited.
C: iTunes ruined it by having a myriad of genres: Swedish Latin House. It started getting out of hand.
JohnnieGoat says:
to Chris Stein & Clem Burke
as the 2 remaining original instrumentalists in the band, and given your different styles, are you finding your styles gelling a la Keith and Charlie as you get older, or do you have to work on arrangements and songs to keep things tight?
Guardian contributor C: I'm not going to say I wish Clem sounded like Charlie... I don't know how much the Stones' style has changed over the years. I was always a Stones freak.
tendertrap asks:
Was Parallel Lines an obvious drug reference? Who decided to cover Hanging on the Telephone by The Nerves?
Guardian contributor D: No, it wasn't about drugs. I was about the idea of lives going along, separately but at the same pace, never really crossing - the idea of infinity. I went further with that with The Bride of Infinity. But Parallel Lines was about ships in the night, stuff like that. It was always our intention to be subliminal though, or double.
TiminHexham asks:
A bunch of us Durham Archaeology students were digging on Orkney - Summer 1979 - and on Saturday nights we would party playing Parallel Lines followed by Outlandos d’Amour followed by Parallel Lines followed by Outlandos d’Amour followed by Parallel Lines. You get the picture - great times! Did you write the lyrics first, write the music first or just jam and follow your inspiration? What was the creative process to produce an album of such outstanding and catchy songs.
Guardian contributor C: What I find nervewracking about Broadway, is that they write the lyric first and the music is woven around, whereas in pop, music comes first, or at its best, simultaneously. What were you digging up, is what I want to know...
D: Vikings, that kind of stuff?
Debbie: 'I'd love to have Patti Smith's child'
okfraser wonders:
Rip Her To Shreds - a great song but are the lyrics really aimed at Patti Smith ?If so, why so . . . if not, why has the rumour persisted ?
Guardian contributor D: Patti Smith - I'd love to have her child. She has a great talent, I love her honeyed vocals, the tone of her voice, and I like her storytelling ability. I love her knowledge of poetry, and her appreciation of literature.
Guardian contributor
LeeInMitcham asks:
Chris, do you plan on writing your autobiography and is there any chance you will one day put out a compilation of all the camcorder footage you shot in the early 80s?
Guardian contributor C: No-one has ever asked to see the camcorder footage before you, so probably not.
ImNoAngel says:
Gene Simmons - who’s that? Oh, the glam rock band, a second rate Sweet or Slade - are they in the R&R Hall of Fame?
Guardian contributor D: [in cockney accent] He's a big poof! I'd like to tie him down and wax his entire body.
C: Getting waxed in the demon makeup, that's the way to go. If Gene had his way, he'd be the only person in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Juicylicious asks about gender:
When lazy journos riffed that you were a man - did you take it as an insult or a compliment?I ask because people who don’t know me assume (from my emails) that I’m a man and it’s usually women (laughs). I have a gender neutral name and being called a fella* doesn’t bother me. But equally I’m not sure what it is about the way I write that presumes me to be male. What are your thoughts?
* Disclaimer: I’m pretty glad I don’t look like one but writing like one? Fine with it.
Guardian contributor C: I think most dynamic female artistes have heard that they were once a man: Marlene Dietrich, Grace Jones... this is just more gender inequality and misogyny: if a woman is powerful, she might be a man.
D: Gender is just a big fucking mess. It's a big glandular mixup, it's up for grabs. They're applauding men who can express their feminine side, without saying women can express their masculine side. We both have everything, and we both have moments when we need to use them, and society is totally inhibiting and quite cruel really.
Debbie: "After you hear Avicii, you can just say 'fuck off' to the world"
ID9444952 asks:
Do you think pop music will ever get it’s edge back, or is it now too much of an ‘Industry’?
Guardian contributor C: I think there's as good stuff coming out now as there ever has been. People are a little resistant to the EDM thing, there are always purists in every form, every fanbase has crazy purists, but pop music today is just as exciting now. Songs I play over and over: Titanium by David Guetta and Sia, Chandelier by Sia I can't get the chorus out of my head even though I prefer the verse. Gotye, I listened to hundreds of times on repeat. Wake Me Up by Avicii is awesome. Teenage Dream by Katy Perry really stands up for me, I'm so happy to hear her not singing the melisma style that makes you sound like you're running while you're singing.
D: After you hear Avicii, you can just say 'fuck off' to the world. Fever Ray songs are amazing too. There are obviously strong hooks and melodies today. Great songwriters.
RogerFromPutney says:
Two of your finest songs - Atomic and Heart of Glass - were completely made by Clem’s drumming. Don’t you think you should have cut him in on the songwriting credits?
Guardian contributor
Chris: 'I can definitely see a music scene coming out of an early Mars colony'
schtengraby asks:
Where will a milieu like 1970s New York next be created?
Guardian contributor C: They are planning these Mars flights... I can definitely see a music scene coming out of an early Mars colony.
D: It's going to be strictly done via the internet, from Mars. Musicians are cowards though, they're never getting in a spaceship.
C: I have heard a rumour that 'Richard Branson' is an actor and the real Branson is a 4ft Lithuanian.
Updated
mutante says:
Mike Chapman claims you (Debbie) wrote the rap in Rapture in just five minutes, having left it right up until the moment the vocal needed to be recorded.
Is that story really true, or just a good yarn? Did you have ideas and lines in mind, or even a fully-formed lyric, before you started putting pen to paper that day?
Guardian contributor C: That's just Mike's vision of it - memory is subjective! A lot of the rap was written beforehand, Debbie may have improvised some of it.
D: We did scribble some stuff during it.
C: Chapman was so thrilled with the first take, because he was unfamiliar with the form, and he kept it.
D: One take wonders are nice, but it would have been better to have a couple of takes on it.
sirmoonface wonders about the lyrics:
Can you explain the lyrics of ‘I’m On E”? I’ve never understood what you meant.
Guardian contributor C: I don't know if ecstasy existed at the time.
D: Yes it did!
C: Ok. But it just meant empty, like on your fuel gauge.
D: I was mourning the loss of my car.
C: People don't get what 'do the punk rock' means in Rapture. The hip-hop community would have names for these dances they'd do, and the punk rock was a certain set of moves. It doesn't refer to punk music.
jackcoulter asks:
Hi Debbie… I was wondering what your friendship was like with Jean-Michel Basquiat? Was it true that you bought one of his first works?
Guardian contributor C: He'd been working on cardboard up to that point, and I said why don't you work on canvas? He made something on loose, unstretched burlap canvas. I bought it for $200; he went round telling everyone how much I'd ripped him off.
Apologies to Chris! His answer was mistranscribed. It should read:
C: He’d been working on cardboard up to that point, and I said why don’t you work on canvas? He made something on loose, unstretched burlap canvas. I bought it for $200; he went round telling everyone how much he’d ripped me off.
Updated
Chris: 'I wish I'd taken more pictures of the hip-hop scene'
ID608454 asks:
Among the photos collected together in the new book - which is your favourite/ holds the most meaning for you?
Guardian contributor C: People ask us what our favourite song is - it changes. I always say they're movements in a larger piece, nothing stands out specifically. And with the photos, there are ones I like with certain aesthetic compositions. There's a picture of Richard Hell, with an arm reaching in and handing him a beer - it looks like a still from an old noir film.
D: They're very moody and evocative. Some of the scenic ones, that aren't in the book, are so moody. I love the snowy streets, the dilapidated buildings.
C: But I was trying to make nice images, not document the period. People didn't know how much New York was going to change. I also like the pics of Lester Bangs on the beach - my favourite one isn't in the book, because we couldn't get clearance with everyone in the crowd. The one with the mirror shades was very casual, in a parking lot, but everyone reacts to it. I wish I'd taken more pictures of the hip-hop scene too.
Michael Mckenna wonders:
When making the music videos for most of your songs was it a conscious decision to include Iconic images within these videos? Studio 54 sign, Ed Sullivan show, Twin Towers, Atomic bomb, rocket to the moon, alien being, New York, white suited black God, America Indian, Andy Warhol War etc. Or did you have any input? because most of your videos tell of a time in history?
Guardian contributor C: This totally reminds me of the Kubrick Shining conspiracy theories, about the moon landing - that stuff was just there in our videos, there wasn't a lot of thought in it. It was just stuff we liked.
D: I was wearing a garbage bag, a pillow case - wearing things that weren't fashionable. It was a kind of anti-fashion. It went along with the deconstructed, torn-up look, which became somewhat commercial. It really went far with designers in England.
Chris: 'I think there may be a backlash against the internet'
David Greenwood asks:
There was something very spontaneous about a lot of these photographs in the book. With all of the management / image / stylistic control etc. that is evident these days with a lot of our stars - do you think this type of rock / pop photography is now a thing of the past or do you think there will eventually be another punk like revolution on an artistic and visual level?
Guardian contributor C: Some of those photoshoots that we did that to us were set up and worked out, were so limited. I'd do photo sessions now, with three assistants, a guy doing the lights, a guy doing computers; I'd have a hand held flash stuck to a wall. But I do see a lot of great casual stuff on Instagram all the time, great street photography - that won't go away. Follow me! @christein.
D: One of the first times we were here, people would call Chris Stein, Christine.
C: There was a General Von Stein in both wars, so it's ironic that I'm from Jewish descent.
I think there may be a backlash against the internet, but that's maybe 10 years hence - people may abandon it. But I don't know.
Updated
orange67 has a “daft question”:
Sweet or savoury? I’m a potato chip man myself...my wife’s a choccie fiend...
Guardian contributor
EnEn91 asks:
Having memorably and brilliantly produced music from a wide range of genres, are there any genres or styles that you would still like to or wish you had recorded or written in? Are there any artists (past or present) you would most like to collaborate with?
Guardian contributor D: We're still open to anything. We haven't done anything really primitive in a long time, that would be good.
C: We really hit on a lot of stuff over the years. I prefer German opera to Italian - but we never hit on any of that.
D: I find it a bit beyond me, as a vocalist.
Chris: 'Lyrics in American punk songs were rarely about the welfare system'
George Lucas asks:
Hi Debbie and Chris, The New York punk scene of the mid 70’s seems wonderfully creative and eclectic, did you see a similarity in the London punk scene when you first played there or was it a completely different experience?
Guardian contributor D: Not completely.
C: There was a political base to the UK punk scene that was less manifest in the US scene. Lyrics in American punk songs were rarely about the welfare system; here, everyone was talking about being on the dole.
D: A lot of desire to break from the past. The whole situation with radio in the UK is so different. There always has been a tradition of accepting the new music or culture that comes along in the UK, even if it was completely declared crap, it would nevertheless be exploited or made some notice in the press. The lyrics were more about insanity and sexuality.
C: Punk was a break from AOR, MOR radio music. I listen to Anarchy in the UK in my car, and it's more relevant than ever.
Updated
beadleclaw would like to know:
David Cronenberg favours the shortbread, John Peel chose the fruit shortcake.
What’s your favourite biscuit?
Guardian contributor C: I just finished David Cronenberg's first novel, Consumed, which I'd recommend to any fan of weirdness. We don't have biscuits - we have crackers or cookies. It's like porridge, we have oatmeal. Cookie? I avoid that stuff these days.
D: This all stems from the American Revolution - we keep the words but destroy the meaning.
C: One could say it's as widely different as an Asian country as it is to the UK. If you make a right turn in the UK, you totally have to stop - it's weird.
Chris: 'I was an official crazy cat lady'
trashseagull asks:
Have you still got cats Debbie? How do you cope with not seeing them when touring?Keep writing and playing new music, and I love the raucous covers you do. What are your favourites?
Guardian contributor D: I don't right now. I'd like to, but I'm never home. I'd have to be available for at least six months for a new cat.
C: I had seven cats at once, at one point. I was an official crazy cat lady. Honorary, anyways.
D: They're great hunters. [to Chris] You have a stupid dog - a very good 'doggy' dog. I have a cat-like dog.
C: Serial killers kill cats when they're young, because they're icons, or symbols - they're something to practice on. Anti-cat is also misogynistic.
Updated
mojostarman asks:
Who decides what songs are going to be covered and would you ever record studio versions of the unreleased ones for the fans to download? I’d like to hear blondie cover xray spex or the knife.
Guardian contributor C: I do a lot of cover picking, but Debbie comes up with a lot of stuff. I'd love to cover a Fever Ray or Knife song, but their stuff is so specific, it's tricky. We're doing a Groove Is In The Heart mashup, Beastie Boys stuff, Lights by Ellie Goulding - that's one of my favourite pop songs of all time.
Feckineejit would like to know:
Did you feel any animosity or jealousy from the Ramones once you started to sell records in very big numbers ?
Guardian contributor C: No, I think it was always tongue in cheek. Joey said we sold out, but I don't think he meant it too sincerely.
kellerman wonders:
Who would be your six ideal dinner guests?
Guardian contributor C: Haile Selassie, Julius Caesar, Iggy Pop, Iggy Azalea, Gustav Mahler and Egon Schiele. That's just random.
D: David Cronenberg too!
Kicking things off…
Bettina Der Fuchs asks:
What do you think about the music of Lou Reed?
Guardian contributor C: I think Lou will be inducted into the Hall of Fame this year. Metal Music Machine music, I used to play that a lot. He's missed. I heard a version of Heroin he did in 1965 that sounds like Donovan - it's amazing, it's like a folk song but it's him.
D: The way he delivers his lines, he's so down to earth. Very much about his freedom, he has a great sense of freedom. He was living a real New York rock'n'roll style of living, he just carried on and did all the things everyone did - but wrote about them in a very cool way.
C: We talk about anti-intellectualism that goes on today in the modern media - Lou was super well educated, and it came into his music.
Debbie and Chris are in the building…
Post your questions for Blondie
New York in the late 70s was one of the most musically cosmopolitan places on earth: a confluence of the sexually liberated pump of disco, the bratty chug of punk, the tripping breaks of hip-hop and the nihilistic freedom of no-wave. And at the heart of it all were Blondie, drawing these threads together in a gloriously bright vision of pop.
Fronted by Debbie Harry, who seemed to be both slumming debutante and aspirational street kid all at once, their varied hooks still catch – from the hard-edged Atomic to the ethereal Heart of Glass. They also looked the part, in a parade of leather and sunglasses.
It’s this iconography that’s captured in a new Somerset House exhibition of photography by founding member Chris Stein, entitled Negative: Me, Blondie, and the Advent of Punk – here is Harry shot by Warhol at the Factory, the photogenically filthy streets of New York, and musical peers like Devo, Talking Heads and the Ramones.
To celebrate the exhibition opening on 5 November, Stein and Harry will answer your questions about these images and anything else in their 40-year history. Post them in the comments below, and follow the conversation live from 1pm GMT on Wednesday.
Updated
C: Listen to Frankie Goes To Hollywood.
D: I just relax - put my feet up. Criminal Intent. Or I watch QI - I love it.
C: I watch a lot of TV: Game of Thrones, House of Cards, True Detective over and over again.
Thanks to everyone, and sorry if we missed people. Check out the show at Somerset House - it starts 5 November. And don't believe everything you read.
D: Keep your minds out of the gutter. And don't believe anything we've said today.