‘I don’t really regret my life’: Debbie Harry’s new memoir already has people talking
She's the lead singer of hits like "Call Me" and "One Way or Another," and now Debbie Harry of the legendary band Blondie is chronicling her rock and roll life in a book titled "Face It."
In an exclusive interview with "Good Morning America," Harry opened up about her candid new memoir and looked back at the moments in her life that catapulted her into stardom.
"I suddenly realized, 'Well, I have to make them respond,'" she said about her first time on stage at New York City's iconic punk music club "CBGB." She remembers the moment as "terribly frightening," but she had a revelation while on stage: "'I have to go out there. I have to get them.' After that, it was a no-brainer. I just went out and got 'em."
Since that moment, Harry took the world on as the frontwoman of Blondie, with her bandmate and partner Chris Stein, from the mid '70s into the '80s, becoming an icon of the punk scene.
She was even photographed by the legendary Andy Warhol at the height of her career as she sold tens of millions of LPs.
But fame was not always so easy for Harry.
In her memoir, she reveals she was sexually assaulted by someone who came into her home.
"I have a great partner in Chris. And he helped me just to sort of put it into proportion," Harry told "GMA." "Believe me, I felt anger, frustration. I wanted revenge. I went through every, you know, logical turn of emotion that you would normally go through when you're victimized. I think, for whatever reason, my sanity took over and said, 'You can't carry around this kind of anger and sense of frustration.'"
The singer also struggled with being penniless after seven years of record sales and shows, and her partner, Stein, being hospitalized for a severe illness after they both used heroin.
"We were junkies," Harry said. "And it was, you know, helped us survive this desperately horrible situation. The thing is, yes I regret it, 'cause I know that -- it was a silly waste of time."
Despite all she's endured in her life, the "Tide is High" singer held on and was able to deal with everything that was thrown at her.
"I don't really regret my life," Harry said. "The things that are important to me now are because I've you know, gone through all of this stuff."
Harry also gave her high school self advice and said, "'Carry on.' For some reason, I was able to deal with fear, extreme fear. And I have no answer for why I was able to do this. A stubborn streak? I don't know. But I was able to just leap over, you know, step over something and just -- 'cause I wanted to go there and not stop there."
