Debbie Harry – At The BBC

Released on: Fri 27th Jun 2025, on BBC Radio 2

Sounds of the 70s with Bob Harris

The story of Debbie Harry’s rise to worldwide fame, with no compromise, told through her BBC radio and television interviews from 1978 until today, alongside classic hits from her solo career and huge chart success with her band Blondie.

Debbie, often accompanied by her former lover and working partner Chris Stein, talks to Barry Myers, Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs, Steve Lamacq, Samira Ahmed, Jo Whiley, Dame Jenni Murray, Matt Everitt, Johnnie Walker and Steve Wright.

We hear about church choirs and home perms with her adoptive parents in New Jersey, the early success in Britain, writing with Chris, touring with Iggy Pop and David Bowie and wearing a razor blade dress on stage, a change in musical style with producer Mike Chapman, being labelled “the definition of cool”, taking Richard Gere to a local guitar store where he was ignored, becoming rap pioneers in the mainstream charts with Rapture and reforming for success with Maria in the late 1990s.