← Behind The Song: Classic Rock Chronicles
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Podcast Intro
97.1Fm the drive presents the behind the Song podcast, taking you deeper into classic rock's most timeless tunes.
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Janda
Here's your host, Janda Songs can be a powerful way to cope with the uncomfortable, both for the listener and for the songwriter. In this episode of behind the Song, let's take a look at Blondie's 1979 hit One Way or Another, a song based on the real life experience of frontwoman Debbie Harry, one she had while untangling herself from a stalker ex boyfriend. If you like this episode, give it a like at the end. And don't forget to hit that subscribe button first. A little backstory on the incredible life of Debbie Harry. She was born Angela Trimble in Miami to an unmarried pair, two old flames who'd reconnected long enough to have an affair and was given up for adoption because her biological father was already married with a family which was unknown to her biological mother at the time of their affair. At three months old, she was adopted by the Harry family, a nice middle class couple from New Jersey, and renamed Deborah Ann. She was a majorette in school and was voted Best Looking in her Hawthorne High yearbook. But she says in her memoir, Face it, that she set her sights on getting out of the suburbs pretty early on. Once she graduated from what she considered marriage prep school at Centenary College In Hackettstown in 1965, she promptly moved to New York City, and there she immersed herself in the art and culture and music of downtown New York in the late 60s and early 70s, idolizing bands like the New York Dolls. Free to dye her hair from brunette to the platinum blonde that would become her trademark. Inspired by who else but Marilyn Monroe, Harry worked to support herself as a dancer and she was a Playboy bunny for a time. She recalls serving Jefferson Airplane just before they headed to perform at Wood. Harry writes that living in and around St. Mark's Place downtown during this time was, quote, a time of felt experience. No special effects, just raw, visceral, uncut living. No voyeuristic secondhand selfies being beamed out on the Internet. This was the New York City that gave rise to her own groundbreaking band and other leaders who forged the new wave sound, Talking Heads, television and more. A firetrap loft city that was still cheap enough for artists to live in. In 1972 she joined Elda and the Stilettos, a female fronted punk band who were known for their energetic shows, and it was during this time that she met Chris Stein, who quickly became the guitar player for the band. This of course would be the Chris Stein, whom she would go on to form blondie with in 1974, and with whom she would be romantically involved for over a decade. It was Stein who helped Debbie Harry finally get rid of an ex boyfriend who had been stalking her for years. Back in the late 60s, prior to her time with the Stilettos, she had moved back to New Jersey for a time. There she became involved with someone she refers to in her memoir as Mr. C. Over the course of their relationship, Mr. C, a paint contractor, became extremely possessive and then violent, breaking into her place and threatening her with a gun. When she broke it off with him and moved back to the city, he began stalking her, calling her incessantly, badgering her nonstop, until one day Stine answered the phone and the stalking eventually stopped. It stopped, but the feeling of being stalked was never forgotten. The anger and the helplessness of someone in that situation is real. And Debbie Harry did something remarkable with those feelings. In a very postmodern punk rock way. She turned the experience into a song from the viewpoint of her own stalker. She said it was nothing less than a survival mechanism. The song was written by Harry and Blondie bassist Nigel Harrison, and it became one of the hit singles released on Blondie's Parallel Lines album, their commercial breakthrough in 1979. The lyrics start with the chorus and one way or another goes like this One way or another I'm gonna find ya I'm gonna get ya One way or another I'm gonna win ya I'm gonna get ya One way or another I'm gonna see ya, I'm gonna meet ya One day, maybe next week I'm gonna meet ya I will drive past your house and if the lights are all down I'll see who's around the chorus repeats and then it's on to the next verse. And if the lights are all out I'll follow your bus downtown See who's hanging out and then a variation on the chorus, almost like the stalker's perception of the lack of the desired response he gets from his target, who's always slipping from his grasp. One way or another I'm gonna lose ya I'll give you the slip A slip of the hip or another I'm gonna lose ya I'm gonna trick ya I'll walk down the mall Stand over by the wall where I can see it all Find out who you call Lead you to the supermarket Checkout Some specials and rat food get lost in the crowd One way or another I want to getcha I'll get you where I can See it all, find out who you call one way or another. There is something so powerful about taking this kind of experience back and owning it like Debbie Harry did. She said that it was a way of dealing with it. In her words, shake it off, say one way or another, and get on with your life. And this wasn't the only brush with terrifying experiences that Harry had in those days. She has for decades been adamant in her retelling of an incident that happened in the early 70s. On her way to a party for the New York Dolls, a man in a small white car offered her a ride. Once inside the car, she said that she noticed straight away that the window crank and the inside door handle on the passenger side were gone. She got a cold feeling, so she stuck her arm through a crack in the window and opened it from the outside, made a break for it and ran away. Years later, after he was apprehended and after reading about his methods, Harry became convinced that the man she escaped from in the car that night was none other than serial killer Ted Bundy. Debbie Harry not only survived New York city in the 70s, she went on to conquer it with her band. In another example of finding power in the negative, she and Chris Stein came upon the name Blondie for their group after she was catcalled hey Blondie so many times by construction workers on the streets of New York, due of course, to her famous platinum two toned hairdo. Blondie broke up in 1982 after releasing six albums, and Harry and Stine split up in the late 80s, but the two remained friends and collaborators. Blondie reformed in the 90s with some lineup changes, and the band were inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of fame in 2006. In her memoir, Debbie Harry, truly one of the great faces of rock and roll, who inspired Andy Warhol to create one of his famous pieces in her image, said that so much attention was put on her because of the way she looked that at times it made her wonder if she accomplished any than her image. And of course, she has accomplished so much. With Blondie. She was a vanguard of the New Wave movement, a band that incorporated dance music, hip hop and more into their brand of punk rock. Pioneers of a New York sound that they created from the underground to the top of the charts with over 40 million records sold worldwide. And by taking her own real life experiences as a survivor and turning them into hit songs, she's demonstrated a pretty amazing life lesson. How to take the power out of a bad situation and turn it into something good one way or another. I'm Janda, and this has been behind the song. Special thanks as always to Christian Lane for the music you hear on these podcast episodes. Check us out on TikTok and you can find me on the air weekdays from 9 to 2 Central at 971 FM the Drive in Chicago. And@wdrv.com on the way, much more classic rock and roll.