Seeing Chrissie
Hynde open for Blondie at London’s Roundhouse last night offered an opportunity
to contrast and compare two of rock’s most enduring performers, both of whom paved
the way for members of their sex to benefit from their pioneering efforts,
almost all of whom – and I’m including Madonna in this – profited more significantly
than them without really meriting the rewards that came their way. The history
of rock is tarnished by forerunners penalised by economics that favour
subsequent generations, but it is heartening to note that both Hynde and
Blondie seem now to be banking their just rewards along with their pensions.
Hynde is tough, self-assured,
defiant, wielding a blue Telecaster like chain saw, striking down hard on open-string chords, in command of her stage and her band, and she says fuck a lot
between songs which attracts a Pavlovian response every time. She is thin and
angular, in knee-high black boots, tight blue ripped jeans and a white t-shirt
that reveals plenty of sinewy arm, and she carries herself like a born rocker,
like Cochran, Strummer or Springsteen. Even when she sings without her guitar,
as she did on ‘Brass In Pocket’, she moves around the stage with the confidence
of a woman who’s fought hard for her ‘place in this world’ and woe betide she,
let alone he, who might forget it.
Debbie Harry, on the other hand,
is playful, at times seeming almost vulnerable. Effecting an endearing
humility, she is soft and round and cuddly now, all smiles, and her greater
celebrity allows her to perform with more modesty, frequently allowing the
others in this latest edition of Blondie to step forward and demonstrate their
individual skills. She doesn’t have to work quite as hard as Hynde but,
amazingly, she is still as pretty as a picture, her straight blonde hair – oh
your hair is beautiful – falling down past her shoulders, shimmering in the
spotlights. As with Hynde – heaven forbid! – Harry disdains overt displays of
sexuality; there’s no gratuitous female flesh on display tonight. Cryus and Co
take note.
Experience has taught both
performers the tricks of the trade and, though both were promoting relatively
recent new albums, in Blondie’s case Ghost
Of Download, released in May, and Hynde with the her first solo offering Stockholm, in June, they both chose to devote
most of their sets to well-tried hits of yesteryear. This was wise. A packed,
sweltering Roundhouse responded in kind, granting both acts warm and deserved
ovations.
Of the new songs in Hynde’s set,
the most impressive was ‘You Or No One’, with a resounding, tumbling chorus
that certainly wouldn’t be out of place in a Pretenders set, and ‘Dark
Sunglasses’, which rocked up a storm. Indeed, I was hard pressed to detect much
difference between solo Hynde and Pretender Hynde when it came to the delivery
of their hits, ‘Talk Of The Town’, ‘Back On The Chain Gang’, ‘Don’t Get Me
Wrong’, and the like. She closed with a fierce ‘Middle Of The Road’, gracefully
declining to encore though the response certainly warranted it.
The last time I saw Blondie – at
Guildford in 2008 – I was dismayed by their rather hesitant manner but this
time around all that was in the past. Charging in with a full-tilt ‘One Way Or
Another’, they delivered a well-paced, confident 90-minute set that intermingled crowd
favourites with four or five new songs and it is to their immense credit that
the pace never flagged when the crowd was confronted with a song they probably
hadn’t heard before. The visuals helped. Behind them, on five screens, there appeared
images of Blondie from days gone by or footage that complimented the newer
songs, some of which veer into house territory and the tribal rhythms that seem always
to have fascinated Harry, Chris Stein and drummer Clem Burke.
Harry chose to wear a monochrome
stripy outfit, a touch of parallel lines, and, weirdly, unmatching shoes,
dressing down in fact, and the removal of her black and white jacket solicited
a cheer. The message seemed to be that you don’t have to dress sexy to be sexy
and the reality was that she trumps girls a third of her age in this
department. Her voice never faltered, though at times the sound up in the back
circle seemed a bit slushy, the vocals lost in the mid-range boom until a
piercing guitar found its way through. Guitarist Tommy Kessler excelled,
pulling the anguished guitar hero pose as he stalked the stage, lifting
‘Rapture’ into a tour de force as it morphed into The Beastie Boys ‘Fight For
The Right To Party’. The same song incorporated Harry’s rapping section, a
reminder of how Blondie pioneered this style of music in 1981, long before it exploded
almost a decade later.
Meanwhile, drumming from the left
side, Burke gave a dynamo display, his sticks a blur as he rolled around his
kit, tireless from start to finish. He has made no secret of his fondness for
Keith Moon’s style of drumming, not least in the way he grandstands, twiddling
his sticks around his fingers and tossing them into the air and – unlike Moon –
always catching them. The set offers him opportunities to solo, always
concisely in short sharp bursts, and when he does he leaves no doubt as to his
importance to the show. Stein, cool as ice in a Reed/Cale/VU kind of way,
modestly permitted Kessler to take the lion’s share of the guitar spotlight but
now and again stepped forward to improvise around the lines of a well-known
riff, a knowing presence with a ‘seen it all before’ countenance behind
ever-present shades.
As the set drew on the hits came
thick and fast. ‘Tide Is High’ inspired a melodic sing-along, ‘Atomic’ was
greeted like an old friend, climaxing with a Kessler solo that threatened to go
into double time if Burke was game, and ‘Heart Of Glass’, which closed the
pre-encore set, was punchier, more turbo-charged, than the disco-style studio
hit. They came back on for ‘Union City Blue’ and ‘War Child’, which Harry
introduced with a nod towards issues in Iraq, and closed the evening with
‘Dreaming’, all rolling drums and practiced panache, always my favourite Blondie
song.
After three months on the road
this summer Blondie will be taking a well-earned rest in the coming weeks. I
hope we see them again soon.
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