Blondie star Debbie Harry bats off suggestion David Bowie shouldn’t have flashed her in the 1970s
’I think you should rethink that,’ singer said
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Your support makes all the difference.Debbie Harry has recalled being flashed by David Bowie in 1977.
The Blondie singer, who shot to fame that decade with songs including "Heart of Glass”, “Sunday Girl” and "One Way or Another", would often hang out with the “Ziggy Stardust” musician in New York.
In her 2019 memoir, titled Face It, Harry said that during one particular encounter, after offering Bowie and Iggy Pop some cocaine, the former exposed himself to her.
She wrote: “David’s size was notorious, of course, and he loved to pull it out with both men and women. It was so adorable, funny and sexy.”
In a new interview with The Times, Harry, who was 32 at the time, was asked whether this was an acceptable thing to do, and she batted off any suggestion of offence.
“I think you should rethink that,” she said, adding: “Most women would really die to be in that room.”
Harry continued: “You have to consider the context – I was a consenting adult, shall we say. I believe that that is really the borderline.”
In her memoir, Harry said she assumed Bowie flashed her as a thank you.
“It was very funny,” she wrote. “I didn’t touch it. But I did think, well – very nice. I don’t know, it’s too bad you can’t ask him. I guess I was sort of flattered, you know? He’s one of the great men that I admire in the music world, clearly a genius.” Bowie died of cancer on 8 January 2016.
Harry, who founded Blondie in 1974 with guitarist Chris Stein, is set to play Glastonbury Festival for the third time on Sunday 25 June, having first played in 1999 and then again in 2014.
This time around, she will play the slot after the famous Legends slot, which has this year been filled by Cat Stevens/Yusuf.
Addressing whether Blondie would every play that slot, she told the outlet: “We’ve earned it. We’re still playing music and being creative and that’s the essence of it all, isn’t it?”
Find a list of the 20 greatest Glastonbury performances here.
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