100 books
—
2 voters
Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.
Start by marking “Face It” as Want to Read:
Face It
by
‘I was saying things in songs that female singers didn’t really say back then. I wasn’t submissive or begging him to come back, I was kicking his ass, kicking him out, kicking my own ass too. My Blondie character was an inflatable doll but with a dark, provocative, aggressive side. I was playing it up, yet I was very serious.’
BRAVE, BEAUTIFUL AND BORN TO BE PUNK
DEB
...moreGet A Copy
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Reader Q&A
Community Reviews
Showing 1-30
Start your review of Face It
Interesting, but lackluster memoir
You never know what you are going to get when you start reading a memoir, but it is always hard to write a review for one you feel a little underwhelmed or disappointed with.
So, fans of Debbie Harry, those who will brook no criticism of her, maybe you’ll want to skip this review. I can seem judgmental, more so with a memoir than with a biography written by a third party or a ghost writer.
That’s not really my intent, but I’ve been told I come off sounding that ...more
You never know what you are going to get when you start reading a memoir, but it is always hard to write a review for one you feel a little underwhelmed or disappointed with.
So, fans of Debbie Harry, those who will brook no criticism of her, maybe you’ll want to skip this review. I can seem judgmental, more so with a memoir than with a biography written by a third party or a ghost writer.
That’s not really my intent, but I’ve been told I come off sounding that ...more
Jan 13, 2020
Val ⚓️ Shameless Non-Snowflake ⚓️
rated it
it was ok
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
biography-memoir,
2-stars
1.5 to 2 Stars
This was super disappointing on several levels...
First, I feel like there was no Debbie Harry in this book about Debbie Harry. Meaning, there was literally NO emotion. I feel like I never really got to know Debbie Harry at all, having just read an entire book about Debbie Harry, supposedly written by Debbie Harry.
Harry didn't seem to be connected to the the book at all and there was nothing that felt personal or overly interesting in the entirety of the book.
Secondly, the book was ...more
This was super disappointing on several levels...
First, I feel like there was no Debbie Harry in this book about Debbie Harry. Meaning, there was literally NO emotion. I feel like I never really got to know Debbie Harry at all, having just read an entire book about Debbie Harry, supposedly written by Debbie Harry.
Harry didn't seem to be connected to the the book at all and there was nothing that felt personal or overly interesting in the entirety of the book.
Secondly, the book was ...more
Your enjoyment of this book will increase with each one of the following criteria you can answer “Yes”:
- You are a fan of Debbie Harry
- You enjoy stories – fiction or non-fiction – set in New York during the tumultuous 60s, 70s, and 80s
- You like punk/new wave music
- You enjoy the music of Blondie
- You enjoy autobiographies – no matter who they are about
If you can answer all of these yes – then this book is a must read. If you can’t answer any of them yes, then there is no reason to even try thi ...more
A true page turner for me. Hard to put it down. I have always been a fan of Blondie and never realized that she was in so many other bands. Quite a fascinating tale from one of rock and roll's living legends.
...more
Deborah Harry starts in recounting her early years in New Jersey and how her adoption shaped her view of her world as evidenced by one of her more poignant reflections, '...everybody was trying to do the best they could for me. But I don't think I was ever truly comfortable. I felt different; I was always trying to fit in.'
She was a huge part of the early 70's punk scene and forged her way in a very male dominated industry. Some may dismiss her obvious femininity but it is actually a homage to h ...more
She was a huge part of the early 70's punk scene and forged her way in a very male dominated industry. Some may dismiss her obvious femininity but it is actually a homage to h ...more
It was ok. She didn’t really put a lot of emotion into it. It was interesting but lacked detail of relationships and how she felt about some of the events. It felt glossed over and lacking detail regarding her relationship breakdown etc however she mentioned she was a private person so that may explain it. The photos in my kindle were too small to see clearly. The artwork people sent her was interesting but took a lot of the book up. A bit of a let down for me.
4.5 stars
Although I have fond memories of listening to the music of Blondie and watching the videos of the winsome Debbie Harry prancing in front of the camera, I wasn’t a mega-fan and never followed her career after the break-up of the band. However, that didn’t stop me from anxiously awaiting my early reading copy that promised to be revealing and compelling and I was not disappointed.
I hate coyness in memoirs so I appreciated Debbie letting loose with names along with her honest feelings and ...more
Although I have fond memories of listening to the music of Blondie and watching the videos of the winsome Debbie Harry prancing in front of the camera, I wasn’t a mega-fan and never followed her career after the break-up of the band. However, that didn’t stop me from anxiously awaiting my early reading copy that promised to be revealing and compelling and I was not disappointed.
I hate coyness in memoirs so I appreciated Debbie letting loose with names along with her honest feelings and ...more
I expected something cool and fierce, instead this is dull and unengaging, told in a rambling monotone. Regardless of whether DH is talking about her house burning down, (view spoiler) Blondie splitting up or throwaway waitress jobs, there's no change of pace or tone and only the merest superficiality of detail. A few cameos of Bowie, Warhol and Basquiat add some brief interest but blink and they're over.
If you're a fan, you probably know all this. For th ...more
If you're a fan, you probably know all this. For th ...more
”It was an immediate, smaller, tighter more private world then. It was a time of felt experience – no special effects, just raw, visceral, uncut living. No voyeuristic secondhand selfies being beamed out on the Internet. No cell-phone junkies trading endless texts instead of direct, face-to-face contact. No insistent press trying to video and photo your every move or misstep…”
Look, Blondie is the name of the band, not the singer. Got it? Let’s move on.
Pleasantly surprised with this one, given th ...more
Look, Blondie is the name of the band, not the singer. Got it? Let’s move on.
Pleasantly surprised with this one, given th ...more
1930's Jean Harlow
1940's Betty Grable
1950' Marilyn Monroe an Bridget Badot
1960 Michelle Phillips. Anita Ekberg an Mary Ann Faithful.
When you believed that you have seen them all.
Comes Debbie Harry.
Icon ...more
1940's Betty Grable
1950' Marilyn Monroe an Bridget Badot
1960 Michelle Phillips. Anita Ekberg an Mary Ann Faithful.
When you believed that you have seen them all.
Comes Debbie Harry.
Icon ...more
2.5/meh. Debbie Harry is 74 and I'm sure she's lived a colorful and interesting life, but the only real interesting parts of this seem to be made up (view spoiler)
...more
The stories from 1945-1981 are lifted from Making Tracks: The Rise of Blondie a bio published in 1982, which was written by Victor Bockris from interviews with Debbie and Chris Stein. The new stuff 1982-2019 is almost filler with nothing of any substance. Regarding her and Chris, just saying "we split up" is a cop-out. She couldn't bother to mention her participating in a satanic ritual during 2011 (She cut into a life size cake of a nude Debbie Harry and ripped out the heart) -WTF was that all
...more
An interesting memoir. I enjoy tales of the early days of the New York City punk scene and Blonde certainly had an important role in it. You get a sense of the grittiness of those early days. There are books that chronicle those times better (Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil, Gillian McCain) but hey, it's Debbie Harry - nice to read her perspective of her journey and learn of how some of the band's top hits and records were created. Impressive that she kept so m
...more
I always liked Debbie Harry.
But now I LOVE Debbie Harry!
She's so honest and forthright. This book is like listening to someone as they sit and tell you spontaneously about their life. And I really love her voice: she's so in-the-moment. I love the sense of momentum she imparts, you get the feeling she's constantly in motion. Whatever setbacks she encounters--whether it be an abusive stalker boyfriend who could've killed her (and who inspired One Way or Another!) or a violent attack by a robber ...more
But now I LOVE Debbie Harry!
She's so honest and forthright. This book is like listening to someone as they sit and tell you spontaneously about their life. And I really love her voice: she's so in-the-moment. I love the sense of momentum she imparts, you get the feeling she's constantly in motion. Whatever setbacks she encounters--whether it be an abusive stalker boyfriend who could've killed her (and who inspired One Way or Another!) or a violent attack by a robber ...more
Well that’s shattered my memories of my early teenage years when I bought Heart of Glass as my first single and thought Debbie Harry was “cold as ice cream but still as sweet” (Sunday Girl).
Disappointing. The most interesting part of the book is the first third in which Harry talks about her pre-Blondie days. But once she hits the mid-70s, her examination of her life becomes very surface. She says almost nothing about the writing or production of her music, and she seems reticent to talk about big events like the dissolution of the group and the break-up of her relationship with Chris Stein. It does seem like every apartment she ever lived in caught on fire. Not essential reading (
...more
Debbie Harry: the most badass and effortlessly cool person to ever exist.
This woman has lived a hell of a crazy life. My favourite kind of memoirs are the kind that feel as though you’re just sitting down with a friend and having them tell you a story, this is that kind of memoir.
A fantastic read from one of the greatest music and film icons of our time!
This woman has lived a hell of a crazy life. My favourite kind of memoirs are the kind that feel as though you’re just sitting down with a friend and having them tell you a story, this is that kind of memoir.
A fantastic read from one of the greatest music and film icons of our time!
interesting biography via interviews to the ghost writer but nothing to go wow about its okay better than some musical bios about felt could of gone into more depth
I had major high hopes for this one, but alas, I barely managed to finish it. I was/am a Blondie fan, and really loved them back in the late 70s and early 80s. I am not sure what I was hoping for here, but this was not it.
Debbie Harry takes us on a journey from her childhood through today, but rarely have I ever read a memoir that had less soul; in fact, Harry comes off as something of an empty sociopath here, completely lacking in any emotional aspect. We start off with her childhood in New Je ...more
Debbie Harry takes us on a journey from her childhood through today, but rarely have I ever read a memoir that had less soul; in fact, Harry comes off as something of an empty sociopath here, completely lacking in any emotional aspect. We start off with her childhood in New Je ...more
Sorry, I got to Debbie at age 4 and couldn’t any more. The audiobook read by the author is painfully dull. I wish an editor had told Debbie that an autobiography does not have to be laid out linearly. It’s OK to swirl, and swoop back. It’s OK to start somewhere far more interesting than her life as a beloved child living in the middle of nowhere. And it is never OK to minimize pedophilia, even if the exposure did not traumatize you. And, when writing an autobiography, it is never OK to be so utt
...more
Loved hearing the story of a female artist finding her voice. A large portion of the book covers the late 60s and 70s in NYC, which is always a draw for me. Lots of names, places, and people are mentioned rounding out the picture of the NYC punk scene. Highly recommend.
I really wanted something juicy with all kinds of crazy punk 70's NYC shit and this was a major let down. It's PG-13 and in many cases, you’re trying to read between the details of what really happened. The tone was watered down and not at all convincing. The linear structure (we did this and then this and then this...) is almost a powerpoint presentation but with no style or getting to any real story. Harry seems like she's holding back and trying to skate around some major events and not reall
...more
I was utterly charmed by this memoir. Debbie read the audiobook herself and it came off as slightly stilted but it was worth it to hear her periodic hearty interjections of, “Hah!” I like Blondie but I’m not a super fan by any stretch. I loved hearing Debbie’s stories of New York in the 70’s and beyond. I definitely recommend the audiobook.
I received a copy of 'Face It' at an Oct. 3 panel discussion with Debbie Harry, Chris Stein and interviewer Rob Roth, who co-designed the book. The event, held at San Francisco's Jewish Community Center, was sold out, and a hoot. Harry and Stein told some of the episodes of their lives together that are also featured in the book. The design of it is nice, with thick pages, some black pages with white text in interspersed sections with color fan art portraits of Ms. Harry. For more photos, Stein'
...more
A weirdly tone-deaf memoir with a ton of mixed messages. Debbie spends a lot of time detailing instances where she was harassed, assaulted, or generally treated poorly by sexist men but then ends the bio by saying she "could never put [herself] in the position of whining about being a woman" because sexism played little part in her struggles.
When talking about harassment she encountered (David Bowie exposing himself in dressing rooms, a band member staring at her chest while speaking to her, pr ...more
When talking about harassment she encountered (David Bowie exposing himself in dressing rooms, a band member staring at her chest while speaking to her, pr ...more
I wish Debbie was my mom
The CBGB’s alumni list is very impressive considering the overall size and squalor of both the bar and its neighborhood. I was lucky enough to visit “ground zero” for American punk a little past its heyday but before it became almost a tourist destination. By the time I went there Patti Smith, the Ramones, the Talking Heads and Blondie had moved far away from this tiny stage. Of all these illustrious bands Blondie has had the most commercial success and is still making new relevant music decades
...more
I confess that I am puzzled by some of the Goodreads reviews I have read of this book. Lackluster? Unemotional? Really?! This is a memoir by *Deborah Harry.* There is nothing lackluster about her! Some of us are more expressive than others, and I've always thought (rightly or wrongly) that Ms. Harry had a sly, ironic, even Cheshire Cat-like quality that perhaps is read as "flat affect." But it's all in the arch of her eyebrows, the curl of her smile. The quip. The wry observation. It's subtle. I
...more
Really enjoyed this autoAmericanbiography! (See what I did there?) It's reconstructed from a series of interviews she did to reconstruct her memories, so it's a bit jangly and jumpy, but not overly so. She name drops constantly, so I had to just let that go, and focus on her descriptions of her feelings and the sensory details she would give to conjure 70's New York and beyond. She pays a beautiful tribute to her longtime partner (and former bf) Chris Stein. It's rare that someone can reveal the
...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Readers also enjoyed
Deborah Ann Harry is a Golden Globe-nominated and Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter and actress most famous for being the lead singer for the punk rock/new wave band Blondie. She has also had some success as a solo artist, recording five solo albums and has sold more then 7 million records. In the mid 1990s she also performed and recorded as part of the Jazz Passengers. Harry has also engaged
...more
Related Articles
Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “We are not makers of history. We are made by history.” So, this January, as we celebrate Martin Luther King...
39 likes · 13 comments
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
“From the first time I set eyes on Marilyn, I thought she was just wonderful. On the silver screen, her lovely skin and platinum hair were luminescent and fantastic. I loved the fantasy of it. In the fifties, when I grew up. Marilyn was an enormous star, but there was such a double standard. The fact that she was such a hot number meant that many middle-class women looked down on her as a slut. And since the publicity machine behind her sold her as a sex idol, she wasn’t valued as a comedic actor or given credit for her talent. I never felt that way about her, obviously. I felt that Marilyn was also playing a character, the proverbial dumb blonde with the little-girl voice and big-girl body, and that there was a lot of smarts behind the act. My character in Blondie was partly a visual homage to Marilyn, and partly a statement about the good old double standard.”
—
1 likes
“I wanted to be platinum blond. On our black-and-white television and at the theater where they screened technicolor movies, there was something about platinum hair that was so luminescent and exciting. In my time, Marilyn Monroe was the biggest platinum blond on the silver screen. She was so charismatic and the aura she cast was enormous. I identified with her strongly in ways I couldn’t easily articulate. As I grew up, the more I stood out physically in my family, the more I was drawn to people that I felt I related to in significant way. With Marilyn, I sensed a vulnerability and a particular kind of femaleness that I felt we shared. Marilyn struck me as someone who needed so much love. That was long before I discovered that Marilyn had been a foster child.”
—
0 likes
More quotes…
