Remarkably it is thirty years ago that the best "post-Punk" band ever, Blondie was at Number 1 with Heart of Glass! Now that really does make me feel old...
I was an absolute Blondie fanatic when I was a teen, ever since I spotted Debs and the boys on The Old Grey Whistle Test. I bought every single, 7" and 12" versions - even though I had the albums - and joined their fan club. I even saved up for the picture disc version of Parallel Lines, the last one in our local record shop...
Like most teenage boys I had a poster of Debbie Harry on my wall (the very one below actually), but although that gave some comfort to my mother - who must have been worried about her "fey" son - my sexual interest was by that stage actually more into (ahem) Sting than the great lady...
Parallel Lines remains one of the greatest albums of all time - classic after classic after classic track, it generated four hugely successful singles (including my personal favourite Picture This), and is a masterpiece of pop. No wonder really, as mega producer Mike Chapman (who had almost single-handedly created some of the biggest hits of the Glam era for Sweet, Suzi Quattro, Smokie and Mud) was brought in to add some commercial appeal to the already brilliant post-punk pop the group had launched in their first two albums, and top quality gloss was applied. Even the legendary guitarist Robert Fripp agreed to play on the album.
But nothing quite broke new territory like Heart of Glass. Originally a bit of a half-hearted attempt at a pastiche "disco song", in the hands of the maestro Chapman it became the crossover disco hit of the age. Purists considered disco a dead duck, and hardcore fans of the band's new wave/CBGBs Club roots loathed the idea of them "selling out". But "sell" was the word! It became the second biggest single in the UK that year [after, unbelievably, Art Garfunkel's Bright Eyes], and brought the band the world-conquering commercial success they deserved.
Parallel Lines, with its iconic cover imagery, was a permanent fixture in Britain in the late 70s. It went to No. 1 in the chart on 17th February 1979 and remained there for four weeks, staying on the listings for 106 weeks in total.
Sublime.
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