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‘I’m a fan of chaos’: Blondie’s Chris Stein on Bowie, Debbie Harry and 50 years in rock’n’roll

In his candid new memoir, the guitarist talks about the glory period of Parallel Lines and how addiction and loss altered his life

Both men were a long way from the celebrated cultural figures they would become: Stein had just started to make some money as the guitarist of New York new-wave act Blondie, the band he co-founded with singer Debbie Harry in 1974; the teenage Basquiat, unable to pay for canvases, painted graffiti on to walls, floors or any material he could lay his hands on. Stein, who has thick, platinum hair that is centre-parted in neat curtains and a tidy goatee, is full of such stories: a lifelong New Yorker, his second home for much of the 1970s seems to have been CBGB, the infamous East Village music venue that was the centre of the punk and new-wave scenes. There were more high points: not least the singles Atomic, Call Me and Rapture, written by Harry and Stein, which became the first song featuring rapping to reach No 1 in the US (Basquiat has a cameo in the video, recruited after Grandmaster Flash failed to turn up).

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