Chris Stein New Book"Negative – Me, Blondie and the Advent of Punk "
Though Harry is the breathtaking face and indelible voice of Blondie, she will be the first to acknowledge Stein’s central role in the development of the band as songwriter, guitarist, and visionary thinker. As Harry has said, “The singer is always a recognizable factor but oddly I don’t think Chris gets noticed as a guitarist. His musicality and the way he plays guitar is really an underlying strong part of Blondie.“We were living very much in the moment,” says Chris Stein of his early days in Blondie as he discusses the trove of photographs he’s taken since the start of the seventies. Though best known as an innovative guitarist and groundbreaking songwriter, this Roll Hall of Fame inductee has been equally passionate about, and devoted to, photography. The proof of his acuity as a visual artist is in ample evidence throughout his beautifully rendered coffee-table book, Negative – Me, Blondie and the Advent of Punk, which documents his life back stage, off stage, on the road and at home. Looking at the images, many of them printed in evocative black and white, he says, “There is time travel-esque quality to it, of freezing a moment in time. There really isn’t another art form that does that.”The cross- currents of Stein’s multi-cultural pursuits are all on display in Negative, along with images of seminal figures from the seventies and eighties whom he had befriended: artist Jean Michel Basquiat, designer Stephen Sprouse, hip hop personality Fab Five Freddy Braithwaite, saxophonist James Chance and his muse Anya Phillips, and, of course, Andy Warhol. Above all, Negative –as with so much of the music of Blondie – is a paean to the most enduring creative relationship in pop music: the collaboration between Harry and Stein. It was Stein was gave the world its first photographic glimpses of that ravishing, now iconic face.
Though Harry is the breathtaking face and indelible voice of Blondie, she will be the first to acknowledge Stein’s central role in the development of the band as songwriter, guitarist, and visionary thinker. As Harry has said, “The singer is always a recognizable factor but oddly I don’t think Chris gets noticed as a guitarist. His musicality and the way he plays guitar is really an underlying strong part of Blondie.“We were living very much in the moment,” says Chris Stein of his early days in Blondie as he discusses the trove of photographs he’s taken since the start of the seventies. Though best known as an innovative guitarist and groundbreaking songwriter, this Roll Hall of Fame inductee has been equally passionate about, and devoted to, photography. The proof of his acuity as a visual artist is in ample evidence throughout his beautifully rendered coffee-table book, Negative – Me, Blondie and the Advent of Punk, which documents his life back stage, off stage, on the road and at home. Looking at the images, many of them printed in evocative black and white, he says, “There is time travel-esque quality to it, of freezing a moment in time. There really isn’t another art form that does that.”The cross- currents of Stein’s multi-cultural pursuits are all on display in Negative, along with images of seminal figures from the seventies and eighties whom he had befriended: artist Jean Michel Basquiat, designer Stephen Sprouse, hip hop personality Fab Five Freddy Braithwaite, saxophonist James Chance and his muse Anya Phillips, and, of course, Andy Warhol. Above all, Negative –as with so much of the music of Blondie – is a paean to the most enduring creative relationship in pop music: the collaboration between Harry and Stein. It was Stein was gave the world its first photographic glimpses of that ravishing, now iconic face.