Debbie Harry dyed her hair blonde because she was “bored”.
The singer’s famous barnet gave her band the name Blondie after a truck driver shouted it at her on the street and now her bandmate Chris Stein has revealed it all came about because Debbie worked at a salon and decided to ditch her brunette locks during a slow day when she didn’t have any customers.
In his new book ‘Under a Rock’, Chris wrote: “I was in Debbie’s apartment one afternoon and she came back from work at the salon in New Jersey and I saw that she had dyed her hair blonde.
“She said they hadn’t had many customers and she and her friend and co-worker Ricky had gotten bored.
“She had slicked it down; it looked like Twiggy’s famous hair cut”.
The change happened during the early days of the band and Chris revealed Debbie came up with the name after several men shouted: ‘Hey blondie’ at her on the street.
He added: “One day Debbie came back to the apartment on Thompson Street and announced that several men in the street, including a guy leaning out of a truck window, had shouted: ‘Hey blondie!’ at her and she thought that would be a good name for a band.”
They adopted the name and Blondie played their first show at fabled venue CBGB’s in New York on October 12 1974.
Chris and Debbie were a couple during the early years of the band and they were together for more than a decade.
He recently admitted the former lovers are “still close” and they are still in touch even though he is now married to actress Barbara Sicuranza.
He told The Times newspaper: "We are still very close. But I’ve been married for 25 years now."
When it was suggested to him that it must be "very odd" for him to be constantly questioned about his old relationship, Chris agreed and explained: "Yeah. Well, my wife puts up with it. She does.”
Debbie, 78, even cared for Chris when he was diagnosed with pemphigus vulgaris, a rare autoimmune disease of the skin and broke the band up to look after him.
The couple went their separate ways in 1985, but Chris has retained a professional relationship with Debbie over the years.
