"Her mouth and her body", was my colleague's reply when I asked him what attracted him to Blondie's music. Apparently he hadn't quite understood my question. A mistake made more often: Blondie is often associated with the singer of the New Wave band Blondie. But Blondie is the name of the band and the singer is called Debbie Harry. She was indeed an attractive woman, in the late 1970s, early 1980s. We are now forty years later and the funny thing about getting old is that you don't realize it yourself. Until you run into acquaintances from college days at a birthday party. Hilde was one of those women who looked a bit like Debbie Harry. The only downsides were her nut allergy and heavy southern accent. To me, she looked like a painting from a museum that you can only look at but not touch. Just like Debbie Harry, from Blondie who made the hearts of many people race with her sexy appearance, and lyrics like; "Oh Denis ooh-be-do, I'm in love with you." Not exactly high-quality lyrics but in my dreams I often turned out to be called Denis. Back to said birthday party. Hilde told me she had become a grandmother. I'm suddenly faced with reality. She had grown a bit more chubby, she was wearing ordinary clothes and ditto haircut, and all sensuality had been ripped from her body. It made me realize that I had also aged forty years myself. Debbie Harry in her heyday was what you'd nowadays call a power woman. The band Blondie was embraced in England, but in the US they didn't like the wild girl, swearing and defiantly ranting about the stage during the "Plastic Letters" world tour. The group's management turned the tide with a charm offensive; an exhausted Debbie Harry stopped by radio stations to charm the DJs. And the band was pushed into the studio to record a third album: "Parallel Lines". Blondie's music is a fusion of pop, punk and disco. The record sleeve had to represent said combination of opposites, at least, that was the general idea. But behind the scenes, a disagreement arose between manager Peter Leeds and Debbie Harry. Harry wasn't fond of Leeds, but he was the only one who wanted to manage Blondie. He always wore a suit and smart pair of shoes, and had a nice house. He presented the band members with a vision of a cover that had a much more rebellious appearance than the stylized cover it eventually became. Leeds wanted Harry to frown and the other band members to laugh. But nobody really wanted that. But Leeds was of the school 'divide-and-conquer'. He regularly told everyone that the guys in the band were really worth nothing and that they were all replaceable. So they did what Leeds wanted anyway and managed a smile a few times on the day of the photo shoot. A few weeks later, the band members got to see the definitive cover, just as Leeds had wanted it. They were furious, but the process could not be reversed. Never trust anyone with fashionable shoes, was the wise lesson for the band members and Peter Leeds was eventually fired. Despite all the struggles, the record and the cover reached the status of 'New Wave Classic' in all charts. Debbie Harry is now 76 years old. Her memoirs were published in 2019. If Hilde ever writes down her life story, I will also appear in it. I was the boy who had to call the ambulance when she came to visit me. I accidentally added some nuts to her dessert. Fortunately, it all turned out OK for her in the end, but after that I basically didn't exist for her. By Gerrit-Jan Vrielink Translation: Alex Driessen