The golden age of the East Village in all its creative ferment and the codependent love story between the author and Debbie Harry in founding Blondie.
Debbie Harry defined iconic band Blondie’s look. Chris Stein—her performing partner, lover, and lifelong friend—defined its sound. Parallel Lines, their third album, catapulted to #1, sold 20 million copies, and launched singles like “Heart of Glass” and “Hanging on the Telephone,” providing the beat when Bianca Jagger and Halston danced at Studio 54 and the soundtrack to every 1970’s dorm-room kegger.
Chris Stein is a musician, photographer and excellent writer, who knows how to tell a story. Under A Rock is an old-fashioned, nothing-spared, autobiography. Far from trying to puff himself up to crow about his eventual redemption, Stein reveals himself to be a screw-up. And while that made his and others’ lives miserable, it makes for entertaining reading.
Under A Rock is a rags-to-riches-to-rags story. In one week, Stein went from living in a shoddy East Village apartment to buying a limestone townhouse with Harry on the Upper East Side. And then, due to their twinned heroin habit, that townhouse fell to near-ruin. Harry, in a seeming instant, got sober. But Stein, hospitalized for months just two blocks from their once-elegant house, almost died.
Famous names march through these pages—Warhol, Bowie, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and more–but you can get famous names anywhere. What you can’t get in many other places is a plunge into the moments that make a giant artistic sensation. Stein takes us there in this revelatory memoir.
