Blondie performing live at the El Mocambo in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. August 2, 1978.

Debbie Harry and Johnny Thunders at The Village Gate in New York City, New York. August 1977.

Debbie Harry backstage at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, California. September 28, 1977.

Debbie Harry on the set of Blondie's music video for "Heart of Glass," 1979.

Blondie performing live at CBGB in New York City, New York. 1976.

Debbie Harry on the set of The Foreigner (1978)

Debbie Harry of Blondie performing live at the Paradiso in Amsterdam, Netherlands. January 29, 1978.

“Iggy Pop apparently described me once as "Barbarella on speed." Barbarella was a comic-book character from the future, where people didn't fuck anymore, a sexual innocent who gets sent on a mission to save the planet and along the way learns the joys of sex. The director of Barbarella, Roger Vadim, was a big fan of comic books, as were we. Our band shared its name with a cartoon character, after all. And I was playing at being a cartoon fantasy onstage. But the mother of that character was really Marilyn Monroe. From the first time I set eyes on Marilyn, I thought she was just wonderful. On the silver screen, her lovely skin and platinum hair were luminescent and fantastic. I loved the fantasy of it. In the fifties, when I grew up, Marilyn was an enormous star, but there was such a double standard. The fact that she was such a hot number meant that many middle-class women looked down on her as a slut. And since the publicity machine behind her sold her as a sex idol, she wasn't valued as a comedic actor or given credit for her talent. I never felt that way about her, obviously. I felt that Marilyn was also playing a character, the proverbial dumb blonde with the little-girl voice and big-girl body, and that there was a lot of smarts behind the act. My character in Blondie was partly a visual homage to Marilyn, and partly a statement about the good old double standard.

The "Blondie" character I created was sort of androgynous. More and more lately, I've been thinking that I was probably portraying some kind of transsexual creature. Even when I was singing songs that were written from a man's point of view—"Maria" for example, a Catholic schoolboy lusting after this unattainable virgin girl—I had to be kind of gender-neutral, so it seemed that I wanted Maria. A lot of my drag queen friends have said to me, "Oh, you were definitely a drag queen." They didn't have problems seeing it. It was the same thing with Marilyn really. She was a woman playing a man's idea of a woman.”

Debbie Harry backstage at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles, California. 1979.

Debbie Harry of Blondie performing live at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, Georgia. July 28, 1979.

Debbie Harry of Blondie performing live at the Nakano Sunplaza Hall in Nakano City, Tokyo, Japan. January 11, 1978.

Debbie Harry of Blondie performing live at Dingwalls in London, England. January 24, 1978.

Blondie at the Sunset Marquis in Los Angeles, California. April 24, 1978.

Debbie Harry at the Sunset Marquis in Los Angeles, California. April 24, 1978.

Debbie Harry in a hotel room in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. July 13, 1979.

Debbie Harry during the filming of Blondie's music video for "(I'm Always Touched By Your) Presence Dear" at Blanford Studios in Marylebone, London, England. March 8, 1978.

Debbie Harry visiting Shinko Music in Tokyo, Japan. January 1978.