At the first Stilettos gig, Harry found herself singing to a silhouette. The man she was immediately, magnetically drawn to was Chris Stein. Brooklyn born and raised, Stein’s first passion was soundtracks; Henry Mancini, James Bond, Peter Gunn. Stein’s own film scores include 1980’s Union City, while both Harry and Stein contributed to John Water’s Polyester (1981). West Side Story had an early impact too (Harry took her sister, Martha, to see the 1961 musical). Then came The Beatles, The Stones, and Bob Dylan, whose recordings he made reel-to-reel tapes of. One early Stein group supported The Velvet Underground. As with Harry, there was familial trauma, the sudden death of his father. He fled for San Francisco and ingested copious amounts of LSD in the summers of ’67-’68, returning to New York to study photography. Later, Stein’s images of Harry graced Punk and Creem’s pages (he also shot her with Devo), but his long CV also includes sleeve shots and designs like Robert Fripp’s art-rock Exposure (1979). Beyond penning many of Blondie’s biggest hits, including Sunday Girl, Stein has been Harry’s co-pilot for much of her solo work, while producing acts from Iggy Pop to The Gun Club.
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