A few weeks ago, I had a blast tracing the path of one of my favorite country songs, Hal Ketchum’s “Past the Point of Rescue.” Since we’re in that post-Christmas, “What day is it, even?” mode, I thought it would be fun to dig up the earlier versions of another classic.
Blondie was the personification of New York underground cool in the mid-‘70s. Treading a line between punk and rock while giving respectful nods to the sounds of the past, Blondie was one of the forerunners of what we could call “new wave” music.
As a result, Blondie became stalwarts of the Big Apple’s underground music scene. Surrounded by those too-cool-for-the-mainstream artists, Blondie toiled in New York’s underground rock scene for years.
The excellent box set Against the Odds: 1974-1982 captures the genesis of what would become Blondie’s breakthrough hit. As early as 1974, Debbie Harry and her co-writer/bandmate/boyfriend Chris Stein began working on something they called “The Disco Song.” This demo didn’t even have complete lyrics.
Related: Archaeology of a Hit Single: 'Past the Point of Rescue'
A later demo shows the band experimenting with somewhat of a reggae beat. Most notably, the lyrics are starting to take shape here. The opening couplet is a little different from the finished product: “Once I had a love, and it was a gas / Soon turned out to be a thing of the past.”
Blondie continued to refine “The Disco Song,” now under the title “Once I Had a Love.” After two albums that gave the band credibility among New York’s new wave scene but little commercial success, the band’s label, Chrysalis, wanted Blondie to break out. The band knew it was stuck between two worlds: too pop for punk purists yet too weird for Top 40 radio.
Chrysalis and Blondie traded New Yorker Richard Gottehrer for one of the hottest producers of the day: Australian Mike Chapman. The New York scene thought of it as Blondie selling out, but Chapman was helping Blondie weaponize its songs and sound for success. That included another demo of “Once I Had a Love.”
As Chapman got the band ready for Parallel Lines (one of the greatest albums of the ‘70s in this columnist’s less-than-humble opinion) and a more radio-friendly sound, several things happened to shape the song’s trajectory. Jimmy Destri switched to synthesizers for the track, which gave it a pop sheen that flirted with disco, which was all the rage by 1978, as well as the genesis of the track. The band brought in a Roland CR-78 drum machine, which supplemented Clem Burke’s drumming and accentuated the beat of the track.
Roland’s corporate blog captured the mood of the sessions and what the company’s drum machine brought to the song:
In addition to its mood of romantic yearning, “Heart of Glass” captures an idealized NYC: a playground of late nights at Studio 54, populous dancefloors, and friendly debauchery. (Notably, despite a quick shot of the legendary nightclub, original Top of The Pops producer Stanley Dorfman’s promotional clip wasn’t actually filmed there.)
Atop the CR-78 pattern, drummer Clem Burke added a propulsive, open hi-hat driven backbeat. A rocker to the core, Burke was initially wary of the disco-leaning approach Chapman suggested, but soon came around. Still, the lasting appeal of “Heart of Glass” isn't relegated to the hips. It also contains hints of Blondie’s crack musicianship. Witness the way the song skillfully weaves through a middle section in 7/8 time before returning, refreshed, to its primary groove.
The Roland CR-78 contributed more than just the song’s tropical cadence. The drum machine also sent a trigger pulse to synths in the studio, creating the stuttering keyboard motif central to “Heart of Glass.” Keyboardist Jimmy Destri (who initially brought the CR-78 to the sessions) also utilized a Roland SH-5 in creating the rich atmosphere of “Heart of Glass.”
Somewhere along the way, the band made other significant changes. The instrumental breaks shifted to a 7/4 time, which makes it sound like the band is skipping a beat — yet another innovation.
But the biggest alteration was lyrical. Instead of Harry’s love affair being “a thing of the past,” her lover wound up with “a heart of glass.” Rather than looking backward, that lyrical change placed the focus on the ex-boyfriend’s insecurities. What had once sounded reflective now felt brittle, exposed, and modern. The lyric changed the song’s emotional temperature, and it gave the song its title.
It was irresistible and radio-friendly, but it had its controversies, too. Program directors didn’t like the line from the last verse: “Soon turned out to be a pain in the a**,” which led to edits to make the song more lyrically palatable for mainstream radio.
The sanitation paid off. “Heart of Glass” became Blondie’s first huge hit. It topped the charts in the UK in January 1979, and it hit number one in the U.S. in April of that year. Of course, those too-cool-for-school people in the New York scene accused Blondie of selling out and going disco, but what the band wound up doing was shining a (strobe) light on the rest of the scene and giving other New York bands a taste of success.
What Blondie really did was give radio listeners something fresh and different. I was only six when “Heart of Glass” came out (even though I was pretty precocious when it came to music), and I remember thinking that it was different from the rest of the songs on the radio.
“Heart of Glass” became a classic, and it set the stage for more success from Blondie. It also opened the airwaves to more new wave music, and in a way, the song was a forerunner to the sounds of the ‘80s.
