H.R. Giger: Debbie Harry Metamorphosis: Creating the Visual Concept for KooKoo

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If Har­ry had made an album clos­er to Danielle Dax, for exam­ple, then we might have seen one of the odd­est mid-career shifts in ‘80s music. Debbie’s chart-topping success, fearless spirit and rare longevity - including more than 50 million albums sold worldwide and acclaimed solo projects - have cemented her as a vibrant global force and a shaper of pop culture.

She has become and still remains a true national treasure, one whose influence continues to impact the worlds of music, fashion and art. His strange, enigmatic artworks are a combination of industrial stylistics and apocalyptic vision of the future. He offers a local’s view of the far-from-gentrified East Village neighborhood where he lived, and where the punk movement emerged.A new book, Giger: Debbie Harry Species – Creating the Visual Concept for KooKoo , will document the early Eighties collaboration between the Blondie frontwoman and artist H. You can read her Louder than War reviews at her author profile, and her archive music journalism on Substack. One of the most amazing painters of 20th century was Hans Rudolph Giger, who had a tremendous influence on computer game developers, he is also worshipped by fantasy lovers. It was a match of rock and sci-fi, something the MTV generation had seen everywhere from a Dire Strait famous music video to David Bowie’s Starman and Major Tom and nearly everything about Devo.

Chris Stein documented the meetings he and Harry had with Giger along with the creation of the album cover and two videos for Harry’s 1981 debut solo album Kookoo, and he’s put them together in the new book H. Renowned as the co-founder and guitarist of the iconic new wave band Blondie, Chris Stein’s photography is as poignant and powerful as the songs he wrote. Outside of music, Debbie has also engaged in a successful acting career with over 30 film and television roles to her credit (including Videodrome, Hairspray, and Heavy to name a few).As Harry’s then-boyfriend, partner, and long-term collaborator, his insight is perfect for such an unusual chronicle (Harry and others provide recollections in the book, also). R Giger's contribution to Debbie Harry's first solo project and possibly her most ambitious of the five albums she has recorded. The band re-formed in 1997, achieving renewed success and their sixth number one single in the UK with "Maria" in 1999, exactly 20 years after their first UK No. Skeletons, skulls and sculptures are all part of the scenery, along with a “temple” accessed by a big human-shaped doorway. Stein’s photographs expands on the previously released peeks into Giger’s lavish, fabulously creepy home, built like an old abandoned grotto, centered around Giger’s horror paintings and statues, complete with dark corridors, and those eerie squeaky doors and stairs of a recluse’s hovel in a vine-covered corner where the artist acknowledged being scared by his own Alien creature while walking at night in the dark.

The video for “Now I Know You Know,” also written by Rodgers and Edwards, is even eerier with Harry flexing in a Giger-designed body suit with long black hair. From an irreverent Lower East Side punk goddess to a bona fide international ambassador of New York cool, Debbie Harry will forever be synonymous with that punk spirit that lives somewhere in all of us. In fact, he was clutching an Oscar for Visual Effects the night he met Debbie and Chris at an exhibition of Alien paintings in New York.Though he didn’t know the group–Giger pre­ferred to lis­ten to jazz–he agreed to the cov­er and to the pro­mo videos, even direct­ing when the orig­i­nal direc­tor didn’t show.

For Debbie and Chris Stein’s musical collaborators on the project were Nile Rodgers And Bernard Edwards, at that time pop’s sharpest razors in the producers’ box. And he shares previously unpublished images of such iconic figures of the era as Debbie Harry, his musical partner in Blondie; Andy Warhol; Iggy Pop; David Bowie; and the Ramones. With all the grit, grime and glory recounted in intimate detail, FACE IT recreated the downtown scene of 1970s New York City, where Blondie played alongside The Ramones, Television, Talking Heads, Iggy Pop and David Bowie. His star was a newly brunette Harry re-imagined as a cross between a Xenomorphic Giger monstrosity, the Bride of Frankenstein, and the legendary borg creation of Metropolis. While Deb­bie Har­ry pur­sued the act­ing she had start­ed in punk rock film­mak­er Amos Poe’s works, she also went the solo album route.Interestingly, just as she would work with David Cronenberg in 1983, Harry would also collaborate with another artist with his own ties to the world of horror. Of all the poster-image icons of the 20th Century, perhaps few are as recognisable as Blondie’s Debbie Harry.