

Now, as the band works on its next studio album, it's also dropping Against The Odds: 1974-1982, a massive archival box set including unreleased music, ephemera and track-by-track commentary. Debbie Harry performed in a band called the Stilettos that featured three female vocalists and a male backing band, eventually including Stein on guitar.Īfter Blondie re-formed in the late 1990s, the band scored a hit with the power pop single "Maria." Following its 2006 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Blondie's 2017 album Pollinator introduced a new generation of fans to its music, with collaborations from artists including Charli XCX and Dev Hynes. He saw the Dolls perform at Mercer Arts and befriended Emerson, who became his roommate and sometime bandmate. "And it was beautiful, a lot of people who would see each other on the street, and this gave them a chance to be in the same kind of place."Īt the time, Chris Stein was a student at the School of Visual Arts. "A scene started kind of coming around us," Johansen explains. "I was friends with Eric Emerson, who had a band called Magic Tramps, and he said that he was going to do a gig at this new place, Mercer Arts Center, and would my band want to come and open for him?"īy the summer of 1972, that gig turned into a weekly engagement, with the Dolls sharing the stage with guests including Jayne (then performing as Wayne) County and Ruby and the Rednecks. New York Dolls frontman David Johansen says it found a home just north of Bleecker Street and east of Washington Square.

Debbie Harry and Clem Burke, 14th Street, New York City, circa 1976.īy the early 1970s, the Greenwich Village folk scene had faded, and a new sound was wafting up from the street.
