le cas de Jimmy destri est évoqué dans cet article de SMH du 18 fevrier 2005
ce que C Stein dit sur J destri est un peu puéril, je trouve
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Despite heartbreak, illness and the death of new wave, Blondie's heart of glass keeps pumping, the band's leading man tells George Palathingal.
It's more than 30 years since a young guitarist called Chris Stein fell for the striking frontwoman of the girl-group cover band the Stilettos in a New York bar.
By late 1974, Stein and his girlfriend, Debbie Harry, had formed the new-wave sensation Blondie. They spent the next eight years making some of the greatest pop songs of the 20th century, until a debilitating skin condition put Stein out of action.
The 55-year-old guitarist has long since recovered and now faces one inescapable question. With deserved icon status among its peers as well as their fans and a near-perfect back catalogue, why is the ageing Blondie threatening their legacy - not to mention dignity - by continuing to tour and make new music?
Before I get to ask the question, idle ice-breaking chat about Stein's responsibilities as a relatively new father (and with a second child on the way) reveals part of the answer.
"Y'know, to do it properly ... I don't have as much money as f---ing John Lennon," he deadpans.
Many would assume that, as the (co-)writer of Heart of Glass, Sunday Girl and Rapture, among other Blondie classics, Stein would be living large on an endless stream of royalty cheques. "No, no, we didn't do very well with the whole situation," Stein says. "If we'd come along 10 years later, I'm sure we would have done a lot better, but in those days we were victims of the old sort of feudal systems that existed in the music industry. It was our own fault for not paying more attention."
Being a musician in New York City in the late 1970s and early '80s did have its advantages. "I think a lot of art arrives in depressed times, when people were hungry," Stein says. "I don't think all this ... plasticised reality that we live in, in the big urban areas now, lends itself to good art. There may have been a certain advantage to the sort of desperation, tension that went on, and danger of the big cities at the time."
Such tension helped Blondie's main creative force: the songwriting partnership of Stein and Harry. The hits kept flowing, including some inspired cover versions (Hanging on the Telephone, Denis, The Tide is High), until 1981, when the autoimmune disorder pemphigus vulgaris took its grip on Stein's life and brought the band to a seemingly abrupt end.
"Well, it was at the peak, but we were kind of burnt out and exhausted, which was exacerbated by my health getting that way," Stein says. "It only lasted from about '81, '82, for about another three or four years after that. It didn't go on for very long." He says the autoimmune condition is still widely unknown. "But there's a lot more known about it now. I hear from people who have it, occasionally."
Was he incapacitated at the time? "When I was all screwed up, yeah ... all the proteins that bind your skin break down, so you're covered with blisters. It's a totally stress-related condition, I'm convinced."
And it has never recurred? "No, I never had it back. It was definitely part of using drugs, getting stoned all the time, too. That brought it on with that much ferocity."
Harry stood by her man until he recovered, but in 1986 their romantic relationship ended.
Here, of course, is where the Blondie story should have ended, too. But in 1999, two other members of the band - keyboard player Jimmy Destri and drummer Clem Burke - rejoined Stein and Harry to make the comeback album No Exit. Despite the vintage-sounding single Maria, the album was soon forgotten, but the four kept making music together. They attempted a second comeback with last year's surprisingly strong but commercially underwhelming The Curse of Blondie.
Creative tension still courses through the Blondie camp. Destri, who appeared with the band during its 2003 Australian tour, won't be coming this time. Why not? "Jimmy's just crazy," Stein says wearily. "It's difficult with his issues, whatever. It's like with the Ramones thing, y'know? It's not like there's any great love lost between anybody. I hope Jimmy can write some stuff for us if we do another Blondie record." Stein is unsentimental, even cynical, when it's suggested that the New York punk/new-wave scene Blondie thrived in is edging ever further away with the death of yet another Ramone, Johnny, last September. "It's so idealised now they're all [sic] dead," Stein says.
"It always helps to drop dead. It helps your art."
There will be another difference from the 2003 shows. Shortly before that tour, Stein became a father for the first time and chose to spend those first few months with his son Akira rather than with the band. "The second [child's] not gonna interfere with my coming down!" he says, laughing.
His firstborn's Japanese name hints at one of Stein's passions outside music: Asian cinema.
"There's a whole genre of Asian sort of science-fiction ghost and fantasy movies that are just - I mean, it's just better stuff coming out," he says. "Hollywood is just ... for me, it's sadder what's happened in Hollywood than what's happened in the music industry as far as 'art by committee' [goes], y'know?
"The fact that people, their main motivation is financial for making art these days, rather than to make art. There are a couple of people left in Hollywood - [Martin] Scorsese and a couple of others."
Stein gets a lot off his chest via regular posts on the Blondie website, with one particularly entertaining rant relating to last year's remake of The Manchurian Candidate.
"I was so freaked out by seeing how much they f---ed that up," he says in disbelief. "They took it away from its political base! Y'know, they made the bad guys be this sort of big corporate entity, which is absurd - completely twisted the message and intent of this original film."
It seems his online activity might be cathartic. "Sort of," he says. "I get a lot of response; I have an ongoing dialogue with people. I get a few people telling me to shut the f--- up and I'm just a guitar player and shouldn't write about politics ... there was always a dialogue with Debbie and me and the band - mostly with me and Debbie - about whether or not we should make any overt political statements, or whether just making people entertained was enough of a good thing to do as a mission."
It was more than enough at their 2003 shows. "Yeah?" Stein asks. "Well, that's good. And it should be better if I'm there, too!"
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Sujet: Des nouvelles de Jimmy Destri 
Ven 19 Nov à 3:38
enfin, presque....
