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The Hunter 2001 Liner Notes CD Booklet
Some very bad things had happened in the last year or so. The realization that success doesn't necessarily translate into wealth had finally sunk in. Where had all the money gone? They knew where some of it went, but what about the rest? Too many managers? Too many attorneys?
Both Debbie and Chris came to this latest project full of doubts and fears. They seemed almost disinterested, although they put on a brave face. Debbie had made a solo record since we last worked together, and it had not really achieved what was expected of it. She had put her heart and soul into it and she was not the positive creative force that she had been in the past. I could tell that things were different now, and I knew that this would be the last Blondie album.
It was back to New York this time and that scared the hell out of me. All those strange people would reappear and start interfering again. What made matters worse was that I was to stay with Debbie and Chris at their house. As much as I loved them both, I needed to get away from them at the end of each day and find my own space. Now that freedom was to be taken away from me.
Their house. What a house. Uptown on 73rd at Lexington. Five floors. Five dark floors crammed with stuff. I got the top floor, reached by a tiny pink elevator. Well, it was half the top floor, with a balcony looking down into a huge room with a large black throne. The throne was H.R. Giger. He had designed the set for ALIEN, and this throne was a large black alien skeleton. Over it hung a black mosquito net. I can say nothing more about this set they had created, but it pretty much summed up their feelings at that time.
The new songs were really dark and very deep: songs about orchids, gangsters, beasts and space travel; one about an island of lost souls; Debbie's War Child; an unwanted James Bond theme; a cool but cold cover. And somehow they all worked together. I allowed myself to get inside the songs and I loved them all.
But I knew we were in a different and far less accessible artistic space. And that worried me.
The entire project was a struggle. Nothing went well. Chris was not well. Debbie was not happy. Jimmy had some really bad problems. Clem was complaining about everything. Nigel seemed worried about everything. Frankie, of course, was gone. I was going up and down in that little pink elevator a few too many times and quickly losing my mind. The wonderful world of clever and intensely catchy pop songs had turned into hell.
My precise memories of the main events are blurred now. Occasionally someone will remind me of a certain incident, and things come back. And I wish they hadn't.
There was the day that Jimmy threw his entire Synclavia rig across the control room at me simply because I asked him to redo some stupid little keyboard part. We can laugh about it now, but somehow it really hurt back then.
I spent a good deal of time in a slimy bar near the studio. It was my escape from time to time from all the madness. I generally went there during the sessions, after slamming the control room door and telling everyone to get lost. As a rule, someone would come to get me after a few hours and we'd try again.
I remember a strange bunch of guys being shown into the studio and introduced to me as the horn section for Island Of Lost Souls. Well, I recorded them. Chris wanted them to do it and he was the creative musical force, so... It took a long time for them to get it and, to be sure, it had an unusual vibe. I loved it but hated them all. They were a mess.
We were constantly being shuffled from studio to studio again, since the project was moving quite slowly. But some days were amazing. The day Debbie wrote and sang Dragonfly was incredible. This stuff just kept coming out of her. It was as if she were an alien. In her madness she was beautiful. Her words were beautiful and her thoughts were fascinating. That song still intrigues me.
There was more business nonsense going on than I had ever seen before. I couldn't listen anymore - it was too sad. They all seemed to have their own interests at heart now, and so it became a free-for-all.
When it came time to shoot the cover, one only has to look at it to know what went on. Perhaps it was the perfect cover. They had all been so involved in previous packaging. Now someone had made them look like they hated each other and they didn't seem to mind. It was very hard to make Debbie look bad and somehow they did it. They had really just given up. It was all too much trouble now, and far too painful.
Blondie was never painless art. It was never a hit-making machine. There was so much stuff boiling below the surface always that simply making a record was never an option. We lived those records from day to day, hour to hour and gut to gut. We got what we got from them. We were all looking for something different and ended up getting the same thing. They tattooed me with every word and note they ever played and wrote. They sharpened my skills and dulled my senses. They left me empty when they left me. The ultimate fulfillment.
Mike Chapman
May 2001
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