HANGING ON THE TELEPHONE
“I’m in the phone booth, it’s the one across the hall! If you don’t answer, I’ll just ring it off the wall!” Debbie Harry’s deliciously pissed-off vocal on Blondie’s 1978 top-five UK hit ‘Hanging on the Telephone’ replays in my mind as I dial the New York number provided for me at our scheduled interview time and discover that the line is engaged. (So too their 1980 number one, ‘Call Me’.)
Not that I’m angry — just nervous. After years of Zoom chats, I’d forgotten how stressful and impersonal phone calls can be. Am I being stood up? If I get through, will we click? What if she hangs up on me? When a symbol of cool like this decides you’re lame, there’s no getting over it…
Then, on my third attempt, I get through, and the most famous frontwoman in rock — or rock with a pop/avant-garde/reggae/hip-hop bent, depending on where in their 40-million-selling discog you land — greets me with an easy, breezy “Hi, how are you!?” before proceeding to answer, with
