Chris Stein
Chris Stein
Christopher "Chris" Steinis the co-founder and guitarist of the new wave band Blondie. He is also a producer and performer for the classic soundtrack of the hip hop film, Wild Style, and writer of the soundtrack for the film Union City. An acclaimed photographer, Stein has taken thousands of images documenting the early New York City punk music scene, the visual allure of Debbie Harry and Blondie, and his collaborations with artistic luminaries including Andy Warhol and H.R. Giger. Stein's...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth5 January 1950
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Being inducted seems to mean a lot to a lot of people, and by proxy that has sort of rubbed off on me. But it's not necessarily a mandate from the masses, so I don't know. We'll see.
It means a lot to everybody outside of the business, so much that it's come to mean more to us. It's sort of an insider music thing, not really a mandate of the people. But it's nice to be in there with all of my heroes.
Debbie was accused of being too overtly sexual and now the standards are different. Times have changed.
We didn't want a hybrid of the old stuff. The old records were very dense musically. Now there's a trend towards minimalist sound. That's the main thing.
We're a pop art band. Not a pop band.
In the early days, I often felt that I was taking a math test when we were playing. It was a profound feeling of having to prove myself.
We tap into a lot of things from musical history when making the songs.
CS: I always say there's a tribal element in a rock concert. There's a real back-and-forth thing that goes on between the audience and the performers.
The vagaries of the industry and show business itself would not lead one to conclude a lengthy career - because things change. Popularities come and go. The tragedy of it is that somebody like Robin Williams should suffer from that, and be driven to commit suicide. If ever there was an untimely, unfair death, it was him.
A thing we always talk about in today's culture is that nobody is an outsider - everybody's kind of a hipster on the inside.
We exploded after a while and made a lot of horrendously stupid mistakes.