"H.R. Giger: Debbie Harry Metamorphosis" Slipcased Signed Limited Edition No. 105 of only 150 [Sealed]

Personally signed by Debbie Harry and Chris Stein. Debbie Harry is the singer, songwriter and actress, best known as the lead vocalist of the band Blondie.

Limited to only 150 signed & numbered units worldwide. Presented in an exclusive slipcase. 

Titan Books April 28th 2023. Chris Stein, Debbie Harry, H.R. Giger "Metamorphosis: Creating the Visual Concept for KooKoo". Deluxe Slipcased Signed Limited Edition of only 150. Personally signed by Debbie Harry and Chris Stein on an exclusively designed tip-in sheet. Presented in an exclusive slipcase. Limited Edition. Very Fine. Sealed in the original publisher packaging without any flaws.

This is number 105 of 150. 

Featuring variant cover art with image of Debbie Harry taken from the KooKoo album cover.

A beautiful coffee table signed limited edition art book chronicling the extraordinary collaboration between Debbie Harry and H.R. Giger for Harry's 1981 solo album KooKoo.

This edition is now OUT OF PRINT.

• PAPER STOCK & WEIGHT: 140gsm Chinese Chen ming art matt art
• SPECIAL FINISHES: Interiors spot gloss machine varnish throughout
• BINDING: Sewn
• DUSTJACKET: Exclusive jacket, variant from standard edition with image of Debbie Harry taken from the KooKoo album cover on front and Giger masks on the back
• SLIPCASE SPECIFICATION: Printed 4-colour on 157gsm glossy art with matt lamination and spot UV varnish over 3mm boards
• TIP-IN SHEET: 120gsm Zen with images of contact sheets of photography from the book
• SIGNED: Signed bound-in tip- in sheet signed by Chris Stein and Debbie Harry
• NUMBERED: 1 to 150
• LIMITED TO: Limited to 150 copies

Description

When the visual artist H.R. Giger, best known for his biomechanical creature and set design for seminal 1979 sci-fi-horror film Alien, encountered Debbie Harry, the punk icon and lead singer of globally successful New Wave band Blondie, the results were sublime. The artwork for Harry’s 1981 debut solo KooKoo album cover was deemed so frightening it was originally banned on the London Underground. The fantastical videos for two of the tracks on the album, ‘Backfired’ and ‘Now I Know you Know,’ featured Giger himself piercing an Egyptian sarcophagus and a newly brunette Harry reimagined as a xenomorphic Giger creature.

With photographs and words by Chris Stein, Harry’s long-term collaborator, artefacts and sketches from the Giger archive, and an introduction by Debbie Harry, this is an essential behind-the-scenes insight into the processes of an incredible creative partnership.

Debbie Harry

The name Debbie Harry evokes many images: seminal rock-n-roll figure, complex songstress, incandescent front woman, actor and fashion icon. Debbie’s chart-topping success, fearless spirit and rare longevity - including more than 50 million albums sold worldwide and acclaimed solo projects - have cemented her as a vibrant global force and a shaper of pop culture.

With Blondie, undeniably one of the most trailblazing and influential bands of our time, Debbie and co-founder Chris Stein brought the worlds of rock, punk, disco and Reggae together with “Heart of Glass” and “Call Me” and broke ground by combining hip-hop and pop on “Rapture.” Their decades-long successes led to an induction into the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame for the band in 2006. As a solo artist, Nile Rodgers & Bernard Edwards co-produced her first release Koo Koo in 1981 and she continued to defy expectations with such genre-busting efforts as “French Kissing in the U.S.A.,” “Rush Rush,” “Rain,” and “The Jam Was Moving.” Debbie has also had a long running collaboration with the critically acclaimed American jazz group, The Jazz Passengers, stalwarts of New York’s free-jazz scene. Her spectacular voice drips with a sophisticated elegance rarely heard in pop music as she continues to infuse her work with an exquisite artistic sensibility.

Outside of music, Debbie has also engaged in a successful acting career with over 30 film and television roles to her credit (including Videodrome, Hairspray, and Heavy to name a few). She has become and still remains a true national treasure, one whose influence continues to impact the worlds of music, fashion and art.

More recently, in October of 2019, Debbie became a best selling author with the release of her memoir, FACE IT. In an arresting mix of visceral storytelling and stunning visuals including never-before-seen photographs, bespoke illustrations and fan art installations, FACE IT upended the standard musical memoir while delivering a truly intimate portrait of an iconoclast. With all the grit, grime and glory recounted in intimate detail, FACE IT recreated the downtown scene of 1970s New York City, where Blondie played alongside The Ramones, Television, Talking Heads, Iggy Pop and David Bowie. Following her path from glorious commercial success to heroin addiction, the near-death of partner Chris Stein, a heart-wrenching bankruptcy and Blondie’s break up as a band, to her multifaceted acting career, a stunning solo career and the triumphant return of the band, FACE IT is a cinematic story of a woman who made her own path, and set the standard for a generation of artists who followed in her footsteps.

From an irreverent Lower East Side punk goddess to a bona fide international ambassador of New York cool, Debbie Harry will forever be synonymous with that punk spirit that lives somewhere in all of us.
Based in New York.

Wikipedia entry:

Deborah Ann Harry (born Angela Trimble; July 1, 1945) is an American singer, songwriter and actress, best known as the lead vocalist of the band Blondie. Four of her songs with the band reached No. 1 on the US charts between 1979 and 1981.

Born in Miami, Florida, Harry was adopted as an infant and raised in Hawthorne, New Jersey. After attending college, she worked various jobs—as a dancer, a Playboy Bunny and a secretary (including at the BBC in New York)—before her breakthrough in the music industry. Harry co-formed Blondie in 1974 in New York City. The band released its eponymous debut album in 1976, and released a further three albums between then and 1979, including Parallel Lines, which spawned six singles, including "Heart of Glass". Their fifth album, Autoamerican (1980), afforded Harry and the band further attention, spawning such hits as a cover of "The Tide Is High", and "Rapture", the latter of which is considered the first rap song to chart at number one in the United States.

Harry released her debut solo album, KooKoo, in 1981. During a Blondie hiatus, she embarked on an acting career, appearing in lead roles in the neo-noir Union City (1980) and in David Cronenberg's body horror film Videodrome (1983). She released her second solo album, 1986's Rockbird, and starred in John Waters's cult dance film Hairspray (1988). Harry went on to release two more solo albums between then and 1993, after which she returned to film with roles in a John Carpenter-directed segment of the horror film Body Bags (1993), and in the drama Heavy (1995).

Blondie reunited in the late 1990s, releasing No Exit (1999), followed by The Curse of Blondie (2003). Harry continued to appear in independent films throughout the 2000s, including Deuces Wild (2002), My Life Without Me (2003) and Elegy (2008). With Blondie, she released the group's ninth studio album, Panic of Girls, in 2011, followed by Ghosts of Download (2014). The band's eleventh studio album, 2017's Pollinator, charted at number 4 in the United Kingdom.

H.R. Giger

H. R. Giger is recognized as one of the world’s foremost artists of Fantastic Realism. Born in 1940 to a chemist’s family in Chur, Switzerland, he moved in 1962 to Zurich, where he studied architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts. By 1964 he was producing his first artworks, mostly ink drawings and oil paintings, resulting in his first solo exhibition in 1966, followed by the publication and world-wide distribution of his first poster edition in 1969. Shortly after, he discovered the airbrush and, along with it, his own unique freehand painting style, leading to the creation of many of his most well known works, the surrealistic Biomechanical dreamscapes, which formed the cornerstone of his fame. To date, more than 20 books have been published about Giger’s art.

Blondie

Blondie is an American rock band co-founded by singer Debbie Harry and guitarist Chris Stein. The band was a pioneer in the American new wave scene of the mid-1970s in New York. Their first two albums contained strong elements of punk and new wave, and although highly successful in the UK and Australia, Blondie was regarded as an underground band in the US until the release of Parallel Lines in 1978. Over the next four years, the band released several hit singles including "One Way or Another", "Heart of Glass," "Call Me," "Atomic," "The Tide Is High," and "Rapture". The band became noted for its eclectic mix of musical styles, also incorporating elements of disco, pop, reggae, and early rap music.

Blondie disbanded after the release of their sixth studio album, The Hunter, in 1982. Harry continued to pursue a solo career with varied results after taking a few years off to care for partner Stein, who was diagnosed with pemphigus, a rare autoimmune disease of the skin. The band re-formed in 1997, achieving renewed success and their sixth number one single in the UK with "Maria" in 1999, exactly 20 years after their first UK No. 1 single ("Heart of Glass").

The group toured and performed throughout the world during the following years, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. Blondie has sold around 40 million records worldwide and are still active. The band's eleventh studio album, Pollinator, was released on May 5, 2017.

Chris Stein

Chris Stein is the co-founder, songwriter and guitarist of the iconic punk band and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Blondie, whose recent studio album, ‘Pollinator’, was named one of Rolling Stone’s 20 Best Pop Albums of 2017. Beyond his era-defining music with Blondie, Stein has collaborated with a host of artists over the years, including Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, William Burroughs, Devo, Glenn O’Brien, and Shepard Fairey. Chris’ photographic work has been featured in the press and in galleries around the world, most prominently in a 2017 exhibition at London’s prestigious Somerset House that drew a reported 60,000 visitors.

His first book of photography and essays, 2016’s Negative: Me, Blondie, and the Advent of Punk (Rizzoli) was hailed by Good Reads as “a must-have celebration of the new-wave and punk scene, whose influence on music and fashion is just as relevant today as it was four decades ago.” With is second book Point of View: Me, New York City and the Punk Scene (Rizzoli), Stein expands upon that highly praised collection, which offered a unique, behind-the-scenes look at Blondie and its milieu. This time Stein recalls in photographs and words the rough-edged New York City streets he came of age in as an artist in the late sixties and seventies. Stein documents, most often in evocative black and white, an urban landscape filled with detritus yet teeming with life, from the avenues of midtown to the boardwalks of Coney Island. He offers a local’s view of the far-from-gentrified East Village neighborhood where he lived, and where the punk movement emerged. And he shares previously unpublished images of such iconic figures of the era as Debbie Harry, his musical partner in Blondie; Andy Warhol; Iggy Pop; David Bowie; and the Ramones.

The New York Times notes “POINT OF VIEW: Me, New York City, and the Punk Scene is a fascinating document, not only of the punk scene of the early and middle 1970s but more generally of New York City in its years of chaos, decay and creative energy.” Based in New York.