Parallel Lines Blondie Chrysalis
In 1978, producer extraordinaire Michael Chapman, a one-man hit factory for 1970s rock and pop groups, got a call from Terry Ellis, the co-founder of Chrysalis Music, asking him to help put New Wave band Blondie at the top of the charts. The group, fronted by blonde stunner Debbie Harry, were considered underground at the time, with just two albums to their name: 1976's self-titled debut and 1978's Plastic Letters.
Ellis gave Chapman six months to knock the band into shape. It would be a challenge. The band - singer Harry, drummer Clem Burke, keyboardist Jimmy Destri, bass-player Nigel Harrison, and guitarists Frank Infante and Chris Stein - didn't really like each other.
'They were really, really juvenile in their approach to life - a classic New York underground rock band - and they didn't give a f*** about anything,' Chapman told Sound on Sound magazine in 2008. 'They just wanted to have fun and didn't want to work too hard getting it.'
Chapman loved Blondie's first two albums and the group's quirky sense of humour, but thought they were 'musically the worst band I ever worked with'.
Despite the obstacles, Chapman told the group bluntly that he would make them a hit record. 'If you're going to be in the music business, you've got to make hit records,' he said. 'If you can't make hit records, you should f*** off and go chop meat somewhere.'