| Released | 28 September 1979 |
|---|---|
| Label | Chrysalis Records |
| Genre | New wave, pop rock |
| Duration | 43:50 |
‘Blondie are a household name,’ the insert notes of my cassette copy of Eat to the Beat proclaim.[1] ‘Platinum albums and a series of smash singles have elevated this six piece New York outfit to previously undreamt of heights in three short years.’
The band's second imperial phase album was a must-have purchase for me in autumn 1979 to the extent that I bought it before it had spawned the quality assurance of its clutch of ‘smash singles’ — only its lead single, Dreaming, was out when I got the tape.
I remember listening to a BBC Radio 1 preview of the album in the lean-to at the bungalow of my great-aunt — a fearsomely Dickensian figure whom the staff at the hospital where she spent her final days nicknamed ‘The Duchess’.
As I listened, the redoubtable woman bustled into the compact ‘conservatory’ and aggressively lowered the volume on the ‘wireless’.
A quirk of my always below-average hearing is that I can hear higher-frequency sounds better than others. When the future faux dowager left me with the barely audible radio, I changed its treble setting to accommodate my hearing range.
This provoked another lean-to liaison with my irate great-aunt, who accused me of undoing her recent noise-abatement activity.
I promised her truthfully that I hadn't touched the volume control, and she retreated sceptically into the bungalow while I resumed my tinny first listen to Eat to the Beat.
Early ownership of the album allowed speculation on its prospective hits.
I was keen on the first side concluding Accidents Never Happen and on Side Two's second track, Slow Motion.
In this, I proved less prescient than my fellow Blondie fan friend, who spotted Atomic as the standout track on first hearing the album.
It was an astute selection, well ahead of Atomic's eventual UK single release in February 1980. It became Blondie's third UK number one.
I like Atomic's memorable riff but still favour Slow Motion's subtler charms.
My liking for the album tracks reflects my feeling that they are of a more consistent quality with the singles than those on Parallel Lines, where the chart hits are standouts.
Side Two has the more striking sequencing, with the tracks staying mid-tempo from Die Young Stay Pretty through Slow Motion to Atomic. The side then soothes with the lullaby Sound-A-Sleep, before Victor chimes in with a rude awakening that brings Blondie back to its punky roots. The record ends with another personal favourite, Living in the Real World, a second burst of energy with a lyric about vanishing beneath a glamorous facade.
The cassette has the French version of Sunday Girl as a bonus track — ‘Hey, j'ai vu ton mec avec une autre fille…’ This didn't help much with my CSE French, partly because the lyrics render the titular sabbatical female in English, which Harry keeps Francophonic with a heavy accent. I guess ‘Dimanche Fille’ just doesn't scan…
On the origins of the band's name, Harry recalls:
“Blondie” — well, I had been bleaching my hair again and when I walked down the street the construction guys and truck drivers would yell, “Hey, Blondie!” There was a famous comic strip character from the thirties named Blondie, a flapper — the dumb blonde who turns out to be smarter than the rest of them. Okay, I could play with that role onstage, it was a good start.[2]
Playing that role meant Harry became synonymous with the band name — she was ‘Blondie’ — compelling its fan club to issue merchandise insisting that ‘Blondie is a group!’
The album's cover does little to dispel the misapprehension. Of the band's initial half-dozen albums, it is alone in not featuring the entire lineup on the front cover, splitting it instead between front and back.
Harry is front and centre with guitarists Chris Stein and Frank Infante to her left and right. Bassist Nigel Harrison, keyboardist Jimmy Destri, and drummer Clem Burke are consigned to the back cover.
Norman Seeff's monochrome band portraits have a stylish 1950s Hollywood quality, but the artwork lacks Parallel Lines' sharp and stark branding.
I've formed the retrospective theory that 1979 was an annus mirabilis for personal favourite album releases — probably because I was developing my musical taste then. I've also encountered some of the records from that year in arrears, but Eat to the Beat was a highlight of that autumn and remains a regular spin or stream.
Notes and references