Blondie – X Offender

6th May 2022 · 1970s, 1976, Music, Punk

Blondie made their debut in June 1976 with X Offender, making them one of the first ‘punk’ bands to release a single.

A few years ago I was sitting in a local cafe in Stoke Newington, drinking a coffee, when a guy around my age asked if he could sit at my table.

We got chatting, as you do in a local cafe, and the talk turned to what we did for a living. His name was Gary – Gary Lachman – and it turned out he wrote for British newspapers, like me.

Unlike me, he wrote mostly about mysticism and occultism.

When I looked him up later, I learned he was the author of A Secret History of Consciousness, “a study of non-reductive, non-materialist accounts of consciousness, with detailed discussions of Owen Barfield, Julian Jaynes, Jean Gebser, Jurij Moskvitin, hypnagogia, and related themes.”

And no, I have no idea what any of that means.

After a while, our talk turned to music. “I used to be in a band when I lived in New York in the 1970s,” he replied. “But they weren’t very successful when I was there.”

I asked whether I might know them. It turned out I did.

It also turned out he wrote the lyrics for this, their very first single (though the singer subsequently rewrote them, changing the song from being about an 18-year-old boy having sex with an underage girl to one about a female sex worker taking a fancy to the cop who arrests her).

It sounds like a supercharged Sixties girl-group song, propelled by a cheesy Farfisa organ, punctuated by a twangy guitar solo, and illuminated by the presence of the girl singer. And, obviously, the dexterity of my new friend, the bass guitarist.

It wasn’t a hit, and Gary (who went by Gary Valentine back then) left the group in 1977. But he left them this song, along with another one called (I’m Always Touched By Your) Presence Dear.