How great it must be to have international stardom! To have fans all round the world who want to see, hear and touch you. In 1978, Blondie had just released the single ‘Denis’ and were doing the promotional rounds.
You might think that endless interviews and appearances would be dull and annoying, with the same questions over and over again. Not a lot of fun if you’re shy, as Debbie Harry has claimed to be. But that’s without the difficulty imposed by having interviewers and audiences whose English is not so good.
In this tricky and, for me toe-curling, Japanese encounter, the uniformed schoolgirls who have obviously been drafted in at the last minute seem to appreciate the opportunity to see the band standing awkwardly, and to occasionally whoop and clap, but it really looks like nobody has a clue what’s going on. ‘Japanese fans are great’, ‘We like Japan’, ‘We think we’re leaving tomorrow morning around 11’, ‘Japanese girls very good’.
And then there’s that question that you never seem to get nowadays; ‘Do you have a message for your fans?’ ‘Thank you to the fans, we love you’….. – oh, and ‘learn how to pogo.’