H.R. Giger: Debbie Harry Metamorphosis: Creating the Visual Concept for KooKoo

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It’s a unique chronicle of a unique event and a glimpse into the creativity of two icons of the 1970s and 1980s. Giger had been the set designer on the film, creating a series of erotic and symbolic images that were at once both terrifying and strangely beautiful. One of my fave music acts is Debbie Harry/Blondie and I really love Debbie's solo album Koo Koo which Giger also was involved with visually, so this book was a must for me with a load of rare and previously unseen photos and background story of Debbie's look while making this great album.

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 book begins with pictures from the trio’s first meeting in New York – the Alien exhibition and socialising afterwards. 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. That comes across clearly in Debbie Harry’s memoir Face It, as does her admiration for Chris Stein’s parallel career as a photographer.

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.

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. Harry and her partner/bandmate, Chris Stein, had met Giger in 1980 at a show in New York of his paintings. And he shares previously unpublished images of such iconic figures of the era as Debbie Harry, his musical partner in Blondie; Andy Warhol; Iggy Pop; David Bowie; and the Ramones.Undoubtedly, the 1981 image would go on to play its hand in influencing Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, its race of antagonistic Cenobites, and particularly their leader, Pinhead. KooKoo was produced by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards of Chic and marked Harry’s first foray into the music industry without the rest of Blondie. Titan Books will use the information you provide on this form to be in touch with you and to provide updates and marketing. Harry’s trademark blonde hair is turned black, denoting the dark aesthetic turn of their concept, and she is dressed in a half-human, half-machine bodysuit.