Blondie talk ahead of their appearance at Camp Bestival

Heavens above, the woman wasn’t even wearing a bra.

To an 11-year-old girl trying to find her way in the world, Debbie Harry singing Heart of Glass on Top of the Pops in 1979 represented a seismic shift in the way female pop stars could be viewed.

The girls from Abba, bless them, were lovely but they cranked out the hits with the functionality of Swedish flat-pack furniture. Olivia Newton-John in Grease was cartoon-like. Elsewhere, a reliance on cheesecloth, long skirts and soppy songs about love and flowers just wasn’t hip.

But Debbie Harry was something different, something dangerous and cool and the Blondie album Parallel Lines seemed to be on continual loop throughout the late 1970s. Poster girl for a generation, age hasn’t withered her power or iconic status since and such is her trans-generational power that my 12-year-old daughter readily describes her as ‘awesome’.

Now, three-plus decades later and with my awe still firmly in place, I am on the phone to her.

Her voice across the line gives me a strange sensation. But then, if you remember singing Hangin’ on the Telephone into your hairbrush in front of a full-length mirror in the privacy of your bedroom at the age of 11, that’s going to happen.

I had heard tales of truculence and monosyllabic answers but my Debbie Harry, now aged 65, was warm, open and happy to chat about the forthcoming Blondie album Panic of Girls and her visit to Dorset to headline Friday night at Camp Bestival in July.

“We still get such a buzz playing the old songs, but we like to spice them up a bit which I think helps,” she said, her voice exactly as you would imagine – slightly cracked, husky and smoky, testament to a life lived at the fast edge of the rock scene.

“We like to change things from night to night, change the arrangements so they feel a bit different. We merge them into other songs and mess them up a bit.

“The reception we get from the audiences to the songs they love is completely wonderful and makes it all worthwhile.

“I don’t know what the magic is with the old songs, but people can make the decision of what they want to hear and there is so much music available these days. It is a tremendous advantage because it means you can discover who you are, musically, in your own way.”

Guitarist Chris Stein founded Blondie with Harry and drummer Clem Burke. He has been by her side throughout, as a lover, friend, song-writer and touchstone and he too approves of the 21st century’s improved access to music, both as a listener and a performer “I like the way CDs sound and I like the visual applications of music,” he said.

“But I do miss the big old LP covers and the feeling of leaving a shop with your big square record in a plastic bag.

“I think with the music business now, everyone is working out how it functions in this day and age and where the music industry is going to go. Record companies, studios and stores are going down and there is a sense that everyone is feeling their way.

“As a performer, the process hasn’t changed much, although the technology is easier and with the Internet, you feel you have to produce more music. But it is also easier to make music. It used to cost £50,000 to go into a studio, now you can make music at home for the price of a computer.”

Panic of Girls is out this week. It sounds like ‘classic Blondie’, is the band’s first release for eight years and appeared first, last Monday, in a special collectors’ edition of Classic Rock magazine. The CD is scheduled to go on more general release in July. The name is borrowed from a line in the song The End The End, which appears on the album.

“We were motivated to write the song by manic street preachers,” Debbie chuckled, “you know, the ones who make predictions of doom about ‘the rapture’ that always fall apart on the day. It’s about the panic of girls at that time and how the truth changes through time.”

Somehow you can’t imagine Debbie being the kind of girl to ever get into a panic – which is just as well when you look back at Blondie’s chequered career.

They were pioneers of the American New Wave scene in the mid-1970s, endured a hard apprenticeship which led to a blast of glory and then a slow slide into quietness, solo work and ill-health.

But where other bands might – and have – folded under the pressure, Debbie Harry, Chris Stein and drummer Clem Burke kept it together and have emerged triumphant.

“We came to the conclusion that this is what’s most important to us, separately and as a band,” said Debbie.

“The things that work for you when you are working together build up and are so much more valuable. With maturity you can appreciate these things more.

“I feel kind of bad that other people have not been able to resolve their differences and there are a lot of really good musical relationships that have not been able to be salvaged.”

Chris, now aged 62, added: “I think we are taking on the role of elder statesmen of rock. Do I mind the title? It’s what we’ve been given, so what are you going to do?

“I think our age is our final hurdle, the final challenge and today the most popular music stuff put out is for the kids. I remember when I was in my 20s there wasn’t the age span of performers there is now. There weren’t older people performing apart from the blues guys who were my heroes, people like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf.

“But now you have people like Mick (Jagger) and Keith (Richards) and they are still working, so there is a big age span in the business.”

Debbie certainly seems undaunted by her seventh decade.

“You just have to look after yourself,” she said.

“You go through stages in your life and I think I am more appreciative of what I do now than what I did back then.

“But I still like to go out dancing. I get out and have a great time – you have to, to stay alive.

“And there’s still plenty of juice in the old bones yet.”

• For further details of Camp Bestival, go to Campbestival.net