Blondie Battle Continues

07/29/1998 8:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(7/29/98, 6 p.m. PDT) - The members of Blondie and their handlers are apparently unfazed by the threatened legal action by former Blondie members Nigel Harrison and Frank Infante (myLAUNCH, 7/27).

Blondie members Deborah Harry, Chris Stein, Clem Burke and Jimmy Destri say that they have yet to be served with the lawsuit. They also "deny any claim of wrongdoing against Harrison and Infante and are confident that they are fully entitled to proceed with their current plans, including the use of the name 'Blondie.'"

This news comes courtesy of a statement released by the Left Bank Organization, which operates Beyond Records, the new label set to release the Blondie reunion album, No Exit, in February.

The statement from the Left Bank Organization adds that the current members of Blondie believe the suit was "brought only to unfairly capitalize upon the current band's anticipated success." It also points out that "Harry, Stein, Burke and Destri are all original founding members of Blondie, while Harrison and Infante are not."

The statement, however, fails to mention that bassist Gary Valentine was also an original member of the band, and that Harrison and Infante were members of the band during its most successful period--the late '70s and early '80s--when the band racked up platinum sales with the Parallel Lines, Eat To The Beat and Autoamerican albums.

Harrison and Infante claim that Harry and the three other original members of the band have misappropriated funds "continuously for the past six years," the New York Post reported. Blondie broke up the first time in 1982, but according to the Post, all of the members of the band remained financial partners. Infante and Harrison are claiming that because of the ongoing financial agreement, Blondie can't reform without them.