DROP DEAD CITY: The Dolls, Blondie and the Birth of Punk

In Conversation with Gary Lachman, Nina Antonia and Travis Elborough

The Century Club, Shaftesbury Avenue, London

July 4^th 2023

Torrential rain was not the best backdrop to trying to find an anonymous Soho doorway but once inside the fourth floor of London’s Century Club turned out to be an excellent space in which to eavesdrop on a three-way conversion between Nina, Travis and Gary – who you might know better as Gary Valentine, bass player with Blondie up until 1977. Now based in London, these days Gary is a writer specialising in consciousness, the esoteric and the occult. Nina shares many of these interests but the discussion tonight was about music – specifically about the New York scene in the mid-1970s.  Gary lived there as a budding musician, whilst Nina chronicled the rise and fall of the New York Dolls and their guitarist Johnny Thunders, the subject of her most recent book, In Cold Blood. Travis did well to keep the conversation flowing and we got some excellent anecdotes – who knew that Kung-Fu Girls on the first Blondie LP was written for Thunders? Nina hung around after the event to sign copies of her book  (Gary had been too modest to bring his book New York Rocker) and I learnt that guitarist Neal Whitmore and ex-Thunders drummer Chris Musto will be setting some of Nina’s poems to music. A very rewarding couple of hours.