With its seductive snarl and hooky riff, One Way Or Another provided a bridge between Blondie’s grimy, CBGB past and glossy commercial future. It is in many ways the quintessential moment from the ultimate new wave album, 1978’s Parallel Lines, which yielded six singles in the US and UK and sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.

Those statistics would have been inconceivable just two years earlier. Blondie were the least likely candidates for global fame to emerge out of New York’s seedy punk milieu. Ramones, Television and Talking Heads were all marked out for critical, if not commercial, success. Blondie, by contrast, were regarded as a joke, with their attempts to bring girl- group sass to garage rock.

And then in 1977 their single Rip Her To Shreds, from their self-titled debut album, became a Top 5 hit in Australia. Suddenly it didn’t seem ludicrous at all that this platinum-blonde sexpot backed by four identikit, dark-haired male musicians should become a mainstream staple. And by 1978 that’s exactly what happened: Denis, (I’m Always Touched By Your) Presence Dear and Picture This reached numbers 2, 10 and 12 respectively in the UK chart.

But the group still hadn’t cracked the US market. Enter Mike Chapman, the bubble-glam producer for The Sweet, Suzi Quatro and Mud, among others, who was brought in to finish the job that Richard Gottehrer, producer of Blondie’s previous album, Plastic Letters, had started: to make them worldwide stars.

“I don’t know if it was that deliberate,” the band’s guitarist and main songwriter, Chris Stein, considers, “but certainly Mike Chapman had been involved in a lot of number one records.”

Stein agrees that Chapman gave Blondie an essential polish, notably on One Way Or Another: “It definitely connects punk and pop, especially in the vocals and the raw guitars. It’s got the snarl of punk and the glossiness of pop.”

One Way Or Another was recorded between June and July 1978 at the Record Plant studio in New York. It packed a lot into its three-and-a-half minutes: a snappy guitar riff, keyboards, bass and drums that achieved the perfect blend of tunefulness and menace, some swirling organ, a police siren sound, and a coda that nodded to the band’s 60s garage roots.

Then there was Debbie Harry’s voice. It started off gently, carrying just enough icy disdain. Soon, though, louche irascibility set in for the ‘get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya’ hook, which swiftly turned into ‘meet ya, meet ya, meet ya, meet ya’. At this point, it became unclear who Harry was playing in this song about a stalker: the protagonist or the prey.

“He was so wild, I had to move out of New Jersey,” she has said of her ex-boyfriend who worked all day in a chemical plant and drank all night, at which point he would “start after me”, calling her on the hour, every hour, and then hanging around outside her door.

“The girl in that song is certainly not a victim,” says Stein. “The protagonist is a self-empowered figure.”

The lyrics to One Way Or Another were written by Harry, while the co-writing credit went to the British-born Nigel Harrison, who had joined the band as bassist after Plastic Letters. The basic musical structure was Harrison’s, but the details and flourishes could have come from any of the musicians in the band. “Everybody played their part, and the songs were shaped in the studio,” says Stein.

Those studio sessions were fraught. Chapman, an Australian living in LA, found his first meeting with Blondie, at the Gramercy Park Hotel, decidedly “unnerving”, perhaps because they sensed that he had been brought in to clean up their act – or rather hone it until they became a well-oiled chart machine. “They were all over the place, musically,” he said. “The group didn’t know what hit them.”

Chapman’s memory is of the “dark, silent and serious” Harry. As for the others, there was no little antagonism when they realised how hard he was going to work them to turn their demos – “embryos of a musical masterpiece”, as the producer put it – into finished works of pop art.

“He [Chapman] was a hard taskmaster,” Stein says with a laugh. “He would go over and over a part until we got the right version. That’s something we hadn’t been familiar with prior to working with him. By the time we got to [1979’s] Eat To The Beat it was much more loose. That was like ‘school’s out’ compared to Parallel Lines.”

Stein got off lightly – during one session Chapman claims to have “rode [Harrison] so hard he threatened to take me apart piece by piece if I didn’t back off. No one,” he adds, “was happy with my technique.”

It worked, though. One Way Or Another, although never released as a single in the UK, became such a favourite with audiences it felt as though it had been. In the US it reached No.24. It presented a new type of female role model: the intimidatingly glamorous, every bit as tough as Poly Styrene or Siouxsie Sioux, but with added boho, SoHo chic, as though Patti Smith had been remade/remodelled by Warhol.

Surprisingly, for all its qualities, Stein didn’t think One Way Or Another would make a good single, let alone a hit. “You’re never 100 per cent sure,” he says.

With a little help from One Way Or Another and its parent album, Blondie became one of the biggest bands of the era. They also invented a new paradigm: catchy, danceable new wave, the sort that has been unavoidable these past few years.

Asked whether he’s amazed at their achievement, Stein’s wry reply is as pure New York cool as the song itself. “Somewhat,” he says, “yeah.”

This feature originally appeared in Classic Rock 160, published in June 2011.

It’s hard to believe, but had his life not been cut so tragically short, AC/DC’s Bon Scott would be turning 80 years old this month. In an alternate universe, is he still fronting AC/DC with his pirate’s smile and larger-than-life stage presence?

AC/DC are still out on the road, Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney are both older, and they’re both still out there doing it, so I think it stands to reason that Bon probably would be too. Sadly, though, our universe had other plans, and we lost Bon back in 1980, but his legacy remains. And I wager it always will.

This issue, Kurt Squiers, AC/DC expert and creator and host of the Beyond The Thunder podcast, remembers the glorious enigma and contradiction that was Ronald Belford “Bon” Scott in the company of those who knew him, admired him, or spent time with him.

This issue we also talk to Rob Halford about his songwriting and his life in Judas Priest; venture back to the 80s to look at the making of Ozzy’s The Ultimate Sin album; collar Alice Cooper and Joe Perry to talk up their forthcoming Hollywood Vampires tour; go to Canada with The Sheepdogs; chat to Ronnie Wood about the new Rolling Stones album and so much more.

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Features

Bon Scott At 80
A Celebration AC/DC’s former frontman, rock’s most beloved rogue remains impossible to define but easy to admire.

Ozzy Osbourne
Forty years after the release of The Ultimate Sin, we tell the story of how a fragile but defiant Ozzy Osbourne conquered personal demons to eclipse Black Sabbath.

Frankie Miller
When he and his band played a gig to a captive audience at San Quentin prison in 1975, things could have turned nasty.

The Sheepdogs
In Canada’s modern-day rock’n’rollers we found the beating heart of a band who wield retro tastes like superpowers.

Judas Priest
Rob Halford opens up about the classic tracks, the hard times and the no-compromise that forged the metal gods’ identity.

Regulars

The Dirt
‘Whispering’ Bob Harris steps down; Tony Iommi and Maiden manager Rod Smallwood in King’s birthday honours list; concert, exhibition and tribute album to mark Syd Barrett’s 80th. Welcome back CJ Wildheart and The Menzingers. Say hello to Frenzee and The Gnomes. Say goodbye to Dave Greenslade, Walter Parazaider and Sonny Rollins.

The Stories Behind The Songs: B-52s
How Rock Lobster, kooky song about undersea life, became a new-wave dance classic.

Q&A: Ronnie Wood
The Rolling Stones guitarist and own band leader on the new Stones album, its guest appearances, a new Faces album, Einstein and more.

The Hot List
We look at some of the essential new tracks you need to hear and the artists to have on your radar. This month they include These Wicked Rivers, Dead Pioneers, Split Dogs, AA Williams, Public Opinion, John R Miller, Getdown Services and more.

Reviews
New albums from Foreigner, Muse, Robyn Hitchcock, Big Country Redux, Fantastic Negrito, Armored Saint, King Crimson, Koyo Bloom, Bywater Call and more. Reissues from Thin Lizzy, Small Faces, Sendelica, Hawkwind, My Chemical Romance, Motörhead, Frank Zappa, Clutch, Status Quo, Supertramp and more. DVDs, films and books on Clem Burke, Def Leppard, David Bowie, Paul Di’Anno, Bruce Springsteen, Sex Pistols and more. Live reviews of Linkin Park, Dogstar, Skindred, Guns N’ Roses, Limp Bizkit, B-52s, Jason Isbell, Jon Spencer.

Buyer’s Guide: Levellers
The recorded manifesto of the politically charged folk-punk-rock survivors are still casually ignoring musical trends.

Lives
We preview tours by Saxon, Hollywood Vampires and Tuk Smith. Plus gig listings – who’s playing where and when.

The Soundtrack Of My Life: Bruce Watson
The Big Country Redux guitarist picks his records, artists and gigs of lasting significance.

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