DH --- article in UK telegraph newspaper heralding Ms Harry as the Queen of all CARS (!?) Her legend goes on... while Madonnas slides turd like..further down the pan...........read on....
Car culture: A feast fit for the man from Mars
(Filed: 05/04/2003)
The Subaru Forester might be an ugly beast that breaks all the rules, but it is also among the best cars in the world, says Stephen Bayley
Blondie's great album, Autoamerican, was recorded at Hollywood's United Western Studios in 1980. One particular track deserves at least two footnotes in the history of popular culture: Rapture (track two, side two) was the first time, at least so far as I am aware, that ghetto rap was assimilated into the mainstream of shiny, professionalised white pop rock.
Queen of pop: Debbie Harry on The Old Grey Whistle Test
More interestingly, the brilliant but possibly drug-addled Deborah Harry/Chris Stein lyrics introduce a singular Japanese car into popular iconography. Ms Harry is rapping away that a man from Mars has just eaten your head when she continues:
"And then you're in the man from Mars,
You go out at night
eatin' cars,
You eat Cadillacs,
Lincolns too,
Mercurys and Subarus..."
This interesting reference is significant in the history of Subaru's acceptance into consumer consciousness. What Ms Harry did for rap, musicologically speaking, she also did for Subaru of America Inc, commercially. With Blondie, Subaru became part of the American landscape. This was a project that the most idiosyncratic of Japanese companies (Fuji Heavy Industries is majority shareholder) had been working on for some time, interestingly aided by an unusual business practice.
At the time Blondie were recording Autoamerican, Subaru was the only publicly quoted car company trading in the United States without any manufacturing activity there. Inevitably, this had a dramatic effect on the balance sheet: economically speaking, Subaru of America was exceptionally liquid, a happy position made even more delightful because the company had only to finance its inventory while in transit from Japan, a journey customarily between 10 and 30 days. To say this financial strength contributed to the bravery, even recklessness, of Subaru's product mix would be tendentious. What is certain is that Subarus are seriously strange products. For instance, only half the Debbie Harry era Subarus were four-wheel drive (an amazing figure in those days), but now they all are. It's a sector that Subaru dominates across the world..... (and so it goes
www.telegraph.co.uk)