When Blondie recorded their fifth album Autoamerican in 1980, the band was continuing to experiment with sound, even tipping their hat to country, closing Side A with the twangier “Go Through It.”
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Initially tracked during the Autoamerican sessions, the band’s original demo for “Go Through It” was less country and more pop-punk and pulled from a verse in the song—He delivers, he’s a roadsider / He gets no road from a back seat driver / Away we go, yes or no? / I love you honey, gimme a beer—and the initial pop-culture concept of the album as its title.
An earlier incarnation of “Go Through It,” the original demo of “I Love You Honey, Give Me a Beer” is one of the rarities on the forthcoming box set Blondie: Against The Odds 1974-1982 (UMe, The Numero Group), out Aug. 26.
“I Love You Honey, Give Me a Beer” appears on one of Against The Odds‘ bonus records of rarities and was named after the intended title of the album: Coca-Cola. The initial concept of the album centered on themes of American pop culture and Americana.
Founding member and guitarist Chris Stein, who co-wrote the track with singer Debbie Harry, wanted to use the Coco-Cola logo as the album cover art, which was later replaced by the iconic and Stein’s original idea was to adorn the cover with a Coca-Cola logo and nothing else, but when the beverage company declined the idea, the band went for a local photograph, shot on a rooftop in New York City, and treated to look like a painting, credited to Martin Hoffman. The bonus record in the box set honors the band’s original Coca-Cola cover concept.
Pulled together over six years and with the involvement of every member of Blondie—past and present—Against The Odds is an extraction of early demos and rarities from the bands that were sitting in founding member and guitarist Chris Stein’s Woodstock, New York barn for decades.
The box set is the first comprehensive collection of music released by the band and features 124 tracks and 36 previously unreleased recordings—mixed and unearthed by Tom Camuso and Steve Rosenthal—from Blondie’s earlier basement sessions to dozens of alternate versions, demos, and outtakes of tracks, in addition to the band’s six studio albums, which were remastered at Abbey Road Studios from the original tapes.
Against the Odds also includes track-by-track commentary from all seven of the original band members, extensive liner notes by Erin Osmon, and essays by producers Mike Chapman, Richard Gottehrer, and Ken Shipley, in addition to a 120-page illustrated discography with hundreds of photographs.
“I Love You Honey, Give Me a Beer,” follows the release of another rare Blondie demo of the band’s cover of The Doors’ Strange Days track “Moonlight Drive.”
Main Photo: Norman Seeff
