This is a photo of Clem Burke with John Browner (center, wearing glasses, drinking a beer) backstage at the Whisky a GoGo from September 26, 1980. The occasion was the B Girls show (they opened for England’s Mo-Dettes).
This was THEE show to be at, and it seems like everyone was there. Blondie had been in Los Angeles working on their album Autoamerican (on which you can hear backing vocals by the B Girls, recorded not long after this gig). There is a long history between Blondie and the B Girls, and most of the band turned up to show their support for the support band. Stiv Bators and Sabel Starr* were also there.
Clockwise from far left, B Girl Cynthia Ross, B Girl Marcy Saddy, Debbie Harry, Sabel Starr, B Girl Xenia, KROQ’s Rodney Bingenheimer, and Blondie’s Nigel Harrison.
Watching all of this with admiration was Jeffrey Lee Pierce (The Gun Club), who never left his spot in the hallway and let me capture this portrait of him. In the photo above with Clem and John, you can see him in the mirror (to the right of my flash).
Clem introduced me to John Browner on this night and told John he and I had another friend in common with Rob duPrey, with whom Browner (as everyone called him) was exceptionally close. Browner is a writer, and at the time, his novel, Death of a Punk had just been published by Pocket Books. John was a downtown NYC insider - friend to all the CBGB-era bands, and an incredible similarity between Blondie and other CB’s bands is one of the layers in the storyline of Death of a Punk.