The former Blondie guitarist revisits his classic riffs and solos on “One Way or Another,” “Heart of Glass,” “Call Me,” “Rapture” and more
By Joe Bosso
EVEN IF YOU didn’t know that Frank Infante is a Jersey boy, it wouldn’t take you long to figure it out. Born and raised in Jersey City, next door to Hoboken and a tunnel or bridge away from Manhattan, the 71-year-old guitarist still has his gritty North Jersey accent intact. It’s a tone and attitude thing, a certain street flair to the way he occasionally says “dis” for “this” or “dat” for “that.” When he talks about guitar parts, it sometimes comes out as “guitar pahts.” And as for the way he says “forget about it,” well, fuhgeddaboudit.
Back in the 1970s, Infante brought plenty of tone, attitude and flair to a New York City band that wasn’t lacking in any of those areas: Blondie, the pioneering, shape-shifting outfit, led by guitarist Chris Stein and singer Debbie Harry, who, over a six-year span, deftly — and in many ways, presciently — mixed punk and new wave with the sounds of Sixties girl groups, garage rock, disco, reggae and hip-hop. The band was one of the first success stories out of CBGB’s, and by the time their run ended in 1982, they had dominated the airwaves with a steady succession of smash hits like “Heart of Glass,” “One Way or Another,” “Call Me,” “The Tide Is High,” “Atomic” and “Rapture.”
Infante remembers the downtown New York scene where it all started. “It was a cool time,” he says. “You didn’t have to be a brilliant musician — you just had to play your songs and have fun. Right before Blondie, you had the New York Dolls and other bands doing the androgynous thing. Then CBGBs and Max’s started up, and what we could call punk and new wave came in. CB’s was more of the college kids on a pseudo-intellectual trip, while Max’s was pure street rock ’n’ roll. Blondie played both places.”
During this time, Infante bounced between North Jersey and Manhattan, playing in a number of blues-based hard rock groups, most notably WWIII. “I started using Gibson guitars and Marshall amps in that band,” he says. “It was also the first band I was in that did all-original material. We were a four-piece — guitar, bass, drums and a singer — so I did all the guitar parts and improvised a lot. We were four uncompromising delinquents. We’d show up at places and take over, just pla
