The making of "Heart of Glass"

[Marcio**]

"Those dance songs were so much more difficult to make than regular rock 'n' roll! If you did a song like 'Heart of Glass' today, with MIDI, if you could come up with the parts, you could put that together in a few hours. But at the time we made it, it took us something like two weeks. It was all manual, all played around one little synthesizer pulse track and a rhythm machine part. The bass drum took like three hours-Chapman insisted that every single beat had to be exactly right. The guitar part was done with tape delay and it took hours and hours, making sure the pulse of that was perfect."


Chris Stein, 1999


from
http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_blondie_dreaming/

[Eurodancemix]

And all that hard work paid off! I absolutely *LOVE* "Heart Of Glass"!

But this really illustrates how much people underestimated disco (and still do, for that matter). It's easy to dismiss disco as being "simple" music but it was obviously quite a feat to produce back then.

As much as I enjoy today's dance music, it's pretty obvious that so much of it can be patched together by simpletons who have access to a computer. I'd like to see THEM work with a full-fledged orchestra!

[JIMspins]

Most of the disco haters of the day are now older and in many cases confess to now liking songs that they would never admit to liking back then. Disco was criticized as trash by the rock n' roll purists....now when you listen to old disco records, you have to appreciate the string and horn arrangements of REAL horns and strings, not some polyphonic keyboard that tries to replicate those sounds. Disco music was nearing the end of old school recording techniques....sometimes cheese has to age before it becomes a delicacy....I have DJ'd since 1976, and even as recently as last month a fellow younger DJ ( by younger I'm talking the guy is 40 ) so often says when I spin certain tunes " I used to hate this song...now I actually think it's great! "

[ashley_k]

It’s worth checking out the two earlier versions of Heart Of Glass, as it shows how the disco sound effected the final version.

Sound clips on the following Amazon pages:
Amazon.com: Plastic Letters: Blondie: Music
Track 14 - Once I Had A Love (AKA The Disco Song) - 1975 Version
A very slow version.

Amazon.com: Parallel Lines: Blondie: Music
Track 13 - Once I Had A Love (AKA The Disco Song) - 1978 Version
They have now speeded it up and it’s now got a kind of raw disco feel to it.

and Track 10 - Heart Of Glass – the final version in full disco style

Always liked Heart Of Glass and the instrumental version too.

ashley_k