Blondie guitarist talks about challenges of songwriting and why the tide is high for the band's popularity in Europe

Although Blondie has sold more than 40 million records worldwide, had four No. 1 and four other top 40 hits in the U.S. alone and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006, Chris Stein original Blondie guitarist and Deborah Harry's one-time romantic partner and longtime musical collaborator takes pride that they still have a certain credibility with the alternative crowd. Over the phone from a tour stop in Windsor, Ontario, he asserts "the fact that we maintain our cult status. We never quite made it to the A-list." Stein even likens Blondie to their peers and pals the Ramones, who had huge influence but not matching commercial success during that band's life.

The more perspective you have on their remarkable journey, the better you appreciate that Blondie remains a viable creative pop music force in the year 2011; their first studio album in eight years, "Panic of Girls," was released this month, and they play ACL Live tonight.

Like an acrimoniously divorced couple, Blondie's career can be neatly divided into two widely separated parts. Part 1, aka Back in the Day, is their classic period, from formation in the crucible of the Lower Manhattan underground scene in the mid-'70s, through the glory years in the late '70s and early '80s, to abrupt dissolution in 1982 amidst personal and creative crises. (Stein was sidelined for several years with a rare autoimmune skin disease.) Part 2 begins with the band's key players reuniting in 1997 after a 15-year intermission, vowing to create new material to play alongside old hits like "Call Me," "Heart of Glass" and "Rapture" and not be just another act on the rock nostalgia circuit. Longtime fans of the band might be startled to realize that Blondie's second act has now lasted about twice as long as their first. Debbie Harry is now 66, Stein is 61, and the band's original drummer, Clem Burke, 56, is still a Keith Moon-loving, showboating rocker.

But let's begin at the beginning — at least from my perspective. In the spring of '78, my friend Bruce, a music-obsessed hipster from central New Jersey who bunked in a Boston University brownstone dorm next to mine, plopped a copy of a recently released album titled "Plastic Letters" on his turntable. The cover depicted a pinup-grade blonde in a shiny pink minidress sitting on a police car alongside three unsmiling young guys wearing mostly black. The songs on the LP, with titles such as "Youth Nabbed as Sniper," "Contact in Red Square" and "Detroit 442," were even more intriguing and, to us, a breath of fresh air compared with most of the serious first-wave punk and New Wave stuff we were drawn to.

Here was something new: a band with the visual trappings of punk, New York to the core and bred in CBGB's incubator no less, but pop-conscious, with a cinematic eye, a taste for kitsch, a willingness to experiment and a refreshing sense of humor. Using homages to '60s girl-group pop as a starting point but ranging far afield, their originals showed a real creative spark and a desire to test listeners' tolerance for diverse styles. And Harry's deliberately provocative eye-candy factor certainly didn't hurt — the band knew enough to capitalize on it by paying close attention to their videos well before MTV's maiden broadcast.

In their prime, Blondie showed an uncanny ability to not only mirror current musical trends but sometimes lead. Take "Heart of Glass," the song that made it OK for people who loathed disco to admit liking a disco song (it was, in fact, a harbinger of the band's future concentration on dance music). And when it comes to post-modern female pop singers with attitude, in control of their own image rather than being someone's puppet — or at least, seeming to — you can draw a straight line (in bright red lipstick) from Harry through Madonna to Lady Gaga. The band was always more than Debbie, of course, and the reunited Blondie made good on their pledge to write some decent new stuff, topping the U.K. charts in 1999 with the single "Maria." As recently as December 2009, their cover of the Christmas staple "We Three Kings" was a 21st-century power-pop delight that kicked as hard as any classic Blondie track. And "Panic of Girls" fits the band's sampler-platter aesthetic to a T, with Spanish and French vocals and reggae thrown in with the electronica and dance rhythms.