jlh | Monday Music: Hanging on the Telephone (Reply)

There hasn't been enough rock around here. Let's let Debbie here change all that.

"Hanging on the Telephone" was written by Jack Lee, guitarist of the LA punk band The Nerves, about his high school girlfriend. (He also wrote "Come Back and Stay" for Paul Young about the same girl.) Blondie covered the song on their 1978 album Parallel Lines, and it went to #5 in the UK. Like most great punk songs it barely clears two minutes, but it packs a lot of punch in a short amount of time.

And really, this song is all about Clem Burke, Blondie's drummer. Oh, the guitar riffs are great, but Debbie is really singing with Clem—you could probably perform the entire song with just the vocal and the drums. C____, one of my best and oldest friends, is a drummer and he's probably the reason drums in songs are so important to me. We got talking in an email about this song once, and I've shamelessly copied the way that he talks about drum sounds in prose.

Debbie brings us in, and then Clem, halfway through the first line, click-click-click-click-crash!

I'm in the phone booth, it's the one across the hall
If you don't answer, I'll just ring it off the wall
I know he's there, but I just had to call
Don't leave me hanging on the telephone
Don't leave me hanging on the telephone

A little fill, and onto the second verse:

I heard your mother now she's going out the door
Did she go to work or just go to the store
All those things she said, I told you to ignore

A sort of bridge-let where drums and guitar go into a surf beat under Debbie singing "Oh why can't we talk again?" before we head into the chorus:

Oh why can't we talk again
Oh why can't we talk again
Oh why can't we talk again
Don't leave me hanging on the telephone
Don't leave me hanging on the telephone

My favorite part, Clem underlines Debbie at the start of the third verse, click-click-bam-bam-click-click-bam-bam:

It's good to hear your voice, you know it's been so long
If I don't get your call then everything goes wrong
I want to tell you something you've known all along
Don't leave me hanging on the telephone

Clem thrashes away during the guitar solo, lots of fills, lots of cymbal, and brings us back to the verse with a pretty sick roll.

Now that we're back to the verse, we can hear how clean Clem's been playing the whole time, just simple straight-ahead drumming; "I can't control myself" brings us that surf beat again.

I had to interrupt and stop this conversation
Your voice across the line gives me a strange sensation
I'd like to talk when I can show you my affection
Oh I can't control myself
Oh I can't control myself
Oh I can't control myself
Don't leave me hanging on the telephone

But the end of the song is Clem's; while Debbie is singing "Hang up and run to me" Clem is punctuating every beat with the cymbal, and when she's done Clem is playing those off beats as the song thunders to its conclusion.

There isn't that much one can say—or should say—about a two-and-a-half minute punk song. So I'll boil it all down to: Just listen to Clem.

Blondie: Hanging on the Telephone
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