Giorgio Moroder And Others Talk Donna Summer & Giorgio’s 10 Big Music Moments: Interview

Robbie Daw | May 17, 2013 9:05 am

4. “Call Me” by Blondie (1980) In Paul Schrader‘s 1980 box office hit American Gigolo, Richard Gere dropped his pants, bared all and seduced moviegoers as Los Angeles male escort Julian Kaye. Just your average Saturday afternoon popcorn fare to bring the kids to, right?

To match the picture’s gritty subject matter, Moroder, who composed the music for the film, turned to exploding post-punk band Blondie for theme song “Call Me.” Except it wasn’t originally called “Call Me.”

The members of Blondie pose with Giorgio Moroder, Richard Gere and American Gigolo director Paul Schrader. Photo by Dennis McGuire, courtesy of Chris Stein.

blondie debbie harry giorgio moroder richard gere

Blondie co-founder Chris Stein remembers, “Somewhere I have Giorgio’s demo on a cassette of the song. It was called ‘Man Machine,’ and the lyrics were really very literal. ‘He’s a man who talks to girls,’ you know – it was kind of like that. And then Debbie [Harry], when she started seeing rough cuts of the movie, she saw all that stuff about the colors and the fashions and all that stuff, and put it in there.”

Debbie Harry also recalls Moroder’s demo. “The track was very clear and nearly like what we recorded,” she says. “Except ours was more rough sounding.”

Despite his association with disco music in the ’70s, Chris Stein says that Blondie had no reservations about working with Moroder. “We loved Giorgio,” he notes. “We were all huge fans of Donna [Summer’s] music.”

“Call Me” was just one of a handful of songs by Blondie that shot to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 between 1979 and 1980 — though it was the only one that wasn’t produced by the band’s collaborator Mike Chapman.

“Giorgio was the exact opposite of Chapman,” Stein says. “He just liked to do everything quickly and not be bothered, and then fix it up later. Chapman was a taskmaster and had a lot of repetition and refining parts until they were super, super precise, so that the stuff sort of mixed itself. Giorgio was like a fix-it-in-the-mix guy.”

Stein then adds, cheekily, “[Giorgio] probably replaced some of our parts here and there, too.”