Blondie snubs band

Debbie Harry continued an ugly feud with former Blondie band members with a very public snub at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony.

Harry may have turned 60 but age has clearly not mellowed her. The original members of Blondie - three of whom are still in the band and three who are not after years of acrimonious wrangling - appeared on stage together in New York for their induction into the Hall Of Fame.

But it was, to say the least, an awkward reunion. The current bandmates, Harry, Chris Stein and Clem Burke, barely acknowledged their former colleagues Frank Infante and Nigel Harrison, who unsuccessfully sued to rejoin the band, and Gary Valentine, also involved in another dispute.

Infante begged to perform with the band. 'Debbie, are we allowed?' he asked.

Harry, due on stage to play such hits as Heart Of Glass, Rapture and Call Me, was not to be talked into it. 'Can't you see my band is up there?' she replied last night.

The three rejected members walked off stage, but not before Infante groaned into the microphone.

Their public show of animosity was the highlight of the ceremony to honour old-timers. Perhaps Blondie, the hugely successful New Wave band of the late Seventies and early Eighties, were simply trying to emulate the Sex Pistols, the real bad boys of the punk era, who went one step further by refusing to show up at all.

The Pistols turned down the honour in a letter that compared the hall to 'urine in wine'.

Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner read out the letter, and invited the band to pick up their trophies at the Hall Of Fame museum in Cleveland. 'If they want to smash them into bits, they can do that too,' he said.

Others inducted during a ceremony at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel included Black Sabbath with frontman Ozzy Osbourne, trumpeter Miles Davis and Southern rock pioneers Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss, founders of A&M Records, received a lifetime achievement award.

Osbourne was on his best behaviour and said thank you for the honour. Previously he had criticised the Hall Of Fame for snubbing Black Sabbath.