TAKE FIVE: DEBBIE HARRY

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 | 7:11 a.m.

Two major events are coming up this summer for Blondie vocalist Debbie Harry.

The punk rock diva from the 1970s and '80s is among the cast of performers on the crusading True Colors Tour, which focuses on issues involving sexual diversity.

Harry, 61, also is releasing her sixth solo album, "Necessary Evil," 14 years after her last solo effort, "Debravation."

"I'm excited about doing this," she said. "I hope people will like the new material. It gives me sort of a new lease on life in a creative way."

She'll be singing new songs during the True Colors Tour, even though her new CD won't be released until Aug. 7, after the 16-city tour ends.

Harry will be without her Blondie persona for the event. She was co-founder of the group Blondie in the mid-1970s . It broke up in 1984, but reunited in 1998. Blondie has sold 30 million records worldwide and has four No. 1 hits - "Heart of Glass," "Call Me," "The Tide Is High" and "Rapture."

Harry spoke to the Sun during a break from rehearsing for the tour.

On why she joined the True Colors Tour

It's about human rights, and so I'm definitely down for that. I was invited to participate, to be part of the tour, and it coincided really well with the release of my first solo CD in many years. So it seemed like a lot of things fell into place in a really good way.

On human rights

I don't know if it's more important at this time. I think it's always important. I don't know if there's been a decline in rights, really. It seems to be more of an accelerated awareness. It seems like there are so many important issues to deal with now, and more people are knowledgeable about them, with the Internet. With the computer age, information is so accessible. All of these issues are much more obvious and much more part of our daily lives.

On the long delay between solo CDs

There were a number of reasons. I think my last solo album was in the early '90s, then we put Blondie back together and that took up most of my time and energy. We did a couple of CDs for Blondie, the "No Exit" CD and "The Curse of Blondie," and we toured - constantly - so there wasn't any real need or time to do one. Then we sort of stopped doing Blondie touring for a while and I found myself with some time and, coincidentally, at the same time I met this really great production team from Brooklyn called Super Buddha. I was writing songs with them, but at the time didn't have ambition to do another album. But then it seemed like a good idea and so it came out.

On 'Necessary Evil' themes

Most of the songs in pop culture are usually about timely topics - politics, ecology or about personal neurosis, different problems. But really, most of the songs are about love or about relationships. That's basically what most of the topics are about on my record.

On Blondie

The CD is a departure from Blondie, but not a complete departure. After the True Colors Tour I go on tour with Blondie in the United Kingdom. We'll do a whole bunch of shows over there.