Blondie singer Debbie Harry was raped at knifepoint, the star has revealed.Writing in her forthcoming autobiography, she describes how she – and then boyfriend Chris Stein – were tied up by an armed robber.
"He poked round searching for anything worth anything," she writes. "He piled up the guitars and Chris's camera and then he untied my hands and told me to take off my pants."
Showing remarkable courage, the singer, now 74, says she refused to buckle to the attacker, who struck at her home in New York before she shot to stardom. "The stolen guitars hurt me more," she adds.
Harry became an international star in the 1970s and 1980s with a string of hits including Call Me, Tide is High, Hanging On The Telephone and Heart of Glass.
In her autobiography, which is entitled Face It and is published in October, she also describes how she accepted a lift from a stranger that she now believes was Ted Bundy, the American serial killer who was executed in 1989 after admitting to the murders of 30 young women.
"I got in and the windows were rolled up except an inch and a half at the top," she recalls.
"I realised there was no door handle, no window crank, no nothing. The inside of the car was totally stripped out. The hairs on the back of my neck just stood up."
She reached through the window in an effort to open the door from outside. But she adds: "He tried to stop me by spinning the car, but it helped me fling myself out.
"After, I saw him on the news – Ted Bundy."
The singer, who split from Blondie guitarist Stein in 1989, admits the couple took heroin and that she even took the drug to him while he was in hospital.
"Heroin was a great consolation," she admits.