“He said, ‘There's a room upstairs filled with guitars, but you can't see them – we’re only selling them all at once.’ We came back and waved hundred dollar bills in his face”: Blondie's Chris Stein on his greatest (and strangest) guitar shopping spree

Chris Stein (foreground) and Debbie Harry (background) onstage with Blondie in London.

You could forgive Blondie for soaking in the incredible run of success they were enjoying in 1980.

They’d certainly paid their dues – spending years slogging it out in New York City’s dingy punk spawn point CBGB’s and throwing spunky guitar-pop darts at a wall to no avail, before they hit it (really) big in 1979 with the irresistible Heart of Glass.