Over a number of years, I’ve heard the repeated assertion that Blondie’s 1982 tour for The Hunter was canceled at least in part due to poor album sales.  It came up again today, and I wrote this opinion:

The one thing I would say in response to the many times over the years where someone said something like the Hunter tour was canceled due in part to “poor sales” “and the fact they weren’t going to make any money due to tax problems. The money had run out.” is this:

As an archivist of the band for 30+ years, I have never personally seen anything in writing (either official or internal correspondence) that supports the claim that the tour cancellation was related to poor album sales in any way. I’ve heard that repeated many times, but so far, no one has shown any evidence to support the claim (logical fallacy called “Proof by Assertion“). If such evidence exists, I’d certainly like to see it. The tour dates in the US that preceded the canceled part were doing pretty well in venues the size of where they have played in the last 8 years. Blondie has toured internationally every year since 2001, and in many of those years, had no album out at all, so album sales are not required for touring. In 1982, poor sales of The Hunter, though true, was not the cause of the tour cancellation, but it was correlated. Correlation is not causality. Chris was a critical member of the band and was taken out by an illness that was more likely than not to be fatal in 1982 and did not continue without him. Any tax liability owed by individual band members would not affect the profitability of a tour because that debt was not part of their record company or management company’s liability and did not affect income at all. It would be entirely owed by the individual. There wasn’t a lump sum of money that could “run out”. Blondie’s business is a revenue stream of record sales, tour income, merchandising, and royalties, and the business never had any responsibility for anyone’s individual tax debt.