And the dirt continues!

NEW YORK (AP) -- Between the Sex Pistols and Ozzy Osbourne, there's an air of malice associated with this year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class.

Blondie is doing its part, too.

The band being inducted Monday includes two members, Nigel Harrison and Frank Infante, who unsuccessfully sued their former colleagues for being left out when Blondie reformed in 1999.

Deborah Harry's voice turns hard when she's asked if the two men will be invited to perform again with Blondie for old time's sake at the Waldorf-Astoria ceremony. Even the Police and Talking Heads managed to set aside bad feelings for a few songs upon their inductions.

"Absolutely not," she snapped. "There was no excuse for them suing us. That ended it."

Ah, a good, old-fashioned rock 'n' roll feud! Something to add a little spice to the night.

Osbourne's appearance is highly anticipated. He's been a longtime critic of the rock hall because it took several years for his band Black Sabbath to be inducted. In 1999, he dismissed the annual vote as "totally irrelevant" to him and asked that Black Sabbath not be considered in the future.

Now that Sabbath has made it, he and the band are expected to be at the Waldorf. They won't perform, but Metallica will induct Sabbath and rattle the walls of the high-class ballroom with a tribute.

The Sex Pistols, who compared the rock hall to "urine in wine," will be a no-show. Perhaps they were upset by being beaten to the hall by peers like the Clash, Talking Heads and Elvis Costello.

"We're not coming," Johnny Rotten and his bandmates sneered in a letter posted on the band's Web site last month. "We're not your monkeys and so what?" (Read more of Rotten's caustic comments.)

Jazz great Miles Davis and Lynyrd Skynyrd will also be inducted. Herbie Hancock will induct Davis and Kid Rock will honor the Southern rockers.

Highlights of the induction ceremony will be presented on VH1 on March 21.

Shirley Manson of Garbage, another woman who fronts an otherwise all-male band, will pay tribute to Blondie. Even before the ceremony, Harry said she noticed a difference in people's attitudes toward the band simply because it was voted in.

"It gives us a symbol of credibility that they had not really given us," she told The Associated Press. "It pushed us up a notch in a lot of people's thinking."

The platinum-tressed Harry, 60, gave Blondie its name when she formed the act with longtime partner Chris Stein in the mid-1970s. Harry, now a brunette, still works with Stein and drummer Clem Burke in the reconstituted Blondie. Longtime member Jimmy Destri still writes songs but has otherwise quit the rock 'n' roll life.

Blondie's energetic rock, topped with breathy vocals from Harry that recalled the girl groups of the early 1960s, fit in with other bands from New York's CBGB scene. But stylistic diversity became its signature. "Heart of Glass" was a pop hit with a sharp disco beat, "Rapture" was among the first Top 40 songs to incorporate rap and "The Tide Is High" was a reggae remake.

Harry said she and Stein were true city creatures and were influenced by the different forms of music they heard around them.

"It's the old art school mentality, the idea of experimenting or doing conceptual pieces," she said. "We weren't really married to one particular kind of style."

She takes pride that the form of musical cross-dressing was influential. It's now commonplace, but Blondie took heat from fans and critics at the time. Even some band members weren't fully on board, she said.

"There is no accounting for taste," she said. "It took awhile for some of the guys to become a little more sophisticated. Eventually, they did, because times change and styles change."

Blondie fell apart in the mid-1980s, which Harry blames on band tension ratcheted up by inept management. She also took time off from music to help Stein, then a romantic partner as well, recover from a debilitating illness. They broke up, but never stopped working together.

Harry, who's long forged a parallel acting career, needed some coaxing to reform Blondie. They're caught in a trap similar to many acts their age: maturity and experience have made them better musicians than when Blondie topped the charts, but few people -- except for the nostalgic -- notice.

Like at the start of their career, Blondie is more popular overseas, particularly in England. The greatest hits package that is being released in the U.S. to coincide with their induction, "Sound and Vision," was available in Europe months ago.

"In a way, we never really finished our mission," she said. "But I think getting back together and writing new music was a really good thing for us. To have everyone still pretty much with it and alive was kind of a miracle in itself."

Here is even more LS!

Tuesday, March 14, 2006; Posted: 7:43 a.m. EST (12:43 GMT)

var clickExpire = "04/12/2006"; Blondie spat: Frank Infante, who once sued to rejoin the band, has words with Debbie Harry onstage Monday. 

 CLASS OF '06 A quick rundown on what the class of 2006 did to arrive at the pearly gates of Cleveland:

Blondie: One of the biggest and most popular bands to come out of the '70s New Wave scene, Blondie was fronted by Debbie Harry. Before breaking up in 1982, the New York band's hits included "Heart of Glass," "Call Me" and "One Way or Another." They also reformed in a slightly different incarnation in 1999 for the album "No Exit" -- which, unlike most reunions, was well received by critics and fans alike. Today, Blondie is still going. RELATED • Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS Deborah Harry Miles Davis Ozzy Osbourne or Create Your Own Manage Alerts | What Is This?

NEW YORK (AP) -- Between an ugly feud among Blondie members spilling over onstage and a rancorous letter from the absent Sex Pistols, the latest Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class did not enter quietly on Monday.

The animosity even made Ozzy Osbourne, inducted with Black Sabbath, seem sedate.

As midnight arrived under the chandeliers of the Waldorf-Astoria's grand ballroom, Lynyrd Skynyrd was performing the song that launched countless cigarette lighters, "Free Bird," to celebrate the band's induction. Famed jazz trumpeter Miles Davis completed the honorees.

When Blondie, the most commercially successful band to emerge from a fertile New York rock scene that also produced Talking Heads and the Ramones, reformed after 15 years, they didn't include former members Frank Infante and Nigel Harrison. They sued unsuccessfully to join.

Infante, Harrison and Gary Valentine, another former member left behind in a business dispute, were barely acknowledged by former chums Deborah Harry, Chris Stein and Clem Burke as they received their awards.

Infante begged to perform with the band.

"Debbie, are we allowed?" he pleaded before Blondie performed their hits "Heart of Glass," "Rapture" and "Call Me."

"Can't you see my band is up there?" Harry replied. The three rejected members walked offstage, but not before Infante groaned into the microphone.

Time hasn't diminished their spirit: the Pistols declined to participate in their own induction, issuing a statement comparing the hall to "urine in wine." (Read more of the band's caustic comments)

Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner read the letter, and invited the band to pick up their trophies at the rock hall in Cleveland.

"If they want to smash them into bits, they can do that, too," Wenner said.

Behind the unnerving stare of singer Johnny Rotten and the lacerating lyrics of "God Save the Queen" and "Pretty Vacant," the Sex Pistols appeared the most shocking of the first punk-rock generation in the mid-1970s. The Pistols imploded after one album, with Rotten saying, "ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" before walking offstage after their last show for decades.

Osbourne may be better known now as an addled reality TV star, but his musical legacy with Black Sabbath got its due with the band's induction.

Osbourne has badmouthed the hall of fame for waiting a decade to induct Sabbath, a cause taken up by Metallica member Lars Ulrich in his induction. Metallica guitarist James Hetfield and Ulrich both said their band would not exist without the example of Black Sabbath.

"If there was no Black Sabbath, I could still possibly be a morning newspaper delivery boy," Ulrich said. "No fun."

Osbourne, Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi and Bill Ward did not perform, but Metallica rattled the walls with versions of "Iron Man" and "Hole in the Sky."

"Thank you to all Sabbath fans everywhere," Ward said. "Hopefully our induction tonight will add to the validation ... (and) hard rock and heavy metal will have an enduring and everlasting place in rock history."

Osbourne thanked his wife, Sharon, who sat in the ballroom with their daughters Kelly and Aimee.

Davis was inducted by fellow jazz musician Herbie Hancock, who said the trumpeter often played with his back to the audience simply because he was conducting the band.

"He was a man of mystery, magic and mystique," Hancock said. "It was often said he was an enigma. I would venture to say that many who said that just didn't get it."

Southern rockers Skynyrd, whose name was a deliberately misspelled "tribute" to a hated high-school teacher, made much of its memorable music before a 1977 plane crash killed singer Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Steve Gaines.

"No one deserved to be here more than Ronnie Van Zant," said his widow Judy, "and he would truly be honored."

Johnny Van Zant, who replaced his brother as the lead singer, joined Kid Rock in a duet of the band's hit "Sweet Home Alabama," such a well-known prideful statement of Southern heritage that the title was later swiped for a Reese Witherspoon movie.

Each of the acts is still active. Blondie and the Sex Pistols reformed after long dormant periods, and so did Sabbath, which frequently headlined the popular Ozzfest summer concert tours.

The hall also gave a lifetime achievement award to Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss, founders of the influential A&M Records label that bore their initials and signed artists like the Police, Supertramp, John Hiatt, Cat Stevens and Alpert's band, the Tijuana Brass.

"I haven't seen this many people since I played bar mitzvahs years ago," said trumpeter Alpert.

Inductees are honored at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame & Museum in Cleveland. Highlights of the 21st annual ceremony will be shown on VH1 on March 21.

I am shocked that Deborah couldn't suck it in and put aside the differences and let Valentine, Infante and Harrison jam onstage with them.  There's bad blood between them, but the night was to celebrate Blondie as a while, and Infante & Harrison was both in the band when they were at their peak.

Either way, I'm glad to see them inducted