Atomic fall-out as Blondie feud erupts again

Acrimony between three of the still-performing members, Deborah Harry, Chris Stein and Clem Burke, and three former members, concerning the reforming of the band in 1999, boiled over onstage at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York.

Frank Infante and Nigel Harrison, who unsuccessfully sued to rejoin the band, and member Gary Valentine, involved in another band dispute, appeared onstage with the other members to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Shirley Manson, the Scottish singer with Garbage, introduced Blondie, calling the group "one of the coolest, most glamorous, most stylish bands in the history of rock 'n' roll". Blondie's guitarist, Chris Stein, said her introduction "put dents in my cynicism".

But despite apparently reuniting for the evening, relations between the two factions were obviously frosty, as Harry, Stein and Burke barely acknowledged the presence of the others.

And when Infante begged them to be allowed to play with the band, the argument became public.

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

"Can't you see my band is up there?" Harry replied.

He replied: "Your band? I thought Blondie was being inducted."

The three rejected members walked offstage, but not before Infante groaned into the microphone.

"They wrote themselves out of the band history, as far as I'm concerned," Stein said later backstage. "They should have a little bit of honour. This is supposed to be rock 'n' roll. This is supposed to be friendly. This is like going through the trenches together."

Blondie's onstage falling out was not the only controversy of the evening, as ageing punk rockers the Sex Pistols refused to be inducted to the Hall of Fame, sending instead a letter comparing it to "urine in wine".

The statement, strewn with profanities and mistakes, was read out by Rolling Stone magazine's founder, Jann Wenner: "Next to the Sex Pistols rock and roll and that hall of fame is a p*** stain. Your museum. Urine in wine. Were not coming. Were not your monkey and so what?"

Musicians become eligible for inclusion in the Hall of Fame 25 years after their first recording.

For some of the other musicians who were inducted yesterday, the recognition was posthumous: jazz legend Miles Davis died in 1991, while several members of the Seventies rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd died in a plane crash in 1977.

However, one of rock's greatest survivors, Ozzy Osbourne, made it into the pantheon of musical greats when his original group Black Sabbath were finally inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Despite having requested in the past that they not be considered for the accolade, Osbourne expressed his happiness.

"It's an achievement," he said. "I'm really proud about it."