He is a guitarist born in New York, New York, who began his professional career in the 1970s playing for bands such as World War III and The Elegant End and is occasionally nicknamed “The Freak.
In 1977 he was asked to become a member of the New Wave group Blondie and featured on all their albums and singles from then until they disbanded in 1982. Originally being signed up as the bass guitarist, he moved to being the guitarist after another bass guitarist, Nigel Harrison, joined the group also in 1977. He saw major success with them as a musician and also with his compositions that included “I Know But I Don’t Know”, “Underground Girl” and “Victor”. When Blondie decided to reform in the mid-’90s it was decided to leave him and Nigel Harrison out of the line-up and together they took out an unsuccessful lawsuit against the group.
From that time he continued to find other work and has been featured on recordings with Iggy Pop, Stiv Bators, Joan Jett, Sylvain Sylvain, the DiVinyls and saw further chart success with 4 Non-Blondes on their “What’s Up”.
As an actor he has made appearances in the movies Return to Babylon and Citizens of Perpetual Indulgence and also in the TV programmes Tales of the Crypt and Saturday Night Live.
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006 as a member of Blondie.
Now resident in Los Angeles he performs with the trio Infante’s Inferno.
Blondie recordings
Heart of Glass (Debbie Harry/Chris Stein)
11:59 (Jimmy Destri)
Here he is with 4 Non-Blondes performing “What’s Up”…
Sources:
- http://www.frankinfante.com/
- http://www.superiorpics.com/frank_infante/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Infante
- http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0408613/
- https://www.discogs.com/artist/422777-Frank-Infante