Just Backdated

CLEM BURKE (1955– 2025)

Clem dressed to impress; Elvis Ramone backstage at the Apollo in Glasgow, Scotland, 

December 31, 1979. 

(Photo by Bob Gruen.)

A PhD is generally awarded to those who have attained the highest academic achievement in a given discipline, be it scholastic or physical. I long ago realised that Clem Burke, whose death from cancer at the age of 70 was announced today, merited one in both. He was Blondie’s powerhouse, a tireless, rock-solid drummer whose energy never flagged – just listen to ‘Dreaming’ – but he was also a friend to anyone and everyone, from the big stars to the up-and-coming hopefuls and all the fans too, a bit of an Anglophile ever eager to share his knowledge or learn from others. In this way he amassed an encyclopaedic wisdom about every record of merit ever released, and every decent rock and roll band too, US and UK and everywhere else, from the fifties right up into the new millennium. What’s more, he did it for the sheer love of it. 

He was also a friend of mine. We first met way back in the 1970s, in New York, when Blondie were learning their trade at CBGBs and I wrote about them for Melody Maker. We bumped into one another again and again over the years, most recently at Blondie shows in London during the 2010s. He always put me on the guest list. It would have been about 15 years ago when he approached me to help him write a book about his life and we went out to lunch at an Italian restaurant on Berners Street. I encouraged him all I could but it never happened, though he did send me some sample text which I edited for him and returned. He requested that I keep it confidential and I complied, and, unfortunately, no longer have any of his text on my computer. 

        The passage I remember most was about his wide-eyed wonder at finding himself in some backstage dressing room somewhere with most of the Travelling Wilburys, Bob Dylan and George Harrison amongst them. He recalled the dialogue which was as droll as Michael Palin’s sleeve notes on the first Wilbury album. Whenever I saw him after that I got on his back about his book, but it never happened and now it never will. 

        But what a book it would have been for aside from playing at every Blondie gig ever, Burke played his drums for, amongst many others, Pete Townshend, Bob Dylan, Eurythmics, Iggy, and once or twice for a sort of Ramones tribute band, calling himself Elvis Ramone. He was also a member of a group called The Empty Hearts that featured others from name bands, and he loved it so much he even played in a Blondie tribute band when the real thing was between tours. 

        Clem sent me a copy of the first Empty Hearts album that I reviewed here on Just Backdated. “The obvious influence is the tougher end of sixties power pop,” I wrote, “those wonderful mid-decade singles by the Stones, Who and Kinks, but I think the Hearts have dug a bit deeper into their record collections and listened again to Beck/Page era Yardbirds and Roy Wood’s Move, and they also tip their hat to Cheap Trick and the garage rock that Lenny Kaye unearthed in 1972 for the first Nuggets compilation. Either way, all four of these grade-A students of rock history must have had a whale of a time writing and playing songs that pay tribute to their formative Brit influences yet at the same bring them into the modern era with crisp production, faultless playing and a rippling feel for the music, passion really, that rocks hard from beginning to end.” 

The Empty Hearts CD, its design a pastiche of The Who's debut LP, with Clem in Op-Art top.

        And in 2017, reviewing a Blondie show at London’s Roundhouse, I wrote. “Burke is still the band’s engine room, unrelenting, staunch and sturdy. I probably wasn’t alone in noticing that Clem wore – no doubt deliberately – a New York City t-shirt in the design favoured by John Lennon that for the encore he had changed to one emblazoned with the logo of CBGBs. Always the Blondie man most respectful of rock’s past, he is a showman drummer in the tradition of Keith Moon, chucking his sticks into the air, tumbling around the kit and at one point adopting one of those Moon poses with one arm high in the air and the other at right angles. He is largely responsible for bringing many of Blondie’s songs to a thumping close, soloing briefly before the final crashing chord, and tireless throughout.”

        Clem looked like a rock star. He wore his hair in a style that recalled The Beatles in their Revolver period, and he always dressed to impress, often like a Mod. Also, finally, he idolised Keith Moon. Blondie were in the midst of a European tour on September 7, 1978, the day Keith died, and two days later, played at the Hammersmith Odeon. “I went downstairs in the hotel and all the British tabloids had the headline ‘Keith Moon Is Dead’, so that day became kind of a dream sequence for me,” he told Blondie biographer Kris Needs later. “We played the Hammersmith Odeon and I wanted to get some gasoline and an axe to use on the drums and no one would give them to me. So I threw my whole drum kit in the audience, not wanting them back, because I wanted to sacrifice them for Keith. And the roadies went and got them back, which I was upset about. It was a real emotional time for me because he had meant so much to me.”

        RIP Clem.