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Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Clem Burke's Beat Helped Blondie Conquer the World
Farewell to Clem Burke, one of the all-time great rock & roll drummers. The Blondie legend passed away on Sunday, only 70, from cancer. His exuberant energy was as crucial to the Blondie sound as Debbie Harry's vocals. He combined the chaotic frenzy of his idol Keith Moon with the forward motion of Motown drummers like Benny Benjamin, as his beat took them from CBGBs to conquer the world. 'Clem was not just a drummer,' the band said in an official statement. 'He was the heartbeat of Blondie.' To hear what made Clem Burke unique, all you need to listen to is the first 26 seconds of 'Dreaming,' the band's 1979 hit. The first sound you hear is Burke bashing away, setting the scene for Debbie Harry's entrance. By the time she starts singing, the emotional stakes are already high because there's so much teenage melodrama bursting out of the drums. More from Rolling Stone Pete Best, Original Beatles Drummer, Announces Retirement Drummer Clem Burke, the 'Heartbeat of Blondie,' Dead at 70 Why Hollywood Can't Resist the Beatles Blondie were kicking around the Lower East Side bars before they hooked up with Burke, but he was the element that made them finally click as a band. Before he joined in 1974, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein weren't even sure they wanted to keep trying 'We stepped back and decided whether we were going to continue,' Harry told the Chicago Tribune, 'and Clem showed up, and he was a real star. He could play, and you could tell that it was his life. He was that kid—that rock 'n' roll kid. Then we sort of knuckled down and put it together.' The rock & roll kid was just 18, from Bayonne, New Jersey, but he had no doubts about this band, and he never let them down. Burke powered the band through the frantic new wave rush of classics like 'Hanging on the Telephone' or 'Fan Mail' or 'Rip Her to Shreds,' but he also held down the groove as they dabbled in disco with 'Heart of Glass' and 'Atomic,' rap in 'Rapture,' reggae in 'The Tide Is High.' He could do it all. He was left-handed, but played a right-handed kit because that's the way Ringo did it. He joined the band after their previous rhythm section quit.(Bassist Fred Smith left to join Television.) Everyone figured this band was cooked, but Harry and Stein put an ad in the Village Voice and auditioned 50 applicants. Clem was the last one they heard, but he blew them away. 'He had a charismatic quality,' Harry recalled in the 1981 book Making Tracks. 'He was also the only one who had on fancy shoes.' He had the flash they needed. 'Clem was definitely what we were looking for. His father was a drummer in a society band and he was a show-biz drummer.' That show-biz element was key, because Burke was a drummer with real star power. He was the fashion plate of Blondie, with his impeccably dapper suits and his much-imitated mod haircut. 'I also would put beer and grease in my hair and turn on the oven and stick my head in there,' he told Please Kill Me in 2017. 'I would be spiking my hair out because I didn't have a hair dryer.' You can hear his boyish energy jump out right from the opening seconds of 'X Offender,' the first song on their debut, which he once cited as his favorite performance. He plays along with Harry for the spoken-word intro — a Sixties girl-group trope in the mode of 'My Boyfriend's Back.' But he combines punk mania with Hal Blaine-style pop frills; in the final minute, he speeds up, getting more giddily excited the faster he plays. I don't think I've ever heard 'X-Offender' without immediately craving to hear it again. 'Debbie is definitely a big sister to me,' Burke said. 'She's ten or eleven years older than me.' As the kid brother of the band, he goaded Harry and Stein into writing songs. As she recalled, 'Clem kept telling us we were good, that we had something. I never asked what 'something' was but he got us rehearsing again.' Yet he never saw himself as taking a back seat to the glamorous lead singer. 'I don't like being in the back,' he told Please Kill Me. 'The Beatles were four superstars. New York Dolls were five stars. No, I was never interested in being in the back. Of course, Keith Moon was a big inspiration for me as Ringo was, and they were both rock-star drummers; they were not the drummer in the back. There was no jealousy over Debbie's position, other than I wanted to be famous too, and when you're young and you're trying to be famous, you kind of have a gunslinger attitude. I wanted to be the best drummer.' He thrived in the CBGBs punk scene. In the early days, he recalled, 'There were no t-shirts, there were no punk rockers, and you know, not too many women either. That's what you say. When the girls started showing up – that's when you knew something was starting up.' Burke was a big reason why the girls came, as he fueled Blondie's pop appeal. 'As someone who used to go to Woolworths to buy bin albums by the Shangri-Las and the Ventures, he fell in enthusiastically with our plans to form a pop group that aimed to modernize AM radio sounds,' Harry recalled in Making Tracks. 'Clem never wanted anything else but to be a pop star.' Everybody wanted to play with this guy. Over the years, Burke drummed with everyone from Iggy Pop to Nancy Sinatra, from Pete Townshend to the Eurythmics to Joan Jett. He played with his hero Bob Dylan, on the 1986 album Knocked Out Loaded. He also sat in with his old friends in the Go-Gos, filling in for drummer Gina Schock. As he boasted, 'I was the best-looking guy in the band.' He even joined the Ramones in the summer of 1987 — and famously lasted for two gigs. When their drummer Richie Ramone quit, they called and asked him to join, under the name 'Elvis Ramone.' However, Elvis soon left the building, since Johnny didn't like his madcap drumming style. 'It was very loose, like in Blondie,' Johnny said, 'not as rigid as we need.' (Burke later played the Ramones Beat On Cancer benefit in 2004, on what would have been Johnny's 56th birthday.) Whenever you saw Clem at a gig, you knew you were in the right place. He was renowned as a charmer and a wit. (When the Go-Gos finally got elected to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2021, I posted on social media that Gina Schock was now the coolest drummer in the Hall. Clem, inducted in 2006, quipped, 'Sorry Rob, but I don't think so, Ha!') In the Eighties, he formed the Chequered Past with fellow Blondie bassist Nigel Harrison and Sex Pistol guitarist Steve Jones. He played in the International Swingers with another Pistol, Glen Matlock, and the Empty Hearts, with members of the Cars, the Romantics, and the Chesterfield Kings. 'My favorite drummers are Earl Palmer, Hal Blaine, Keith Moon, Ringo Starr and Al Jackson Jr. from Booker T,' Burke told Tidal in 2022. 'There's a time for flash and there's a time to lay down the groove, so you have to find that balance. I try to do that, and I have little trademark things that I do that let people know I'm there.' But nobody ever had trouble hearing when Clem Burke was there — his signature style brightened everything he played on. He was always that irrepressible rock & roll kid, right up to the end. Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
New York Times
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Clem Burke, Versatile, Hard-Driving Drummer for Blondie, Dies at 70
Clem Burke, whose energetic, versatile drumming provided the beat for the band Blondie as it churned out post-punk, disco and rock hits in the late 1970s and early '80s — and then again after the band re-formed in 1997 — died on Sunday. He was 70. In a statement, the band said the cause was cancer. It did not say where he died. Though Blondie is best remembered for its charismatic lead singer, Debbie Harry, Mr. Burke's relentless percussion was just as important to its success as one of the most popular American rock groups of its era. He can be heard tumbling forth with a rapid disco beat in the intro to 'Call Me' (1980), only to switch to a tropical lilt on the reggae-inflected 'The Tide Is High' (1980). Like other post-punk bands that slid into the New Wave movement — the Cars, Devo — Blondie was known as much for its image as for its substance. The band's album covers and press photos often featured Ms. Harry, with her angular face and wispy blonde hair, framed by her four male bandmates, usually in black suits and skinny ties. Mr. Burke stood out with his boyish cheeks and vertiginous mop of hair. But he and the band were about more than their sharp looks: In one survey, Rolling Stone ranked him the 61st greatest drummer of all time. 'The American roots of rock 'n' roll — Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochrane — that was the foundation of what I loved from an early age,' Mr. Burke told Mixdown magazine last year. 'It just spiraled from there.' He played on all 11 of Blondie's studio albums — six recorded between 1976 and 1982, and the rest after the band restarted in 1997. The son of a professional drummer, Mr. Burke was already well known around the various music scenes of Lower Manhattan when, in 1974, he answered a want ad in The Village Voice placed by two musicians, Ms. Harry and the guitarist Chris Stein, looking for a drummer for their new band, Blondie. Mr. Burke showed up for an interview wearing the shirt component of a sailor suit, a tribute to a look once sported by his idol, Keith Moon of the Who. The three bonded over their shared admiration for acts like David Bowie, Iggy Pop and the Velvet Underground. They soon added Gary Valentine on bass and Jimmy Destri on keyboards. Within a year, the band was playing regularly at storied East Village venues like Max's Kansas City and CBGB, a musical archipelago where other bands in the punk, post-punk and New Wave movements found a home. Blondie embraced all three genres, while breaking into the mainstream with radio- and dance-floor-friendly tracks like 'Heart of Glass' (1979) and 'Rapture' (1980), both of which reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts. Thanks in part to Mr. Burke's infectious beats, the songs managed to embody a genre, and range beyond it, as well: 'Heart of Glass' is both pop and disco, while 'Rapture' borrowed heavily from a new style, hip-hop, that was then taking shape in the Bronx. 'Our records were always all over the place,' he told The Sarasota Herald-Tribune in 2004. 'I always admired bands that didn't stick to one particular style.' Clement Anthony Bozewski was born on Nov. 24, 1954, in Bayonne, N.J. His father, Clement J. Bozewski, played in clubs around northern New Jersey, and his mother, Antoinette (Terracciano) Bozewski, managed the home. Clem learned to drum from his father and played in school bands growing up. By his late teenage years he was crossing the Hudson River into New York, where he performed in a variety of rock bands before meeting Ms. Harry and Mr. Stein. He styled himself as something of a throwback to the rock-star drummers of the 1960s, like Ringo Starr, John Bonham and Mr. Moon, who were known as much for their charisma onstage as for their virtuosity behind their kits. Mr. Moon was his north star. Mr. Burke was just going onstage in 1978 when he learned that Mr. Moon had died, at 32; when the set was done, he kicked his drums into the crowd, shouting, 'That's for Keith Moon — the greatest drummer in the world!' After a marathon run of six albums in just over six years, Blondie went on hiatus in 1982. Over the next 15 years, Mr. Burke became an A-list session drummer, working with artists like Mr. Bowie, Eurythmics, Bob Dylan and Pete Townshend. He played on classic songs like 'I Love Rock 'n' Roll,' by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, and in 1987 he played two shows with the Ramones. Like the rest of the band, he chose a stage name: Elvis Ramone. Mr. Burke also formed or joined a long series of bands, including Chequered Past, the International Swingers and the Plimsouls. Information on survivors was not immediately available. After Blondie reunited, the band released its seventh album, 'No Exit,' in 1999. This time the band was more heavily identified with Ms. Harry and Mr. Stein, and Mr. Valentine and Mr. Destri left after a few years, but Mr. Burke stayed on through the most recent album, 'Pollinator' (2017). 'Everybody around me seemed to think that becoming 'a rock star' was unobtainable, but I never felt that way,' he told Modern Drummer magazine in 1985. 'I felt that this was how I was going to be able to escape my working-class existence. I was on a quest to find the perfect lead singer. I always say that when I met Debbie, I sort of found my Mick Jagger.'
Los Angeles Times
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Clem Burke, Blondie drummer and self-proclaimed ‘Rock & Roll survivalist,' dies at 70
Blondie drummer Clem Burke has died, the band announced Monday on social media. He was 70 'It is with profound sadness that we relay news of the passing of our beloved friend and bandmate Clem Burke following a private battle with cancer,' singer Debbie Harry and guitarist Chris Stein said in a statement on behalf of 'the entire Blondie family.' The specifics of Burke's cancer were not revealed. 'Clem was not just a drummer; he was the heartbeat of Blondie,' the statement continued. 'His talent, energy, and passion for music were unmatched, and his contributions to our sound and success are immeasurable. Beyond his musicianship, Clem was a source of inspiration both on and off the stage. His vibrant spirit, infectious enthusiasm and rock solid work ethic touched everyone who had the privilege of knowing him.' Born Clement Anthony Bozewski on Nov. 24, 1954, Burke joined the band shortly after it was founded in 1974 by Harry and Stein and played on every Blondie album, including 'Parallel Lines,' the 1979 release that included the hit single 'Heart of Glass.' The genre-crossing nature of that song upset some punk fans, but not Burke. 'Dance was as subversive as punk to me. Us doing 'Heart of Glass' was our way of pissing off people in our own circles,' he said at the SXSW Festival in 2014. Burke was 'a self proclaimed 'Rock & Roll survivalist,'' the band said, who was undaunted when Blondie split up in 1982 years after the hits 'Call Me,' 'The Tide Is High' and 'Rapture.' Blondie reunited periodically, in 1997 and beyond. In and around those times, he performed with musicians including Eurythmics, Ramones, Bob Dylan, Bob Geldof, Iggy Pop, Joan Jett, the Fleshtones, the Romantics, Dramarama and the Go-Go's, to name a few. Burke was inducted with his Blondie bandmates into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March 2006. In 2011, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the U.K.'s University of Gloucestershire, the BBC reported, in recognition of his 'groundbreaking work with students' tied to a research project he started to study the positive physical and psychological effects of drumming. The study tracked the heart rate, oxygen uptake and blood lactate levels of professional drummers in rehearsals and during live shows, the outlet said. It included the likes of Rush drummer Neil Peart and led to the conclusion that top rock drummers required the same stamina as elite-level soccer players. 'His influence and contributions have spanned decades and genres, leaving an indelible mark on every project he was a part of,' the band's Monday statement continued. 'We extend our deepest condolences to Clem's family, friends, and fans around the world. His legacy will live on through the tremendous amount of music he created and the countless lives he touched. As we navigate this profound loss, we ask for privacy during this difficult time. Godspeed, Dr. Burke.'
