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.
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.
