Blondie drummer Clem Burke: “I’m basically living the other side of the dream”
As I enter the Zoom call for our interview, I make it no secret to Clem Burke that I am a huge fan. They say it’s best never to meet your idols, but the Blondie drummer is far more jovial than one would expect of someone in the middle of a press junket. He laughs as I stand up in front of my webcam to show him the t-shirt I bought from the band’s 2013 Blast Off Tour. “I like those cartoons,” he says of the drawings of the band members on my front. “They are gruesome, caricatures can be strange.”
Undoubtedly, Burke is best-known for his time with Deebie Harry, Chris Stein, and the other rotating members of the pioneering New Wave band. However, the list of the other stars he’s played with reads like a who’s who of music legends: Bob Dylan, Eurythmics, Iggy Pop, Joan Jett. It’s not hard to see why he was named by Rolling Stone as one of the greatest drummers of all time. “Clem showed up, and he was a real star,” Harry once told the Chicago Tribune. “He could play, and you could tell that it was his life.”
Burke tells me that he is in a very good mood. The previous night he played a private show at The Troubadour, the iconic West Hollywood venue that helped to launch the careers of Linda Ronstadt, Carole King, and the stateside success of Elton John. Since the onset of the you-know-what in 2020, he is grateful for the re-emergence of live music. “It kind of drew a line in the sand to realise how fast time does move because it’s hard to believe that it’s been two years almost,” he says. “But I’m ready, like everyone else, to move on.”
Skipping past the Covid era, his mind casts back to the last time he played in the UK, drumming with Bootleg Blondie (“the only tribute band endorsed by the real Blondie”) as part of an extensive national tour. “It was really, really wonderful,” he grins. “I got to do some songs that we don’t normally do, like deeper cuts, because we have so much new material.” Amusingly, the idea for the tour came when Burke dropped in on a Bootleg Blondie gig at Sutton FC’s football ground. “After a couple of beers, you want to get up and play. I played a couple of songs, there were a couple of hundred people there, and it was really fun!” The tribute band invited Burke to be a special guest at any of their shows next time he was in the UK, but he suggested doing a whole tour. “I was expecting to be playing pub back rooms and then the second gig was the Shepherd’s Bush Empire which was sold out.”
The tour included a stop in Leeds with a show at Brudenell Social Club. I remind Burke of this and tell him that I was in the audience. He is elated. “That is such a wonderful venue as well.” Then, he recounts an “inspiring” pilgrimage he made to The Refrectory to see the space where The Who recorded their seminal album ‘Live at Leeds’. Picturing the drummer of one of the greatest bands of all time pottering around the Student’s Union in search of the canteen is nothing short of fantastic.
But, alas, two years has passed, Blondie’s upcoming tour has been postponed twice, and Burke is itching to get on the road again. “The tour is called ‘Against The Odds’ for several reasons: having any kind of success in the music business is really against the odds and then with being able to actually tour [amid international coronavirus restrictions] is against the odds”
Although, this time, he is looking forward to playing big arena shows again. “At this point in our career, the bigger the better,” he admits. “We have Johnny Marr opening as a special guest; we want to give people value. He’s brilliant, he’s a friend. It’s going to be great.”
What’s more, the magnitude of 2022 for the band doesn’t stop there. The tour precedes the release of the first ever authorised archive project of the groups work, the similarly titled ‘Blondie 1974-1982: Against the Odds’. The collector’s box will include extensive liner notes, track-by-track commentary from the entire band, as well as the band’s entire discography complete with unreleased bonus material. With Blondie’s 50th anniversary fast approaching alongside this archival retrospective, I ask Burke how it feels to look back at such a long and illustrious career that few bands manage to achieve.
“Well, they say – not to flatter myself or Debbie or anyone – if you’re a living legend you’re kind of near the end of your life so I don’t really like to dwell on that too much,” he laughs. “I don’t think we think about time all that much, we think more about health and creativity. And to have a bit of optimism about the world as difficult as that may be.”
Yet, he confesses that the pause that lockdown gave the world made him reflect back on his memories as a musician. “When I get interviewed people once in a while would say that’s a great anecdote. You should think about doing a book,” he claims. “It’s almost a cliché, but I’ve been working on a memoir for some time that’s probably going to come out in 2023.”
“The working title is ‘The Other Side of the Dream: My Life In and Out of Blondie’. It’s about the success and accepting what happens after the success, the ups and downs of that and what still spurs you on creatively. I’m basically living the other side of the dream… anyone who’s [tried to have] success in the rock and roll business, that’s what they wanted. They wanted to be on the radio, be on tour, meet David Bowie. All that stuff happened for me. But what I’m also writing about is the other side of the dream. Taking out the trash, cleaning the cat box and then going and doing a gig. It’s the yin and yang of success.”
But now he’s reached that hallowed ‘other side’, I ask Burke who of the up-and-comers he has his eye on. He mentions Lana del Rey but saves his biggest praise for Måneskin, the Italian rock stars who have seen rapid success since winning last year’s Eurovision Song Contest.
“I like their energy, their glamour. They are taking from what came before and making it new which is kind of what we did with Blondie in a lot of ways. If you have the right influences you can make something different and great based on that. If you’re influenced by Marc Bolan and David Bowie, you are going to make music that I want to hear.”
However, despite the rise of new talent, Burke and the rest of Blondie are not content with simply resting on their laurels. In fact, he mentions that the band still has one goal in particular. “The ultimate gig for a New York band is to headline Madison Square Garden. not that we couldn’t get an audience for that but for one reason or another we’ve never headlined.”
Regardless, Blondie and Burke show no signs of slowing down. Referring back to his memoir, he says that he wants its release to coincide with the band’s new album in 2023. Considering that they already have a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a back catalogue that is the stuff of legend, and enough royalties to ensure a peaceful retirement, their tenacity is admirable.
“We are going to keep going because we are going to do the new record. So, we are going to have to tour again behind the record. It’s not the end yet.”
Blondie will play First Direct Arena in Leeds on 4th May 2022.
