Clem Burke – Drumming Icon (a tribute and obituary)

In this special extended blog/tribute, Martin Gray takes a heartfelt and appreciative look back at one of rock’s most illustrated, universally adored and charismatic and iconic drummers, Clem Burke, who tragically died last week aged 70, after privately battling cancer, and shares his own thoughts and ruminations on how he was such a hugely influential figure for so many fans and aspiring drummers alike.

Flashback #1 – October 1971

Slade were on Top Of The Pops, performing their first number 1 hit Coz I Luv You. As a six-year-old, this was the first band I went nuts for. They’d already featured on TOTP with their first top 20 hit a few months earlier – a stonking cover of Little Richard’s Get Down And Get With It, but this time they’d grown out of their skinhead look of short hair and bovver boots, and now glammed up with long hair, they looked somewhat different, but ace.

Rip-roaring singer Noddy Holder sported his huge trademark flat cap (later stovepipe hat with mirrors) over his curls; Dave Hill with his pudding basin fringe, cape threw flamboyant guitar shapes; bassist Jim Lea brandished his viola; and, most exciting to me, Don Powell behind the drums, nonchalantly chewing gum as he pounded those skins. I was captivated and besotted. I pestered my sister to buy me the single a few days later.

Slade became my pop obsession for the next three years or so, along with fellow glam rockers The Sweet, who also featured a great drummer (Mick Tucker) I simply could not take my eyes off as an impressionable youngster. Thanks to these two groups, I’d already decided there and then that I wanted to play drums too. Other acts soon appeared on Top Of The Pops whose drummers I watched with zeal and harboured a desire to copy: the Faces with Kenney Jones, then the great Cozy Powell (no relation to Don) in 1973 with his hit Dance With The Devil.

Also in 1971, my elder sister had the only single we ever bought by The Rolling Stones: Brown Sugar. It was a stone cold classic and still gives me goosebumps to this day. Whilst never a Stones fan at all, I always loved those solid, pounding, tough-sounding drums that the legendary Charlie Watts made so much his own style. He very soon became the next of the holy quintet of great rock drummers I aspired to emulate: so we had Don, Mick, Kenney, Cozy and Charlie (sounds almost like a 60s band!)…. I was beginning to dream that dream, as kids of that age often do.

And yet what happened in 1972 defied all logic. I didn’t ask for a drum kit for my 7th birthday but I actually settled for a guitar. God only knows why, because I wanted to be a drummer, but drums took up too much room. So a guitar it was, and thus I was promptly bought one: a half-size child’s acoustic. And I still have it to this day – 53 years later. Albeit missing three strings and looking a bit battered around the varnished wood casing, simply because I abused it with child’s drumsticks. I used the left stick to slide up and down the frets and I would smash the strings with the right one – whilst laying the guitar horizontally like a pedal steel….. a tuneless racket for sure, but in some bizarre way I may have unwittingly pioneered the Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth approach to playing the guitar with drumsticks some 10 years before it was even a thing…

So much for wanting to be like my five drum heroes then. As it transpired, I never learnt to play the guitar properly anyway, cos I was hopeless and far too impatient.

Flashback #2 – February 1978

Top Of The Pops again. There were some really cool bands in the charts by this point. The belligerence of punk the previous year had given way to post-punk and new wave (more tuneful, less shambolic and thus more appealing to me) and a whole slew of new bands were now regular entries and featured on this edition: Elvis Costello, The Boomtown Rats, Ian Dury & The Blockheads, The Motors to name but a few. There was also Kate Bush – the first truly original female artist to appear in ages, plus a couple of disco acts, still, and the remnants of the Saturday variety show regulars (e.g. Boney M and Brotherhood of Man, both of whom I decided I hated).

However, a gang of exciting new faces were on this programme: the debut performance of Debbie Harry and Blondie – making their UK chart debut with a gleefully boisterous tune Denis (later we discovered it was a cover of ’60s vocal group Randy & The Rainbow’s Denise – now gender switched with French pronunciation). Having never seen this lot before, I was captivated…and agog. It was like an epiphany. A pre-teenage ‘wow’.

Classroom talk the next morning in school was inevitably about ‘that ace new band with the foxy blonde chick singer with cheekbones and Monroe-esque pout’. Of course we all fixated on Ms. Harry in her short red one-piece stage dress, but I was also watching the drummer, as usual … because, to be fair, he was the other clear shining star among the group. His way of playing and his showmanship absolutely transfixed me – and not for the first time either.

He looked so effortlessly cool in a tonic suit and tie, smart mod haircut, a little trace of Paul McCartney’s boyish looks too – he was a handsome dude, and a total fucking star even then. The band all looked pretty suave and dapper come to that and the song was an earworm straight from the off. So that was it. A new favourite band to now follow.

From that point onward. I would eagerly await the next time Blondie and Debbie Harry would appear again on TOTP. I didn’t have long to wait either as, a mere weeks later after Denis gatecrashed the top end of the charts, there was a second hit single in hot pursuit: (I’m Always Touched By Your) Presence Dear. This was an even better song. I was in pure ‘new wave pop heaven’. And the drummer – Clem Burke – again didn’t disappoint. In fact, he positively outshone the rest of the group.

So inevitably Blondie became my new pop obsession of sorts. At that age, I didn’t really care much for punk to be honest – it was pretty much everything that followed in its wake. An avalanche of great bands of all different genres that came along at the tail end of the 1970s that rescued the decade from sliding into a MOR-ass of soft rock mundanity which it had threatened to do around 1976-77, when there was also simply far too much bandwagon disco dross and iffy gorgonzola novelty acts for my liking. Ironically, it was the pub-rock bands, like Dr. Feelgood and Eddie & The Hot Rods, that pre-empted the arrival of punk proper that proved to be the much needed shot in the arm.

And suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, this incredible guy called Clem Burke from Blondie became my new drum figurehead for pretty much the rest of time and right to the present, steamrollering over my five previous early-’70s drum heroes with gusto.

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A true maverick and ready-made rock star

Born Clement Anthony Bozewski in Bayonne, New Jersey on 24th November 1954, the irrepressible Clem knew his stuff even before he joined Blondie in 1975. He was one of those who, at a young age, already had his trajectory set on conquering his first and biggest passion – that of drumming for life in rock bands – and had the suss and know-how, as well as sure-shot confidence, to succeed. It is thought that, even before joining Blondie, he adopted the stage surname ‘Burke’ simply because he felt it sounded sharper and more succinct and in keeping with the rock’n’roll spirit at the time.

His influences were proudly displayed for all to see in the manner in which he not only set his kit up but how he played it: the four most obvious being Keith Moon (whom Clem was obsessed with and thus started his lifelong infatuation with all British beat groups of the era); Ringo Starr – the drummer from his all-time favourite band The Beatles; Hal Blaine (master sticksman who propelled Spector’s legendary Wrecking Crew with his cavernous and inimitable powerhouse drumming style); and lastly, one of the earliest progenitors of the nascent rock’n’roll sound, Earl Palmer.

One only had to listen to any Blondie track with Clem in full flow (or throttle) to fully appreciate the incredibly deft manner in which these four musicians’ influences were not only present, but ultimately assimilated into his own singularly unique and distinctive style. Clem took the brutality and bombast of Keith Moon’s unhinged and thunderous pummeling and harnessed the rough edges into a more tighter, disciplined attack (best example of this is of course the entire drum track to Dreaming – 3.03 minutes of relentless full-on clattering frenzy like no other).

In the case of Ringo Starr, Clem shared the same curious characteristic of playing left-handed on a right-handed kit, which is what Mr. Starkey did all through his time with the fab four. Even more astonishingly, Ringo Starr’s unique ‘backwards drum fills’ – where he hits the toms first before the snare (the best examples are heard on Rain and Strawberry Fields Forever) were the template for some of Clem’s most mind-boggling and inventive breaks – particularly on the earlier Blondie tracks that featured on their first two albums. Listen to his drumming in the bridge of Presence Dear and those complex fills between 1.36 – 1.49. They really are quite out of this world.

It’s also clearly evident that the spirit of Hal Blaine’s distinctive tumbling drum sound runs rampant throughout a lot of Clem’s drumming. Their first hit Denis features some gleefully manic somersaulting fills cribbed directly from the Blaine school: towards the end of the song’s fade, Clem is going hell for leather and almost all of those accents can be heard in many of those classic Phil Spector hits – albeit Clem plays them at twice the speed simply because he can. This is a measure of his skill and adeptness. He takes on the classic sixties girl groups’ sounds – be it Phil Spector’s Ronettes (or Shadow Morton’s Shangri-Las – another of Burke’s big ’60s pop obsessions) – and applies his own ‘none more punk rock’ take on their execution. It really is an exhilarating thing to behold and this is the reason why I find his drumming style to be so exciting and utterly irresistible.

Lastly, the faster rock’n’roll style of Earl Palmer can be clearly heard in the frantically-paced songs like 11.59, Will Anything Happen, Attack Of The Giant Ants, Kung Fu Girls, and others. Clem’s almost comically-accelerated style where he plays those deliriously rapid machine gun fills are almost super human in tempo and it’s what makes him such an amazing showman and consummate performer who never comes across as anything less than utterly thrilling to watch in action, whichever band he happens to guesting with.

Such was Clem’s larger than life presence in Blondie that I can say with all honesty that the band had TWO main focal points whenever they appeared onstage anywhere. All eyes tended to dart like in a tennis match between the singer and the drummer. Both commanded so much attention (and adoration), it’s a testimony of how utterly indispensible he really was within the group.

It’s also been often said that Clem was actually the second pin-up in the band, after Debbie. Debbie had her legions of universal admirers and devotees – both male and female, and Clem attracted the same kind of adulation from not just the girls for his handsome poster boy looks, but also the guys who wanted to be just like him (be it effortlessly cool in those Mod-ish tonic suits and immaculate barnet, or of course playing the drums in exactly the same way as he did – barely breaking sweat and keeping his composure in such admirable style: body posture sat bolt upright despite head nodding and his arms frantically flying across the kit in a frenzied blur).

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Irrepressible icon of cool and an unabashed Anglophile

Clem always made no secret of the fact as to how much he loved England (and the UK). A self-confessed Anglophile, he often made trips over to London on his own, separate from the band, just to buy records and clothes and to then work these cultural and sartorial influences into the band’s visual manifesto so to speak. Of course, in time he would end up playing with countless bands on both sides of the Atlantic, guesting, sessioneering and indeed gigging in good old trusty ‘transit and truck stop’ style across the country with simple no-nonsense rock’n’roll / punk outfits and sharing the limelight in collaboration with new emerging talents just because his passion and appetite for live music was so insatiable and unquenchable.

He was the quintessential ‘hardest working drummer in rock’, as they say, but with good reason. It’s not known exactly how many gigs he has clocked up now in the past 20+ years since Blondie re-emerged triumphantly with their sixth number 1 hit Maria in early 1999, but I am willing to bet it’s somewhere in the thousands. The guy was simply tireless and perennially super-youthful and seemed to be possessed with a supernatural surfeit of boundless energy and a voracious appetite for just jamming and playing with anybody. It is the reason why he is so universally adored and respected, even worshipped.

Going back to the early days again, consider how he was the one Blondie member responsible for honing the band’s image before they broke huge across the world. The image which became iconic and launched countless copycat bands in their wake. In 1975, when Clem first hooked up with Debbie and Chris Stein after answering an ad the latter placed for a ‘freak energy drummer’ [sic], he also took along his best school mate at the time – Gary ‘Valentine’ Lachman – and introduced him to the couple, recommending they recruit him too as the bass player and another songwriter. Thus was the first incarnation of Blondie and indeed four fifths of the quintet which graces the cover of their first self titled album (keyboardist Jimmy Destri would join shortly after).

Gary – like Clem – was very into the UK music at the time and shared a similar interest and enthusiasm for the beat pop and mod styles of the mid to late 1960s, and thus they both suggested the others in the band adopt the retro-’60s look with sharp suits and shirts as a contrast to the somewhat shambling boho anti-styles that so many of their contemporaries were sporting.

At the time, mid-’70s, they all had longish hair (Clem included, being as he was a huge fan of trashy glam punks like the New York Dolls), but with Clem’s ’60s Brit obsessions finally taking over, he got his own hair trimmed and styled to replicate those of the UK beat groups, even creating his own individual ‘male beehive’ look – an astonishing (and at the time audacious) stylistic sidestep. To achieve his distinctive barnet which became his trademark during those first commercial breakthrough years, he actually went to the extreme of baking his specially sculpted haircut (shaped using a home-made mixture of beer, sugar, hairspray, and whatever else he could improvise with) by lying prostrate with his head partly inside a warm oven for at least an hour or so until it was set.

Debbie Harry recalls one particular occasion during those early years, when they hadn’t seen Clem for a few days, and it turned out he’d jetted over to the UK again to go shopping in London’s hipness epicentre of Soho for new suits – one for each member of the band – and presented them on his return. He had also fallen in love with nascent r’n’b acts like Dr. Feelgood with their sharp suits, so decided that not just their records, but the band’s look too, should inform his own image change. His meticulous attention to detail – doing everything to ensure that the group’s image was just *so* – has earned him the unofficial mantle of the band’s unsung style guru – something which, in many other cases, would be practically unheard of given how most bands’ drummers care little about such trivialities as presentation. But this is Clem we’re talking about, and it’s these very foibles that make him so popular and truly iconic.

This writer has been so in awe of his look, his style and his irrepressible spirit and modus operandi all these years since that first TOTP appearance in February 1978, that, come the one fateful day when I finally got to meet him in person (of which more later), I underwent what one can only mildly call a ‘state of near fan boy meltdown’ and had problems trying to articulate myself.

A drummer first and foremost

Clem Burke never joined Blondie to be a songwriter. He was, in his own words, a drummer first and foremost, and a drummer to the end. And what an exemplary one at that. His vision for the band was resolute: that he would simply be an integral contributor to securing success that he already (quietly) sensed would eventually come. He lived the rock and roll dream one hundred percent. Some would say that he probably drummed in his sleep. He was exceptionally blessed with these game-changing attributes that have ensured his immortality even after his passing.

Blondie issued eleven albums between 1976 and 2017, and though all of them had various members of the band penning the songs, as well as – in later years post-2000s – many collaborative unions with outside songwriters as well as guest players, one notable absentee in the songwriting credits was, indeed, Clem Burke. However, there is one curious anomaly which may have been overlooked by many. Although it’s widely recognised that Clem played little to no part in songwriting duties at all, he did partake in arrangement and music of some tracks, and the one album where his name does appear in the credits as songwriter and arranger for the first time is No Exit – the 1999 comeback album after 17 years hiatus.

Clem actually co-wrote one track on the album – Divine – with Kathy Valentine from the Go-Gos. He also features as music arranger on another – Boom Boom In The Zoom Zoom Room – again with Kathy. So at long last he appears to have broken his duck and made his songwriting debut on a Blondie album. However, that remains his sole cameo to the present day, but it’s still an interesting little detail to touch upon nonetheless.

The Curse Of Mike Chapman

The first two (decisively more ‘street punk’ sounding) albums Blondie and Plastic Letters were produced by Richard Gottehrer (with Craig Leon handling duties on two songs from the debut). Their third, breakthrough, mainstream-strafing monster Parallel Lines was the work of renowned pop producer par excellence Mike Chapman. It went stratospheric, thanks to a mixture of Chapman’s ruthless efficiency and strictness in the studio, and collective meltdowns from various band members at having to do take after take after take to satisfy Chapman’s control-freak approach to recording, bequeathing a perfect commercial pop record.

Understandably, Clem and other band members initially resented Chapman and his dictatorial ways, acting like the over-officious school master berating his charges for not stepping into line. To the band’s utter chagrin, the producer even had the nerve to criticise their playing during their many takes for the tracks on their third album, and deriding the band (initially) for being sloppy and not playing to their strengths.

Of course things would soon change over time, as bit by bit, after all the squaring up and gnashing and wailing, the band admitted that a classic record was in the works as the arrangements began to sound much tighter and more concise – helmed by Chapman’s indisputable production nous. His legacy was undeniable: he was after all, the purveyor of the very finest of the early 1970s glam pop acts of the UK like the Sweet, Mud and Suzi Quatro – together with his writing partner Nicky Chinn scoring hit after hit for all three acts….and more bands besides. You simply don’t argue with that sort of pedigree. But Clem initially wasn’t too happy with Mike’s regimental boot camp demeanour. And one song in particular really got up his back and – initially at least – brought on even more indignation than usual.

Here’s Mike Chapman recounting (laughing) in an interview when talking about Clem Burke: ‘Clem….. my god, Clem – he was out of control! He was a hugely talented drummer for sure, but I had to do something to rein that precociousness in!’
Even Chris Stein said something similar: ‘Clem had this attitude that he was Keith Moon: wanting to play every drum all of the time!! It was a challenge trying to get him play simpler and in time!’

And what Mike did was unprecedented in studio recording back then. He insisted Clem record each drum part separately – the kick, the snare, the hi hat, the cymbals etc….for the song they were working on at that juncture (Heart Of Glass).  It was no way for a maverick free-spirit like Clem to play any drum kit, that was for certain. The reason for this was that Mike wanted to sync up a drum machine to give the song a more consciously mechanical feel – thus Clem would have to then play his part over it. The latter initially baulked at that idea, but Chapman insisted the kit now be recorded in separate parts, thus began the painstaking task of doing a perfectly simple drum part but in a very fragmented and time-consuming manner. **

Besides, Mike was also insistent that the tempo be absolutely precise and metronomic, and did not allow for any speeding up of the drum track which he fully anticipated Clem would do as the song progressed. Thus the drums were ‘cut and pasted’ into a locked beat. This is what we hear on the main track – the 4-minute single edit, the extended 5.46 mins 12-inch edit (which concludes with just the wordless refrain simply looped for around 2 minutes to fade, with absolutely no variation at all).

However, all is not quite what it seems. Despite Chapman avowing that this was how the drum track was recorded and that he did not allow Clem any free rein on the drum kit to play it naturally, the original 3.54 album version of this song (later CD versions replaced it with the 12″ extended version) and in particular the special remix (a longer 4.34 edit – video below) that graced 1981’s The Best Of Blondie compilation suggests otherwise. Both these feature an instrumental outro whereby it’s clear that Clem has been granted the liberty of playing his drums as ‘normal’ …. Almost as if the dam holding him back has been breached, he begins to add his signature accents and acrobatic fills on every bar, the sort you hear him playing on other Blondie songs. Evidently he’s been allowed to go crazy and let rip on the drum kit after all, as the track fades.

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Funny what decades of hindsight does though, because much later, reflecting back on the recording process that birthed Parallel Lines, many of the band, Clem included, showed more gratitude and humility by admitting how the experience taught them a lot about discipline in the studio. Clem even retrospectively praised Chapman for showing him that there was more to recording the drums than just bashing the fucking shit out of them – there was such as thing as subtlety and restraint – and it was a valuable learning curve for him in his quest for self improvement and adapting other different playing techniques in line with various new recording processes.

** Was Martin Hannett by any chance taking notes? Unlikely, but I ponder this because this was almost the exact same process (near enough) he went through when recording one of the bands on Factory during the exact same time – namely Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division (released a year later in 1979) whereby he instructed Steve Morris to have each drum and cymbal recorded separately in the same way by taking apart the drum kit piece by piece. Uncanny coincidence indeed (although it has to be said Chapman didn’t go to the same kind of extremes by demanding Clem dismantle his kit…).

Ever dependable perennial drummer for hire. 

The list of bands and artists that have been blessed with Clem’s incredible stickwork is damn near exhaustive, reading like a veritable who’s who of modern rock and pop. Even before Blondie’s first break up, he was contributing as guest drummer with fellow ’80s duo the Eurythmics on their 1981 debut album In The Garden, before returning to the fold to complete his own band’s (at the time) final album The Hunter, which was released in 1982, after which the group parted ways amid some considerable inter-band tensions (crucially, Chris Stein was also quite ill by this point so the end was inevitable). Of course, a few years later Clem was Eurythmics’ touring and studio drummer, featuring on the Revenge album and tour of 1986.

Following this stint, the restless and ever-versatile Clem played key roles in many other groups – notably enduring Detroit rockers The Romantics, fellow veteran CBGB garage act The Fleshtones, backing bands for Joan Jett, Pete Townshend, Iggy Pop, Johnny Thunders, Bob Dylan, and also a brief stint with long-time contemporaries Ramones, deputising (for departed drummer Richie) on a couple of gigs under the alias Elvis Ramone. This seemingly tireless workaholic also then played in different bands with former Sex Pistols members Steve Jones (Chequered Past, between 1983-1985, which also featured former Blondie bandmate Nigel Harrison) and Glen Matlock (International Swingers, 2011-present), as well as cameo stints with The Adult Net, and The Go-Gos.

As if that wasn’t enough, Clem also – incredibly – starred as the token celebrity drummer with Bootleg Blondie (self-declared ‘the world’s no. 1 Blondie tribute band’), playing and touring with them, even at one point reunited alongside his former colleague Gary Lachman, who also briefly had a stint with this London-based (and excellent) tribute act which has gone from strength to strength over the last decade or so. In fact the core duo who originally conceived this band, married couple Andy and Debbie Harris (real surname), struck up such a cordial working relationship with the ever dependable drum legend around the time of the pandemic in 2020-2021 that they have since been working on a rock opera about London, no doubt helped along immensely by Clem’s renowned passion for everything to do with Britain’s music scenes.

Aside from endorsing the sterling efforts of Bootleg Blondie, Clem kept busy playing and touring with another long established group of US rock veterans The Tearaways, returning to UK shores in 2023. It was only after the band’s most recent appearance at the International Beatles Festival in Liverpool, held during late August, that Clem joined ranks with them and played at the hallowed Cavern Club – who of course host the annual shindig that unites Fab Four fans worldwide – for the second time that year (the first occasion being in March 2023 at a show celebrating 45 years of Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life album, where Clem shared star billing alongside luminaries Glen Matlock, Katie Puckrik and Kevin Armstrong).

A doctorate and UK ambassador for drumming too.

In 2011 Clem received a Honorary Doctorate from the University of Gloucestershire, UK, for his role in taking part in a comprehensive years-long study which he set up in 2008 (named the Clem Burke Drumming Project) along with two professors in the field of applied sport science, Dr. Marcus Smith and Dr. Steve Draper, to investigate the therapeutic and physical/psychological effects and benefits of drumming on people of different ages and social backgrounds.

The conception of this project arose after an initial research programme was started by Professor Smith in 1999, when Blondie first returned to great public acclaim after 17 years absence in the wilderness. Clem was tested for his own stamina levels when drumming for a specific period of time and it was found that they were comparable to, and even surpassing, that of a professional athlete or footballer. Given that many concerts average around 90 minutes for a main set (a similar length to the average soccer/football game), this was a fascinating insight into just how strenuous on the body’s metabolic rate drumming can be.

Admirably, he recommended that educational and health organisations consider reassessing physically demanding musical activities – such as drumming – as a means of boosting the well being and confidence (as well as fitness levels) of its participants, particularly in the cases of people across the autistic spectrum such as ADHD, but also equally applicable to anybody taking up drums as either a hobby or (professional) career.

More recently, Clem was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music by Chichester University in 2022 for the above outstanding achievements in the important research they carried out over the years into the correlation between drumming and human sciences, something which, up until that point, had never been properly investigated or indeed understood. As a result the university then established a ‘drumming lab’ – the first of its kind anywhere – to monitor other drummers and the psychological/physical effects of their daily routines.

Weak In The Presence Of Godlike Greatness

It’s hard for a shameless Clem-ophile like myself to not share my own once-in-a-lifetime encounter with the legend himself when I was working at Liverpool’s Beatles Story visitor attraction between 2007 – 2012. In August 2011, Blondie were embarking on a (near sold out) UK tour for the first time in several years to promote their newest album Panic Of Girls – and were playing the O2 Academy that first week, when Clem and a couple of his entourage paid their customary visit to the museum to buy a few more items of Fab Four merchandise. Given that Clem is an obsessive Beatles fan, this was a given….but never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine that one day, whilst stood at the door welcoming visitors from far and wide, that he would himself drop by.

I was told by management that we would be expecting him to call in, and I was beside myself with excitement and nervousness, having never seen them playing live, let alone meet them. Needless to say, when I did come face to face with the legendary man, it was the usual fanboy gushing and awkward outpouring of garbled platitudes, thanking him and Blondie for being such an inspiration to my teenage years and inspiring in me the desire to start playing drums just like him.

He was so accommodating and never for one second behaved like a haughty rock star – happy to chat and show a genuine interest in hearing about how I learned to play all his drum licks on the singles and every track on the album Parallel Lines. ‘Hey man, that’s so cool!’ he said in return at one point and I practically melted – much to the amusement of my younger colleagues who were stood by the admissions desk reeling off tickets to the queues of visitors.

I said to him ruefully that I couldn’t make the Blondie show in the next couple of days cos it was sold out. He then stunned me by asking if I would like to be put on the guest list, as he would be more than happy to get me and a friend in to the gig if I left their management with an email address. I was gobsmacked and absolutely elated, thanked him profusely, shook his hand, told him how much I adored and worshipped the band all these years and that was it. I had this insane grin on my face for the rest of the day. My colleagues probably thought I’d swallowed some happy biscuits.

True to his word, they did email me two days later and, along with my workmate Neringa, we took ourselves off to the O2 Academy that Tuesday night, and to our disbelief and delight were given AAA laminates. Access All Areas! Wow! The venue was heaving, the temperature was sauna-like, but hell, I was excited as fuck, and so was my friend Neringa as she had never seen the band before either.

The band were tighter than a gnat’s chuff and belted out all those evergreen hits I went doolally over all those teenage years back. Debbie was just impeccable and in fine voice, Chris to her right was his usual studied cool but of course who was the other star of the show?! We were as near to seventh heaven as it was possible to be – 33 years it has taken me to finally see Blondie in action (what with being too young in 1978 to catch them you understand). Some weird serendipity to relate: 33 years was also the age of Debbie Harry in 1978. She was twice that age at 66 now – here standing on stage right in front of us. But her appearance and voice was ageless. As for Clem – well, Clem also looked perennially youthful and did everything we expected him to do and for the encore he showed his loyalty to the fair city of Liverpool by sauntering back onto the drum riser sporting one of the four Beatles T-shirts he bought at my workplace. Now that’s true love and dedication for you!

Following the set, we were at the backstage after-show gathering where Clem was already chatting to everybody as was his usual genial self. Debbie didn’t show up until a while later but when she did it was heart-a-flutter time all over again. Like with Clem, I made some quick hushed complimentary small talk and thanked her graciously, telling her how much I enjoyed their show and what an absolute honour it was to meet them all. Hearing her say the words ‘thank you’ in return was just like…. oh my! Gently kissing her hand, I then backed off into the room and soon caught up with Clem again. I got my friend to pose with him for one solitary photo, and when Neringa offered to take one of me in return with my idol, I faltered, then – foolishly – declined. I couldn’t bear the thought of him looking so cool standing next to a dork like me so I will now rue this lost opportunity for the rest of my life.

As it transpired, I have only had ONE photo taken of me with a legendary rock drummer idol in the recent past: Don Powell from Slade. That was in December 2019 at another of my former workplaces: the British Music Experience. I didn’t look too great in that picture either, all saggy jowls and premature man-boobs poking through my t-shirt. But then that’s just me, not really the type to enjoy seeing myself in photos, I guess.

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A truly singular talent: loved, adored and now mourned by millions.

The news of his untimely death from cancer (what a bastard that is) sent shockwaves throughout the music world. I was utterly stunned when my best friend (like me, a lifelong Blondie and Clem fan) texted me with the three simple words on Monday afternoon: Clem Burke RIP. I was incredulous at first, thinking he was winding me up, but then once it sank in, my head was in pieces. The shock was like a brick wall slamming into me. Never before has the passing of a famous rock drummer affected me in this devastating, crushing manner. Charlie Watts was probably the closest – in August 2021. I adored Charlie too – he was a true class act for sure and, despite never being a Stones fan, I had a lot of love, respect and admiration for the great man, his cool persona and his debonair style. When he passed, I was pretty damned upset. So much so that I didn’t speak to anybody for three days – totally consumed by my grief and mourning for the legendary figure.

But with Clem’s passing, it was far more profound and a hell of a lot more painful. Simply because I looked up to him as my all time drummer hero in many ways, for the reasons outlined earlier, and for the simple fact that I also met him face to face back then in 2011 – so that makes a huge difference and throws everything into greater, starker significance. It seems unreal that he’s gone, as so many fellow musicians and legions of fans all over the world (articulating their collective devastation and sharing their tributes and condolences online) have similarly expressed.

The outpouring of grief has been phenomenal : it’s fair to say that I don’t think we have ever seen such a colossal tsunami of united love and collective sadness/shock for the loss of a modern contemporary drummer as we have done for Clem. It really does bring a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes every time I see these tributes online and all those pics being shared across the decades of this incredible drumming legend and figurehead to so many fans young and old. And still the tributes have been pouring in online, a week on from the day he left this planet rock. And still I have these tearful moments in reflection.

He just seemed so boundlessly energetic, versatile, enthusiastic and utterly indefatigable, living his musical life to the full, to succumb to something as awful as this. Forever youthful too, belying his 70 years by some distance, but as ever, the dreaded C-word does not discriminate. It’s cruel and merciless. Too many of our great heroes in music, film, art and literature have already been taken from us in this way.

We all genuinely believed that somebody as passionate, super-fit, ebullient, amiable and outgoing as Clem would never age, and thus be immortal. It’s therefore a seismic shock to see that he’s now the first of the classic Blondie line up to have left us. Sometimes I ask that question: why is it always the drummer in a classic band that always goes first (given that only weeks earlier we also lost Rick Buckler from The Jam; the great John Bradbury from The Specials passing in December 2015 floored me too)?

Fans everywhere will of course be remembering him by whacking on those classic timeless tunes and blasting them out at full volume, and playing real, or air, drums in respect of the great man no doubt…… whilst Clem himself, now inducted into the great drumming supergroup in the sky, is probably hooking up with the best of the rest of them: those equally loved and revered legends whose time was sadly up before they even knew it. Of those, he will be especially ecstatic to see Keith, Earl and Hal, but he may have to hold out a little while longer before the equally irrepressible Ringo (85 this summer) is ready to join him.

At the time of his death two major undertakings have remained partly incomplete: his London Rock Opera with Debbie and Alan from Bootleg Blondie, and also the memoirs he was working on that he announced to the world only a couple of years ago. Hopefully they will be realised and consummated in some way and that fans everywhere will get to share in that final couple of chapters of his already tremendous legacy.

Godspeed and RIP Clem Burke – drumming superstar and a much revered friend to almost everybody in rock. Forever also in my head, heart and ears.

Clem’s formidable powerhouse drumming style and explosive punk rock energy can be fully appreciated in his performances as seen in the ground-breaking Eat To The Beat video album:

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All words written by Martin Gray.  For other articles and reviews, check Martin’s profile here

• Source: NEWHD MEDIA