It wasn’t the tight blazers and skinny ties that made new wave such a blood-buzz. Nor was it the drugs that turned its angular riffs and ricochet melodies so breathless and urgent. No, the whole impetus, energy and momentum of the scene was driven by the beat; that spare, piston-firing charge that set the sound’s often breakneck pace, daring the rest of the band to both keep up with and match its vitality and verve. And as the drummer with new wave’s definitive band Blondie, and one of the original beat-makers of the CBGB punk scene, Clem Burke – who died yesterday (April 7) aged 70 – was arguably the driving force of new wave, and much alternative music since. It’s the beat of his drum that the world has been dancing to for fifty years.
His brilliance is there in the feverish pace and assault rifle fills of ‘Atomic’, and the three beats it takes to announce that ‘Hanging On The Telephone’ is about to hurtle across your next two minutes like a drag race through the Lower East Side. His monstrous drums almost single-handedly lift ‘Union City Blue’ and ‘Dreaming’ into the realms of arena rock. But he wasn’t merely a pummelling powerhouse; his skill was in modernising and invigorating any style the song required – be it disco, hip-hop, reggaeton or doo-wop.
At heart, Burke was a natural showstopper. Born Clement Anthony Bozewski in New Jersey in 1954 to a drummer father, Burke grew up in awe of the “rock star drummers” such as Ringo Starr, Keith Moon and Al Jackson Jr from Booker T & The MG’s, and aspired to the same sort of backbeat magnetism. As a teenager, he became a minor local hero by founding popular New Jersey covers acts such as Total Environment and Sweet Willie Jam Band in the late-’60s and early-’70s.
When Deborah Harry and Chris Stein approached him when looking to replace Blondie’s departing drummer Billy O’Connor in 1975 – as Stein recalled in his Under A Rock memoir – he was living in a room in New York filled with drumming magazines and came with a coterie of hometown admirers attached. “Clem showed up, and he was a real star,” Deborah Harry told the Chicago Tribune in 2015, “he could play, and you could tell that it was his life.”
Burke was instrumental in keeping Blondie together during this rocky early period. With founding members decamping for Television and the Patti Smith Group, it was only Burke calling in his bassist friend, Gary Valentine, that stopped Harry and Klein from calling quits on the band. And, over the six albums of Blondie’s first era (from the self-titled debut in 1976 to 1982’s ‘The Hunter’), Burke’s dynamism and adaptability were absolutely fundamental to their wide-ranging appeal, both fuelling Blondie’s pop punk spirit and allowing them to shape-shift at will.
In the early years, he revitalised classic 1960s girl group rhythms for the likes of ‘Picture This’ and ‘In The Flesh’. Come 1980’s ‘Autoamerican’ he was encompassing calypso and emergent hip-hop on ‘The Tide Is High’ and ‘Rapture’. “Clem was not just a drummer; he was the heartbeat of Blondie,” the band wrote in their tribute. “His talent, energy, and passion for music were unmatched, and his contributions to our sound and success are immeasurable.” Not least on ‘Heart Of Glass’, where he repurposed the era’s four-to-the-floor disco shimmy for 1970s punk kids previously too cool to dance. That you could recognise the song from his hi-hat alone is a mark of his impact.
When Blondie split in 1982, Burke remained a cornerstone of the post-punk era, playing with names including Pete Townshend, Iggy Pop, Eurythmics and Joan Jett. His incredible skill saw him back Bob Dylan, while his immaculate punk credentials allowed him to play alongside the Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones in Chequered Past in 1983 and sit in with the Ramones for two gigs in 1987, under the alias Elvis Ramone. But Blondie was his home, and when the band reunited in 1997, Burke was the backbone. “We regrouped as a new band in a lot of ways,” he told this writer in 2020. “We wanted to make a new record and start fresh with that and see where that took us…It was a new beginning.”
Between dabblings with numerous supergroups made up largely of punk and new wave musicians (including Slinky Vagabond and the International Swingers alongside the Sex Pistols’ Glen Matlock), Burke would play with the reformed Blondie for the rest of his life, gaining his first Blondie writing credits on 1999’s comeback album ‘No Exit’, recording four further albums – culminating in 2017’s ‘Pollinator’ – and getting inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame with his bandmates in 2006.
He remained an adventurous player throughout: 2014’s ‘Ghosts Of Download’, for instance, saw him embracing electronic elements. But his recorded work was only part of his importance to Blondie. “His vibrant spirit, infectious enthusiasm and rock-solid work ethic touched everyone who had the privilege of knowing him,” the band wrote; the band has lost not just its heartbeat, but its gleaming powercore.