Clem Burke: Eat to the Beat

He was the coolest drummer in the coolest NYC punk/pop band

Clem Burke was one of my favorite rock & roll drummers. Not just punk, not just NYC CBGBs. I held him up there with the best--Charlie Watts, John Bonham, Bill Bruford, and, of course, Clem's biggest influence, Keith Moon. Like Moon, Clem was adept at splashing accents across the entire drum kit in heavy handed, syncopated manner. At the same time, he had the drive and laser precision of the best pop laced rock and roll--think 'Friday On My Mind' or 'Paint It Black.' And he adopted a mod style that expressed his love for the British bands of the sixties--The Who, The Kinks-- both in his drumming and his wardrobe. Clem Burke was the coolest drummer in the coolest NYC punk/pop band with the coolest lead singer. And some great songs.

Eat to the Beat is hands down my favorite Blondie album. I can make a case for any of them, except the tropical one. The first two are brimming with fresh energy, and Parallel Lines is its own kind of masterpiece.

When I heard about Clem's passing the first song I thought of, along with a lot of other folks, was Eat to the Beat's opening salvo, "Dreaming." Clem's drum fill is the first thing you hear, right before the guitar and bass come crashing in. His paradiddling across floor toms and snare not only help define the song, they provide a rumbling bottom, a raging rapids that never slow down. I listened to a streaming version as well as on CD, and something just was missing, something that I remembered. Today I exhumed the album and put it on the turntable, and there it was--the booming quality that makes Clem's drumming the bottom of the group's sound.

His fills, heard at even faster tempo on the record's title track, owe a lot to Keith Moon, but there is more precision in Clem's playing--all the more amazing that he can play so fast AND keep the volume up. If you aren't sure that Blondie was a top notch rock and roll band, do yourself a favor. Get this album on vinyl and give it a listen.

Another place to enjoy Clem's playing is on one of my favorite Blondie songs, "Accidents Never Happen." He opens with a timekeeping pattern with strong accents. The tempo never flags or hesitates, and though he doesn't deviate from a fairly unadorned new wave beat much, he very much controls the overall mood of the track. During the middle eight section ("Now you love me/I, I can tell") he unleashes those runs across the drum kit again, and he varies his accents significantly between the section's repetitions.

But Burke was far from a one trick pony. On a ballad like "Shayla" he was able to keep the song moving along without interfering with its dreamier qualities. He adds more drama to "Union City Blue." He's able to provide bristling human energy to the Kraftwerk-vibed club number "Atomic."

Another cool thing about Eat to the Beat is that is was also the first album to be released as a video album as well, meaning that there are videos for all of the tracks on the record. Most are performance videos of the band, which is again fortuitous in that it provides an opportunity to glimpse Clem behind the drum kit providing savage energy and cheerleading the group onward.

Two more Blondie albums followed Eat to the Beat: the muted Autoamerican and the The Hunter, a completely unfocused mess. In 1982 the group called it quits: “I don’t think that when the band stopped anybody really cared. It was almost like a relief,” according to Burke.

Clem Burke spent the rest of the decade as a sideman, recording and playing live with any number of acts, including LAMF, Johnny Thunders, Bob Dylan, and Colors. He sat in for live gigs with the Ramones on two occasions, adopting the moniker Elvis Ramone. He and Blondie bassist Nigel Harrsion formed the band Chequered Past, which had more of a heavy metal sound, along with Sex Pistol Steve Jones.

In 1990 Burke joined up with Detroit garage rockers The Romantics, at a time when they weren't able to record any new music due to legal action on the part of their management, who they claimed had been ripping them off for years. He can be heard on the 1993 EP Made in Detroit, on which his sharp, energetic drumming contributes to the record's success. He continued to work with the group through the early 2000s.

When Debbie Harry and Chris Stein decided to reactivate Blondie in 1997, Burke returned to the group he called his day job, and continued to be a member until his death. It speaks volumes about his talent, energy, work ethic, and friendship that there has been no end of musicians posting their sadness at his passing and their memories and stories of playing with, or being influenced by him.

Ultimately Clem Burke was a music superfan, as noted by comedian and drummer Fred Armisen in an interview with Canadian Broadasting Corp. Armisen says that seeing Clem play "Dreaming" with Blondie on SNL when he was a kid ignited his desire to be a drummer. Later he became friends with Burke. His words describe the kind of person who becomes so deeply into the music he loves that the only thing left is to dissolve the barrier between fan and performer, and take the step up onto the stage:

"He was, like, everything you wanted from a person because he was a music nerd. He was a fan. And so you couldn't talk about anything without him having more details about it — about records, about what records were hits. Like, he really kept track. He was like a walking, excited encyclopedia of pop and punk."

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