Jason Barnard and Clem Burke
Following the sad news of Clem Burke’s passing, we’re honoured to share a never-before-seen video interview from August 2023 with the legendary Blondie drummer. Clem reflects on his time with Blondie, Iggy Pop, and what it meant to keep the beat for a generation.
Extract of written version of his Strange Brew Podcast with Jason Barnard:
Would you say that the Blondie album Eat To The Beat had a bit more of a live feel than say Parallel Lines?
Well, Parallel Lines was recorded live as well without any programming at all, but it was a kind of a reverse psychology used by our producer, Mike Chapman. It’s been said many times that he was such a taskmaster and a very arduous procedure to record Parallel Lines. I never really felt that way. I really respected Mike for his past history of working with people like the sweet Suzi Quatro and writing songs like Tiger Feet, bubblegum glam rock songs. But Mike was pretty well minded on the idea that he wanted to make Parallel Lines the classic album that it became. He worked us pretty hard on getting the basic tracks correctly.
So when it came time to do Eat To The Beat, he almost used reverse psychology on us and just let us go for it. A prime example of that being Dreaming, which is probably the first take. I never expected that to be the final basic drum track, and Mike, everyone thought it was just great. I was just kind of having a jam on the song, running through it, as we were beginning to run it down in the studio. So yeah, Eat To The Beat is our most rock album, a rock and roll album, I would say, something like the song Eat To The Beat, with the harmonica and pretty raucous. Accidents Never Happen, then there’s Union City Blue. There’s big drums. It was recorded at The Power Station. Yeah, it’s our most rock and roll album. But then you have something like Atomic on there, which carries on the tradition of Heart Of Glass in a way.
