Clem Burke opens up about the alluring pull of Iggy Pop’s material and Blondie’s contrasting parallel careers in the UK and US. With his forthcoming 2024 Lust For Life tour and a new Blondie album on the horizon, Clem is more passionate than ever about creating unforgettable shows and never missing a beat. This is a written version of his Strange Brew Podcast with Jason Barnard.
Firstly, it’s helpful to talk about the Lust For Life tour. The one thing that stands out for me was the amazing reception that you guys had on the last tour. It went down so well and crucially, it just looked like great fun and great music.
Yeah, it was really, really fun. And it was great to work with the people that I was working with on that. I mean, of course, Glen came on at the last minute. It was a bit crazy because originally it was supposed to be Tony Sales, who along with his brother, Hunt Sales, were the rhythm section on both The Idiot album and Lust For Life. For one reason or another, as time got closer, Tony wasn’t able to commit to travelling. So we had to cancel our engagement in Japan, which was a bit of a disappointment. I always enjoyed going to Japan.
Last time I was there, I was with a band called The Empty Hearts, a band I was involved in with a few people, Elliot Easton from The Cars, being one of them. We put two albums out a while back and then some people in the band lost interest during the pandemic. It was very disappointing for me once again to not be able to carry on with The Empty Hearts. But anyway, at the last minute, we were able to get Glen Matlock to come in. So we changed the whole kind of idea of the band in some ways.
Glen just had a new album coming out so we were able to do a few of his songs. Then we did some Pistol songs and it just got changed around a bit. Katie Puckrik in particular was really amazing. She really rose to the occasion. She almost became like a female Iggy. Also, the lyrics took on a less misogynist character and they became more like the beat poetry, which they really are in a way.
Katie was amazing. And then there’s Lewis Correia and Florence Sabeva, an amazing guitar player and keyboard player. And Kevin Armstrong, of course, I was familiar with his work and Kevin was great as the MD. And yeah, the reception was pretty amazing.
I think once Glen joined, it became a little bit more coherent in what we were trying to do. And the rehearsals were really enjoyable. A lot of the gigs just harkened back to the good old days, especially as towards the end, there’s that club in Hastings, a pub. We had a gig upstairs. That place was so jam packed. It was really reminiscent of being at someplace like CBGB or Dingwalls or something back in the day. The enthusiasm for the band and for the music was fantastic. So we’re doing it again, as you know, in March next year. We’re gonna change some of the things up a little bit, but the whole band will be intact and are really looking forward to it.
Yeah, the footage on YouTube is amazing. There’s one of you doing Five Foot One live, from Iggy’s New Values.
Right, that was a really good choice. We started off with doing the Lust For Life album and then of course we did a selection of other songs by Iggy. We did a homage to Tom Verlaine and David Bowie. We did the Tom Verlaine song that Bowie did on Scary Monsters, Kingdom Come it’s called. That was a little side thing that we did that people seemed to really enjoy. We’re gonna try to bring in some other songs on the next go around. But yeah, the enthusiasm amongst the members of the band and also the audience was fantastic and really kind of spurred us on. Every show wound up being sold out. Tom Wilcox, who organised it, I knew Tom from the ICA. I did a Q&A a while back when I began work on my memoir several years ago that Tom put on. So Tom and I have worked together before. So he’s somebody who can really do a great job on putting these sorts of things together. So I was really happy to work once again with Tom Wilcox as well.
You’ve got so many connections with Iggy including playing on his album, Zombie Birdhouse. But around the Lust For Life era, you and Blondie toured with Iggy, didn’t you?
Right, well, the first national tour in the United States that we did with Blondie was in support of Iggy Pop when they were promoting, touring The Idiot album. He was doing a selection of songs from Lust For Life, but that album had not been released as of yet. Of course, famously on that tour, David Bowie was the keyboard player. So that’s really what our relationship with David and Iggy began back then. And with Blondie, we played at the club, Max’s Kansas City on the weekend. Two sold out shows, and after the second show about four o ‘clock in the morning, we got into a caravan. And I always say the same thing, I have no idea who was driving. There was one bed that we basically all kind of crashed out in or slept on the floor in this caravan.
We travelled to Montreal for the first gig. We arrived at the venue early and we just went into the dressing room where we were all hagged out from driving all night and then the door opened and David and Iggy walked in and introduced themselves. That was the beginning of the tour. It really showed them as gentlemen and they were very gracious to us on the tour and very helpful. I remember David would watch our soundchecks quite a bit and of course I would watch their sound checks and it was amazing. They were always, especially with David, always rearranging or sticking in new bits or background vocals on the songs. So the songs, the arrangements were growing as the tour was going on and that’s when I first met Tony and Hunt Sales.
Then I had a band with Tony right at the end after Blondie stopped, it was called Chequered Past. We did one record on EMI America. The band included Steve Jones from the Pistols as well.
So there’s a lot of connections between all the people involved in the whole. Of course Kevin Armstrong was Bowie’s MD at Live Aid and also played guitar on the Blah Blah Blah, Iggy album. Glen wrote some songs with Iggy and played on the Soldier album and also toured with Iggy quite a bit.
And it was you and Chris Stein who worked with Iggy for his Zombie Birdhouse album.
Right. Chris produced it. Prior to the recording of that album, I had been on tour with Iggy. Unfortunately, I was hoping that the touring band would have made that album, Zombie Birdhouse. But because of, I think, budgetary things, Jimmy – Iggy Pop was a little bit down on his luck at that time. He wanted to make a very minimal record and use the advance, I think, for living expenses and stuff. I toured with Iggy with Carlos Alamor on guitar from David Bowie’s band and a guy called Rob DuPrey, who I knew from the New York scene, he was in a band called The Mumps. And Gary Valentine, who was my high school mate who began Blondie with me. We had three guitarists and a guy called Mike Page, who played with Sylvain Sylvain from the New York Dolls on bass.
We did a six week tour ostensibly continuing the promotion of the Party album, the Rock And Roll Party album Iggy had made. We opened for the Rolling Stones for two nights in a giant, massive Pontiac Silverdome with no sound check. It was Iggy, Santana and the Rolling Stones, 70,000 people indoors. So that was a pretty interesting experience to say the least. But yeah, there’s always been a connection with Iggy. And of course, I bought those Stooges records when I was a kid. I think famously the Ramones always would say that for each of them, they only knew three other people they knew that liked the Stooges. That wound up being the rest of the Ramones.
I had that same kind of little rat pack of friends who were into Bowie and T-Rex and the Stooges. When most people, especially in the States, were into the Grateful Dead and things like that, more like, hard rock and all that. I was always into the more artistic, experimental type of rock and roll, like what Bowie was doing and people like that. I’m also very influenced by the whole British music scene in general. It all began with the so-called British invasion of the mid-60s, when the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan etc., etc. Everyone, my generation, cites that as being the turning point of wanting to be in a band, to start a group.
Then with The Rolling Stones coming along, it broadened the spectrum of how you can be in a group. So then it just kind of carried on through, The Yardbirds, The Who, The Small Faces, all those bands were very influential. So that continued into my interest in people like Bowie and T-Rex and Slade, bands like that as well. Cockney Rebel was a big favourite of mine. I famously saw them play at the Bottom Line in New York, a very small club. It was a really, really great show.
One final link with this tour is the rhythm section that you’ve got with Glen Matlock. You’re playing now with Glen in Blondie and the recent footage of Glastonbury where you’re playing all the great Blondie hits like Atomic, it feels like you’re all locked in and the band is as vital as ever.
Yeah, it’s Blondie, it’s almost like a super Blondie. We’ve had some changes. Christ Stein is very active on the latest album that we’ve done that’s yet to be released. Our longtime bass player Leigh Foxx, had some issues where he wasn’t really able to travel. We were just about to do an arena tour last March 2022 in the UK. So literally about a week before I rang up Glen and asked him if he was available to do it, which he was. He’s continued to work with us since and he has a song on the new Blondie album that’s yet to be released as I mentioned.
And Glen and I had worked together on a couple of different projects as well. We had one group called Slinky Vagabond that featured Earl Slick on guitar, and then we had another group called the International Swingers with a guy called Gary Twinn as the lead singer. He had some success in Australia with a band called Supernaut. He was invited to do a tour of Australia. James Stevenson the guitarist, and Glenn and I were all friends with Gary so we went on this tour of Australia with Gary and then we continued the band. We did release an album that’s out there The International Swingers. Also at the height of Blondie I had a first idea, for a so-called, for lack of a better word, supergroup.
I was trying to put a band together with Glen and Eric Faulkner from the Bay City Rollers and Paul Weller. It never really came to fruition but we’ve had a few drinks and talked about it back in the day but it never happened. But I thought at the time, the juxtaposition of having a Bay City Roller and a Sex Pistol in the same band was pretty interesting. They were all great songwriters so that would have been an interesting band.
You have such a great mix of influences and musicians across your career. In terms of Blondie’s early years, it was through the New York club scene that all you guys coalesced with Blondie.
Yeah, well, there was a place called Club 82, 82 East 4th Street, which was a gay disco, more or less. And disco music was the predominant music that was played at the club. But one night a week, they would have rock and roll.
And the stage was set up behind the bar, similar to if you went to a strip club or something like the band would be set up behind the stage. It would be set up behind the bar. And so bands like the New York Dolls, Wayne County and the Backstreet Boys, a band called Teenage Lust, the Neon Boys, which was the predecessor to the band Television, would play at this club. I had a band at the time called Sweet Revenge. It was a kind of a glam rock band. And we played there and Chris Stein and Debbie Harry had a band called the Stilettos, and they also played there.
But the main thing was everyone kind of hung out there on, I think, a Tuesday or Wednesday night it was the rock and roll night. You’d see people like Lou Reed and David Bowie at the club once in a while. Along with people like Joey Ramone, who was known as Jeff Starship at the time, he had a band called Sniper. And people like Lenny Kaye. And it was right around the corner from CBGB. So it was funny how it’s almost like everyone changed their image a bit and went around the corner and started making music at CBGB. But Club 82 was definitely integral to the beginnings of the whole New York scene, kind of the tail end of the New York Dolls glam rock and into the sort of more bohemian underground scene that happened at CBGB. That’s how it all began.
One of the great early Blondie tracks is Out In The Streets, which was originally a Shangri-Las song. Who was into the Shangri-Las and the girl groups in the band? Or was it that all of you were fond of that sound?
Well, we were all fond of that sound. That was one of the common denominators that brought us together as far as being musically compatible, Chris, Debbie and I. We love the Ronettes, we love the Shangri-Las. We love the Velvet Underground and the New York bands. But the girl group sound, the whole Brill building, the whole Motown, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, things like that. All of us loved that music, which was very unfashionable at the time, basically. And of course, the New York dolls were into bands like The Ronettes and The Shangri-Las. So that influence carried over in that way as well. But when I first met up with Chris and Debbie for a little bit of a chat, we commiserated on our liking of artists like the Shangri-Las, for instance. And that was one of the songs that was in the early Blondie repertoire. And then we actually re-recorded it on the album that we did when we got back together called No Exit. We did another version of it.
But our original demo included Out In The Streets by the Shangri-Las, the early version of what turned into Heart Of Glass and a couple of other tracks that never really were professionally recorded. They’re out there now, they’ve been in box sets and things like that. But the song Platinum Blonde, which was kind of Debbie’s calling card, was never officially recorded other than in a demo in a basement in Queens back in, I think early 74 or something like that or late 74. But yeah, one of the early muses for Blondie was the whole girl group sound. I think when you hear a song on our first album like In the Flesh, we even have Ellie Greenwich singing back up on it, who co-wrote Leader Of The Pack and Out In The Streets and songs like that.
Do you think a bit of that girl group influence came into X Offender, for example?
Oh, absolutely. I mean, that was kind of a homage to the whole Phil Spector sound in a lot of ways. And it’s funny enough how that song came out right around the same time as Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen. There’s a lot of similarities between those two songs. I think Springsteen was reaching for a Phil Spector wall of sound at the time as well. And, you know, there’s the guitar riff in Ex-Offender that’s reminiscent of the guitar riff in Born To Run. We had no idea that each of us were doing that at the time. It just coincided literally almost exactly at the same time. I think maybe Born To Run came out, the album came out a little earlier than the Blondie album, but right around that same time.
But that’s the sound in New York, a lot of it, the early Brill Building sound and of course, Spector moved to California. But it all started in New York and we were all exposed to that. Another song that’s very New York is the song Denise, which was done by a band called Randy and the Rainbows, which was what they call in the States a doo-wop group. A bunch of guys standing on a corner and vocally harmonising. We went on to record that as Denis and it became a big hit for us in the UK. So we’re very influenced by the sound in New York City. We still are to this day. We carried on with the influence in hip-hop and all that as well later on.
It’s interesting you mentioned something like Denis, and there’s obviously The Tide Is High, but you have the knack of recording songs that were covers. People weren’t aware that they were covers – your original material, you couldn’t tell the difference.
Yeah, it was Debbie’s idea to do Denise, for sure. I recall that. It was Chris’s idea to do Tide Is High. Hanging On The Telephone is by a band called The Nerves. Jeffrey Lee Pierce, who went on to be the founder of a band called The Gun Club, was a big Blondie fan. He actually became our president of our fan club for some time, which some people may find that hard to believe when you think of Jeffrey Lee Pierce and his incarnation as the lead singer of The Gun Club. He sent us a compilation tape when we were on tour in Japan just for something to listen to. And one of the songs included was Hanging On The Telephone. So we all thought, well, that’s a really cool song and decided to cover that as well. But yeah, we do have a knack for cover songs. I would like to make a, it sounds almost cliche, but I wouldn’t mind making a complete covers album. We used to do a lot of different songs. We used to do a song called Big Man In Town by the Four Seasons. We did Heatwave very early on. And quite a few other songs. We’ve covered Jet Boy by the New York Dolls. We covered Pet Sematary by the Ramones. You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory by Johnny Thunders. I had this idea to do a punk rock or sort of whatever you want to call it, new wave or new york band album. We also used to do a song by Television called Venus De Milo. I was thinking we could have an album called Safety Pinups, like Bowie’s Pinups.
I’d love to do a complete straight ahead, organic 70s disco album. But we never really have a particular theme when we go into record with Blondie. It all just comes about quite naturally and organically. People come up with ideas and we just interpret them whichever way we think that the song should be going, whether it be me coming up with a beat or someone coming up with a guitar riff. But the raw material is just there and we take it and it becomes Blondie’s material. We never went with an idea – “we’re going to make an album like this”.
You mentioned disco, Heart Of Glass has that feel. What was it like playing with a drum machine on that? Was it challenging or just something that came natural to you? You weren’t defensive, you seemed to be open.
Basically, this is before digital recording. So it was an analogue way of doing things. So what I did was there was the Roland drum machine, the same drum machine that it’s on, like Roxy Music’s Dance Away and famously on Phil Collins’ In The Air Tonight. It was that particular Roland drum machine that had just come out that everyone was using. But there was no way you could sync that up with a synthesiser or an arpeggiated synthesiser. So you’d have to do a piecemeal. So essentially we’d have to do it bar by bar. What we did first off was I made the bass drum the click track. So I played along with the synthesiser and just played the quarter notes on the bass drum and built the track up from there. So I wasn’t inhibited at all about experimenting with drum machines. We’ve carried on that tradition more so as we go on and live some of the songs are programmed where I do play to a click and to some programming and other songs are live.
It’s about a 60, 40 split of the Blondie live show. So whatever works for the song, I’ve always been open minded that way. I was not particularly fond of Heart Of Glass when we first recorded it as far as doing it live. But it’s gone on to be an absolute classic song and people seem to never get tired of hearing it. It’s kind of like Kraftwerk meets Donna Summer, really.
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.
It’s amazing that there were singles that were number one in the UK that weren’t even released in the States. Sunday Girl being an example. You seem to have a different career at times in the UK.
Yeah, it’s really interesting actually, I pointed that out many times. It starts with Denis, which was a big hit. And then Presence Dear also was a big hit off the Plastic Letters album, then carried on with the release of Sunday Girl, Hanging On The Telephone, Picture This. They were all big hits in the UK, but as you said, they weren’t even released in the States. I think the US marketing people in the States didn’t really know what to make of the album. The first single was the cover of the Buddy Holly song, I’m Gonna Love You Too in the States. I don’t think it was released in the UK. Yeah, it is really interesting that there are more Blondie pop songs. And then in America, in the United States, we’ve had four number ones, but they were all of a different genre, each one. Starting with Heart Of Glass and then carrying on with Call Me, which was a one off, which we did with Giorgio Moroder producing. And then Tide is High and Rapture, all different kinds of songs and all of them number one in the States. But as you mentioned, things like Picture This or Sunday Girl were never hits or released as singles in America. Yeah, it is like two separate careers in a way. And we were always, as I mentioned, very influenced by the British music scene. To have success in that way has always been very satisfying for all of us. And it continues. The arena tour we did last year with Glen was great. It was all sold out and really fantastic.
Coming back in the late 90s and again a UK number one with Maria. There’s not many groups that would be able to do it. That must have been extra special.
We really laid the groundwork for the No Exit album, we did a tour prior to release the album around Christmas time of 98, I believe. Then Maria was released in early 99 and it was set up pretty well to be accepted by the British public. But yeah it was pretty phenomenal at the time to have a so-called comeback release go right to number one. It was amazing. It was just the beginning of a whole new era for Blondie that continues to this day, especially in the UK. But we are finding we’re getting a lot more recognition in the States. It’s funny enough, maybe it all kind of began when we were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame which I really almost never expected to have happened. We were eligible for quite some time. Then we were finally inducted, it was a bit of an acrimonious situation for us, but were really glad to be inducted.
Just recently Billboard magazine has named Debbie the number seven greatest lead singer of all time. They’ve done this list of 50 greatest lead singers not artists for instance Bowie, or people like that are not included. But people like Roger Daltrey or Grace Slick or Mick Jagger. So Debbie’s in the top 10 and I always said that she was as equally as amazing as someone like Mick Jagger or Jim Morrison, or David Bowie. For me she’s the female equivalent of all of those people, just as brilliantly talented as them. She really reminds me of David Bowie, her whole approach to making music and delegating other musicians and her brilliant lyrics.
The last Blondie album released was Pollinator and songs like Long Time, they’re just as vital as the songs that you were doing in the late 70s and early 80s.
Yeah, we’re particularly happy with Long Time. That Pollinator album was kind of a one off. Most of the songs were from outside writers. There’s a band called Blood Orange, Dev Hynes, and he wrote Long Time. That’s another thing with Debbie and Chris. They’re always aware of artists that I may not be aware of. I was not aware of Dev Hynes particularly. Then it comes to pass that he is quite well known and credible. We’re happy to get that song from him and we did a good job on it. The whole Pollinator album is great. I think we had more of an objectivity working on it because a lot of the songs were from outside writers.
Our keyboard player Matt Katz-Bohen wrote a couple of songs. I think Debbie and Chris maybe wrote one or two on there and then the rest were from people like Johnny Marr and Dave Sitek from TV On The Radio wrote the song Fun. We had a good time making that record.
You mentioned The Empty Hearts earlier. Remember Days Like These features Ringo Starr. How did that happen?
Actually, Wally Palmer from a band called The Romantics, who’s the lead singer in The Empty Hearts, did several tours with Ringo and his All Star Band. I cut the track with the band and then we decided we could maybe get Ringo to add his drums. So I wound up playing tambourine on it. And on the first Empty Hearts album, we were lucky enough to work with Ian McLagan.
The Small Faces, Faces.
Right. I had done a record with BP Fallon. And we got Ian on that record we did in Austin, Texas, where Ian was living at the time. And so when we did The Empty Hearts album, I rang up Ian. Just coincidentally he happened to be in upstate New York, right when we were in the studio. So he was able to come in and spend the day with us. So we had two amazing people on each of the albums. Ian on the first Empty Hearts album and Ringo on the second one. I was happy to play a tambourine along with Ringo on drums. It’s amazing.
So you’ve got the Lust For Life Tour next year, late February, early March. You’ve got so many projects on the go. What’s exciting you over the next six months to a year?
Well, I’ve written a rock opera with two of my friends, Andy and Debbie Harris, who have a band called Bootleg Blondie. They are a tremendously talented couple. And the reason they had Bootleg Blondie was because they were trying to do their original music for some time and not really making much headway with that. Then they formed a pub rock band doing covers. Whenever they would do a Blondie song, they’d get a great reaction. So they decided to have this Blondie tribute band, which I actually toured with. While I was touring with them before the pandemic, I suggested that maybe we start writing some original material together. I suggested that we perhaps use London as our muse. So we’ve written a rock opera called The Big Smoke.
We’re getting ready to put a single out digitally on the Blow Up label. So we’re going to put out a little teaser, an excerpt from the rock opera, The Big Smoke. That’s going to be coming out soon. Also, I’ve been working on my memoir. It’s almost a cliche. Everybody’s got a book, right? But I actually have a legitimate book deal. So the memoir hopefully will be out next Christmas. I’ve just been meeting with UK publishers because we secured the deal in the US first surprisingly enough. I was always thinking that, if anyone would be interested, it would be the British public. So that’s happening. And several other things. I’m actually playing at the 100 Club in October with a side project I have called The Split Squad. We’ve played the 100 Club several times. We’re there, October 28th. Then I did a record during lockdown with a band called The Tearaways. That’s on the Dirty Water Records. And we’re going to be playing at the 100 Club on 25 November. So I’m going to be back in the UK in October and November.
We’ve been doing US festivals with Blondie and are looking forward to the release of the Blondie album next year. But The Big Smoke, the rock opera, that’s coming. We’ve recorded 28 songs so far. Pat Collier who used to be in The Vibrators, has a great studio in Lewisham. So we’ve been working there. So there’s a lot going on for next year. I’ve got to complete the memoir. It’s mostly completed, but I’m really excited about that. There’ll be some stories to be told, some real insight into the whole Blondie experience. And of course, with all the other people I’ve worked with over the years. So now that the deal’s in place, it was kind of my muse during lockdown to keep myself occupied. Then I kind of put it aside. But then there seemed to be real interest in it, so now I’m really very excited about completing it and having it released. So there’s quite a few things.
Clem, it’s been a pleasure to talk to you. You’ve got loads going on over here in the UK, so it’ll be good to see you again, including next year for the Lust For Life tour.
Right, Lust For Life for sure. That’s going to be a lot of fun and I’m sure there’ll be many people that turned out last time and probably have some new people as well. So that begins right at the end of February, I believe it’s a leap year next year. The first gig is on the 29th of February.
The first date has sold out already, so people need to get the tickets pretty soon, otherwise they might miss out.
More than likely it’ll be sold out by the time I arrive in the UK to do it. Everyone else is based there. Okay, Jason, thank you very much. Great to chat with you, mate. See you later.
Further information
Lust For Life Tour 2024 – including Clem Burke, Glen Matlock, Katie Puckrik and Kevin Armstrong
