Clem Burke is the drummer of Blondie and as such has seen and lived a good chunk of rock history of the last half century. During the band's inactivity he performed with many other musicians, from Bob Dylan to Pete Townshend of the Who to Iggy Pop.
He tells it in an interview published by Louder who recalls among other things that “Blondie's first national tour in the United States was with Iggy. David Bowie was on keyboards in his band. The night before the tour started we played a show at Max's Kansas City. When it was over, we got into a camper, drove all night to Montreal, got to the venue and collapsed in a smelly dressing room. The door opened and Bowie and Iggy came in. They couldn't have been nicer.”
Burke then joined Iggy Pop's band when the rocker went on a six-week tour to promote the album Party of 1981. “There was no food allowed backstage,” the drummer recalls, “only drugs and alcohol. The rule was ‘no coke, no show.’ His only order was ‘Play as loud as you can, as fast as you can.’”
Burke, who among other things is a member of Lust for Life, a high-end tribute band to Iggy Pop’s 1977 album that also includes Katie Puckrik and Glen Matlock (as well as guitarists Kevin Armstrong and Luis Correia and keyboardist Florence Sabeva), talks in the same interview as Debbie Harry (“Basically my older sister, she has the same talent as Bowie and Lou Reed, I won’t say Paul McCartney because the Beatles are untouchable”), Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols (“A very complicated young man, he used to come to my loft in New York looking for money for stuff”) and Pete Townshend (“A true gentleman”), Bob Dylan (“He communicated through music, but one night he asked me: ‘What happened to Blondie? You were really big’, I explained: ‘Just one word: drugs’ and he understood”).
Burke, on the other hand, doesn’t particularly fondly recall his time in the Ramones under the nickname Elvis Ramone. The problem was Johnny Ramone. “A bastard,” he says. “They asked me to join the Ramones four times and when I finally said yes I made it clear that it wasn’t forever: do you want to talk about Johnny’s politics? For him, the guitar was a means to an end, I don’t think he cared much about it. He refused to rehearse, so I had to figure things out on my own. They’re all dead now and it’s very sad, but the Ramones were not a happy place to be.”
