WASHINGTON — Clem Burke, drummer and founding member of the rock band Blondie, has died after a private battle with cancer, according to the group’s social media page. He was 70.
“His vibrant spirit, infectious enthusiasm and rock solid work ethic touched everyone who had the privilege of knowing him,” Blondie’s two other founding members, singer Debbie Harry and guitarist Chris Stein, said in a social media post.
Burke’s iconic drumming riffs can be heard echoing off all of Blondie’s 11 studio albums, beginning with their self-titled 1976 debut and most recently on 2017’s “Pollinator.”
As the New York-based group’s sound evolved, so did rock-and-roll’s identity and aesthetic. Blondie’s prominence coincided with the rise and decline of disco, the birth of punk rock and the early years of MTV.
Burke, along with Harry and Stein, helped bring the new wave genre into the mainstream while also introducing other underground and marginalized genres into the mainstream. Their 1981 single “Rapture” became the first song with a rap verse to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and made hip hop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy a household name among White indie audiences.
The group had three other number-one hits in the United States: the seductive disco song “Heart of Glass” (1979); the rock and roll “Call Me” (1980), which featured on the AMERICAN GIGILO soundtrack and 1980’s “The Tide Is High,” which was an updated rendition of a ’60s rocksteady song by the Jamaican group, The Paragons.
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Burke’s other collaborations represented a who’s who of ’80s rock-and-roll, drumming with Eurythmics, Joan Jett, The Romantics and the Go-Go’s.
Burke even adopted the last name “Ramone” during a brief stint with the punk band The Ramones during the late 1980s.
“As we navigate this profound loss, we ask for privacy during this difficult time,” Harry and Stein said on Monday. “Godspeed, Dr. Burke.”