Clem Burke, the drummer for Blondie, has died, the group announced Monday morning, He was 70 and died following what was described by the surviving group members as a “private battle with cancer.”

A statement signed by co-founders Debbie Harry and Chris Stein said it was “with profound sadness that we relay news of the passing of our beloved friend and bandmate Clem Burke… Clem was not just a drummer; he was the heartbeat of Blondie. His talent, energy, and passion for music were unmatched, and his contributions to our sound and success are immeasurable. Beyond his musicianship, Clem was a source of inspiration both on and off the stage. His vibrant spirit, infectious enthusiasm and rock solid work ethic touched everyone who had the privilege of knowing him.”

The group’s statement continued, “Clem’s influence extended far beyond Blondie. A self proclaimed ‘Rock & Roll survivalist,’ he played and collaborated with numerous iconic artists, including Eurythmics, Ramones, Bob Dylan, Bob Geldof, Iggy Pop, Joan Jett, Chequered Past, the Fleshtones, the Romantics, Dramarama, the Adult Net, the Split Squad, the International Swingers, L.A.M.F., Empty Hearts, Slinky Vagabond and even the Go-Go’s. His influence and contributions have spanned decades and genres, leaving an indelible mark on every project he was a part of.

“We extend our deepest condolences to Clem’s family, friends, and fans around the world,” Harry and Stein’s statement continued. “His legacy will live on through the tremendous amount of music he created and the countless lives he touched. As we navigate this profound loss, we ask for privacy during this difficult time. Godspeed, Dr. Burke.” It was signed “Debbie, Chris, and the entire Blondie family.”

Blondie was founded by Harry and Stein in 1974, and Burke quickly came aboard as the group’s second drummer in 1975, generally being considered an original member given the brief tenure of his predecessor. The group’s first single, “X-Offender,” came out in June 1976, and their debut album followed at the end of that year. Burke remained with the group through their breakout success with 1978’s “Parallel Lines” album, and their first breakup in 1982, rejoining for a series of reunions that began in 1997.

A reformed edition of the band, with Stein sidelined, performed at the Coachella festival in 2023 and again in the SoCal area last May at the Cruel World festival, where, Variety writer Pat Saperstein wrote, “Clem Burke’s drumming is as muscular as ever.” Their final show with Burke was June 19, 2024 in Belfast. The last album to have been released was “Pollinator” in 2017, although Blondie had announced plans to release a new studio album this year.

“For some reason, we’re partners for life,” Burke told Variety writer A.D. Amorosi in a 2022 interview, when the band was releasing a career-retrospective boxed set. “Plus, I brought my aesthetic of a love of all-thing-’60s — bubblegum, power pop — and that stuck and became part of the Blondie style that wasn’t there before I came on the scene.”

Blondie’s first single to crack the Billboard Hot 100 was also the group’s biggest: “Heart of Glass” went right to No. 1 in 1979. Three more No. 1 smashes followed: “Call Me” and “The Tide is High” in 1980,, and “Rapture” in 1981. No other singles cracked the top 10 in the U.S., although “One Way or Another” and “Dreaming” came closest, at Nos. 24 and 27, respectively.

In the U.K., chart success came earlier, with “Denis,” “(I’m Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear” and signature song “Hanging on the Telephone” all making the top 10 in 1978 prior to “Heart of Glass” also reaching No. 1 there.

The indelible mark that Burke left was based on his mastery of a swing-driven, pummeling style of drumming — a groove that married the verve of Gene Krupa to the violence of Keith Moon, all while maintaining a sense of power-pop propulsion — and even disco’s pulse during Blondie hits such as “Rapture” and “Heart of Glass.” 

“Moon was one of my big drumming influences along with Ringo Starr and session drummers such as Hal Blaine and Earl Palmer, the guy who famously played on Eddie Cochran’s ‘Something Else’ and Little Richard’s Specialty [Records] material,” Burke said in 2022. “My drumming did connect the dots as far as creating a consistency in their arrangements and the sound of the band at that time. It was pretty raw — just Gary (Valentine, the bassist who left in 1977), Chris, and myself with Debbie up front. That gave me a lot of room to experiment.”

When a record had Clem Burke as its drummer, you knew it. Along with his rhythmic style, Burke was renowned for his Mod fashion sense of lean-cut suits and a haircut that combined post-Beatles bangs with its razored top. “I was responsible for finding a lot of the clothes that we wore (from the start),” Burke said in 2022. “I can remember bringing in these immense trash bags of ’60s gear that a friend of mine had — he had an Army/Navy store that was going out of business, and I raided it to outfit the band.”

Burke wasn’t Blondie’s first drummer when Harry and Stein started the band in 1974; that credit goes to Billy O’Connor, who died in 2015. Yet he was the glue that held that band together as Burke was Blondie’s longest continuous member, other than Harry and Stein, playing on every one of their albums from 1976’s “Blondie” through to their upcoming release, “Electric Dreams.”

Clement Anthony Bozewski was born on November 24, 1954 in Bayonne, New Jersey, and began playing drums by the mid-1960s, with his earliest experiences being with Total Environment and Sweet Willie Jam Band, the cover bands he helped co-found — on top of his time drumming in the Bayonnes Saint Andrew Bridgemen Drum and Bugle Corps. He closely studied the work of Keith Moon in the Who (“Moon filled in the blanks, especially with [Pete] Townshend playing quite a bit of rhythm guitar”), and further credited Earl Palmer’s sense of propulsion as inspiration. “He was a jazz musician who became crucial to rock ’n’ roll — a true architect,” said Burke.

Burke brought that knowledge, inspiration and fire to New York City in the early 1970s, with its East 4th Street venues like Club 82 in the time of glam-rock, Wayne County, the New York Dolls, and the Stilettos, Harry and Stein’s band.

Asked if he was a New York Dolls fan in regards to their music and dress, the drummer said he “worshipped the Dolls,” and considered them an immense influence on him as well as all of the downtown NYC bands at that time – especially the Stilettos’ Harry and Stein, who he ran into often at Club 82 and Max’s Kansas City.

When Harry and Stein put an ad in the back page of the Village Voice for a drummer without giving their names, Burke answered, got together with the couple at their rehearsal space on West 30th Street, and found “a lot of common denominators between us in terms of influences — the Shangri-Las, Iggy & the Stooges — and what we wanted to do musically going forward.”

Burke joined Blondie in early 1975 and immediately became an integral part of the operation, as it was the drummer who brought in his pal, Gary Valentine, to play following the departure of original Blondie bassist Fred Smith, who left to join Television. “I was living at a storefront at that time with Gary, so it was all pretty convenient,” Burke said. “We could negotiate New York City better that way. All the clubs were close by us, the Bowery in general. Max’s was just up the road a bit. It was easy to begin in the city at that time — very different, obviously, from what it’s become now.”

After recording the “Blondie” album in summer 1976 at Plaza Sound studio with producers Richard Gottehrer and Craig Leon for the Private Stock label, the band went on tour with Iggy Pop and his friend-keyboardist David Bowie in 1977, with Burke befriending Pop (Burke later played on Pop’s “Zombie Birdhouse” album, produced by Chris Stein and released in 1982). Blondie’s Gottehrer-produced “Plastic Letters” album followed in 1978, with “Parallel Lines” released later that same year.

Produced by Mike Chapman, “Parallel Lines” was Blondie’s ticket to fame and fortune with its hits ranging from the punkish (“Hanging on the Telephone,” “One Way or Another”) to the pretty (“Sunday Girl”) to the deeply grooving (“Heart of Glass”) – all to platinum success in the United States and across the globe.

Further platinum sales were awarded to 1979’s “Eat to the Beat” and 1980’s “Autoamerican,” with the disco Blondie single “Call Me” (co-written by Harry and the track’s producer, Giorgio Moroder for director Paul Schrader’s 1980 film “American Gigolo”) achieving No. 1 status for six consecutive weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 before “Autoamerican’s” release.

“A lot of stuff you might think is sequenced or done to a click track, such as ‘Rapture,’ is not,” said Burke. “That was just me and a natural live drum groove in the studio that we built upon. All of the demos and early Blondie tracks were built from the bottom up, from a drum track through to becoming the trigger for a fresh arrangement.”

After 1982’s “The Hunter,” Blondie wound down and splintered for a time, leaving Burke to lend his drumming skills to the Romantics (whom he joined as their regular drummer between 1990 and 2004), and to his own Chequered Past in 1983-1984, with Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones, Blondie’s Nigel Harrison, one-time Iggy Pop bassist Tony Sales and rocker/actor Michael Des Barres releasing their sole, eponymously-titled album in 1984. On more than one occasion, starting in 1987, Burke sat in as drummer for the Ramones as “Elvis Ramone,” even joining Tommy Ramone, C. J. Ramone and Daniel Rey in a “Ramones Beat on Cancer” concert in 2004.

When Debbie Harry and Chris Stein regrouped Blondie for the albums “No Exit” (1999) and “The Curse of Blondie” (2003), Burke was on board for recording and touring, and was inducted with the rest of the band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.

Burke still continued with other sessions and other shows such as joining Slinky Vagabond with David Bowie guitarist Earl Slick and Sex Pistol Glen Matlock for their debut concert at the Joey Ramone Birthday Bash in 2007. Burke joined with Matlock again in 2011, for the International Swingers with one-time Generation X guitarist James Stevenson of Generation X and singer Gary Twinn of Supernaut.

Burke also founded the Clem Burke Drumming project for the investigation of the physical and mental-health benefits of drumming after having worked through a similar project at the University of Gloucestershire and the University of Chichester that studied the physical and psychological effects of drumming and the stamina required by drummers.

That stamina pushed Burke through additional Blondie albums “Panic of Girls” (2011) and “Pollinator” (2017), which the band continued to tour into 2022, while maintaining his old school New York City punk cred in 2016 and 2017 by playing dates as a member of L.A.M.F., a Johnny Thunders tribute act featuring Walter Lure, Mike Ness and Glen Matlock, with a live album recorded at the Bowery Electric released in December 2017.

Burke is survived by his wife of 23 years, Ellen Burke.