Clem Burke doesn’t say it like a brag—more like he’s still slightly shocked the universe allowed it—but Blondie made it to 50 years. “It’s really against the odds that we would have had this kind of success,” he tells me, amused. He knows a box set probably should’ve happened earlier. But in true Blondie fashion, it arrives fashionably late, loaded with tapes Chris Stein hoarded like someone who knew future historians would eventually need receipts.
“Chris has always been a hoarder,” Clem shrugs. “We knew he had stuff. We just didn’t know how much.”
Turns out: a lot. The Against the Odds box is stuffed with demos, lost tracks, and sketches from the ‘70s—some rough, some shockingly fully formed, and all revealing just how much the band tinkered before stumbling into the hits that would soundtrack three generations’ worth of nightclubs, movies, and shampoo commercials.
Burke remembers the early version of “Heart of Glass”—“Once I Had a Love,” back when it was just “the disco song.” It lived on a tape alongside four other tracks that never made it past demo form, including “Platinum Blonde,” Debbie Harry’s early manifesto, never officially recorded beyond that first take. It’s all in there now, if you want to hear Blondie before Blondie realized they were Blondie.
“We always liked experimenting,” Burke says. “The Ramones were great, but they had one sound. We always had this bigger musical palette.” He’s not kidding—he lists Kraftwerk, Donna Summer, R&B, bubblegum pop, the New York Dolls, Bowie, Iggy, glam, proto-punk, doo-wop, the Velvet Underground… it’s basically the CBGB version of a kid dumping their Halloween candy on the floor just to sort it all by color.
And Bowie really was that big an influence. Burke’s memory of Blondie’s first national tour borders on cosmic improv: “We got into this little mobile home—still no idea who was driving—and when we got to Montreal, Bowie and Iggy walked into the dressing room to introduce themselves.” He lets the absurdity hang in the air. “It was amazing.”
Decades later, he still drifts back to Ziggy Stardust when he thinks about Bowie. “We were all at Carnegie Hall the night he did Ziggy,” he says. “We didn’t know each other yet, but we were all there. Shows you the influence.”
But the box isn’t just nostalgia. Blondie’s also got a new album in the can, built the same way as 2017’s Pollinator—everyone in the room at once, recreating that tour-tight chemistry. There’s a cover of an underground ‘60s New York band (“It’ll surprise people”), new original material, and another contribution from Johnny Marr. Blondie toured the UK with him recently—“a dozen arenas,” Burke says, casually, like that’s just what happens when Johnny Marr opens your shows.
Even better: Blondie aren’t just being rediscovered—they’re everywhere. “It’s interesting,” Burke says. “People know the songs, even if they don’t know us. The music’s just part of the fabric now.”
With the sound of “Heart of Glass,” “Call Me,” “One Way or Another,” and “Dreaming” popping up in The Boys, Better Call Saul, Westworld, and whatever Hollywood wants to look cool this week, he’s not wrong.
Asked if he has a favorite modern Blondie needle-drop, he goes old-school: Donnie Brasco. “The yacht scene,” he says, grinning. “Johnny Depp, Pacino, Michael Madsen… and there’s ‘Heart of Glass.’ That was a good one.”
He congratulates Eurythmics on their Rock Hall induction. He talks touring, Blondie’s rooftop New York shows, and the general chaos of being a band that has now outlived entire genres. But mostly, Clem Burke sounds energized—not like a guy celebrating 50 years of a legacy, but like someone looking over at a stack of drums he still needs to hit.
“Yeah,” he says. “There’s a lot going on.”
And Blondie, against all odds, is still going.
Watch the interview above and then check out the videos below.
