Bootleg Blondie – Remembering Clem Burke
Cavern Lounge, Liverpool
11th December 2025

The greatest of all Blondie tributes return to Liverpool’s Cavern for a special show in remembrance of the veteran band’s legendary and much missed drummer Clem Burke, who sadly passed in April this year. Martin Gray pays his respects and celebrates with them like it’s 1979 again.

For two wondrous nights in succession, I have been re-living the spirit of the glorious pop-tastic year 1979 all over again, regressing shamelessly back to my 14-year old self. On the evening of Wednesday 10th December, perennial favourites and national treasures Madness returned to Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena to showcase their 46-year long hit parade in support of yet another singles collection, and duly delivered a magnificently presented performance touching upon their entire illustrious career. Opening for them were fellow great British pop institution Squeeze, who in turn performed all of their greatest evergreen hits likewise. It was a brilliant evening, catching both of them together for the first time.

Barely 24 hours later, it’s a beeline to the legendary Cavern venue to witness the return of my favourite tribute band of them all – Bootleg Blondie. Tonight’s show will, of course, be played out in honour and in loving memory of the legend that is Clem Burke himself. It promises to be a mixture of both the euphoric and the emotional, for many and for myself especially.

I first caught Bootleg Blondie in action a few months ago in July when the band played Fort Perch Rock in my hometown of New Brighton, Wirral. It was a truly splendid and electrifying night with the band and audience connecting in perfect harmony.

Bootleg Blondie are without a doubt one of the finest of all tribute acts to anyone (not just their namesakes). For one thing, across their astonishing 25-year career they have gained complete endorsement from the actual founders of Blondie themselves, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, and, most memorably of all, have featured two original Blondie personnel – Clem Burke and Gary ‘Valentine’ Lachman – joining them on stage. Clem actually went so far as to tour with them – twice – in 2019 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Parallel Lines hitting number 1 in UK. What better accolade can one get than that, we wonder?

As if that isn’t grand enough, we also know another thing: the husband and wife couple who started the band go by the real names of Andrew and Debbie Harris. They actually conceived of Bootleg Blondie in response to audiences enjoying their Blondie covers so much (as part of their earlier band Granny Takes A Trip, which incorporated covers in their set among their own original songs) they decided to go full steam ahead with it after much meticulous planning getting all of those period details (costumes, instruments, props, stage craft, etc) as close as possible to their heroes.

Furthermore, the remarkable uncanniness with which Debbie and her partner Andy resemble the original Debbie Harry and Gary Valentine circa 1978 cannot go unnoticed/ Their stature has grown ever bigger over time as each subsequent tour they have undertaken has garnered new followers completely rapt in their authentic sounding takes of all of those irrepressible classics which have soundtracked so many generations since. Appealing to young fans and old timers like me alike, their sets really do transport us right back to those heady days of the late 1970s and early 1980s when music was at its most diverse and ground-breaking. Halcyon times indeed.

Tonight, they return to Liverpool’s Cavern – the spiritual home to one of Clem’s two most loved bands ever, let’s not forget – and perform an incredible extended set that lasts more than two and a half hours, split into two distinct halves to accommodate all of the 30+ songs played. Virtually every Blondie hit that we know and love get aired, between 1977’s X Offender and their first comeback of 1999, Maria, plus a smattering of B-sides, one from their last album Pollinator (the excellent Long Time), and the other customary Blondie covers of Bond theme Goldfinger, Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire and Bolan’s Get It On,  and almost all of them sound as note-for-note perfect as one could expect.

They kick off with (I’m Always Touched By Your) Presence Dear and One Way Or Another, breezing swiftly through a confident take on the Bond theme Goldfinger before more Parallel Lines-era classics such as Sunday Girl, Pretty Baby, 11.59, Picture This, Will Anything Happen? and Fade Away (And Radiate) ensue in quick succession. The gathered crowd tonight are afforded the spectacle of Debbie’s adept costume changes across these numbers – which she undertakes inside their customised telephone box ‘changing booth’ emblazoned with photos of them and Clem Burke, Gary Lachman and other slogans and posters.

Gleeful stomps through Denis and Rifle Range (a personal fave of mine) before more early-period nuggets In The Flesh, Attack Of The Giant Ants, Rip Her To Shreds and Look Good In Blue follow, and at this point all eyes are on the drummer with the band who is in every way as irrepressible, dynamic and wildly energetic a presence as the original drumming god Clem himself.  He careens across the kit with aplomb, pulling off those characteristic somersaulting fills and supernaturally speedy chops that Clem made his trademark, and almost every other song he plays ends in a kind of mad call-and-response with Andrew and Debbie, as the latter two goad him into those crazy showstopping endings. It’s pretty much the rock ‘n’ roll spirit of the late, great legend Mr. Burke himself encapsulated. Watching him over the entire course of this set, you wonder where he gets all that energy from to sustain such incredible superhuman stamina.

I know this must have been said countless times before, but it really feels like we are watching the genuine article up there on stage, as Debbie’s mannerisms, coupled with her entire convincing resemblance to the real heroine in so many ways (she even has that almost identical famous pout of Ms. Harry’s) leaves everyone amazed and enthralled. Every costume change tonight (six in total across the two sets – pretty damned impressive) is  totally evocative of the classic Harry images from those glory days. When Debbie emerges from the phone box dressed in her scarlet red attire and thigh boots brandishing the telephone-as-mic for (what else but?) Hanging On The Telephone, which closes the first half, the entire room goes up another notch in terms of delirium, shouting along to the words as only they can. It really is one hell of a special thing to behold.

During the 15-minute intermission (a cue to get more drinks and some merchandise then), Andy and one of the girls from the t-shirt stand present on stage a bass drum skin donated and autographed by the great man Clem himself, and announce that proceeds from all merch sales and the auction of the drum skin will go directly to the running and upkeep of  Fripps Farm Animal Rescue in Essex, a rehabilitation sanctuary for the care and welfare of rare animals which the couple have long supported. They then start the bidding with the audience, and after just two bids, somebody promptly pipes up with the generous amount of £1,000, which takes everyone by surprise. The band are astonished and then delighted by this unexpectedly hefty bid, but consider the offer accepted: winners all around then.

The second half sees another costume change as we now enter Eat To The Beat territory (the entire evening’s set is roughly performed in a chronological timeline). Debbie saunters on with the most punk get-up of them all – black shades, ripped yellow blouse, sleeveless PVC bin liner overcoat (emblazoned with a giant dedication to Clem Burke on the back), black tights and thigh boots, and Atomic gets underway. It’s a veritable party at this point of the evening with the crowd lapping it up as the onstage antics reach fever pitch. A rock-tastic blast through Johnny Cash’s Ring Of Fire follows, then things slow down a little for Shayla before another great 1979 single, Union City Blue, is dispatched, Debbie strapping on the replica Chris Stein Goya guitar (which Debbie Harry is seen playing in the original video for the single) to emulate the real McCoy.

We’re almost into the last third of the set, and the hits just keep on coming: a sprightly romp through two hits from AutoAmerican: Rapture with everybody’s favourite goofy rap performed on the fly, and The Tide Is High, before the two singles from The Hunter (War Child and Island Of Lost Souls) follow in quick succession. Then a relatively recent number from their last 2017 album Pollinator – the disco-tastic Long Time which recalls both Heart Of Glass and Good Boys (the latter sadly one of three or four singles missing: the others being End To End, What I Heard and Mother) – before the welcome airing of Maria gets everybody singing along in unison again…..cue the signal for Debbie to disappear into the phone box again as this song’s extended outro plays out….

‘Once I had a love and it was a gas.….’ Well, who could ever mistake THAT opening line then? Back she comes then sporting the off-the-shoulder outfit that Ms. Harry made so famous in that video to their first 1979 smash hit – the global number 1 Heart Of Glass and the one that elevated the band to stratospheric levels of success. Here in the Cavern Lounge, it’s the air that is getting increasingly humid and rarified from all of the massed bobbing of bodies, and it only becomes more so when the inevitable finales of Dreaming and Call Me follow, but not before yet another costume change.

To round off the night, the band tear through two classic covers of which everyone present tonight gladly appreciate and of course happily join in with as one: the first is Andy Harris’s customary vocal rendition of The Jam’s Down In The Tube Station At Midnight – and here his voice is a convincing take of that of Paul Weller’s as his accent possesses pretty much the same southern vowels. The room pogos along in wild abandon as the spirit of 1978 is re-enacted once more…… ahhh, many of us may well be older, wider, saggier, balder and crankier than back then, but how fucking good does it feel to always relive such golden years of our teenage youth?

Then to finish off with – with more than two and a half hours having elapsed – a collective dinosaur stomp through glam-tastic Marc Bolan and T. Rex evergreen Get It On (Bang A Gong) and this brings the curtain down on a truly excellent evening filled with incredible energy and spirit, a perfect way to celebrate the legacy of one of the greatest bands in history – and of course one of the best loved, and most inspirational and influential drummers of any generation. Raising more than a tip of the hat, a tug of the mod-hive and a glass or three to the undiminished brilliance of Clement Anthony Bozewski: known to the wider world forevermore as Clem Burke – drumming legend. Bootleg Blondie salute you. We all salute you. Rest in glory eternally.

~

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All words and photography by Martin Gray
More articles and reviews by Martin can be found on his profile