Clem Burke memoir charts Blondie rise, punk days, and rock legacy

Clem Burke’s memoir has become something more than a career chronicle. With Burke gone, The Other Side of the Dream: My Life In and Out of Blondie now arrives as his final firsthand account of the drummer who helped drive Blondie from New York City grit to global superstardom.

HarperCollins will publish the book in the United Kingdom on May 7, 2026, and in the United States on September 8, 2026. Fred Armisen wrote the foreword, adding another familiar name to a project that already carries deep weight for anyone who followed Blondie’s run through punk, new wave and the decades that followed.

Burke began writing the memoir more than 20 years ago, then repeatedly set it aside as Blondie’s touring and recording schedule kept moving. He finished it shortly before his death, after cancer treatment and illness forced him to retire. Burke died on April 6, 2025, at age 70, and the book now reads as a personal archive of a life spent behind one of rock’s most recognizable backlines.

The memoir reaches beyond the obvious band history. It traces Burke’s path from the streets of New York City into Blondie’s rise, while reflecting on the explosive punk scene, the creative partnership that shaped the group’s records, and the pressures that came with fame. Burke joined Blondie in 1975, played on every Blondie record, and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the band in 2006, a span that made him one of the most durable figures in the city’s rock story.

The announcement landed through a joint post from Blondie and Burke, underscoring how tightly his identity remained tied to the band even at the end. Kathy Valentine of the Go-Go’s, one of Burke’s longtime friends and former romantic partners, also urged fans to preorder the book. Blondie later marked the one-year anniversary of his death with a tribute that said, “there is a hole in our hearts. Yet his energy lives on,” a reminder that Burke’s presence now survives not only in the grooves he cut, but in the pages that finally capture his side of the story.