If you take four musicians who grew up on the rock & roll of the fifties and early sixties and put them in a studio together, they are bound to come up with music that feels happy, uncluttered and fresh; the kind of sounds that you bop your head to, sway your shoulders and hips to, smile to. Lucky for us, four musicians did indeed recently get together and record some songs like this. Calling themselves the Empty Hearts, their debut album is currently available for public consumption, already garnering rave reviews from the critics and the fans. Comprised of Cars guitar player Elliot Easton, Romantics vocalist Wally Palmar, Blondie drummer Clem Burke and Chesterfield Kings bass player Andy Babiuk, they have hopped back to the music that hooked them in their youth and has stuck with them for all these years. Songs like “Soul Deep,” “I Don’t Want Your Love (If You Don’t Want Me),” “Drop Me Off At Home,” and “Fill An Empty Heart” are so darn catchy it’s hard to play them only once.
A few weeks ago, Glide caught up with the uber-busy Clem Burke while he was in Philadelphia playing a gig with one of his numerous side-bands, the Split Squad. “We’re opening for this band called The Baseball Project, which is Peter Buck and Mike Mills’ band,” Burke explained. When he is not playing with Blondie or the Split Squad, he can be found handling the skins for the International Swingers (featuring Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols and James Stevenson of Gene Loves Jezebel), among others, and working with the Clem Burke Drumming Project.
You’re always busy. How do you have time to add another project to your life?
Well, you know, all four of us have carved out the fourth quarter basically for the Empty Hearts release. I’m on tour now with a band called the Split Squad. We did a record about a year ago with a few of my other friends from the Fleshtones and the Plimsouls. Then we’re going back out with Blondie for the rest of the summer. But the fourth quarter is basically carved out for the Empty Hearts cause the primary reason we came together was to be a live band. So we really want to go out and play live for everyone.
Who got the ball rolling on the Empty Hearts?
We’re all mutual friends. We’ve all known each other for quite some time. Andy Babiuk, the bass player from the Chesterfield Kings, was kind of the prime mover as far as getting everybody together. Wally, I played with in the Romantics for a long time. And Andy I’ve known actually through Steven Van Zandt and through Wally Palmar for a pretty long time as well. Elliot and I have talked about collaborating with each other for quite some time. We had a little band with the late Doug Fieger from the Knack. But I’ve got to say that Andy Babiuk was the prime mover behind organizing it, which he is still kind of the organizational person as far as it all goes. He’s really good at that.
On these songs, I hear shades of the fifties and early sixties, when music was fun and not all bogged down with experimentation and everything.
Oh sure, the roots of rock & roll lie in the greats from the fifties obviously, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Eddie Cochran, people like that, and Buddy Holly, and our roots are more in the sixties but the music of the sixties was obviously The Beatles, the Stones and The Who. They were influenced by the music of the fifties so it kind of all syncs up that way. We all really like roots rock & roll music a lot. We all really like the British Invasion music a lot. So it wasn’t like we had to tell each other what to do. It was more like we kind of got in a room in the spirit of what it was like to be in a band back when we were a lot younger and kind of brought that spirit in the studio and started playing. That’s how it kind of came together, very organically in that respect.
How were these songs created? Did everyone get together and start from scratch or were these bits and pieces each one of you brought in?
A lot of the songs came about from just being in a studio and just jamming. Someone would have a riff, someone would have a song title, I’d come up with a groove or a title, a couple of lyrics, and one thing would lead to another. Then when we got the basic idea to the songs we kind of sat around and fleshed them out a little more. But they all came out of a handful of sessions that we had just in a rehearsal room. It wasn’t really preconceived at all. It just kind of came out of us being in a room together and playing.
Do you remember the first song that came together for you guys?
There was a few but the song that people seem to like, that Little Steven Van Zandt is focusing on, “90 Miles An Hour Down A Dead End Street.” That was one of the early titles and one of the early riffs. And also the other song, “I Don’t Want Your Love (If You Don’t Want Me),” which the record company is kind of hot on and been streaming on the Billboard site. That was one of the first ones to come together.
One of my favorites is “Fill An Empty Heart.”
Oh yeah, that’s great. I love that song. Ian McLagan’s keyboard on that is really great. I think it’s primarily Wally’s lyrics, we came up with the music, and it’s kind of apropos because it’s in reference to the band in the title.
What about “Drop Me Off At Home,” which Ian played on as well.
Oh that’s a great one. With Ian on there, it’s kind of like a Faces-type of song. It’s kind of Faces/Rolling Stones and with Ian McLagan playing keyboards on it, being that he played both with the Rolling Stones and the Faces, we’re all really super honored and big fans of Ian’s work over the years. That was another thing that came together relatively easily. He was playing in Rochester with a day off on his way to Syracuse, and I know Ian from a couple other projects so I was able to put him in touch with Andy, and Andy and Wally brought him in the studio on his day off and he was able to record a bunch of keyboard tracks for us which was amazing. It came together very easily. It was amazing that he was actually in the area, so that’s always a good sign for us that we were able to get his energy put on the record as well.
Are you going to do all the songs in your live sets?
Yeah, I mean, we really don’t have many other original songs. We’re talking about going in the studio and doing a few cover songs to kind of have and be able to release on the net as kind of bonus things. Then depending on the gig and the venue, we’re planning on doing a few songs from each of our pasts. A couple of Cars, a couple of Romantics songs; probably “Hanging On The Telephone,” a Blondie song, things like that. But yeah, as I said, we’ve carved out basically the last three months of the year for Empty Hearts gigs and touring. It’s just the logistics and the economics of it. We’re just trying to put all that together now. But the main reason we formed the band was to go out and play live. But we felt if we made the record, we’d be able to show people we really did exist as a band and it was a legitimate thing having a record. We’re really happy with 429, the record label signing us.
How much involvement did Steven Van Zandt have with this? I know he helped think of the name for the band.
Steven is a friend. I was in a band with Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols back in the middle eighties and we actually did a US tour with Little Steven & The Disciples Of Soul. I’ve known Steven for a long time and Andy is good friends with Steven. And we just kicked around the idea with him and of course the music he plays on his Underground Garage show is the kind of music that we all like and we also feel we fit that mold. So we asked him for some advice and he came up with a list of band names and a lot of them were taken. The Empty Hearts didn’t seem to be taken and we all liked that one so we chose that one. But basically Steven Van Zandt did name the band and he is an ally and he’s just phenomenal. He’s a Jersey guy, a nice guy, a big, big music fan and a lot of stuff he does is coming from his heart, like promoting rock & roll.
Rock & roll music is almost like Jazz music now, you know. It’s not really the most popular form of music. There’s an avid following for rock & roll but it’s not what I would call popular music. It really isn’t the pop music of today, not even what most kids listen to today obviously. But we all feel kind of like we’re journeymen Jazz musicians. We’re veteran musicians, we’re grown men, we have the resources to put this together for ourselves and we’re happy with it and proud of it. So where it’s going to go from here, no one really knows but we are definitely planning on going out and playing. We’re hoping to cover the entire country and the world. It’s just being able to put it all together. Touring is a tough prospect in some ways, you know, so we’ll see.
New Orleans would be a great place to play cause one of my all-time favorite drummers is from New Orleans, Earl Palmer. Do you know Earl Palmer? Earl Palmer was the drummer on all the Fats Domino stuff, all the Little Richard stuff, all the stuff that was done in Cosimo Matassa’s studio that he had in New Orleans in the fifties. So Earl Palmer is one of my main inspirations as a drummer. He’s a New Orleans drummer but he moved to LA and played on “La Bamba,” he played on Eddie Cochran, he played on Phil Spector stuff. So New Orleans is a great source of inspiration to musicians.
James Stevenson said the International Swingers may be recording an album in the fall.
Yeah, we’ve demoed a lot of songs. There’re actually a lot of basic tracks that might be usable, but yeah, we’re planning on going back in the studio, in 606, Dave Grohl’s studio. The International Swingers are an ongoing thing but I have to make time for everything. It’s just with the release of this Empty Hearts record now, that’s taking precedence at the moment.
Have you noticed the way you play drums has changed very much over the years?
I think I’m influenced by modern music as well as roots music so maybe I’m always incorporating a few more modern aspects into it. I mean, with Blondie a lot of the recording and a lot of the performances are done to sequencers and click tracks so that’s a certain way of approaching playing to a song. Then with International Swingers or with the Empty Hearts, more of a rock & roll approach. But I would say no. I’ve pretty much stayed true to my roots. Getting back to Earl Palmer, he was one of my main influences when I was younger. He played on so many great records that influenced me, along with Hal Blaine from the Wrecking Crew who played on all the Phil Spector stuff. Those two guys, along with Ringo Starr and Keith Moon, have remained influences to this day. So I always try to incorporate a bit of their elegance and style into the music.
I don’t really know, the only thing that changes really is I think, if you’re a musician and you continue to be a musician as you get older, you basically get a heck of a lot better (laughs) because you’re just doing it all the time and there’s a lot of muscle memory involved. I have the Clem Burke Drumming Project, which is a foundation which studies the psychological and physiological aspects of drumming. I received a doctorate for that from Gloucestershire University a few years ago in the UK. And basically that study is about how your body and your mind works while you’re drumming, and we’re finding that even though I’m older, we’re finding that by physiology and my psychology as far as playing, is great, you know. I attribute that mostly to the fact that I’ve been playing most of my life. So I think as you get older you do get better.
Did you choose the drums or did the drums choose you?
That’s a good question. You know I’m left-handed and trying to play guitar when I was a kid, people had difficulty showing me how to play because most people were right-handed. It turns out that Ringo is left-handed but I play a right-handed drum kit. So I would say at the end of the day that yeah, the drums chose me.
I read a quote by you where you said that playing CBGB was like a workshop.
CBGB in particular was a place where we were able to make our mistakes in public. Nowadays a lot of people, particularly comedians, they kind of lament the fact that they can’t really go and workshop the material because it’s instantly on the internet. Back in the day you could do something in relative seclusion in front of a handful of people and get some kind of feedback and kind of be able to realign where you were going from there with it. The owner of CBGB, Hilly Kristal, his only sort of request was that you played original music. So we were able to play our original music there and some of it good, some of it bad, and kind of get the idea where we were going to go with it. I make the analogy that it’s like an actor’s workshop. This was kind of like a music workshop and it was a very creative atmosphere and the handful of people that were involved in the genesis of CBGB were all very creative, interesting, talented people; whether it be someone like Joey Ramone or Johnny Thunders or Patti Smith or Tom Verlaine. Everyone was able to feed off everyone’s energy and it really kind of developed what I call in Blondie, the CBGB sound. There’s roots of that in our music to this day. A lot of times in concert we do Ramones covers, we do Television covers, we do Johnny Thunders covers. That music is a mainstay for us and a big inspiration. It all leads back to the early days of CBGB. It was a great place.
Do you like the modernization of recording better now compared to your early days in a studio?
Well, Pro Tools is a great tool, you know. I don’t agonize over the digital age the way a lot of people do. I listen to music on my laptop and on my iPod like everybody else. You know, everybody criticized the compression of an MP3 but when I first started listening to music, I listened to it on a little transistor radio with a speaker about, you know, how big was that speaker (laughs). You used to mix, even with analog recording, you used to mix to a radio mix cause it involved compression and it was coming out of a little speaker. Everyone had earpods but only one. It wasn’t in stereo. You just put your earphone into it, if you remember that. Lenny Bruce had a joke that teenagers all had this disease: they were all going around with their head cocked (laughs) cause they’re holding up the radio to one ear. People always reminisce about listening to their little transistor radios under the covers at night when they were little kids. So people always listened to music in a lo-fi way. Obviously, digital is not lo-fi, it’s just the compression of MP3s that people complain about. I do enjoy my vinyl. I love listening to vinyl so it’s just another tool. Time goes on and I think the Empty Hearts really feel as though we have one foot in the past and one foot in the present.
What still excites you about playing music after all these years?
You know, I really enjoy the improvisational aspects of live performance. Once again, I make that analogy between rock & roll and Jazz music. There’s an element of spontaneity involved when you play live and when the audience is responsive that kind of eggs you on. I find inspiration in someone like Bruce Springsteen, who is an amazing performer. I like Jack White. There’s a lot of great music out there that inspires me. I do look forward to performances. It really is a day to day thing and you really don’t know what to expect. Like I said, that kind of excitement and spontaneity is there and when you do a good gig and people are telling you that they enjoyed it, it’s a very positive thing. People do enjoy music and maybe you get a little bit subjective about it as a musician and it’s what you do for a living, and they’re looking at it from a different angle. But the average person just wants to go out and have a good time, and if they enjoy rock & roll and you see it in their eyes and you see it in their faces at your show, it’s a great inspiration. I’m a big, big fan of music too. I have many, many people that I really love. I love Bob Dylan and I love Bruce Springsteen, The Beatles, so many things. And there’s always something new I find.
Being in a new band but with people who have been around the music scene for a long time, you must almost feel like you’re a kid again with this band.
Yeah because I would have to say we’re doing it for the right reasons. No one presented itself like we’re going to need a whole bunch of money to form the Empty Hearts. It was like, hey, you know what, we WANT to play some music that we really like. I think we probably all have the same kind of common denominator as far as where we’re coming from musically, although we’re all versatile, especially Elliot. He’s a phenomenal, educated guitar player. I think we’re all basically versatile enough to play the kind of music we choose to play, and we choose to play this rock & roll music that we’re playing in the Empty Hearts. And like I said, it is a feeling of being a kid again, except we all play a lot better (laughs) and that makes it a lot better.
For more about the International Swingers, check out our recent interview with James Stevenson
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