The punk era produced a handful of short-lived supergroups, from Sex Pistols/Thin Lizzy team-up The Greedy Bastards (aka The Greedies) to the Sham Pistols, a brief union between Sham 69’s Jimmy Pursey and ex-Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Cook.
But they had nothing on a mooted supergroup that would have brought together members of Blondie, the Sex Pistols, The Jam and… 70s teen idols the Bay City Rollers.
Speaking in the current issue of Classic Rock magazine, where he’s interviewed alongside former Sex Pistols bassist/fellow punk lifer Glen Matlock, Blondie drummer Clem Burke reveals that he tried to enlist Matlock, The Jam frontman Paul Weller and Bay City Rollers guitarist Eric Faulkner for a new band.
“I tried to get Glen in a band with me, back in the seventies, that I was trying to put together with Eric Faulkner and Paul Weller,” Burke tells Classic Rock’s Ian Fortnam. “It was kind of a pipe dream. We had that bit of a lay-off with Blondie at the time, and even though we were so successful I was still trying to get something else going, just to keep playing, and that’s been my MO ever since.”
And why did this mind-boggling Pistols/Blondie/Jam/Rollers supergroup band not materialise in the end? Burke can’t quite recall what went wrong – though alcohol may have had something to do with it.
“I’m not exactly sure what happened with that band, but I know we spent a lot of afternoons in The Roebuck [pub] on the King’s Road,” explains Burke.
Burke and Matlock have more in common than just being part of punk’s first wave - both men played in Iggy Pop’s band at different times. In the same interview, Matlock reveals that he once got roasted by Iggy after drinking at a gig.
“The first time I went to New York I was playing with Iggy and we headlined the Palladium on Halloween [1979], with The Cramps supporting us, and I did like a brown ale back then,” he says. “Iggy read me the riot act: ‘The American people will not stand for this kind of behaviour…’ You know, Iggy Pop telling me off,
can you imagine? It was probably because I was winding him up about getting on a bit.”
Burke and Matlock finally got to play together in The International Swingers in the early 2010s and again in 2017 as part of L.A.M.F., a tribute to former New York Dolls guitarist and New York punk icon Johnny Thunders.
Now they’ve reunited once more in Lust For Life, a band made up of former Iggy Pop band alumni fronted by TV presenter-turned-singer Katie Puckrick. Lust For Life play the Dog Day Afternoon festival at London’s Crystal Palace on July 1 alongside Iggy himself.
Read the full interview with Glen Matlock and Clem Burke in the brand new issue of Classic Rock. Order it online and have it delivered straight to your door.
