By 1986 Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart had dropped the sparse, arty Kraftwerk impressions and were writing full-fat rock songs for a stadium audience. Who better to deliver crowd-levelling drums than Clem?
Clem Burke says:
“The first thing that producer Conny Plank said to me was that he recognised the influence of Kraftwerk in Heart Of Glass, which was what we were trying to emulate.”
“Once again, we did most of the tracks at Conny’s studio, and it was great to reconnect with all that. But then we recorded the drums in the stairwell at Studio Grande Armée in Paris, which was this huge expensive studio wired into the Grande Armée concert hall. You hear about people recording in marble rooms and all that - well, we did them in the stairwell!”
“You know, Dave’s an English eccentric and Annie is a gorgeous woman with a gorgeous voice… we won a Best Rock Performance Grammy for the song Missionary Man, and then we all went on a two-year world tour right afterwards. I’m real happy with that record.”