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The profile · researched 5 November 2026
Six costume changes and a signed drum skin: inside Bootleg Blondie's 25th year
A London husband-and-wife tribute that played CBGB before it shut, toured as a band with Blondie's own drummer, and now carries his memory through a diary booked into late 2027.
A covers band that kept being asked for one thing
Bootleg Blondie was formed in 2001 and grew out of another London group, Granny Takes A Trip, whose audiences kept asking for more Blondie songs until the Blondie songs became the whole set. At its centre are Andrew and Debbie Harris, husband and wife, on guitar and lead vocals respectively, and they have been the constant through every line-up since.
The band's defining early gamble was geographic rather than musical. In April 2006 they flew to New York and played CBGB on the Bowery — the room where Blondie had come up — roughly six months before the venue closed for good. Andy Harris had the club's name tattooed on him afterwards. No other Blondie tribute has played that stage, and the trip gave the act a credential that no amount of UK pub bookings would have produced.
Debbie Harris came to the role with a performing family behind her: she is a niece of the singer and actress Shani Wallis, who played Nancy in the 1968 film of Oliver!. Her own television break came on BBC One's Even Better Than The Real Thing, hosted by Paddy McGuinness, where she was chosen from a reported 15,000 applicants to represent Debbie Harry.
Signed off by the people being copied
Tribute acts rarely get written permission; this one effectively has it. Reviewers covering the band note the endorsement of Blondie's two founders, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, and in 2017 Bootleg Blondie were acknowledged on Blondie's eleventh studio album, Pollinator — an unusual thing for a covers act to be able to point at.
That approval is visible in the gear. Debbie Harris plays a guitar signed by all the Blondie members at every show. The drum kit is a Premier replica signed by Clem Burke, also used at every show, and the band's stage props include further replica instruments carrying Chris Stein's signature. The effect is less impersonation than inheritance: the objects on stage have been through the hands of the originals.
Away from the signatures, the band built a working CV on bigger British stages than most tributes reach — the Isle of Wight Festival, Shepherd's Bush Empire and the Hammersmith Palais among them — and support slots with acts including The Undertones and Slade.
CBBB, and the year the tribute wrote its own song
The relationship with Clem Burke moved from endorsement to collaboration. Burke came to a Bootleg Blondie show in London in 2016 and got behind the kit mid-set. Three years later, marking 40 years since Parallel Lines, he joined them for two UK tours billed as CBBB — Clem Burke & Bootleg Blondie — and also played alongside the band's other original-member guest, the bassist and songwriter Gary Valentine.
Those shows were not straight tribute nights. Reviewing CBBB at The Brook in Southampton on 14 October 2019 — a return date after the first had sold out — Rock Regeneration noted the publication was breaking its own rule against covering tribute bands, and described two sets that mixed the Blondie catalogue with material reaching back to Buddy Holly and Lee Hazlewood.
The tours also produced an original: Enigma Soho Au Go Go, credited to Clem Burke & Bootleg Blondie and issued on a 7-inch single. It remains the thing that separates the act from the circuit it works in — a tribute band with a record of its own, made with the drummer it was imitating.
Playing after April 2025
Clem Burke died on 6 April 2025. For a band whose kit he had signed and whose tours he had joined, the loss reshaped the show rather than ending it. On 23 April 2025, seventeen days later, Bootleg Blondie played the Half Moon in Putney for nearly three hours; Glen Matlock, the Sex Pistols bassist who had been touring with Blondie, was in the room and paid his own respects to Burke. The set also made room for Marc Bolan, who died close by in East Sheen, and a reading of Bowie's Heroes.
The fuller memorial came in December. On 11 December 2025 the band played a Remembering Clem Burke show at the Cavern Lounge in Liverpool, running over two and a half hours across two sets with a fifteen-minute interval and more than thirty songs. A drum skin signed by Burke was auctioned on the night for £1,000, with the money going to Fripps Farm Animal Rescue in Essex.
Writing for Louder Than War, Martin Gray described a drummer channelling Burke's style and a show that held "the spirit of the late, great legend" without turning maudlin. The Remembering Clem Burke billing has since become a recurring fixture rather than a one-off.
Where the diary stands
Twenty-five years in, the band is working as a touring-theatre and club act with a calendar that stretches well past the usual tribute horizon. Three dates are currently on sale at the front of that run, led by Cottingham Civic Hall on 27 November 2026 and a return to the Cavern Club's Live Lounge in Liverpool on 3 December 2026 — a 7.30pm start, £15, standing with limited unreserved seating, billed again as Remembering Clem Burke.
Beyond that the schedule reaches deep into 2027: The Picturedrome in Northampton on 9 January, The Buttermarket in Shrewsbury on 5 February, the Picturedrome at Holmfirth on 12 February, Coventry's Empire on 20 February, the Grand in Clitheroe on 27 March, the Citadel in St Helens on 3 April, Saint Luke's in Glasgow on 7 May and Rothes Hall in Glenrothes the following night, with The Wharf in Tavistock pencilled for 2 October 2027.
It is a spread of mid-size civic halls, converted cinemas and music clubs rather than arenas — the economy of the tribute circuit — but the booking depth and the repeat venues suggest rooms that sell out and ask them back.
What the show has become
The current format is a two-set evening with an interval, built to run long. The Liverpool show in December 2025 cleared two and a half hours and more than thirty songs; the Putney show in April 2025 ran close to three. The spine is the catalogue in roughly chronological sweep, from the 1977 debut through to the 1999 comeback: Heart of Glass, Call Me, Atomic, Dreaming, Hanging on the Telephone, Rapture, The Tide Is High, Maria, Denis, Sunday Girl, with deeper cuts such as 11:59, Union City Blue, X Offender and Fade Away and Radiate filling out the sets.
Non-Blondie material is deliberate rather than filler, reflecting what the original band drew on: Goldfinger, Ring of Fire, and encores of Heroes and Get It On.
Staging is hand-built and portable. A red telephone box doubles as a prop for Call Me and a quick-change booth — Debbie Harris got through six costume changes in Liverpool — and a CBGB banner hangs behind the band, who have been known to dress in black suits as a nod to the Parallel Lines sleeve. Reviewers settle on the same verdict: accurate playing, a frontwoman whose resemblance does half the work before she sings, and a night that reads as nostalgia done carefully rather than cheaply.
The show, now
A Bootleg Blondie night now runs two sets with a fifteen-minute interval and rarely comes in under two and a half hours — the Cavern Lounge show in Liverpool on 11 December 2025 cleared that with more than thirty songs, and the Half Moon in Putney on 23 April 2025 ran close to three hours. The set moves chronologically through the Blondie catalogue, from the 1977 debut to the 1999 comeback, anchored by Heart of Glass, Call Me, Atomic, Dreaming, Hanging on the Telephone and Rapture, with album tracks such as Union City Blue, 11:59 and Fade Away and Radiate between them, and encores drawn from Bowie's Heroes and T. Rex's Get It On. Staging is self-made: a red telephone box used both as a prop for Call Me and as a quick-change booth — six costume changes in Liverpool — a CBGB banner, a Premier drum kit signed by Clem Burke and a guitar signed by all the Blondie members. Support is usually a local act or none at all; recent shows carry a Remembering Clem Burke billing, and the Liverpool date auctioned a drum skin he had signed for £1,000 towards Fripps Farm Animal Rescue. Reviewers single out the accuracy of the playing and Debbie Harris's likeness; the Louder Than War write-up credited the band with holding the drummer's spirit while noting the endorsement of Debbie Harry and Chris Stein.
Researched from pleasekillme.com · louderthanwar.com · londonmumsmagazine.com · scenesussex.uk · rock-regeneration.co.uk · thegigcartel.com · cavernclub.com · uktw.co.uk