The Boss and the Big Man: the life and death of Clarence Clemons

Monday, June 27, 2011

Mervyn Dandy
Bruce Springsteen’s saxophone player, Clarence Clemons, known as “the Big Man”, has died. He suffered a stroke on 12 June 2011, following which he underwent two surgeries and was declared in a serious but stable condition. Sadly, he succumbed to complications caused by the stroke in the early evening of Saturday 18 June 2011. He was 69 years of age.

Paying tribute to Clemons, Springsteen said: “Clarence lived a wonderful life. He carried within him a love of people that made them love him. He created a wondrous and extended family. He loved the saxophone, loved our fans and gave everything he had every night he stepped on stage

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. His loss is immeasurable and we are honoured and thankful to have known him and had the opportunity to stand beside him for nearly forty years. He was my great friend, my partner and with Clarence at my side, my band and I were able to tell a story far deeper than those simply contained in our music. His life, his memory and his love will live on in that story and in our band.” Clemons is the second member of the legendary E Street Band to pass away, organist Danny Federici having died in 2008.

Clarence’s passing has drawn tributes from musicians other than the Boss, and from leading American personalities in other walks of life as well. At a U2 concert in Anaheim a few hours after Clemons’s death, Bono paid tribute to him and read lyrics from Bruce’s song “Jungleland” (from the seminal breakthrough album Born to Run (1975)), on which Clemons had played a lengthy and meticulously rehearsed solo on his beloved tenor saxophone. New Jersey rock band Bon Jovi performed “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”, likewise from Born to Run, at a concert in Denmark the following day in his honour. Carlos Santana and Eddie Vedder, at separate concerts over the course of the two days following Clarence’s death, paid tribute to him and made a dedication to him. Television presenter Jon Stewart, on The Daily Show, in his first show after Clemons’s demise, dedicated a “Moment of Zen” to him and screened a clip of Springsteen introducing Clemons to an audience. And New Jersey Governor Chris Christie ordered all flags in New Jersey to be flown at half-staff in honour of Clemons on Thursday 23 June 2011.

To the average fan outside America, not much is known about Clarence Clemons other than his membership of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. And it may come as a surprise to some to discover that Clemons played with a wide variety of famous and influential musicians other than Springsteen, and released a number of solo records as well. In 1985 he had a hit single with Jackson Browne (who took second billing, after Clemons, on the label) entitled “You’re a Friend of Mine”, on which Clarence both played and sang lead vocals in his booming, soulful voice. He co-wrote, played and sang all the lead vocals on the tuneful and up-tempo B-side, “Let the Music Say It”, which was arguably an even better song than its accompanying A-side. He also played saxophone for Aretha Franklin on her hit single “Freeway of Love” in the same year. He toured with Ringo Starr in 1989, as a member of the first line-up of the All-Starr Band, during which he sang “You’re a Friend of Mine” with fellow member Billy Preston (who died in 2006) and handled lead vocals by himself on an updated arrangement of “Quarter to Three”. (Only the latter track was included on the album released from that tour, in 1990. Significantly, that incarnation of the All-Starr Band included guitarist Nils Lofgren, who went on to become a member of the E Street Band after it was re-formed by Springsteen in 1999, pursuant to the success of the 4-CD Tracks box set, issued in 1998.) Most recently, Clemons played saxophone on two tracks, “Hair” and “The Edge of Glory”, from the new Lady Gaga album Born This Way, released a few weeks ago. All this was in addition to various other side projects, including his own band, Clarence Clemons and the Red Bank Rockers, with whom he released an album entitled Rescue in 1983. He also made three other solo albums, Hero (1985), A Night with Mr C (1989) and Peacemaker (1995).

The list of musicians for whom Clarence played is as varied as it is astonishing; he has backed another Jersey band, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, and he has recorded with Carlene Carter, Janis Ian, Joan Armatrading, Greg Lake, fellow E Street Band member Little Steven (Steve van Zandt), Ian Hunter, Twisted Sister, Gloria Estefan, the Four Tops, Joe Cocker, Roy Orbison, Alvin Lee, Luther Vandross and Todd Rundgren, among many others.

Besides all this, Clemons (like Steve van Zandt) pursued a career as an actor, both in feature films and on television, the latter including appearances in Diff’rent Strokes (1985), The Weird Al Show (with Weird Al Yankovic) (1997), and an episode of The Simpsons (1999) in which he was a guest voice. The full-length films in which he acted include Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York (1977), in which he played a trumpeter named Cecil Powell.

But it is as the saxophonist for the E Street Band for which Clemons is best loved and most widely remembered. Bruce Springsteen wrote a line for him in “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” (“And the Big Man joined the band” – the predictable cue for a flourish on the saxophone), and he was a key member of Springsteen’s backing group even before it became known as the E Street Band, having joined in 1972. Different accounts of their first meeting have been told by Springsteen in concert, one of which can be heard on “The E Street Shuffle” on the recently released Live at the Main Point, 1975 double album, recorded on 5 February 1975. According to Clarence, the true story is that he went down to a club called The Student Prince at which the erstwhile Bruce Springsteen Band was playing. It was a rainy and windy night, and when Clemons opened the door to the club, the door flew off its hinges and blew away down the street. The band, on stage at the time, stared at the huge frame of Clarence Clemons in the doorway, and when Clemons approached Springsteen later that night and asked to play with the band, Springsteen – apparently intimidated by Clemons’s bulk – immediately consented. The two realized immediately that they belonged together. Springsteen’s affection for Clemons was both enormous and obvious: witness the Boss’s beaming smile as Clarence, imposingly clad in a white suit and white wide-brimmed hat, plays his sax solo on “She’s the One” at the legendary November 1975 Hammersmith Odeon show in London, and the genuine warmth in the Boss’s pose and facial expression as he leans on the Big Man in the iconic monochrome photograph that was spread across the front and back covers on the gatefold sleeve of Born to Run.

Clemons first played on record for Springsteen on “Blinded by the Light” and “Spirit in the Night” on the Boss’s debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973), contributing also background vocals and handclaps to that LP. But it was on Born to Run that he came to international attention and eventually world fame, playing saxophone on six of that album’s eight songs, including “Thunder Road”, “Born to Run”, “She’s the One” and “Jungleland”. His full-bodied and passionate delivery on those pivotal tracks helped in no small measure to elevate Born to Run to its status as one of the most majestic albums in the rock milieu.

Many more magnificent, and often driving, sax solos followed – on “Badlands” from Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978), on “The Ties That Bind”, “Sherry Darling”, “Independence Day”, “Crush on You” and “Ramrod” from The River (1980), on “Bobby Jean”, “I’m Goin’ Down” and “Dancing in the Dark” from Born in the USA (1984). But it was on the blazing set of tracks culled from the E Street Band’s 1981 American concert tour which appear on the Live 1975—85 set that Clarence delivered the most compelling of his many amazing performances. The E Street Band were, by that stage, the best backing band in the world – they were simply untouchable – and Clemons was an indispensable part of the group. The sax solo that carries the incredible performance of “Cadillac Ranch” on that album through to its exuberant conclusion is, for my money, the best in all of rock – superior even to the raunchy playing of Bobby Keyes on the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” or anything that Andy Mackay laid down on tape for Roxy Music during the seventies and eighties.

Clarence Clemons was not only one of the world’s best-known saxophone players but also one of the most talented – indeed, he was arguably rock’s finest ever saxophonist. He has left behind a wonderful collection of performances that will continue for decades to delight fans and aficionados of rock music, none better than on the numerous Bruce Springsteen albums on which he played. He is an iconic figure who symbolized the amazing artistic heights that can be reached when black and white musicians collaborate. He was a Big Man in every sense, and he will be sorely and deeply missed.

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