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The Big Man, Much More Than Springsteen’s Sideman

19 Jun
By , NY Times  Published: June 19, 2011

It was never just about the saxophone. In more than three decades wielding his tenor sax with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, from its beginning in 1972 to his death at 69 on Saturday, Clarence Clemons was as much a symbol as a sideman.

Lennox Mclendon/Associated Press

Bruce Springsteen, seated, with Clarence Clemons at a concert in Los Angeles in 1985.

Bill Kostroun/Associated Press

Clarence Clemons and Bruce Springsteen in 1999. Mr. Clemons’s presence declared that rock’s black heritage was shared, not plundered.

He played an essential role in Mr. Springsteen’s songs, particularly in the E Street Band’s first years. Mid-1970s songs like “Jungleland,” “Incident on 57th Street” and “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” stretched out like suites, and in their instrumental interludes Mr. Clemons’s saxophone parts testified to wordless yearning, to determined striving and to comical gumption. Even after Mr. Springsteen chose to write shorter, pop-structured songs, making concision his new discipline, Mr. Clemons held his place: as the honking foundation of “Hungry Heart” and the longed-for dance partner in “Dancing in the Dark.”

His meaty tone was the legacy of his main model, King Curtis, and of the countless lesser-known honkers, shouters and squealers who pumped out riffs and took eight-bar solos in 1940s and ’50s jump blues, R&B and doo-wop. His lung power forged the E Street Band’s most visceral connection with those African-American rock ’n’ roll roots, one that was already nostalgic even in the ’70s. Recently, when Mr. Clemons made a valedictory appearance in Lady Gaga’s “Edge of Glory,” his sound paid tribute to his own younger self from nearly 40 years ago.

But in a band that constantly proved itself on the road, from Asbury Park club gigs to its decades of headlining arenas, Mr. Clemons’s presence was always as significant as his sound. He was, in his resonantly matter-of-fact nickname, the Big Man, 6 feet 4 inches and built like the football player he might have been but for knee troubles. He was by far the E Street Band’s flashiest dresser, in eye-popping suits and broad-brimmed hats; Mr. Springsteen gleefully let himself be upstaged by a sideman he’d never place in the background. They were by all accounts dear friends, even soulmates; Mr. Clemons often described their relationship as nothing less than love (but of a nonsexual kind). Onstage, with thousands of spectators, Mr. Springsteen would bow at his feet or hold him in a close hug, presenting him as a muse, not an employee.

Of course Mr. Clemons was the band’s abiding African-American musician, who kept the E Street Band multiracial after the early departure of a keyboardist, David Sancious, also African-American. Along with the sound his saxophone brought to the songs — of soul and R&B, of urban sophistication and wildness — Mr. Clemons’s imposing figure declared that the E Street Band was sharing rock ’n’ roll’s black heritage, not plundering it. In America’s long, vexed cultural history of race, his bond with Mr. Springsteen made Mr. Clemons a symbol of unity and reconciliation.

Ever conscious of iconography, especially on “Born to Run,” the album that was to be his unabashed, arduously recorded attempt at rock greatness, Mr. Springsteen didn’t lightly choose its cover image. It shows him leaning on a shoulder that, when the album is unfolded, belongs to Mr. Clemons. (Mr. Springsteen was standing on something, since Mr. Clemons was a head taller.) Mr. Springsteen is smiling, watching, listening as Mr. Clemons plays his saxophone, the way he had listened to and synthesized so much of rock ’n’ roll’s past. The attentive grin on Mr. Springsteen’s face suggests that he’s learning some deeply pleasurable secret; the openness and determination in Mr. Clemons’s eyes, gleaming out of deep shadows, show he is proud to hand it on to his friend.

Springsteen Tape Takes Us Back To ‘Rock & Roll Future’

8 May

The evening of May 9, 1974, is legendary in the annals of rock ’n’ roll. It was the night the little-known Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band opened for Bonnie Raitt at Harvard Square Theater, dazzling the critic Jon Landau into writing “I saw rock & roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen’’ in the local alternative weekly The Real Paper. Now a tape from that night — one of the most revered in rock history — has emerged as a museum object 36 years after the storied event.

The tape, never available for public hearing, is included in the Springsteen exhibit “From Asbury Park to the Promised Land’’ at Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, on display through summer. It has been digitalized and streams to a single listening station, where two people at a time can listen to it on headphones. It is not available on the museum’s website, nor can a copy be purchased in the museum store.

The sound has some rough patches, and there are no seats for relaxing. But the radical effect of the music on the audience then (this writer was there and can attest to that) can still be felt. The band aims for the mystically transcendent one minute and party-hearty, sax-fueled retro-rock raucousness the next, keeping everyone off guard. Springsteen was in Cambridge to promote his second album, “The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle.’’

The idea for an exhibit centering on Springsteen’s career came about because the Hall of Fame’s induction ceremonies were going to be in Cleveland last year and chief curator Jim Henke wanted a big show to accompany it. He approached Springsteen, who had been inducted in 1999. Springsteen agreed and provided items ranging from his “Born to Run’’ Fender Esquire guitar to his favorite songwriting table.

The exhibit drew so well in 2009 — 423,000 visitors — that it has been extended into this summer, with newer artifacts added, including the jacket he wore to President Obama’s inauguration, his 2009 Kennedy Center award, and the Golden Globe he won for “The Wrestler.’’ But it is the Harvard Square tape that remains one of the most fascinating parts of the exhibit, just as that night itself remains an enduring, pivotal moment in the Boss’s career.

“It was my idea to include it, because that show is so famous because of Landau’s review,’’ Henke says. “So we contacted [Springsteen’s organization], and they had a tape of the songs played there. He and the E Street Band were a great live band, and that does come through in those tracks.’’

Springsteen’s band at the time of the Harvard Square booking featured a pianist with strong jazz and classical leanings, David Sancious. (He left in August 1974.) It is Sancious who makes the band’s first impression so strong, opening with a long, melancholy, and ruminative solo on “New York City Serenade.’’ It slowly leads into Springsteen’s yearningly searching vocal, with the impressionistic, romanticized lyrics that seem part Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row’’ and part Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side.’’ The song was aiming for theatrical grandeur and also reverent intimacy, and the effect it has on hushing an audience can still be felt today.

But then he moves away from that territory on “Spirit in the Night,’’ a song that still has its cryptically spooky Dylanesque lyrics but also builds into a more traditional soul shout-out, thanks to Clarence Clemons’s saxophone solo. The band then goes into soul-oldies heaven with a cover of “I Sold My Heart to the Junkman,’’ which had been a 1962 girl-group hit. On these three songs and five others, it’s evident that Springsteen and his tightly rehearsed ensemble were trying simultaneously to draw from the music’s past and to create a future. This is the night they came to be forever recognized for it.

It took luck for Springsteen’s audio engineer, Toby Scott, to find the tape. He lives in northwest Montana and met a Boston emigre, musician/retired music teacher Michael Atherton, at an open-mike night at a bar in the town of Whitefish. Atherton, a resident of Trego, said he had a tape for him — Springsteen at Harvard Square Theatre, 1974. He had made it himself, lugging in a professional-model cassette recorder with external microphone and taping the show from a seat in the back. At the time, Atherton was a natural-foods baker (with his wife) as well as a musician. “I saw every concert we could afford to — of course, we were broke most of the time,’’ Atherton recalls. “I don’t even know how I knew who Bruce Springsteen was. When we baked, we listened to WBCN all the time and even took doughnuts over to them because we thought they were so cool. So maybe that was it.’’

Smuggling the bulky recorder into the show turned out to be easy, because he was prepared. “My father was a news photographer for 40 years and instilled in me a rule to always look like you know what you’re doing when confronted with any possible security situation,’’ he says. “So I put it under my peacoat, where it probably looked like I was pregnant. Then I put it in my lap and held the microphone up in the air.’’ He also recorded a bit of Raitt’s headlining act, before the batteries gave out.

Over the years — as Atherton and his wife moved to first New Hampshire and then Montana, he has made a few copies for friends — which may have something to do with the bootleg copies that some Internet sites say exist. But he has only played it once for himself. “It was every bit as good as I remembered it,’’ he says. “It was the greatest band concert I’ve ever seen — completely together, completely refined, the dramatic intent clear from beginning to end.’’

Actually, Landau — who went on to become Springsteen’s manager — didn’t see the performance that can now be heard at the hall of fame. He went to the second show that night, when the set list not only was somewhat changed — Springsteen opened with “The E Street Shuffle’’ — but showcased a new song, “Born to Run.’’ Landau had seen Springsteen at a Cambridge club called Charlie’s Place just a month earlier.

Landau declined comment for this story, but the music writer Dave Marsh — Landau’s editor at the time — recalls The Real Paper review well. “It was playing off ‘A Christmas Carol’ — it was Dickensian in the way he talks about rock ’n’ roll’s past, present, and future. It always gets quoted as being in a prophetic voice, but it wasn’t.’’

Marsh went on to write two Springsteen biographies and “Bruce Springsteen on Tour: 1968-2005.’’ While he and Landau had seen Springsteen earlier in a small Cambridge club, Marsh didn’t make the Harvard Square show. “This is a horrible thing to say,’’ he says. “I had a ticket but was sick.’’

Danny DeVito Performs Glory Days with Bruce Springsteen, As He’s Introduced into the New Jersey’s Hall of Fame

4 May

Mini movie star Danny DeVito proves he’s a HUGE crowd pleaser …. as he blasts out Bruce Springsteen’s classic number Glory Days with The Boss himself.

Rocker Bruce introduced Danny, 65, into New Jersey’s Hall of Fame before teaming up to perform the tribute to their home state. Impressed Bruce, 60, told the crowd, “He has Jersey attitude pouring out of him, even when he is standing still.”

Bruuuce!!! Rock Hall Hosts Another Springsteen Weekend

22 Apr

Posted by Michael Gallucci on Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 3:07 PM
We love us some Springsteen here in Cleveland, don’t we?

Clevelanders often take pride in the fact that we were one of the first cities to embrace his music. And we’re the home of one of the greatest Boss bootlegs of all time.

So it’s no surprise that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has just scheduled another Springsteen weekend.

They held one of these things in 2009. This year’s edition will take place on June 4-6.

It’s all Bruce, all weekend, with the Rock Hall loading up on documentaries, guest speakers, and live performances (not from Bruce or even stray E Street Band members, but cover group Stone Pony Band, who’ll play on Saturday).

For our money (and yeah, it’s gonna cost you if you want to go to these events), the best program is Saturday’s “Bruce Springsteen’s Cleveland History,” which includes local luminaries like the Agora’s Hank LoConti, concert promoter Jules Belkin, and radio guy John Gorman talking about our city’s crucial part in the Springsteen saga. All that’s missing is the Cleveland Boys.

You can find a complete schedule of events here. —Michael Gallucci (follow me on Twitter @mgallucci)

Bruce Springsteen, Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame Exhibition

16 Jan

This from backstreets.comnewsrockhall

Years in the making, a major Bruce Springsteen exhibition is set to open in just a few months at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland. “From Asbury Park to the Promised Land: The Life and Music of Bruce Springsteen” opens Wednesday, April 1, as part of a weeklong celebration leading up to the 24th annual Rock Hall induction ceremony on Saturday, April 4.