If the Big Man can die, so can I.<\/p>\n
Bruce Springsteen hasn’t written a hit in years.\u00c2\u00a0 But we go to the show to remember.\u00c2\u00a0 Who we once were.\u00c2\u00a0 When we had hope, when we believed, when we still had hair, when we were skinny.<\/p>\n
Danny Federici was bad enough.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, there’s been some change in the group.\u00c2\u00a0 David Sancious used to play in the E Street Band.\u00c2\u00a0 And Max wasn’t the original drummer.\u00c2\u00a0 And Nils Lofgren broke through with Neil Young.\u00c2\u00a0 And Miami Steve left and then came back.<\/p>\n
But there’s no Springsteen without Bruce.<\/p>\n
And there’s really no E Street Band without Clarence Clemons.<\/p>\n
Not only was the Big Man on the cover of "Born To Run", the breakthrough album, he signified that Bruce was something different, not a me-too act.\u00c2\u00a0 Springsteen might have been labeled a Dylan wannabe, but when they finally turned up the band on the second record, and Landau enriched the sound on the third, the music was as far away from Dylan as Asbury Park is from Hibbing.<\/p>\n
I bought that first album.\u00c2\u00a0 And as good as "It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City" was, "Spirit In The Night" was the keeper. Because of the sax.<\/p>\n
And "Rosalita" was the keeper on the follow-up album.\u00c2\u00a0 For the same reason.\u00c2\u00a0 The explosion of pure joy.\u00c2\u00a0 When Bruce sings about the record company giving him a big advance you feel like it happened to a member of your family, you’re not envious in a twenty first century way, wondering how come you haven’t gotten yours, but thrilled that someone you know has made it.<\/p>\n
And then came "Born To Run".\u00c2\u00a0 If you’d been following at this point, the sax was not a surprise.\u00c2\u00a0 It was an integral part of the group.<\/p>\n
Then there was the end of "Jungleland".\u00c2\u00a0 That lonely sax spoke of nothing so much as despair.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the flip side of rock and roll.\u00c2\u00a0 The exuberance and then the solitary feeling that you’re Wall-E, alone in a city without heart, without hope.<\/p>\n
And what do you do when you feel this way?\u00c2\u00a0 Put on a record!\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the only thing that gets you through!<\/p>\n
Springsteen changed with "Born In The U.S.A."\u00c2\u00a0 He tried to become what we didn’t want him to be.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody else’s.<\/p>\n
But he redeemed himself with "Tunnel Of Love".\u00c2\u00a0 Listen to the title track.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s love, a ride on a roller coaster in the dark.<\/p>\n
"Lucky Town" was the better album, but the title track of "Human Touch" was pure Bruce.\u00c2\u00a0 Anthemic without being meaningless.\u00c2\u00a0 Bruce was not Gene Simmons, he wasn’t asking for your attention.<\/p>\n
Ironically, that was Clarence’s gig.\u00c2\u00a0 He could be everything the Boss was not.\u00c2\u00a0 Flamboyant.\u00c2\u00a0 A cheerleader.\u00c2\u00a0 Clarence could enjoy the success when Bruce could not.<\/p>\n
But no longer.<\/p>\n
Like Ian Hunter, we were shocked to find out how old Clarence Clemons was.\u00c2\u00a0 We think all our stars start out in garages and are on their way by twenty one.<\/p>\n
But it takes others time to find their way.\u00c2\u00a0 Their life experiences enrich their music.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re one step ahead of us.<\/p>\n
Then they’re gone.<\/p>\n
It was bad enough he had a stroke.\u00c2\u00a0 Dick Clark had one of those, he may not speak well, but he’s alive.\u00c2\u00a0 Same with Kirk Douglas, hell, he was on the Oscars.<\/p>\n
As long as Clarence Clemons was alive so were our hopes and dreams.\u00c2\u00a0 On some level I’d just graduated from college, the E Street Band was on the stage at the Bottom Line, it was still a year away from "Born To Run", never mind law school, marriage and decay.<\/p>\n
But then he died.<\/p>\n
I found out the way you do now.\u00c2\u00a0 On my BlackBerry.<\/p>\n
And the e-mail got me frantically searching.<\/p>\n
There was a link to TMZ.\u00c2\u00a0 But I wouldn’t believe it until a Twitter search confirmed it.<\/p>\n
The Big Man had finally left the band.<\/p>\n
Like Bill Murray said in "Stripes", one day Tito Puente’s gonna die and you’re gonna say you’ve been listening to him for years!<\/p>\n
One day Clarence Clemons is gonna die and he won’t be a secret.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ll all say we’ve been listening to him for years.<\/p>\n
It’s sad.\u00c2\u00a0 For him.<\/p>\n
And for us.<\/p>\n
So put on a smile, let your freak flag fly, get behind the wheel of that convertible and floor it!<\/p>\n
It’s fucking great to be alive.\u00c2\u00a0 Seize the moment.<\/p>\n
Clarence may die, but the music survives.<\/p>\n
Crank it!<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If the Big Man can die, so can I. Bruce Springsteen hasn’t written a hit in years.\u00c2\u00a0 But we go to the show to remember.\u00c2\u00a0 Who we once were.\u00c2\u00a0 When we had hope, when we believed, when we still had hair, when we were skinny. Danny Federici was bad enough.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, there’s been some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-177","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4285"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4286,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4285\/revisions\/4286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}