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| Clarence Clemons (1942-2011) |
"Shouldn't we get going?"
The concert was supposed to start soon. We were eating dinner at some downtown restaurant. I had long finished my burger, and the adults had cleared everything but their drinks, which did very little to halt the conversation. I honestly have idea who most of them were, but I assume they were with Adrienne. Adrienne was my mom's friend from her early working days.
If anyone knew anything about Springsteen concerts, it was Adrienne. As a self-professed Boss lover, she had been to more Bruce concerts than she could count. She housed a larger-than-life Springsteen vinyl in her Atlanta home. She used to live near Clarence and would frequently say hello at their supermarket. She even applied once to work as Mr. Clemons' assistant.
We were fine, Adrienne said. Bruce always starts late.
I couldn't believe how right she was. We finally left what felt like a half hour later and still had time to get to our seats with time to spare. My dad snuck out and got tour shirts for me and my mom. My mom's read, "Tramps like us, baby we were born to run." I don't think she's ever had the balls to wear it in public. Mine was a bluish gray tour shirt that, we quickly noticed, forgot to mention the St. Louis stop on the back. Oh well. The concert was about to start.
It was going to be a special concert. To keep things lively, the band was playing full albums at different stops on tour. Our stop was Born To Run, the beloved breakthrough. Even without this treat, it still would have been a hard concert to forget. Bruce plugged through the three hours with unnerving energy, surfing the crowd and taking requests from collected fan poster boards.
I had always heard what a great show the E Street Band put on, yet I turned down an offer the year before to see them. At some point in the year between those two shows, I decided to check out The Essential Bruce Springsteen, a three-disc set my parents owned. I had uploaded them to our family computer a while back because my dad wanted the collection on his iPod and, being over 40, he was incapable of putting them there himself. Yet, for some reason that blurry, grayscale, bearded-Bruce cover was always a little daunting. Sure it could have been the immensity of the 41-track set, but, more than anything, I think it was simply what it represented to me at the time: Bruce Springsteen was Dad Music. I was 16; the last thing I wanted to do was admit my parents were right, even — nay, especially — in regards to music. Nonetheless, I was always a fan of the E Street take of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" (I'm a sucker for Christmas music), so I had one unwavering thread to Bruce. Maybe that pushed me over the edge, or maybe I just decided it was okay to like music my parents liked. Whatever it was, I went through a period where literally all I wanted to listen to was The Essential Bruce Springsteen. Needless to say, when a chance to catch Bruce was offered again, I made sure to not let it pass.
So there I was, standing way off in a back right section of the ScottTrade Center (or whatever the hell they call it these days), craning my neck over the packed house and witnessing an epic played out live before me.
Born To Run.
The thunder bellows furiously, laughably appropriate for the opening track. That legendary — at least to me — harmonica kicks in. Piano drives at the pace of runaway lovers. We welcome in electric guitar, sounding like a truck with the windows rolled down, letting the wind blow your hair back. The drums are the map; available for guidance if needed, but for now we just play it by ear. And then, finally, what I've been waiting for: Clarence. The glorious saxophone riff. The successful getaway. The happy ending. But not tonight. No, not tonight. It is June 18, and Clarence Clemons is dead.
"Thunder Road" is over, but the thunder outside continues to overwhelm my headphones. As the epic unfolds, the weather reminds me of the big man up there, throwing a raucous Tenth Avenue freeze-out, as he was known to do down here.
"When the change was made uptown, and the Big Man joined the band. From the coastline to the city, all the little pretties raise their hands. I'm gonna sit back right easy and laugh when Scooter and the Big Man bust this city in half with a Tenth Avenue freeze-out."
Not that I needed any reminding. Vintage Clarence lends his smooth paragraphs of reeded brass, perfecting textures — a pair of 3D glasses making the blue and red sounds pop off the page — and taking command with solos crisp and determined enough to make you forget it's not his name in the band's title.
Song after song, he does not fail. Bruce is the grit, the dirt road, the dream. And Clarence is the fun, the party, the moment. Clarence is the sidekick with his own cape (literally), because for all the grandiloquence of Bruce's flights, Clarence is always the stability when Bruce needs someone to lean on, as he so famously does on the album's iconic cover. Clarence is that friend you know you just can't do without, Clarence is your mom when your six-year-old self gets picked on at school, Clarence is your wife after a rough day at work, lest his towering figure let you forget he is a man. For damn sure is he a man.
"Jungleland" settles in, the final voyage of our epic. It is Clarence's eulogy. Soulful with a twinge of sadness, albeit with constant reminders of joy, this defining solo is above all a tribute. A yearning-but-proud reflection upon one's glorious past. It is the epitaph, the remembrance, the amen.
"And the poets down here don't write nothing at all. They just stand back and let it all be. In the quick of the night, they reach for their moment and try to make an honest stand. But they wind up wounded, not even dead, tonight in Jungleland."
Rest in peace.
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