The Star-Ledger
http://www.nj.com/starledger/
June 18, 2011
Clarence Clemons — the Big Man with the big horn — died today of complications from a stroke he suffered last weekend, according to a spokeswoman for Bruce Springsteen who requested anonymity because she was not authorized by the Clemons family to issue a statement. He was 69 years old.
He was the spirit of the E Street Band, and the oaken staff that Bruce Springsteen leaned on.
"He was the kahuna of surf and soul and a man that had love in his heart and, always, a smile on his face. He was my brother — my musical brother," said original E Street Band drummer Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez.
Lopez last saw Clemons when he guested at an E Street Band show in Philadelphia, in 2009. "I was in the dressing room with him, and we were laughing and talking about golfing," said Lopez.
Clemons was having a hard time walking, Lopez remembered.
"It's just a shame," said Lopez of Clemons' death. "He had a lot more he could give."
There have been many charismatic figures in the E Street Band, but none had the personal gravity of Clarence Clemons, the group’s Bunyanesque saxophonist.
Springsteen himself acknowledged this, always introducing Clemons last at concerts and adopting a reverential attitude uncommon among rock stars. It’s Clemons' big shoulder that Springsteen was looking over lovingly on the famous cover of his "Born to Run" album. As his bandleader beamed at him, Clemons, black-hatted and bold, turned toward the camera and blew his sax.
"Clarence lived a wonderful life," Springsteen said in a statement tonight. "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.
"His loss is immeasurable and we are honored and thankful to have known him and had the opportunity to stand beside him for nearly 40 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 seemed to be a character out of a storybook — or better yet, a widescreen movie about the triumph of a romantic gang of rock ’n’ roll renegades. Wildly popular among fans of the E Street Band, he was the sort of larger-than-life figure to whom legends accrued. Recognizing this, Clemons and Springsteen did much to play up those legends: "Big Man: Real Life and Tall Tales," Clemons’ 2009 autobiography written with Don Reo, combined genuine reflections with fiction in an attempt to capture the mythical quality of the musician.
Springsteen’s oft-told story of his initial meeting with Clemons felt Biblical: with a lightning storm raging outside, the Big Man tore the door off an Asbury Park club, strode onstage, and made magic. (Springsteen would later immortalize this meeting in "Tenth Avenue Freeze-out," a song on "Born to Run.")
Was this embellished? Most likely. But reality never seemed quite big enough to accommodate Clarence Clemons.
"Mere facts," wrote Bruce Springsteen in the preface to Clemons’ book, "will never plumb the mysteries of the Big Man."
Born in Norfolk, Va., Clemons was the son of a Baptist minister who had no love for raucous rock ’n’ roll. But at the age of 9, his family gave young Clarence an alto saxophone — and soon he discovered his lung power was formidable.
By young adulthood, he excelled at music and athletics and earned a football scholarship to the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. Injuries suffered in a car accident prevented the young lineman from trying out for the Cleveland Browns. From then on, Clemons dedicated himself to his horn.
Clemons called his instrument "a vehicle to move my spirit around."
"I don’t think it’s only my saxophone," Clemons told All Access Magazine in 2008, "it’s who I am. My spiritual guide … told me that my purpose in life was to bring joy into the world. He didn’t know about my music, he didn’t know who I was. He saw my heart, he saw my soul, and he saw my determination for this life."
On the tenor saxophone, Clemons developed a style that was considerably more than the sum of his influences: party-ready King Curtis, brassy Junior Walker, skronking Earl Bostic. Clemons could be tough, raspy and percussive, but as a carrier of melody, his shoulders were broad.
After playing with a number of Asbury Park outfits in the early ’70s, Clemons joined the as-yet-unnamed E Street Band in 1972. Along with bassist Garry Tallent, drummer Vini Lopez, organist Danny Federici, pianist Dave Sancious and Springsteen himself, Clemons was an original member of the group.
He was also the oldest, and it’s no exaggeration to suggest he was often treated as the in-house big brother. His saxophone became a pillar of the E Street sound, and helped anchor Springsteen’s storytelling in blues, jazz and gospel traditions.
"That night we first stood together," said Springsteen of Clemons during his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction speech in 1999, "I looked over at C and it looked like his head reached into the clouds. And I felt like a mere mortal scurrying upon the earth, you know. But he always lifted me up. Way, way, way up. Together we told a story of the possibilities of friendship, a story older than the ones that I was writing and a story I could never have told without him at my side."
Clemons’ solos on songs like "Jungleland" and "Born to Run" were quintessential rock ’n’ roll sax rides — things of beauty and drama unmatched by efforts of thousands of imitators. But Clemons also took his support role seriously. On "Spirit in the Night," his graceful passages were part of a thick tapestry of sound. On "Hungry Heart," the E Street Band’s first Top 10 hit, his baritone sax tugged at the bottom of the track like taffy on the sole of a sneaker.
That wasn’t the only time Clemons swapped his trademark tenor for a baritone. In the early ’70s, he kept another tool in his shed: a lilting soprano saxophone; on more recent tours, he covered the top end with a pennywhistle. Reeds weren’t all he did — with the E Street Band, Clemons also proved himself an able percussionist and an enthusiastic backing vocalist, too.
With his instantly identifiable tone and passion for all varieties of popular music, Clemons was often in demand as a session musician. When E Street activities slowed in the ’80s and ’90s, Clemons had no difficulty finding work. He played on scores of records, including Aretha Franklin’s "Who’s Zooming Who," Twisted Sister’s "Come Out and Play" and Roy Orbison’s comeback "King of Hearts." In 1989, he joined the inaugural version of Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band, where his charismatic stage presence and playful attitude fit in perfectly.
When Lady Gaga attempted to resurrect the glory of ’80s stadium rock on her recent album "Born This Way," she called in Clemons.
"The universe is there to give you what you want," Clemons told All Access about his multifaceted success. "You just need to be there to get it."
Clemons also released five solo albums under his own name. "Hero," a 1985 set produced by Narada Michael Walden, gave him a hit duet (with Jackson Browne): "You’re a Friend of Mine," a song, ironically, about the relationship between Clemons and Springsteen. Even on his solo sets, the sax player could not elude the shadow of the Boss.
For two years, Clemons operated Big Man’s West, a rock venue in Red Bank that became something of a clubhouse for the E Street team and affiliated acts. Springsteen himself appeared at Big Man’s close to 20 times. Although the club closed its doors for good in 1983 for financial reasons, its existence helped revive the Shore sound. Many of the musicians who’d rock the Garden State (and beyond) during the late ’80s took the stage at Big Man’s, including Jon Bon Jovi and John Eddie.
Stone Pony founder Butch Pielka warned the saxophonist about the perils of running a rock club.
"He offered me some advice in the beginning, like, ‘Get out of the business,’ " Clemons told The Star-Ledger this year. "My accountant agreed with him: ‘Just consider that you had a party for two and a half years, and invited all your friends, and you picked up the tab.’ That’s what it was like."
Clemons’ celebrity never quite faded. But in recent years, a series of debilitating ailments kept him out of the limelight. The Big Man was felled by multiple spinal surgeries and knee replacements. Undeterred, he continued to blow from his wheelchair. ("He’s always on time, he’s always in pain," wrote Don Reo in "Big Man.")
The musician lived long enough to see "Who Do I Think I Am?," a documentary about his life, air at the Paramount Theatre in his beloved Asbury Park this April. Hobbled by his health problems, he nevertheless took the stage at the Paramount and answered questions and signed autographs, smiling all the while.
Under the stagelights, surrounded by those who loved him, Clemons was in his element. Pushing 70, he rehabbed hard, hoping for a chance to join the E Street Band on tour in 2012.
He told Rolling Stone magazine in February that as long as he had a mouth, a brain and a pair of hands, he would keep on playing. Nobody who saw Clemons perform would ever have doubted it: his dedication was total. The saxophone was a conduit for his spirit, he assured us, and that spirit was a colossus.
Far beyond the boardwalk of Asbury Park, those big notes will keep echoing.
Clarence Clemons, Springsteen’s Soulful Sideman, Dies at 69
By BEN SISARIO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com
June 18, 2011
Clarence Clemons, the saxophonist in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, whose jovial onstage manner, soul-rooted style and brotherly relationship with Mr. Springsteen made him one of rock’s most beloved sidemen, died on Saturday at a hospital in Palm Beach, Fla. He was 69.
The cause was complications of a stroke he suffered last Sunday at his home in Singer Island, Fla., a spokeswoman for Mr. Springsteen said.
In a statement released Saturday night, Mr. Springsteen called Mr. Clemons “my great friend, my partner.”
“With Clarence at my side, my band and I were able to tell a story far deeper than those simply contained in our music,” he added. “His life, his memory and his love will live on in that story and in our band.”
From the beginnings of the E Street Band in 1972, Mr. Clemons played a central part in Mr. Springsteen’s music, complementing the group’s electric guitar and driving rhythms in songs like “Born to Run” and “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” with muscular, melodic saxophone hooks that echoed doo-wop, soul and early rock ’n’ roll.
But equally important to the group’s image was the sense of affection and unbreakable camaraderie between Mr. Springsteen and his sax man. Few E Street Band shows were complete without a shaggy-dog story about the stormy night the two men met at a bar in Asbury Park, N.J., or a long bear hug between them at the end of the night.
Mr. Clemons also became something of a celebrity in his own right, acting in Martin Scorsese’s “New York, New York” and other films, and on television shows like “Diff’rent Strokes,” and jamming with President Bill Clinton at the 1993 inaugural ball.
A former college football player, Mr. Clemons towered over Mr. Springsteen at 6 feet 4 inches and about 250 pounds — his self-evident nickname was the Big Man — and for most of its history, he stood out as the sole black man in a white, working-class New Jersey rock band. (The keyboardist David Sancious, who is also black, played with the group until 1974.) Onstage he had almost as much magnetism as Mr. Springsteen, and even if much of his time was spent hitting a cowbell or singing backup, he could still stir up a stadium crowd with a few cheerful notes on his horn.
For many fans, the bond between Mr. Springsteen and Mr. Clemons was symbolized by the photograph wrapped around the front and back covers of the 1975 album “Born to Run.” In that picture, a spent yet elated Mr. Springsteen leans on a shoulder to his right for support; the flip side revealed that it belonged to Mr. Clemons.
“When you look at just the cover of ‘Born to Run,’ you see a charming photo, a good album cover, but when you open it up and see Clarence and me together, the album begins to work its magic,” Mr. Springsteen wrote in a foreword to “Big Man: Real Life and Tall Tales,” Mr. Clemons’s semifictional memoir from 2009, written with Don Reo. “Who are these guys? Where did they come from? What is the joke they are sharing?”
Clarence Anicholas Clemons was born on Jan. 11, 1942, in Norfolk, Va. His father owned a fish market and his grandfather was a Southern Baptist preacher, and although he grew up surrounded by gospel music, the young Mr. Clemons was captivated by rock ’n’ roll. He was given an alto saxophone at age 9 as a Christmas gift; later, following the influence of King Curtis — whose many credits include the jaunty sax part on the Coasters’ 1958 hit “Yakety Yak” — he switched to the tenor.
“I grew up with a very religious background,” he once said in an interview. “I got into the soul music, but I wanted to rock. I was a rocker. I was a born rock ’n’ roll sax player.”
Mr. Clemons was also a gifted athlete, and he attended Maryland State College (now the University of Maryland Eastern Shore) on a scholarship for football and music. He tried out for the Dallas Cowboys and the Cleveland Browns, but a knee injury ended his hopes for a football career.
He was working as a youth counselor in Newark when he began to mix with the Jersey Shore music scene of the late 1960s and early ’70s. He was older than Mr. Springsteen and most of his future band mates, and he often commented on the oddity — even the liability — of being a racially integrated group in those days.
“You had your black bands and you had your white bands,” he wrote in his memoir, “and if you mixed the two you found less places to play.”
But the match was strong from the start, and his saxophone soon became a focal point of the group’s sound. In an interview with The New York Times in 2005, Jon Landau, Mr. Springsteen’s manager, said that during the recording sessions for “Born to Run,” Mr. Springsteen and Mr. Clemons spent 16 hours finessing the jazzy saxophone solo on that album’s closing song, “Jungleland.”
Mr. Clemons’s charisma and eccentricity extended offstage. Wherever the band played, he made his dressing room into a shrine he called the Temple of Soul. He claimed to have played pool with Fidel Castro and won. And by many accounts, including his own, he was a champion partier on the road. He was married five times and divorced four. His fifth wife, Victoria, survives him, as do four sons: Clarence Jr., Charles, Christopher and Jarod.
Mr. Springsteen put the E Street Band on hiatus on 1989, and apart from reuniting for a recording session in 1995, the group did not play again until 1999. But by the mid-1980s, when Mr. Springsteen reached his commercial peak, Mr. Clemons had already found fame on his own. In 1985 he had a Top 20 hit with “You’re a Friend of Mine,” on which he sang with Jackson Browne, and played saxophone on records by Aretha Franklin and Twisted Sister. Recently he was featured on Lady Gaga’s album “Born This Way.”
Mr. Clemons’s first encounter with Mr. Springsteen has become E Street Band lore. In most tellings, a lightning storm was rolling through Asbury Park one night in 1971 while Mr. Springsteen was playing a gig there. As Mr. Clemons entered the bar, the wind blew the door off its hinges, and Mr. Springsteen was startled by the towering shadow at the door. Then Mr. Clemons invited himself onstage to play along, and they clicked.
“I swear I will never forget that moment,” Mr. Clemons later recalled in an interview. “I felt like I was supposed to be there. It was a magical moment. He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we fell in love. And that’s still there.”
Clarence Clemons dies following stroke
The Associated Press
June 18, 2011
NEW YORK — Clarence Clemons, the larger-than-life saxophone player for the E Street Band who was one of the key influences in Bruce Springsteen's life and music through four decades, has died. He was 69.
Clemons died Saturday night after being hospitalized about a week ago following a stroke at his home in Singer Island, Fla.
Bruce Springsteen acknowledge the dire situation earlier this week, but said then he was hopeful. He called the loss "immeasurable."
"We are honored and thankful to have known him and had the opportunity to stand beside him for nearly 40 years," Springsteen said on his website. "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."
Known as the Big Man for his imposing 6-foot-5-inch, 270-plus pound frame, Clemons and his ever-present saxophone spent much of his life with The Boss, and his booming saxophone solos became a signature sound for the E Street Band on many key songs, including "Jungleland," a triumphant solo he spent 16 hours perfecting, and "Born To Run."
In recent years, Clemons had been slowed by health woes. He endured major spinal surgery in January 2010 and, at the 2009 Super Bowl, Clemons rose from a wheelchair to perform with Springsteen after double knee replacement surgery.
But his health seemed to be improving. In May, he performed with Lady Gaga on the season finale of "American Idol," and performed on two songs on her "Born This Way" album.
Clemons said in a 2010 interview with The Associated Press then that he was winning his battles — including severe, chronic pain and post-surgical depression. His sense of humor helped.
"Of all the surgeries I've had, there's not much left to operate on. I am totally bionic," he said.
"God will give you no more than you can handle," he said in the interview. "This is all a test to see if you are really ready for the good things that are going to come in your life. All this pain is going to come back and make me stronger."
An original member — and the oldest member — of the E Street Band, Clemons also performed with the Grateful Dead, the Jerry Garcia Band, and Ringo Starr's All Star Band. He recorded with a wide range of artists including Aretha Franklin, Roy Orbison and Jackson Browne. He also had his own band called the Temple of Soul.
The stage "always feels like home. It's where I belong," Clemons, a former youth counselor, said after performing at a Hard Rock Cafe benefit for Home Safe, a children's charity, in 2010.
"Nobody played instruments in my family. My father got that bug and said he wants his son to play saxophone. I wanted an electric train for Christmas, but he got me a saxophone. I flipped out," he said in a 1989 interview with the AP.
He was influenced by R&B artists such as King Curtis and Junior Walker. But his dreams originally focused on football. He played for Maryland State College, and was to try out for the Cleveland Browns when he got in a bad car accident that made him retire from the sport for good.
His energies then focused on music.
In 1971, Clemons was playing with Norman Seldin & the Joyful Noise when he heard about rising singer-songwriter named Springsteen, who was from New Jersey. The two hit it off immediately and Clemons officially joined the E Street Band in 1973 with the release of the debut album "Greetings from Asbury Park."
Clemons emerged as one of the most critical members of the E Street Band for different reasons. His burly frame would have been intimidating if not for his bright smile and endearing personality that charmed fans.
"It's because of my innocence," he said in a 2003 AP interview. "I have no agenda — just to be loved. Somebody said to me, 'Whenever somebody says your name, a smile comes to their face.' That's a great accolade. I strive to keep it that way."
But it was his musical contributions on tenor sax that would come to define the E Street Band sound.
"Since 1973 the Springsteen/Clemons partnership has reaped great rewards and created insightful, high energy rock & roll," declared Don Palmer in Down Beat in 1984. "Their music, functioning like the blues from which it originated, chronicled the fears, aspirations, and limitations of suburban youth. Unlike many musicians today, Springsteen and Clemons were more interested in the heart and substance rather than the glamour of music."
In a 2009 interview, Clemons described his deep bond with Springsteen, saying: "It's the most passion that you have without sex."
"It's love. It's two men — two strong, very virile men — finding that space in life where they can let go enough of their masculinity to feel the passion of love and respect and trust," he added.
Clemons continued to perform with the band for the next 12 years, contributing his big, distinctive big sound to the albums, "The Wild, The Innocent and the E-Street Shuffle," ''Born to Run," ''Darkness on the Edge of Town, "The River" and "Born in the USA." But four years after Springsteen experienced the blockbuster success of "Born in the USA" and toured with his group, he decided to disband the E Street Band.
"There were a few moments of tension," the saxophonist recalled in a 1995 interview. "You've been together 18, 19 years. It's like your wife coming to you: 'I want a divorce.' You start wondering why? Why? But you get on with your life."
During the breaks, Clemons continued with solo projects, including a 1985 vocal duet with Browne on the single "You're a Friend of Mine" and saxophone work on Franklin's 1985 hit single "Freeway of Love." He released his own albums, toured, and even sang on some songs.
Clemons also made several television and movie appearances over the years, including Martin Scorsese's 1977 musical, "New York, New York, in which he played a trumpet player.
The break with Springsteen and the E Street Band didn't end his relationship with either Springsteen or the rest of the band members, nor would it turn out to be permanent. By 1999 they were back together for a reunion tour and the release of "The Rising."
But the years took a toll on Clemons' body, and he had to play through the pain of surgeries and other health woes.
"It takes a village to run the Big Man — a village of doctors," Clemons told The Associated Press in a phone interview in 2010. "I'm starting to feel better; I'm moving around a lot better."
He published a memoir, "Big Man: Real Life and Tall Tales," in 2009 -- which relates how he once worked as a counselor at what was then the State Home for Boys in Monroe, N.J., also known as the Jamesburg Reform School -- and continued to perform.
He is the second member of the E Street Band to pass away: In 2008, Danny Federici, the keyboardist for the band, died at age 58 of melanoma.
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