Clarence Clemons (Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band) Has Died | Photos | Videos

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13827267

BBC...

19 June 2011 Last updated at 00:10 ET

Clarence Clemons, Springsteen saxophone player, dies

Photo: Clarence Clemons (L) grabs Bruce Springsteen during an appearance in New York in September 2007 Clemons (left) and Springsteen worked together for nearly 40 years

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Clarence Clemons, the saxophone player in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, has died, aged 69, a spokeswoman for the band has said.

Clemons was taken to hospital about a week ago after suffering a stroke at his home in Singer Island, in the US state of Florida.

Known as the Big Man for his 6ft 5in frame, Clemons was credited with shaping the early sound of The Boss.

His solos powered Springsteen hits such as Born to Run and Jungleland.
'Immeasurable' loss

Springsteen spokeswoman Marilyn Laverty confirmed the death on Saturday.

On his website, Springsteen said the loss of Clemons was "immeasurable" and that he and his bandmates were honoured to have stood beside him for nearly 40 years.

The statement said: "Clarence lived a wonderful life. He carried within him a love of people that made them love him."

It added: "He loved the saxophone, loved our fans and gave everything he had every night he stepped on stage."

Clemons had suffered from poor health in recent years, including major spinal surgery in January 2010.

At the 2009 Super Bowl, following double knee replacement surgery, he rose from a wheelchair to perform with Springsteen.

In May this year Clemons, a former youth councillor, was well enough to perform with Lady Gaga on the finale of the television show American Idol.

Born in Norfolk, Virginia, Clemons began playing saxophone at the age of nine after receiving one unexpectedly from his father for Christmas.

"I wanted an electric train for Christmas, but he got me a saxophone. I flipped out," he told the Associated Press news agency in a 1989 interview.

After his dreams of being a football player were dashed by a car accident, he turned to music.

Clemons hit it off immediately with Springsteen, then a singer-songwriter from New Jersey, when they first met in 1971, and the saxophonist became an original member of the E Street Band.

Their friendship survived Springsteen's decision to concentrate on solo projects following the success of his album Born in the USA.

In a 2009 interview, Clemons described his deep bond with The Boss, saying: "It's the most passion that you have without sex."

As well as TV and movie appearances over the years, Clemons performed with the Grateful Dead, the Jerry Garcia Band, and Ringo Starr and his All Starr Band.

He also recorded with legendary musical artists such as Aretha Franklin, Roy Orbison and Jackson Browne.

And he jammed with former US President Bill Clinton at the 1993 inaugural ball.

Clemons published a memoir, Big Man: Real Life and Tall Tales, in 2009.

The saxophonist once described performing as his natural environment.

The stage, said the Baptist minister's grandson, "always feels like home - it's where I belong".

By Robert E. Klein, AP
11/18/2007

Clemons performs with The E Street Band at a sold-out show in 2007 at the TD Banknorth Garden in Boston.

Los Angeles Times...

Clarence Clemons and Bruce Springsteen

PHOTOGRAPH BY: Clayton Call / Redferns
Clarence Clemons | 1942-2011

Saxophonist Clarence Clemons, an indispensable part of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band both for his full-throttle tenor sax work and his larger-than-life onstage persona as “the Big Man,” died Saturday of complications from a stroke he suffered on June 12. He was 69.

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PART TWO...

Springsteen invoked his place in the band in another song from that album, "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out": "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." It's Clemons' mighty shoulder that Springsteen is leaning on in the cover photograph.

Continuing on "Darkness on the Edge of Town," 1980's two-disc set "The River" and 1984's "Born in the U.S.A.," Clemons' sax was as integral to the music as Springsteen's raspy voice and twanging Telecaster guitar, Max Weinberg's thunderous drumming and Roy Bittan's elegant piano work.

They helped Springsteen climb to the top of the pop music mountain in the 1980s with "Born in the U.S.A.," which spent seven weeks at No. 1; a five-disc live set that also topped the charts for seven weeks; and "Tunnel of Love," the triple-platinum 1987 album that also went to No. 1.

Clemons recorded his first solo album in 1983, which gave him a new role at center stage. "I love the responsibility of fronting my own band," Clemons told the Ottawa Sun in 2003. "Creating my own audience is fun, developing my own ideas and carving out my own space."

He further established an identity away from E Street by playing on Franklin's 1985 hit "Freeway of Love," the same year he scored a Top 20 hit with his duet with Browne on "You're a Friend of Mine."

Yet through those side ventures, there was always the E Street Band to come back to. That changed in 1989, when Springsteen decided he was ready to move on musically and informed the E Streeters that he was mothballing the band.

"Springsteen said he wanted to try something new, do something different," Clemons told the Phoenix Gazette. "It was quite a shock; you go through all the emotions of a divorce, all the emotions, instantly. I didn't say much to him. I just said, 'Good luck.' But before long I started to see the good side."

In 1989 he joined ex-Beatle Starr, pianist-singer Dr. John, the Band's drummer Levon Helm, E Street Band guitarist Nils Lofgren, Joe Walsh and others on a tour he described as "one of the most joyous times of my life."

After a decade in solo settings and other band configurations, Springsteen decided it was time to reconvene the E Street Band.

"That's the way we always work," Clemons told a reporter last year. "You get that call, you show up."

Clemons in recent years had to contend with health issues including two hip replacements, and knee and back surgeries. In the '70s he had a reputation as a rock 'n' roll party animal, but in later years he adopted a healthier lifestyle, exploring Eastern philosophies, exercising regularly and meditating daily. Still, his ailments restricted him onstage during the physically grueling E Street Band shows.

In 2009 he published his autobiography, "Big Man: Real Life & Tall Tales," in which he addressed the pain he felt when Springsteen put the band on hold — not knowing at the time whether they'd ever play together again. He also wrote about the sense of acceptance he eventually developed about his role in one of rock's most celebrated groups.

"It's fine for me to be known as part of the E Street Band," he told the New York Daily News. "We all wonder what we're here to do. Something got me into a band with Bruce. It's where I belong."

Survivors include his fifth wife, Victoria, and four sons.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-clarence-clemons-20110619,0,2592783...

Los Angeles Times...

Clarence Clemons dies at 69; saxophonist for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band

The Virginia native, who put his stamp on such Springsteen classics as 'Born to Run' and 'Rosalita,' was known both for his full-throttle tenor sax work and his larger-than-life onstage persona as 'the Big Man.'

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By Randy Lewis, Los Angeles Times

June 19, 2011

PART ONE...

Saxophonist Clarence Clemons, an indispensable part of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band both for his full-throttle tenor sax work and his larger-than-life onstage persona as "the Big Man," died Saturday. He was 69.

Clemons, who put his stamp on such Springsteen staples as "Born to Run," "Jungleland" and "Rosalita," died in a Palm Beach, Fla., hospital of complications from a massive stroke he suffered June 12 at his Florida home, a spokeswoman for Springsteen and the E Street Band 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," Springsteen said in a statement Saturday. "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' career was inextricably linked to his decades playing alongside Springsteen, but he also became an in-demand player and presence for other musicians including Jackson Browne, Ringo Starr, Aretha Franklin and, most recently, Lady Gaga, with his appearance on her mega-hit album "Born This Way."

But every musical road Clemons traveled always seemed to lead back to E Street.

"Every time we get together, it's all brand-new," Clemons told the Associated Press last year. "Every time, Bruce comes back with something new and something different. I keep wondering: How high can he take it? ... How many times can he be reborn? I just want to keep on living so I can keep seeing the change."

Clarence Clemons was born Jan. 11, 1942, in Norfolk, Va., the son of a fish merchant who bought him an alto saxophone for Christmas one year, instead of the electric train he'd asked for.

"I'd never even seen a saxophone before, and didn't really know why my father gave it to me," Clemons once told DownBeat magazine. And even though his father also arranged for him to take lessons, Clemons recalled that "my dad made me practice in the backroom of the store, while the other kids were out playing baseball, and I hated it."

That changed when he was a teenager. He'd switched to baritone sax and played in the Crestwood High School jazz band, but after his uncle gave him a record by celebrated R&B session player King Curtis, Clemons was hooked on tenor, the instrument favored in early rock and R&B bands.

"He turned me on, and it was then that I decided I wanted to play tenor," Clemons recalled later. "His sound and tone were so big on those sessions he did, and his feeling was right from the heart. Here was a guy who gave me something."

A music and football scholarship took Clemons to what is now the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, where he majored in sociology while still dreaming of playing in the NFL. After graduating, he moved to Newark, N.J., and took a day job counseling emotionally disturbed youths. At night he plied the bars and nightclubs with his saxophone.

In Asbury Park one night, he went to a bar a block from the one where he'd been booked to check out a scrawny local musician he'd been hearing about.

"I had my saxophone with me, and when I walked in this club — no lie — a gust of wind just blew the door down the street. Boof!," Clemons told People magazine. "I say, 'I want to play. Can I sit in?' Bruce says, 'Hey, you can do anything you want. Take a couple of background singers, anything.'

"I sat in with him that night," Clemons said. "It was phenomenal. We'd never even laid eyes on each other, but after that first song, he looked at me, I looked at him, and we said, 'This is it.' After that I was stoked."

The E Street Band was in place when talent scout John Hammond signed Springsteen to Columbia Records in 1972. The group's first two albums were lyrically effusive affairs that led to Springsteen's being tagged as yet another "new Dylan." Musically the songs wedded rock, folk, R&B, soul and gospel strains.

Clemons' sax figured prominently in early tracks such as "Spirit in the Night" and "Rosalita," which became core tunes of the band's live shows. But the albums sold modestly and didn't crack Billboard's Top 200 chart until after "Born to Run" cemented Springsteen as a new hero in the rock mainstream.

Clemons' contributions were powerfully woven into the songs on "Born to Run," which were given a new Phil Spector-like sonic grandeur by Springsteen and the album's co-producers.

While Clemons' beefy tenor sax work was central to Springsteen's new sound, he brought an imposing presence onstage, where he often served as a playful and big-hearted foil to the band's leader. His nickname was anything but merely honorary — he stood 6 feet 2 and weighed anywhere between 250 and 300 pounds.

CONTINUED...

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http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/06/19/obituaries/19Clemons_337/19Clemon...

The New York Times...

Clarence Clemons, the saxophonist in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, was known for his soul-rooted style.

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.

Scott Audette/Reuters

Clarence Clemons performed with the E Street Band during the Super Bowl halftime show in Tampa in February 2009.

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Clarence Clemons, Saxophonist, Dies at 69
By BEN SISARIO

Throughout his career, Mr. Clemons shared the stage with other notables, including former President Clinton.

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.”

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http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/e-street-bands-clarence-clemons-dies-at-6...

Rolling Stone...

E Street Band's Clarence Clemons Dies at 69
The legendary saxophonist had suffered a stroke on June 12th

By Andy Greene
June 18, 2011 2:59 PM ET

Clarence Clemons, the legendary saxophonist in the E Street Band who played alongside Bruce Springsteen for the past 40 years, died on June 18th. Clemons had suffered a massive stroke on June 12th. While initial signs had been hopeful after his hospitalization and two subsequent brain surgeries, he reportedly took a turn for the worse later in the week. He was 69.

Clemons – known affectionately to fan and friends as the Big Man – was the heart and soul of the E Street Band. His playing on tracks like "Born To Run," "Thunder Road," "Jungleland," "Dancing In The Dark" and countless more represent some of the most famous sax work in the history of rock & roll. "The story I have told throughout my work life I could not have told as well without Clarence," Springsteen wrote in the introduction to Clemons' 2009 memoir Big Man: Real Life and Tall Tales.

Bruce Springsteen on Clarence Clemons: 'His Loss is Immeasurable'

So much has been said and written about the stormy night in Asbury Park in 1971 when Clemons met Springsteen that it's hard to separate fact from myth. At the time, Springsteen was a struggling musician playing the New Jersey bar circuit and Clemons was a former college football player who spent his nights playing sax in clubs along the shore. "It was raining and thundering like a motherfucker," Clemons wrote in his memoir. "When I opened the door it blew off the hinges and flew down the street . . . Somebody introduced me to Bruce, everybody knew everybody, and he asked me if I wanted to sit in."

Clemons soon became part of Springsteen's backing band (not yet known as the E Street Band), and when Bruce recorded his debut LP Greetings From Asbury Park in the summer of 1972, Clemons was brought in for the sessions. Over the next two decades, Clemons became the most recognizable member of the E Street Band – for his massive size, equally huge personality and his onstage role as Springsteen's foil.

He's the only member of the band on the cover of Born To Run with Springsteen. "When you open it up and see Clarence and me together, the album begins to work its magic," Springsteen wrote in Clemons' memoir. "Who are these guys? Where did they come from? What is the joke they are sharing? A friendship and a narrative steeped in the complicated history of America begins to work and there is music already in the air."

In the 1980s, Clemons began a second career as an actor, appearing in TV shows like Diff'rent Strokes and movies such as Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. He also scored a solo hit in 1985 with "You're A Friend Of Mine," a duet with Jackson Browne. He was on tour with Ringo Starr's All Star Band in 1989 when Springsteen phoned him to say he was breaking up the band. "I didn't speak or even attempt to interject," Clemons wrote in his memoir. "I got very quiet and stopped smiling. In fact, it looked to Ringo like I was being told about somebody dying."

The E Street Band reformed in 1999 and has been incredibly active ever since. Clemons loved being back on the road, even as he battled incredible pain with his knees, back and hips. Earlier this year, he played sax on two tracks on Lady Gaga's new album Born This Way. He appears in the recently released video for "Edge of Glory," and his final live performance was with Gaga on the season finale of American Idol.

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Wall Street Journal...

Kristin Callahan/Everett Collection
Clarence Clemons

Saxophonist Clarence Clemons played with Lady Gaga, Aretha Franklin, Gary Coleman and others–but his most famous gig, of course, was with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Clemons died on Saturday at the age of 69 years old, following a stroke that he suffered on June 12.

http://www.freep.com/article/20110619/NEWS07/106190643/Clarence-Clemons-69-E-Str...

Detroit Free Press...

Clarence Clemons, 69: E Street Band sax man dies following stroke
Jun 19, 2011 |

Photo: Clarence Clemons performs with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in July 2009. / CHRISTOF STACHE/Associated Press

PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Clarence Clemons, the saxophone player renowned for his career with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, died Saturday in Palm Beach, Fla., a band spokeswoman said. He was 69.

Clemons was a key influence in Springsteen's music. He was hospitalized about a week ago after suffering a stroke at his home in Singer Island, Fla.

Known as the Big Man for his 6-foot-5-inch, 270-plus pound frame, Clemons and his ever-present saxophone spent much of his life with The Boss. His solos became a signature sound for the band on many songs, including "Jungleland," a solo he spent 16 hours perfecting, and "Born to Run."

In recent years, he was slowed by health woes. At the 2009 Super Bowl, he rose from a wheelchair to perform after double knee replacements; he endured spinal surgery in 2010.

But his health seemed to be improving. In May, he performed with Lady Gaga on the season finale of "American Idol," and played on two songs on her "Born This Way" album.

Clemons said in a 2010 interview that he was winning his health battles.

"God will give you no more than you can handle," he said. "All this pain is going to come back and make me stronger."

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/06/bloodbrother-clarence-cle...

The New Yorker...

June 19, 2011

Bloodbrother: Clarence Clemons, 1942-2011

Posted by David Remnick

In the summer of 1971, when an ambitious Shore rat named Bruce Springsteen was playing at an Asbury Park bar called the Student Prince and writing songs for his first album, a band called Norman Seldin and the Joyful Noyze was playing at the Wonder Bar down the road. The tenor saxophone player was a huge ex-football player with a King Curtis sound named Clarence Clemons. The story, oft-repeated, is that one stormy night, between sets, Clemons wandered into the Student Prince and sat in, playing “Spirit in the Night.”

“Bruce and I looked at each other and didn’t say anything, we just knew,” Clemons said many years later. “We knew we were the missing links in each other’s lives.” Clemons played on that first album, “Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.” and, at a gig at the Shipbottom Lounge, joined the group that would be called the E Street Band. The legend of that meeting and the formation of the band was the stuff of “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out”—an anthem of becoming that was part of the repertoire for four decades. (“Well the change was made uptown/and the Big Man joined the band….From the coastline to the city/all the little pretties raised a hand.”)

Clemons, who died Saturday of complications from a stroke, was not an entirely original player—he was a vessel of many great soul, gospel, and R&B players who came before him—but he was an entirely sublime band member, an absolutely essential, and soulful, ingredient in both the sound of Springsteen and the spirit of the group. Clemons will be irreplaceable; Sonny Rollins could step in for him and never be able to provide the same sense of personality and camaraderie. His horn gave the band its sound of highway loneliness, its magnificent heart. And his huge presence on stage was an anchor for Springsteen, especially when Bruce was younger, scrawny, and so feral, so unleashed, that you thought that he could fall down dead in a pool of sweat at any moment. At the brink of exhaustion and collapse, Springsteen could always lean on his enormous and reliable friend—an emblematic image that is the cover of “Born to Run.”

On the band’s most recent tour, one that celebrated forty years of music-making, Clemons was clearly hurting: bad knees, bad hips, long shows. Backstage he was ferried around in a golf cart; onstage he played a lot of cowbell and, like Pavarotti in his later years, gave his aching joints breaks when he could. But he was still capable of playing, note for note, his signature solos. He made a joyful noise. Musicians as various as Jackson Browne and Lady Gaga called on him to record, to lend them some of the largeness and warmth of his tone.

If you want to hear the Big Man at his best, a few suggestions:

Two commercial sources first: I love the film of the E Street Band’s foray in England, the DVD of their 1975 concert at Hammersmith Odeon, which is included in the deluxe edition of “Born to Run.” Having gone through the extended boot camp of recording the album over many months, Springsteen, Clemons, Steve Van Zandt, and the rest of the band members seem liberated as they play the songs with the kind of abandon that comes from—practice, practice, practice. They are absolutely alive and the songs are fresh. Another live recording that is sometimes overlooked is “Live in New York City,” a double CD of their “reunion” tour in 2000. The band seems utterly un-bored playing the old songs. Clemons is riveting on his signature solo on “Jungleland” and he and the rest bring you to tears at their anthem of fellowship, “If I Should Fall Behind.”

The YouTube bonanza—and perhaps the greatest of all available Springsteen concerts—is his performance at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, New Jersey, in September, 1978. By then, the band had taken on the songs from “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and Clarence was a presence more powerful than an N.F.L. linebacker. His solos on “Thunder Road” and many others are as urgent as Springsteen’s singing. Of course, I may think so highly of the Capitol Theater performance because I grew up in Jersey and hooked into Bruce early; and I was there. The first time I saw Springsteen was when he was the back-up act for Chicago at Madison Square Garden—“Who is that guy?”—and then kept following him, from the Capitol Theater and beyond. (A similarly brilliant 1978 concert, in Houston, is included as a DVD in the deluxe edition of “Darkness” that came out last year.)

Springsteen is a rock ‘n’ roll romantic, and a large part of his romanticism stems from his notion of what a band means. No one, save Springsteen himself, meant more to the E Street Band than Clarence Clemons. The word is that Springsteen is writing a memoir; the passages on his late, great friend will undoubtedly be the hardest to write and the most moving to read.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/06/bloodbrother-clarence-cle...

Chicago Tribune...

Clarence Clemons

( Photo by Ronald C. Modra/Sports Imagery/Getty Images / June 18, 2011 )

E Street band saxophonist Clarence Clemons died June 18th following complications from a stroke suffered June 12th

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/clarence-clemons-dies-a-look-b...

The Washington Post...

Posted at 01:53 AM ET, 06/19/2011
Clarence Clemons dies: A look back at his interviews and performances \
By Emily Ingram

Bruce Springsteen and Clarence Clemons perform in Boston in 2002. (Winslow Townson - AP) The “Big Man” is gone.

Clarence Clemons, the longtime saxophonist for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, died on Saturday, a week after suffering a stroke. He was 69.

While best known for his decades with “The Boss,” Clemons led his own bands, the Red Bank Rockers and the Temple of Soul, and his contributions can be heard on music from the likes of Aretha Franklin and Lady Gaga.

The Post has Clemons’s full obituary, as well as a photo gallery of his life. Here is a look back at some interviews and performances covering Clemons’s decades in the business.