Clarence Clemons 1942-2011 R.I.P.

Springsteen's friend and sax-wielding musical soul mate passes away at the age of 69 after experiencing a devastating stroke a week ago.

By Fred Mills

Clarence Clemons - the Big Man, the King of the Universe, and so much more - passed away last night, June 18, due to complications following the massive stroke of June 12 that left him hospitalized and partially paralyzed. The E Street Band saxman has experienced a series of health emergencies in the recent past, including knee, spinal and brain surgeries. He was 69.

Beyond reporting the basic details, words very nearly fail me, although the news this week out of Florida, where Clemons lived, had not been encouraging, and I'm certain that Bruce Springsteen/E Street fans across the globe experienced the same sense of foreboding that I did. For those of a certain rock ‘n' roll generation, it's almost a cliché to admit that we often expected our heroes to die in flamboyant flame-outs - drugs, suicide, high-speed auto wrecks and the like - and thus take on a frequently unmerited aura of martyrdom, where The Who's "My Generation" line of hope I die before I get old gets stripped of its ironic/sarcastic context and becomes a maxim-like manifesto. But as time has crept onward, we've had to adjust our fantasies and make room for Real Life: people get old; people get sick; people die; rock stars turn out to be "people" just like you, me, our parents and our friends.

If anyone in the pantheon seemed larger than life at times, however, Clarence Clemons was part of that pantheon. Or maybe you never wondered why Springsteen and his fellow band members called him the Big Man in the first place. It wasn't simply because he was a physically towering presence up there on the stage.

His sax was, quite literally, part of my personal soundtrack for nearly as far back as I can remember. Was there - is there - a more inspiring moment than at that point in the middle of Springsteen's "Badlands," when Clemons' sax enters? From the Darkness on the Edge of Town tour all the way to the present, when the E Streeters played that song, when Clemons stepped forward for his "Badlands" solo, a bolt of electricity would go through the crowd - as moving, as visceral and as propulsive as a battle cry.

Every time I saw Clemons it was a revelation - decades ago, on the Born To Run tour; a 3-night run on the tour for The River, the 1999 reunion tour and numerous others - and the thought now of an E Street Band performance without Clemons up there at Springsteen's side is something I honestly can't process.

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Bruce Springsteen.net posted this notice yesterday:

It is with overwhelming sadness that we inform our friends and fans that at 7:00 tonight, Saturday, June 18, our beloved friend and bandmate, Clarence Clemons passed away. The cause was complications from his stroke of last Sunday, June 12th.

Bruce Springsteen said of Clarence: 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. 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 forty 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.

Springsteen and Clemons' connection was clearly one of rock's most enduring, and personal. In a Clemons obituary, the New York Times reported of the duo's initial, possibly apocryphal (but, for rock ‘n' roll, perfect) encounter, a story that 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.'"

Our friends at Backstreets have penned a wonderful remembrance of Clemons that's posted at Backstreets.com. (Full disclosure: I am also a Backstreets contributor.) Liberally decorated with choice photos, the essay recounts Clemons' back story and places his importance to the E Street Band in precise context. Like me, they can't seem to imagine a musical world without Clemons, but they also conclude on a perfect note: "As long as we tell the stories, as long as we play the songs, as long as we remember, the Big Man will always be with us."

Amen. God bless ya, Clarence.