Who was Clarence Clemons of the E Street Band?
Most backing bands are subject to retreating into the shadows while their leader basks in all the glory of the spotlight, but this has never been the case for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. In fact, perhaps more than any other solo artist, ‘The Boss’ backup has proven as instrumental a force as the lead singer himself, and with the classic reeded dulcet tones of the saxophone helmed by none other than Clarence Clemons.
The saxophonist was a key cog in the E Street machine from its inception in 1972, right until his untimely death in 2011, blazing a musical trail wherever he went and making an indelible imprint on the group’s very heartbeat. Springsteen fans knew him best for some of his most prolific solos, including on ‘Jungleland’ and classic hits like ‘Born to Run’. However, his sonic reach bore far and wide across both the E Street trajectory as well as his own.
Clemons began life rather humbly, making ends meet with odd jobs throughout the 1960s and early ‘70s, while occasionally performing on the side with funk outfits such as Tyrone Ashley’s Funky Music Machine. The heights of sonic rapture were not his first calling, however, being a promising American football player during his college days, rising the ranks until a serious car accident ended his playing career, the saxophone became his main muse.
Subsequently, the lure of the E Street Band soon came calling, although the series of events in which Clemons came to meet Springsteen is a piece of highly contested folklore. The musician later claimed he had been playing with his band, the Joyful Noyze, in Asbury Park, New Jersey, when he caught wind of the original Bruce Springsteen Band playing down the street, so he effectively went to stoke out the competition.
To use Clemons’ own testimony, “A rainy, windy night it was, and when I opened the door the whole thing flew off its hinges and blew away down the street. The band were on stage, but staring at me framed in the doorway.” Like a scene out of a movie, he recalled: “Bruce and I looked at each other and didn’t say anything, we just knew. We knew we were the missing links in each other’s lives. He was what I’d been searching for. In one way, he was just a scrawny little kid. But he was a visionary. He wanted to follow his dream. So from then on, I was part of history.”
From there, the pair never looked back, redefining any preconditions that American rock stood for, and along with the rest of the E Street Band, they set about bringing to life that visionary dream. They certainly gathered some lofty monikers—what with Springsteen being ‘The Boss’ and Clemons being known as ‘The Big Man’—only natural, given that their inimitable rock personae would lead them on to even greater heights.
After all, outside of E Street, Clemons was also the custodian of his own seismic solo career, which demonstrated how his musical prowess was worth far more than the usual status of any other ordinary backing band member. Collaborating with the likes of Jackson Browne and Aretha Franklin on hits including ‘You’re a Friend of Mine’ and ‘Freeway of Love’ throughout the 1980s, the saxophonist was not only integral to the trajectory of Springsteen and Co, but to the magic of music at large.
When Clemons tragically passed away 14 years ago, in many ways it could have felt like the guns of rock music—and saxophones—would forever fall silent. But it was testament to his impact that the E Street Band continued electrifying the studio and the stage in his honour, proving that they truly always will be a band of brothers like no other.
