After weeks of negotiations, Rock Town Hall has obtained exclusive rights to run excerpts from E-Street Band legend Clarence Clemons‘ forthcoming autobiography, No Small Parts for The Big Man. In our first installment Clarence recounts the day The Boss presented him with a new assignment.
By The River Danny was already getting half of my “touches” with that rinky-dink Farfisa organ. Some folks couldn’t leave that wheezy thing back in the garage. The garage rock contingency in the E-Street Band was always trying to make itself heard above he more complex, subtle members of the band, like Roy and Max. God bless ’em! I always saw myself as the bridge among the musicians, and it goes without saying that all roads led to The Boss himself. Now I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I was all-state footballer long before anyone outside Norfolk County, Virginia had heard me blow my horn. The Big Man was a lineman, so “touches,” that is, opportunities to carry and catch the football, were not in my repertoire. I was in the trenches, making the quarterback and all the other pretty boys look good. These may not have been my glory days, but The Big Man could play. Attended Maryland State College (now the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore) on an football athletic scholarship. Thought I was headed for the show, the National Football League.
As it was, the Man with the Plan had another show in mind. My parents gave me the gift of my first saxophone, but the Lord gave me the breath to blow down any walls set in my way. With the spiritual guidance of our Maker and as many King Curtis records as I could lay my hands on, I was prepared for that first time The Boss called for “Big Man!” to step forward and take it home with a solo.
Bruce called us together for the first rehearsals toward an album he said would take us in a new direction. “My Daddy said to me the other morning at breakfast, ‘Bruce, when you gonna grow up and play some real music?’ I said, ‘Pops, whaddaya talkin’ about? I been playin’ real music…” Well, you know how Bruce can get on a roll about his breakfast chats with his dad. Long story short, according to him the old man sold him on the idea of streamlining his sound and putting out an album that would once and for all move beyond his comfort zone of middle class kids from the Northeast corridor. Sounded good to me.
Bruce began by walking us through a new song called “Born in the USA”.
.
There was a lot of standing around and headscratching among the E-Streeters while Bruce insisted that Max do nothing more than bang his snare on the downbeats. The Boss was passionate, though. We’d never heard him sing with such fire. He was singing about our country and how we’d done wrong by our own veterans. Powerful stuff. As each verse built and The Boss called in more troops, I clutched my sax, keeping the keys loose, just waiting for my cue: “Big Man!”
After all the years playing with the E-Street Band I could quickly pick out the key of whatever we were playing and literally hear my opening notes before I ever played them. No matter what the key, what the song, I tell you, I knew what I’d be playing. To me, this is proof that these aren’t my notes, but a higher power’s notes. I’m just blessed to serve as His vessel.
Bruce and Max get to that breakdown, where it sounds like the song’s about to fall apart and end before it kicks back in like the canon-fire of 1812. I’ve got goosebumps as I set the sax in my lips in anticipation of that call to arms. A little while later, the song wraps up and I haven’t played a note. That’s cool, I think, The Boss isn’t one to rush ahead and set his ideas in stone.
“Whaddaya think, Big Man,” Bruce calls over to me, “nowhere to run, nowhere to hide?” I just chuckled, not sure of what The Boss wanted me to say. Then Danny kicked over a milk crate filled with percussion instruments. I had my own tambourine for times when I wasn’t blowing, but the milk crate was for all to share. Danny, Nils, Steven, even Roy had had opportunity to fish through it for a way to make the wall of sound bigger, in some cases, or to bide time for a more meaningful part, in other cases. Cool, my turn to go fishin’!
I settled on a unique combination of maracas banging on a cowbell. I told myself long ago, There are no small parts for The Big Man. “Born in the USA” and the album of that title would be our breakthrough hit, taking us to unimagined levels of influence and adventure. I’d spend a lot of time fishin’ during the sessions for Born in the USA and the tours that followed, but it was worth every moment. I gave it my all.
Fans would come up to me during this period and say, “Clarence, when are you gonna blow that horn?”
“I’m blowin’ as much as ever,” I’d tell them. “Boss plays them four-hour shows. I still get two and a half hours to blow.” I could have sulked, I could have accepted the pity offered by my fans, but that’s not my way. That’s not His way. I had my own thing going on too. You think Bruce felt left out when Jackson and I started working together? We’re all in this together, whether together or apart. When Bruce hooked up with that Hollywood chick and set us free for a few years to do his whole LA thing, we were cool with that. I gotta say, though, Patti’s a real E-Streeter. I’ll go fishin’ with her any day of the week.
Thanks for the reminder of what a tool Alan Thicke was.
Hey! My added vote got cut off before I got to praise Joe all the way, dismiss Clemons, and explain the Ramones innovative construction of a foil-less paradigm. So much to disect!
The foil dynamic is what allows me to be a Zep fan mostly around Plant’s participation.Oats was Hall’s Bud Abbott. The Ventures were Booker T’s foil AND vice versa, depending on your take. Ferry was Eno’s foil and vice versa.
On that goofy generic PIL album, Lydon suddenly had no foils, and look what happened!
So, on to Clemons: I think he was of low enough skill to be a foil, but didn’t have the effect of contrasting usefully with the rest of the band, IMO. Sometimes a potential foil is in fact merely a dolt.
Linda McCartney brought no Foilism to Paul, whereas Yoko was an über-foil. Ringo was the very rare anti-foil. He seemed like he should have been either dolt or foil at first blush, but turned out to be , like Lou Reed, self-foiling!
Moddie, can I just say something?
That video clip with Thicke proves that Clarence Clemons was the William B. Williams of rock and roll. Seriously, you strip out Clarence’s dialogue and put it in Candy’s mouth with the silly shades and the pathetic, ass-kissing laugh, and you’ve got one of the funniest Sammy Maudlin Show skits *ever*.
That doesn’t make Clemons a good foil, by the way. It might make him a good second (or third, or fourth) banana — but I’m pretty sure that’s a silly quest; there are no good bananas that aren’t first.
I like your way of thinking General!
HVB, GREAT call on William B. Williams. It wouldn’t surprise me if The Back Office could pull together a clip that satisfies your wish.
Speaking as a fan of certainly some Ron Wood era Stones, I think this would make a great RTH motto.
On the new Bruce album Clemons is way down on the list of bananas. The sax is used mainly as a rhythm instrument, and in the one semi-big man moment the sax is mixed into the song instead of on top of it.
Not that anyone is going to be converted at this late date, but Magic is quite interesting and not at all what I expected. There’s a good dose of garage/frat rock, and Springsteen gives wider play to his Spector/Orbison side, even venturing into almost art-rock territory and a new non-raspy singing style. A while back I was saying I wished he followed the path of the Darkness album track Candy’s Room, and someone here, I forget who, agreed with me. There’s a bit of that on this record, though the songs are a bit longer with pretty much everything having too much reverb on it by half. And there’s very little of his recent folkie affectations.
I’d recommend Magic to anyone who isn’t an inveterate Bruceophobe.
I’m with your comments on Magic all the way, BigSteve.
Is that the whole book? If not, I bet the damned thing is like reading 200 pages of Pat Robertson meets Hollywood’s idea of a high school football coach. Yuck. I kind of lost interst in Clarence’s Boss in the early 80’s but I’ve heard the new one is good. then again, I’ve heard that about every album he ever released. Little Steven’s radio station plays the new stuff a lot, but I honestly don’t think I’ve ever considered them anything remotely close to a garage band.
Just one of a handful of excerpts we were granted, 2K. Next, I may run an excerpt from a section in which Clarence interviews his fellow bandmates on their most cherished moments working with Bruce. There’s a really good one with Miami Steve/Little Steven.
Definitely a well-chosen and informative excerpt. As an avid fan of The Wire, I used a few connections to get an early look at the chapter dealing with Clarence’s experiences in Hollywood, which he was pushing to call “Circus Story” at that point in the editing stage. I hope it all made it in, there were some interesting bits in there about how he pitched a few gags that made it into Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and a revealing story about his frustration with people constantly thinking he was the guy in Mannequin, which The Boss apparently used to tease him about pretty regularly.
Alexmagic, they didn’t send me that exceprt! If you’ve got the time to send it my way next week, please do so. I don’t think his publisher would mind us loading up that excerpt as well.
I wish the singer would sing with a little more “intensity”.
-db