Blood Brothers Against the Wind: A Tribute to Clarence Clemons

Yesterday, January 11, 2014, was Clarence Clemons' birthday. Were the legendary saxophone player still alive, he would have been 72 years old. Sadly though, Clemons passed away over two and a half years ago, leaving behind the band he had helped build - Bruce Springsteen's iconic E Street Band - in a loss that still feels as heartbreaking now as it did then. Appropriately, Bruce will release his 18th studio album, titled High Hopes, on Tuesday, a belated birthday gift for the gone-but-never-forgotten Big Man. 

I wrote the following piece during my last semester of college, in a class called "Writings in Creative Nonfiction." I had no idea what the hell creative nonfiction even was prior to that class, but I got an A and my professor - and my fellow students - were always complimentary of my work, so I'd say I did alright. The class gave me a chance to discuss things in writing in a way that I haven't really gotten a chance to do anywhere else, either in my other music criticism work or in my English classes. It was illuminating, one of my favorite classes I took in all of college, and the follow piece is something of which I am very proud. In honor of Clarence's 72nd birthday and of Bruce's latest album, I figured it was time to put it out there for the world to see. Thanks for reading.

Blood Brothers Against the Wind

When the sun rose over the teeming streets of New York City on June 19, 2011, there was no indication in the atmosphere that it was anything other than a mundane Sunday morning. Families poured into the streets, making their way to the churches and synagogues where they would share in their weekly worship. Cafes and restaurants filled with patrons, plates of cinnamon rolls, eggs, sausage, bacon, and other mouthwatering brunch foods flying off their menus like they never did on any other day of the week. Teenagers lay in their beds, many of them enjoying the final bastion of their weekends before they were forced back into the hollowed halls of NYC’s public schools for the week-and-a-half long slog that still separated them from their coveted summer vacations. For all intents and purposes, the scene in Manhattan that day was a normal one, a portrait of normal people going about their lives in completely normal fashion. There was no sign that, for many people across the country and around the world, the landscape of pop culture, of rock ‘n’ roll music history, had just been immeasurably changed.

Beneath the city, though, the darkness had a different tale to tell. Where Manhattan’s above-ground residents were busy making their way toward a series of spiritual cathedrals and bursts of communal song, the subway tunnels were already ringing with a different kind of religious experience. The sound was a soaring force of nature, a spider-web of brassy bombast; it was one swift, triumphant burst of musical nirvana after another, each ricocheting from wall to wall, echoing off the gilded caverns of concrete, tile, steel, stone, and historical ingenuity that collectively make up New York City’s connectivity; it was the sounds of Motown, Nashville, Liverpool, and both American coasts, all rolled up in one; it was operatic in scope, baroque in emotion, and dripping with every vestige of rock ‘n’ roll salvation that had converted so many skeptics into believers over the past five decades; it was the perfect collision of virtuosic skill and visceral emotion; and for the people bearing witness to its melodic splendor and musical invulnerability that morning, it was the sound of life, death, and everything in between.

The music belonged to “Jungleland,” a nine-and-a-half-minute behemoth of a song that, in 1975, had served as the grand finale for Bruce Springsteen’s magnum-opus, Born to Run. Just under four minutes into its runtime, following a scenic violin intro, a pair of poetic verses, a searing guitar solo, and a shimmering piano backdrop, the song bursts apart into an exhilarating, soul-raising saxophone solo, and it was precisely that solo that was making such a sonic scene throughout Manhattan’s subway system on that Sunday morning in mid-June. The real question, of course, was why?

Later, when the disciples of that tunnel-bound church service tried to explain what they had seen and heard, they found themselves hard pressed to relate the sheer emotion of the thing to anyone who hadn’t been there to experience it firsthand. After all, how could a single three-minute burst of music convey so much? How could something that was, essentially, a glorified saxophone interlude encompass nearly every corner and expanse of the human condition? For the witnesses, describing how it felt to hear those notes brought something akin to the speechless disbelief that accompanies a religious epiphany: it was, quite simply, as if a Godly presence had descended upon those dark and decrepit old halls and graced them with a glorious gift. But even if those who had heard the music, bouncing along the railway lines and colluding with the howl of the subway trains or the buzz of human interaction, couldn’t quite explain its power, the newspapers and web communities could at least offer the key.

***

They called him the “Big Man,” and for anyone who met him or saw him stalking the stages of the Jersey shore (or later, of nearly every major venue on the planet), it wasn’t hard to figure out why. He spent his life playing rock ‘n’ roll beside some of the biggest giants in pop music history, beside Bruce Springsteen and his legendary E Street Band, but if there was a legitimate “giant” anywhere in sight, it was him. Standing at six feet, five inches and built like a linebacker, it seemed like destiny that he would carry the moniker of “Big Man” throughout his entire adult life. If his parents had different plans when he was born—and it would appear they did, naming him Clarence Anicholas Clemons, Jr., a designation more grounded in regal eloquence and Southern Baptist gospel than on the football field—Clarence was having none of it. Showing athletic talent early on, the prodigious African American seemed poised for a life in the NFL, a career that would doubtlessly bring both the spoils of wealth and the plagues of endless injury. As fate would have it though, the injury came early, putting an end to his sports dreams within the blink of an eye. But that setback wasn’t the end of Clemons’ promise. Instead, it was a serendipitous miracle, an occurrence that would set Clarence upon a new path and turn him into an icon; a defeat that would, eventually, leave his spirit wandering the corridors of the Manhattan underground on that June morning in 2011.

***

Bruce Springsteen had told the tale hundreds, maybe thousands of times before. It was a story as old as his music, as old as his band, as old as all of the questions, themes, and ideals that had defined his rock ‘n’ roll persona ever since he made his first album back in 1973. In many ways, it was the story that held the key to everything, to all he had achieved and everything he had become over the course of his career. It was the stuff of legends, the narrative that had given so many of his songs their heartbeat, the piece of history that had carried him through innumerable tours and concert after concert—even as they stretched well into the night and well past the three-hour mark that generally signified the last encore exit for even the most dedicated music professionals. But Bruce was different: at 60 years old, he still had the vigor of a man half his age, a man as eager to give his fans their money’s worth as he had been in the early days. James Brown may have already earned the title of “the Hardest Working Man in Show Business,” but as Springsteen would jokingly quip later in his career, he was “the hardest working white man in show business.” And that statement, as much as it was meant to incite laughter and cheers from his fans at the start of a show, probably held an awful lot of truth.

Tonight’s concert was a special one, though. As Bruce gazed out from the stage, over the mass of expectant audience members gathered on the arena floor or rising in the bleachers around him, everything felt like it was coming full circle. The date was November 22, 2009; the venue, the HSBC Arena in Buffalo, NY. And the occasion was one of closure: the final stop on a marathon world tour that had stretched on, with few breaks, since the fall of 2007. Over the past couple of months, Bruce and his familial E Street Band had marked the dwindling string of concert dates as a celebration, playing their most beloved albums front-to-back for audiences in America’s biggest cities. Tonight, for the first and only time, they were going all the way back. Back to the beginning, to 1973 and Greetings From Asbury Park, the album that had kick-started Bruce’s career and brought the band’s inaugural members together for the first time. And for a night that was going to function, ultimately, as one big career retrospective, Bruce felt moved to tell his most legendary story at least one more time.

“There I was,” Bruce muttered into his microphone, the nostalgic piano riff of “Growin’ Up” shimmering beneath his rich and weather-beaten baritone. “It was a stormy, stormy night in Asbury Park, New Jersey...”

As the crowd exploded in euphoric cheers and long, drawn-out cries of “BROOOOOCE,” Bruce spun a tale rich in detail and mythic in proportion. He spoke of hurricane gales and buckets of rain, of rattling boardwalks along the Jersey shore and trees bending at the force of the tempest. He spoke of the small, dimly-lit club where he and a few of his band members were weathering the storm and making some noise in the name of rock ‘n’ roll. He spoke of the door that tore open, lifted off its hinges, and went barreling down the street. And he spoke of the massive silhouette now framed in that doorway instead, of a man who seemed to stroll out of his very dreams and into that noisy room, of the big, booming voice that cut through the din and changed his life forever.

“I wanna play witchoo,” it said.

That was all he needed to say. Everything else was conveyed the moment the man placed a tenor saxophone to his lips and began to play. In a romance, they call this kind of connection love at first sight; here, it was brotherhood at first note, an instantly unconditional bond that would carry both musicians—frontman and sideman—to the heights of rock music royalty. In the post-Beatles world of the 1970s, a world where Bob Dylan’s best days were behind him and where legends like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Elvis Presley had or would soon depart forever, listeners were searching for new rock ‘n’ roll heroes. And these two men, this street-rat Jersey poet and this towering sax man, were about to apply for the job and make music history in the process.

Back in Buffalo, back in 2009, where all of that history had already played out, where time had whipped through and taken too much, Clarence Clemons stepped up to the microphone to recreate that fateful stormy evening in Asbury Park. For a moment, it felt as if no time had passed at all. As the crowd watched these two men glance back at their legacy, their bond was as palpable as it had ever been. So much love, so much mutual respect, so much reverence for the power of rock ‘n’ roll and its ability to “save your soul,” it was all flashing across the stage that night. And not just between Clarence Clemons and Bruce Springsteen, but between every member of that fabled E Street Band. From the 40-year veterans to the more recent additions, from Bruce’s beloved wife all the way to the spirit of fallen brother Danny Federici, the organist who had given his life to the band until his life quit giving in 2007, the stage was like a reunion of heroes, all of them finally reaching their promised land.

As the band played on for nearly three-and-a-half hours, making their way through greatest hits, deep cuts, covers, and fan favorites, the audience collectively felt as if they were witnessing something straight out of the rock ‘n’ roll history books, something as poetic as it was mythological. And through it all, Bruce stood at the epicenter, hoisting his guitar to the sky like a talisman to former glories and a challenge to whatever the future might bring. He was a rebellious hero, an elder statesman raging on, a parallel Ulysses rallying his aging ranks for one last charge into the breach. One could almost hear the words of Tennyson echoing through the escapist gospel of songs like “Born to Run” and “Thunder Road,” or through the rousing build of “Rockin’ All Over The World,” the John Fogerty cover that served as the tour’s prophetic bookend:

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

The E Street Band always strove. They always found. They never gave up. And even though the future that night in Buffalo looked an uncertain one, even as speculation shot from one end of the arena to the other—that this could be the end, the grand finale, the last hurrah for the world’s biggest rock ‘n’ roll family—no one onstage even acknowledged the assumption. Cowards yield before their time has come, and no one could call anyone in this band a coward. Not Max Weinberg, who furiously drums himself into a stupor of arthritic pain each night, only to get up and do it again the next day; not Nils Lofgren, who walks around on two artificial hips and still plays the guitar with incendiary vigor. And certainly not Clarence Clemons who, throughout this seemingly endless tour, took to using a golf cart to get from his dressing room to the stage and a mechanical lift to hoist him up into the spotlight.

On that last night in Buffalo, the Big Man almost looked humbled and weak, huddled resolutely on a stool at the far left-hand side of the stage. Every few moments, his yearning eyes would glance toward the spot next to Bruce where he used to stand tall and proud in his younger days, wishing only to be there again. But his youth was fled and his body was breaking. Years of living hard, Hollywood partying, and self-abuse had taken their toll, and Clemons, the victim of both a knee replacement surgery and a mild heart attack, could feel the weight of all the late nights and the road-bound life tearing away whatever health remained. But when the moment came for Clarence to pull himself to his feet, set his shoulders back, and blow into his saxophone, all vestiges of weakness were removed. The sound was as forceful and poignant as ever, a testament to a man who would never stop giving to or living in the music. Right to his last moments with the E Street Band, Clarence remained loyal to the first words he had ever spoken to Bruce: “I wanna play witchoo.”

***

Clarence certainly never yielded, not while he still had strength left in him. Even as he passed his 69th birthday, the “Big Man” couldn’t be troubled to slow down. It was 2011: Bruce was writing new material. Clarence had a prime guest spot on Lady Gaga’s newest album and was even on-hand to perform with her on the season finale of American Idol. On May 25, Clarence blasted into the saxophone solo from Gaga’s newest hit, “The Edge of Glory,” and the sheer media glitz and glam of the event faded away. Everyone fell silent to watch him, this pilgrim of rock ‘n’ roll history, as he left yet another mark on the tapestry. He had given so much of himself to music over the years, and yet, somehow, he still had just a little bit more left in him.

It was the last time the Big Man would ever perform in public.

***

“The record was pretty much done, except that I wanted to get Clarence on it,” Bruce said later, referring to the set of songs that would eventually form the backbone of his fantastic 2012 release, Wrecking Ball. “The week before he died I called him to come in and record on his way back from Los Angeles, where he'd worked with Lady Gaga. He was having problems with the feeling in his hand. He was worried and asked if he could go home to Florida first and have it checked out. It was the only time Clarence passed on a recording session, so I said sure, we'd catch it later down the road.”

But then the road ran out. Clarence’s body betrayed him on June 12, just a week after his retreat to Florida. A stroke wafted through the cracks that had spread in his physique, cutting him down and silencing his grand saxophone forever. Six days later, after a laborious stay in a hospital where he never fully regained consciousness, after a myriad of goodbyes from his blood brothers and sisters, after squeezing Bruce’s hand one last time, their bond still alive even as the bodily vessel carrying half of it sputtered to its final resting point, the complications from the stroke overcame him. On June 18, Clarence’s family turned off the machines, took the Big Man off life support, and let his soul float off into the ether.

“Let your mind rest easy, sleep well my friend. It’s only our bodies that betray us in the end.”

***

It broke Bruce’s heart to lose Clarence, just as it shattered the hearts of everyone hanging out on E Street and all those who had ever been moved by his unparalleled musical ability. The death left Jersey reeling; it radiated through the music community, silencing compatriots at some turns and inspiring them to pay tribute at others; and it shook the very foundations of New York City, where street musicians retreated to the subway tunnels and exploded into their saxophones with the same furor and force that had so defined Clarence. Other passionate fans offered an assist, grabbing their boom-boxes, cranking them up to maximum volume, and keeping “Jungleland” and its master-of-the-universe sax solo ringing on repeat. From all corners and sources, Springsteen devotees were there beneath the city on that June morning in 2011, making sure the strains of Clarence Clemons would never stop echoing—even if his heartbeat already had.

Online fans dealt with things differently, heading to the message boards to pay their respects. “The Sax Solo in Jungleland,” a Facebook page classifying itself as a “Local Business,” got a boost of likes and R.I.P. posts from listeners, many of them weaving anecdotes of how those sublime three minutes of music had changed their lives, or in some cases, saved them. Of how it was still impossible to listen to that song without feeling shivers down your spine or tears stinging in your eyes. There are songs that are considered greater than “Jungleland,” songs that more people claim to love or that more people have heard. But on that Saturday evening or throughout the following day, as friends, family, and fans heard the news and worked through their own spells of grief in their own unique ways, it was difficult to recall any song that had ever inspired such fervent and passionate adoration. Clarence was gone, yes. But within the confines of recorded media and memory, he would forever stand immortal. He even made it onto the new record, which repurposed some old E Street Band songs, previously only heard live, into a lively and resilient high fidelity setting.

“After the funeral, I returned to the studio to finish the record,” Bruce told Jon Stewart in 2012, in an interview the two were sharing for Rolling Stone. “[Wrecking Ball producer] Ron Aniello greeted me, and as we sat at the control board he said, ‘I'm so sorry about Clarence. I didn't know what to do when I heard, so I went home to Los Angeles and put this together from one of the live takes of the song.’ He played me ‘Land of Hope and Dreams,’ and when the solo section hit, Clarence's sax filled the room. I cried. So he's there...through a little technical magic. But he's there.”

***

“And of course, we're here to tell you a story, as always. And tonight's story is a story about hellos and goodbyes, and things that leave us, and things that remain with us forever. So let's get started.”

Bruce Springsteen was back.

Standing on the stage of Michigan’s Palace of Auburn Hills and once again gazing out over the ranks of thousands of fans, the Boss was in top form. His new record had landed at number one on the charts, reviews had been generally rapturous, and reception for this new world tour was as stratospheric as ever. But that didn’t mean Bruce wasn’t feeling the weight of all the things that had left him over the years. It was April 12, 2012, ten months to the day since the stroke that had torn his greatest blood brother to the ground, and that wound still felt fresh.

A few minutes later, Bruce cascaded into his customary E Street roll call, introducing each member of his band to the appreciative roars of the crowd. For this tour, he had chosen to structure the signature moment within “My City of Ruins,” a song that had, at different times, addressed both the downfall of his beloved hometown—Asbury Park, NJ—and the crushing tragedy of September 11th. On both disparate occasions though, the music and lyrics had functioned in the same way, creating a hymn to the power of human resilience, evoking and inspiring the ability to “rise up,” rebuild, and “begin again,” and all of those themes were going to be prevalent tonight as well.

“Are we missing anybody?” Bruce bellowed into the crowd, a mournful lilt evident in his voice. “Are we missing anybody, Detroit?!”

The explosion of noise from the audience was almost deafening, a roar so potent it could have turned stone to dust. “Clarence!” most of them shouted, though intermittent cries of “Danny” proved that E Street’s long-time organist had not been forgotten. Bruce nodded along sadly.

“That’s right. Do I have to say the names?!” he continued, the reaction immediately informing him that he didn’t. “The only thing I can guarantee is, if you’re here, and we’re here, then they’re here with us tonight! So...raise your voices!”

The crowd complied, screaming, shouting, and singing along with as much passion as Bruce had ever seen at a concert. The explanation was simple: tonight was a communion, a catharsis, a funeral, and a farewell; this concert was a chance for these fans to say goodbye to Clarence in a very public and emotional venue, just as the rest of the concerts on this tour would be. Jake Clemons, Clarence’s nephew, had taken over sax duties, channeling his uncle like a true spiritual successor. Every time he took a solo, the audience erupted in enormous raves of approval, all of them grasping for some connection, however fleeting, to the enormous presence they had lost. And Jake was the corporeal realization of that ghostly presence, nailing his uncle’s works with passion and note-perfect accuracy. Throughout the night, Jake’s solos brought extra emotion to Springsteen favorites like “Badlands,” “Thunder Road,” “Born to Run,” and “Dancing in the Dark,” though “Jungleland,” the Holy Grail of Clarence’s legacy, remained retired for the time being.

Later, as the set finally segued into its final number, the tribute to Clarence hit a new height. The song was “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” a semi-autobiographical favorite from the Born to Run days whose lyrics recall the forming of the E Street Band. When Bruce reached the beginning of the second verse, he shouted out for his followers to pay attention.

“THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART!” he bellowed into the stands. He had made his way from the stage to a small walkway in the middle of the general admission section, crowd-surfing across the pool of adoring fans to get there. Now, he stood tall and powerful, surrounded by a sea of followers, and crooned the lines that would likely define tonight’s show for everyone in attendance.

“They made that change up town and the Big Man joined the band,” he sang, his backing musicians dropping out as his voice was joined by a chorus of the venue’s 16,507-person capacity crowd. The venue’s media screens flickered to life, burning with images of Clarence, and the song stopped in its tracks as the massive basketball arena became a cacophonous, cathartic cave of mourning and euphoria. In the earlier days, that line would have been followed by a potent blast from Clarence’s sax, but not tonight.

The band sat back, letting their instruments hang at their sides or lay dormant in front of them, and Bruce raised his microphone to the sky, smiling as he looked around at all of the people paying tribute to his old friend. The pause stretched on for two or three minutes, acting as Bruce’s version of a “moment of silence” for his fallen comrade, even if it was significant specifically for its absence of silence. The crowd rallied with higher decibels than they had exuded all night, but then again, it was only appropriate that a man who had spent his life “bringing the noise” be honored by a profusion of it. The grin spread even wider across Bruce’s face, tears sparkling in his eyes as he looked around remembering the old days.

“We swore blood brothers against the wind, now I’m ready to grow young again.”

The pause was a bizarre meeting of time and timelessness. In the moment, it seemed to stretch on for days, but in retrospect, it was all too fleeting. Eventually, Bruce gave his horn section the cue and they erupted back into the texture, carrying Clarence’s melodic line with boisterous reverence. But as the concert finally dwindled and dissolved into memory, as the E Street Band lined up at the front of the stage to take their bows, and as Bruce gave a cursory “Thank you Detroit!” to conclude his rock ‘n’ roll sermon, one thought was left hanging in the air, something that Bruce had written in the liner notes of Wrecking Ball that had never felt more true than it did right in that moment.

“Clarence doesn’t leave the E Street Band when he dies,” Bruce had mused.

“He leaves when we die.”

The Land of Hope and Dreams: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band Live in Detroit, 4/12/12

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band

Live at The Palace of Auburn Hills, Detroit, MI

April 12th, 2012

Five songs into his marathon, 3 hour, 26 song Auburn Hills
set (27, if you count both pieces of the "Apollo Medley"), Bruce Springsteen broke musical ranks during a brassy, orchestral re-imagining of "My City of Ruins" to have a word with his audience. "Good evening Detroit!" he shouted gleefully. "I love you old Michigan! That's right, I know where the fuck I am!" He was referring to his last visit to the Palace (on November 13th, 2009, also my first Springsteen show), where he famously forgot he what state he was in. On that particular occurrence, he shouted "Hello, Ohio!" three or four times before Little Stevie finally set him straight, but tonight, he had a fan's "Bruce: You Are Here" (with a drawing of Michigan) poster to help him out. It was a good-hearted callback to a night I count among the best I've ever had, and a perfect way for him to re-acquaint himself with the crowd. He continued, telling us all, "You're gonna go home tonight with your hands hurtin' and your voice sore and your back hurtin', and tomorrow you're gonna say '...what the fuck happened to me?!?'"

"And of course, we're here to tell you a story, as always," he said a few moments later. "And tonight's story is a story about hellos and goodbyes, and things that leave us, and things that remain with us forever. So let's get started." And they did, playing through three quarters of the song before pausing again for Bruce to do a roll call of his legendary E Street Band. After he had introduced everyone onstage, the longtime virtuosos and the new additions alike, he asked the big question of the night. "Are we missing anybody?" he roared at the audience. As nice as the gesture would have been, everyone in the Palace on Thursday night knew that Bruce wasn't talking about his wife, back-up vocalist Patti Scialfa, who was absent from the proceedings tonight. No, Bruce was clearly referring to the mammoth presence of Clarence "Big Man" Clemons, whose iconic saxophone sound was stolen from the band when he passed away last summer, due to complications from a stroke. And Thursday night's crowd, aware of this fact from the moment they entered the arena, screamed his name back at Bruce as loud as they could muster, over and over again. It was the night's first direct reference to Clemons, but there wasn't a minute of the show's 180 minute run-time where he was far from everyone's minds - Bruce's included. But just as he's been saying all tour long, "the only thing I can guarantee is that, if you're here, and we're here, then they're here with us tonight." And from the moment Jake Clemons (the Big Man's nephew and his perfect spiritual stand-in) nailed the first sax solo of the night during "Badlands" (the first of many brilliant deliveries), the show felt like a tribute, a farewell, and a catharsis.

But it was also so much more than that. It was a powerful display of a band and a frontman who, 40 years down the road from their first record, are still absolutely performing in top form. It was a slate of some of the best music ever written, coming alive for new generations and past ones alike. And for me, it was a reminder of the power music can have, but I'll get to more on that later. All of those things were evident from the show's introduction (where Springsteen memorably introduces himself) and the one-two punch opening of "We Take Care of Our Own" and "Wrecking Ball," a pair of songs from his latest record that crackled and thrived in this setting, even alongside a smattering of classics. The former, especially, came alive tonight, and "Wrecking Ball," while I personally found it more striking when I saw him two and a half years ago (at this same venue) on the final leg of the Working on a Dream tour, was certainly welcome here, as it remains one of the highlights from the new record and possesses a certain amount of bombast that is very appealing in a live setting. Speaking of new highlights, the Irish rave-up that is "Death to My Hometown" was as ferocious and riotous as I hoped it would be.

Photo by John T. Greilick / The Detroit News

The epic sweep of "Badlands" is welcome in any setlist, whether it occurs near the beginning or towards the end (it served as the main set closer on Springsteen's last visit to Detroit). The Darkness on the Edge of Town opener represented one of only three forays into that record tonight (another being "Candy's Room," which also appeared early), but both songs clearly illustrated why the Darkness tour holds such legendary status, as both still ring with the kind of electricity and life that begets the best live shows. Hearing "My City of Ruins" was a particularly emotional experience for me, not only because of the Clarence, or because of the 9/11 association I will always have with it, but because, aside from maybe "Born to Run," it was the first Springsteen song I ever fell in love with. Hearing it seven or eight years after it first caught my ear, especially in such a centerpiece role, with such a lovingly rendered arrangement (the horn section Springsteen has on this tour was especially effective here), was nothing short of breathtaking. The way Springsteen commands the audience on the classics and the rockers is one thing, but his ability to bring things down to pin-drop ambiance on late-career ballads like this one is testament to both his charisma and the devotion of his fanbase: I can think of a lot of bands that are pretty much relegated to playing their greatest hits these days, but I for one am as pleased to watch Bruce play through his post-millennial output as I am to hear his classics.

Then again, not all fans are so accommodating, and I saw more than a few people heading for the doors in pursuit of bathroom breaks and beer runs during "Jack of All Trades," the most pensive moment from Wrecking Ball. While the song is hardly my favorite on the record, the live performance was undeniably effective, plunging the Palace into an elegiac darkness and allowing Springsteen's voice and words (and later, Nils Lofgren's stunning guitar solo) to ring through the arena unhindered by special effect. On the other hand "Trapped," a cover of a Jimmy Cliff song, thrived on lighting effects, starting in a hazy purple light (which perfectly accentuated the song's nostalgic guitar intro), and exploding into the chorus just as the house lights went up. A muscular electric version "Youngstown," a blue-collar anthem originally from the all-acoustic Ghost of Tom Joad album, played spectacularly well in Detroit, which has fallen on harder times than a lot of other places in the country, while "The E-Street Shuffle," a block-party style jam session from way back in 1973, played up the other side of things and gave the city's residents reason to dance and sing along. Each of these songs epitomized the spirit of the first half of the set, where Springsteen spent most of his time diving in the back catalog and snatching out deep cuts, a practice which might not be rewarding for casual fans, but which I found fascinating.

                     Photo by John T. Greilick / The Detroit News

But the "golden greats" did start to appear eventually, first with "She's the One," the first of four Born to Run cuts to make it onto the stage tonight, and then with live stand-bys like "Waitin' on a Sunny Day," where Springsteen brought a little boy up onstage to sing the chorus and taught him how to do his patented "knee slide" ("His life peaked at seven," my brother exclaimed later. "What could he possibly do that would be more exciting than that?"), or "The Promised Land," the third Darkness cut and another chance for Jake Clemons to show off his chops. I personally don't understand the ubiquity of "Sunny Day" as a live staple, as I've always found the song to be one of the more innocuous moments on The Rising: it's a simple, somewhat tongue-in-cheek pop song on a record of deeply spiritual songs dealing with tragedy. That said, the song is a lot of fun, and I was more jealous of that kid than I would care to admit (though going back to reality after this concert was hard enough for me, even without having shared the stage with a legend). "The Promised Land" was as solid as ever, though I would have traded it out for either "Racing in the Streets" or "Darkness on the Edge of Town," and no complaints on "She's the One," as any Born to Run song is a good one.

Perhaps the best moment of the night came when Springsteen plucked a fan's poster from the pit and held it up, saying "special request for Detroit." The sign read "Incident on 57th Street," a title that prompted every hardcore Springsteen fan in the place to let loose a few ecstatic expletives. That song is one of the three classics that constitute the flawless second side of Springsteen's second record, The Wild, The Innocent, The E-Street Shuffle (and is generally considered "his best song not on Born to Run). However, despite the adoration it receives in fan circles, "Incident" is rarely played live (this was the proper-tour premiere of the song), but hearing the E Street Band play the song tonight made me wonder why. The song was neither the longest, nor the shortest performance of the set (clocking in at 8:30, it was sandwiched between two longer segments in the forms of the soulful "Apollo Medley," where Springsteen paid tribute to Detroit's Motown history, and "American Skin," which I'll get to in a moment), but it was certainly among the best. Most of the audience quieted down to hear this (nearly) historical moment, allowing the song's melodic splendor and lyrical depth to shine. By the time Bruce got to my favorite line of the song ("Hey little heroes, summer's long but I guess it ain't very sweet around here anymore"), I was in heaven.

Photo by John T. Greilick / The Detroit News

"American Skin (41 Shots)" emerged over a decade ago for the E Street Band reunion tour in 1999 and 2000. That tour eventually lead to the inception of The Rising, but the song never made it onto a proper record, and remains available only in live recording. As a result, it's not a song I've spent a lot of time with over the years, but that changed when Springsteen brought it out and polished it off on Thursday night, using it to deliver one of the most emotionally intense moments of the night. Written for the controversial 1999 shooting of Amadou Diallo, Springsteen revived the song last month in Tampa, FL, a mere two hours' drive from Sanford, where Trayvon Martin was shot and killed similar circumstances. Tonight, it sounded like a funeral dirge, transforming the Palace into a cathedral of sound and tragedy, and providing the most sobering moment of the night. As the song stretched on for almost nine minutes, through repeated chants of the "41 shots" motive, and a scorching, over-the-top guitar solo from Lofgren, it resonated in a way that few songs ever do, and was transformed into a highlight. Bruce didn't need to say Trayvon's name for everyone to know what he was singing about, but that's always been one of his gifts: he's always been able to take a song that was written for something else, and apply it to new situations in performance. It happened ten years ago, when "My City Of Ruins" morphed into a hymn to the events of September 11th in the wake of the attacks, or at the end of the reunion tour, where he re-wrote bits of "Blood Brothers" and had his band clasp hands and close their eyes as he sang them. I was humbled to see it happen to yet another song tonight.

"The Rising" never truly resonated with me until I saw Bruce play it live here in 2009, so I was eager to hear it again, and it didn't disappoint. A Johnny Cash-esque, mostly acoustic performance of Wrecking Ball closer "We Are Alive" was every bit as moving, but both were nothing compared to "Land of Hope and Dreams," which served as main set closer tonight, and burst with more energy and emotion than any band has a right to have after playing for over two hours. "Hope and Dreams," which was also originally penned on the reunion tour, finally made its way onto a studio record with Wrecking Ball, and how pleased I am that it did, as its undoubtedly my favorite song of the year so far. In studio form, it contains the only Clarence sax solo on the record, one last flawless piece of a man who spent his life conjuring up some of the greatest moments in the history of recorded music. In its live setting, the song is a sweeping, epic behemoth, a flawless set closer, and an affirmation of the beauty of life, music, and everything in between. It was already my favorite song of the year, but that it managed not only to stand up to Springsteen's best material, but to land as a highlight amidst a set of highlights, was nothing short of staggering, and made me appreciate just how good Wrecking Ball is as a record.

But then, it was singalong time: a trademark harmonica yelp heralded the arrival of "Thunder Road," arguably the greatest song of all time and one of the best I've ever seen performed live. Chills shot down my spine as Springsteen wound through the lyrical beauty of the song's intro, and returned when he let the crowd yell "Show a little faith, there's magic in the night, you ain't a beauty, but hey, you're alright" back at him. "Rocky Ground" had no business being anywhere near an encore set, as much as I like the song on record and as well performed as it was. Back-up singer Michelle Moore got a prominent feature, both on the song's vocal refrain and during the climactic rap section, but the audience reaction was lukewarm, and the song threatened to kill the feverish momentum that had been carefully building since "Incident." Luckily, a performance of "Out in the Street," a raucous bar-band rock song from The River (the only track off that album played tonight), helped bring it back, and by the time the opening swell of "Born to Run" had filled the arena, everything was forgiven. The house lights came up, and I put my arm around my brother and we both screamed along with every word. As the song neared its euphoric bridge section, I took a look around at the arena, gazing behind me at the hundreds of faces scattered on the floor, and the thousands more I saw rising around me in the seats, and I felt like a part of something huge, momentous, and important. With a massive grin on my face, I turned back to the stage and belted out the song's climactic lines: "someday girl, I don't know when, we're gonna get to that place where we really want to go and we'll walk in the sun," and I knew these were moments that I was going to remember and cherish for the rest of my life. "But until then, tramps like us, baby we were born to run." Amen.

The show could have stopped there and I would have been more than satisfied, but it didn't. Bruce asked us all to "put on our dancing shoes" as the synth-intro of "Dancing in the Dark" washed over us. He pulled a pair of young girls out of the audience to dance onstage, mirroring the song's music video, which gave Courteney Cox her big break 25 years ago. Those who had waited for singles all night (if those audience members existed) had to be satisfied by the one-two punch of "Born to Run" and "Dancing," the two biggest singles from their respective albums, and two songs that transformed the Palace floor into a dance-hall-party. But even as the song dissolved (following one last perfect sax solo from Jake Clemons), Bruce screamed "we're not done yet!" and I knew full well what was coming next: "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," the song that has served as the closer all tour long, and for good reason. Halfway through, Springsteen made his way out to the central walkway (ending up some twenty feet from where I stood), and shouting "THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART!" before delivering the most iconic lines of the song: "well they made that change up town, and the Big Man joined the band." The song is, essentially, the story of how the E Street Band formed and of how Bruce and Clarence came together, and on record, that line is followed by a blast from Clemons' sax. Not tonight though. Tonight, the band dropped out, allowing Springsteen to sing that line a cappella, and when he was done, they didn't come back in. Springsteen raised his microphone into the air and photographs of Clarence rolled on the venues' media screens as the audience screamed and clapped for the better part of two minutes. Eventually, Springsteen gave the brass section a cue, and they launched back into the song (with Clarence's sax motive), but it was the two minutes of pure tribute that every audience took with them, and it was a tremendous way to close the set (while carrying it past the three hour mark). "Thank you, Detroit!" Bruce yelled, as the song crashed away and subsided. "Thanks for a great night! We love you!"



The moment Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band left the stage on Thursday night, my head was filled with satisfaction and euphoria, vows to revisit songs that came alive tonight, questions of when I would get to see them again, and a distinctly singular statement: that this was the greatest musical performance I had ever witnessed. I think that last bit is something that every great live performer inspires, and I have certainly felt shades of it on numerous occasions: several Butch Walker shows, the U2 show I saw last summer, and the last time I saw Bruce, to name a few. Comparing concerts is always a ridiculously difficult task because once it's over, it's gone forever. You can download a bootleg, and there may even be a DVD release of it, but there is no substitute for actually being there, nothing that can ever reconstruct that experience. But when Springsteen left the stage at the Palace last Thursday, when those three brilliant hours were just a mere memory, I couldn't recall a concert that had so completely engulfed me, moved me, or reminded me of just how huge an impact my favorite artists can have on my life. Over the past six months, I've gone through some tough situations with my University in regards to my music major, and that's caused me to lose a little bit of faith in the art form that has defined my life for the better part of a decade. But this show was an affirmation, a reminder of why music is so important to me, and Springsteen helped heal those scars on Thursday night. Maybe there were people in the audience like me that night, people who were searching for healing or faith or something equally intangible, and maybe these songs and the atmosphere and energy in the audience helped heal them too. Certainly, each and every one of us was gifted with a catharsis regarding Clarence Clemons, an opportunity to participate in these incredible tributes to him, and a chance to say goodbye in a way that felt completely right. All of those things seemed like miracles to me as I drove back home that night.

The next morning, I got a text from my brother: "What the fuck happened to me?!?" Bruce's prophecy had come true. I myself was exhausted, running on 5 hours of sleep, sore all over, and with a voice that sounded like a hoarse rhinoceros (three days from having to sing in a choral concert, no less), but what I'd gotten in return was greater than anyone who wasn't in that audience could possibly imagine. As I re-adjusted to my everyday life, memories of that concert infected every moment of conscious thought: they were there as I performed that Sunday concert (my voice did come back, amazingly), with a re-energized adoration for music in my heart; they were there as I wrote thirty pages worth of term papers, looking past them to an expansive summer full of possibilities; and they are still here with me right now, as I type these words, listening to the bootleg from the show and trying to sink back into these songs, right back to where I was standing on the floor of the Palace of Auburn Hills that night. In this modern world, this very week in fact, we are worried about a lot of things: about tax day and gas prices and just how the hell we're going to make it through exam week without burning out, but really, beyond things like love, family, and friends, the things that make our day to day life worth living, is there anything more important than a rock 'n' roll concert? Because after seeing Bruce Springsteen play a three hour show, it sure doesn't seem like it.

To borrow a quote from a poster that appeared during the E Street Band Working on a Dream Tour Finale in Buffalo, NY: "It's only rock and roll, but it feels like love."

Setlist

We Take Care Of Our Own
Wrecking Ball
Badlands
Death to My Hometown
My City of Ruins
The E Street Shuffle
Candy's Room
Jack of All Trades
Trapped (Jimmy Cliff cover)
Youngstown (Tour Premiere)
She's the One
Waitin' on a Sunny Day
The Promised Land
Apollo Medley
Incident on 57th Street (Tour Premiere)
American Skin (41 Shots)
Because the Night
The Rising
We Are Alive
Land of Hope and Dreams

Encore:

Thunder Road
Rocky Ground
Out In the Street
Born to Run
Dancing in the Dark
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out

Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball

 Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball

Columbia Records, 2012

Five stars

Bruce Springsteen needs no introduction: he's "the Boss," a living legend who is renowned not only for the strength of his best records (Born to Run is my all time favorite album), or for the cultural ubiquity of his most successful (Born in the USA, which spawned seven massive hit singles), but also for his ability to tap into the psyches of the average American everyman, not to mention his life-affirming live shows, which often stretch on towards the marathon length of three hours or more. Upon the death of legendary saxophonist Clarence Clemons last year, many questioned whether Springsteen would ever make another record, or whether the E-Street Band would ever tour again. They needn't have worried about either of those points, as another worldwide E-Street Tour is brewing for the upcoming spring and summer months, and as Springsteen drops Wrecking Ball, his 17th studio record, this week. While many associate Springsteen with the huge, anthemic sound of his biggest masterworks (Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town) or with the faux-patriotic 80s pop of Born in the U.S.A., Wrecking Ball is a more experimental record, incorporating everything from his classic rock influences to Irish/celtic rave-ups, with a tad of hip hop thrown in for good measure. The resulting record is a masterpiece, the best and most lively collection of songs Springsteen has put together in decades (since U.S.A., at least), and the best album of the year so far.

I wasn't a fan of Bruce's last effort, 2009's Working on a Dream, where the Boss got a little too content with the state of his country, and as a result, a little too boring. George Bush was out, Barack Obama in, and suddenly, the angry political songs of 2007's Magic had faded away. What was left was arguably the weakest set of songs of Springsteen's career, something even he seemed to realize, largely avoiding the album on the subsequent tour and turning instead to his classic material. The end of that tour seemed like a fitting finale for the illustrious career of the E-Street Band, and indeed, upon the death of Clemons, it was certain that things would never be quite the same, no matter their course of action. Wrecking Ball, although it includes contributions by many members of his band, is more in the tradition of Springsteen's solo efforts (the cult classic "Nebraska"), and several songs, like the morose narrative of "Jack of All Trades" (complete with a cathartic guitar solo by Tom Morello, of Rage Against the Machine fame), or the mostly acoustic "You've Got It," wouldn't have been completely out of place amongst that album's sparse 4-track recordings. Meanwhile, one listen to the raucous choruses of songs like "Easy Money," "Shackled and Drawn" or especially "Death to My Hometown" will reveal the plethora of folk and celtic influences Springsteen adopts here, often reminiscent of his equally experimental work on last decade's "The Seeger Sessions" and "Live in Dublin" releases. And then there's "Rocky Ground," a clever rewrite of his Oscar winner "Streets of Philadelphia," complete with an out-of-left-field rap section by gospel singer Michelle Moore; needless to say, it's quite a change of pace for the 62 year old Springsteen.

But even amongst all of the experimentation, at its heart, Wrecking Ball is thoroughly a Bruce Springsteen record. Take the masterful title track, which juxtaposes a flawless singalong chorus with some of Springsteen's best lyrics to become his most epic anthem since "Badlands," or "This Depression," which could have fit on The Rising were it not for the anguished guitar echoes that permeate the second half. Meanwhile, the fist pumping rock 'n' roll of first the single, "We Take Care of Our Own," fits comfortably in the wheelhouse of post millennial Bruce, with a lyric that stands to become his most misunderstood political statement since Born in the U.S.A. Perhaps best of all is "Land of Hope and Dreams," where the ghost of Clarence Clemons floats through one of his last recorded sax solos, recalling a million brilliant moments from the Springsteen catalog and providing the album with its most sublimely emotional moment. "This train carries saints and sinners, this train carries losers and winners," Springsteen sings on the song's joyful chorus, almost like he's paraphrasing the words inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty. It's a moment that could come across as cheesy or heavy handed in lesser hands, but if there's a guy on the planet who can pull it off, it's the Boss, and pull it off he does.

Wrecking Ball certainly has the goods as far as the songs are concerned, but it wouldn't work the way it does if Springsteen didn't have the conviction. If Working on a Dream was the sound of a rock star with nothing left to say, Wrecking Ball is the sound of an American who thought his darkest days were behind him, only to realize that things had never stopped getting worse. His economy a wreck, his people unemployed and unhappy, and as many broken dreams and wasted lives scatter across his nation as ever, Springsteen turns around and writes his most scorching, angry, and heartbreaking album in years, but at the same time, it's also among his most resilient and life-affirming. At the end of Darkness on the Edge of Town, Springsteen's characters were resigning themselves to what their lives had become on the wrong side of the American dream, but here, those same characters are fighting back. The art of the protest album has faded in recent years, but Springsteen, always the voice of the everyman, brings it back and delivers one that is certain to mean something to an awful lot of people. In the album's final moments, on the closer "We Are Alive," Springsteen delivers both a eulogy for his fallen brother and a rallying cry for the downtrodden people of his country. There is a distinct sense of things having come full circle, not just for the record, but for Springsteen's career as a whole, but with the amount of life and passion he showcases on this record, it's not difficult to imagine him making music for another 15 or 20 years. A terrific set of songs, a summation of a brilliant career, both in sound and theme, and a effortlessly affecting message, Wrecking Ball is a late career masterpiece from one of the most significant musical figures in rock and roll history, and is just about as good a record as anyone is making these days: I seriously doubt I'll hear a better album this year.