No Retreat, No Surrender: Learning Life's Big Lessons from Bruce Springsteen's Live Show

Bruce Springsteen's The River was the first album I ever owned on vinyl. As a record collector, I'm still something of a novice. I got started in the summer of 2014, after my brother got my wife and me a turntable for our wedding. By that time, though, I'd already had The River in my possession for over a year. In April 2013, when I was serving as Arts & Entertainment editor for my college newspaper, one of my writers surprised me with a used copy of The River as a gift. For him, I imagine the gift was too perfect to pass up: as with everyone in my life, my fellow editors and writers at Western Michigan University's Western Herald were well aware of my love for Bruce Springsteen. So when this particular writer went shopping for Record Store Day and found a Springsteen LP, he grabbed it for me as something of a "bon voyage" gift. (I graduated and moved on from the paper just a few weeks later.)

Looking back, that gift feels nearly prophetic to me—even if it was probably almost random for him. My friend had thought of me when he'd seen a Springsteen album in a used record shop. But the album he'd gotten me was arguably the perfect one for the occasion. Sure, Born to Run would have been more celebratory, and The Wild, The Innocent—which I wrote about, passionately, just days before I received my diploma—would have fit the almost-summertime mood better. But in Springsteen's catalog, The River is really the album where the characters come into adulthood. As I wrote in April 2013, Born to Run "nailed the redemptive escapism of youth" and The Wild, The Innocent was "a record for the moment before that escapism feels necessary." Darkness on the Edge of Town, meanwhile, found Springsteen's characters mired in the realization that the American Dream isn't always what it's cracked up to be, but with plenty youthful romance, exuberance, resilience, and angst left to burn. The River is the first record where matters of adulthood are the core point of focus.

Bruce put it a bit different when he stopped at Louisville's KFC Yum! Center on Sunday night, for the 13th stop of his second tour in support of the 1980 LP. "I wanted to make a big record, a record that felt like life," he said. "I wanted the record to contain fun, dancing, laughter, jokes, good comradeship, love, faith, sex, lonely nights, and of course, teardrops." He also said that the record was about choosing your partner, choosing your work, and making life worthwhile. In other words, while Bruce may have sang about "Growin' Up" four LPs previous to this one, The River is where he really allowed his characters to grow up. How fitting, then, that my first graduation gift and my first piece of vinyl was a record about moving into the real world and reckoning with all of the joys and heartbreaks that entails.

When I first saw Springsteen live, in 2009, I was still just embarking upon my college career. That was the year that Born to Run really came to mean the world to me. It was my "end of high school" album, a record that connected perfectly with all of the hopes, dreams, and optimism I had in my heart at the time. Seeing the E Street Band play that whole record front to back that November, just a week before my 19th birthday, was life affirming. It made me dream that much bigger about my hopes for some sort of career in music. It made me love music that much deeper, from the moment I shouted "Show a little faith, there's magic in the night" with thousands upon thousands of other fans. It made me cherish how my brother and I had found incredible bonding experiences like this one by going to concerts and sharing our love for the bands and artists whose music meant the most to us.

In a way, each time I've seen Springsteen has aligned perfectly with a different moment in my life. That first concert was the perfect Springsteen live show experience for a teenager who was just falling in love with the world and all of its promise. When I saw him again in the spring of 2012, there was still a lot of hope there, but things had changed. The E Street Band had lost Clarence Clemons, a presence too big to ever replace, and while the show that spring was still life affirming, it reached that note of uplift differently. Instead of celebrating a classic album, the band was celebrating their fallen brother. The messages were clear: cherish the moments you have with your loved ones; make the most of your time here; don't waste your life with people or things that don't make your heart feel full.

At the time, those were all messages that I needed to hear. The spring of 2012 was a crossroads in my life. The first time I saw Springsteen, I was the picture of optimistic youth: one week left as an 18-year-old, in the midst of a great first semester at college, and thinking my music major was going to someday carry me to some big stages of my own. Fast forward two and a half years and I was 21, disenchanted with college, and pretty certain that any dreams I'd had about performing music for a living were just that: dreams. The music school had let me down and screwed me over, and I wasn't sure I wanted to be at that university at all anymore—let alone majoring in something as utterly useless as classical voice. When the Springsteen date came up that April and my brother asked if I could make the show, the text I sent him in response said everything: "Well, I think I have a choir concert that weekend, but they can go fuck themselves: I'm not missing Springsteen."

The show was on a Thursday night, and it reminded me in the first 30 minutes just how powerful music could be. I did make it to the aforementioned choir concert on Sunday—albeit, with my voice blown out from screaming along to Springsteen songs for three hours a few nights before. But being with those people and performing music in such a dry, mathematical, passionless environment forced me to take the message of Bruce's show to heart. For every minute of Thursday's concert, you could tell that everyone on stage was playing for something higher: for Clarence; for Danny Federici; for lost friends and loved ones not in the E Street Band, but a part of the mythology they'd been spinning for 40 years. For every minute of Sunday's choir concert, I felt nothing. I was wasting my time on something that didn't make my heart feel full, at least not anymore, and I wasn't about to disregard the advice of my idol. Making music should be a safe haven, and when it wasn't anymore, it was time for me to go.

How can one person teach you so many lessons about life, even if you never meet them personally? How can a collection of songs and a guy up on a stage have such a massive impact on your life? These questions I pondered as I stood on the floor of the KFC Yum! Center on Sunday night, waiting for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band to take the stage. It had been almost four years since I'd seen them last, and my world had changed so much since then. I'd shifted my career focus; I'd graduated from college; I'd moved away from my home state and moved back again; I'd said goodbye to friends as we scattered across the country; I'd gotten a brief, brief taste of how bad life can feel when you're working a job that seems hopeless; I'd found my way into a work path I could feel proud of; I'd gotten married; I'd reckoned with the death of a loved one; I'd started writing songs of my own; I'd bought a house. In short, I'd grown up. I'd reached that mysterious frontier of adulthood that you can only really recognize when you take a moment to compare your life to how things used to be.

But for all of the things that change, others stay the same. One thing that will never change is how much the music of Bruce Springsteen means to me, and for every minute of the three and a half hours he played in Louisville on Sunday night, I was thankful for that fact. His 2009 show had inspired me to push harder for my dreams; his 2012 show had helped me realize when it was time to let them go. Sunday's show made me see that, while I let go of some dreams, I got to keep the most important ones. I got to make a life with someone I love. I got to keep my family close. I figured out a way to make a living and be comfortable and happy.

Listening to the E Street Band put the 20 songs from The River through their paces gave me a better sense of how lucky I am to have the life I have. That record is about adulthood, but it's also about people: about the people who got their dreams and the people that didn't, and perhaps most of all, about the people who adjusted their dreams as time went along. Born to Run was the fantasy; Darkness on the Edge of Town was the gritty nightmare; The River is reality. It's celebratory one minute and brutally crushing the next, as we all know life can be. But it's also defiant and resilient, a record about how, no matter how bad things get, there's (almost) always a light at the end of the tunnel. For every guy who ends up out on that lonesome highway in a stolen car, wishing to get caught, there's 10, 20, 100 others out there driving all night to see the girls they love. For every wreck on the highway of life, there's a thousand teenagers out in the street making romantic proclamations like "two hearts are better than one" and "little girl, I wanna marry you" outside the windows of their crushes.

Over time, my feelings on The River have shifted possibly more than with any other Springsteen record. At first, when I was delving into the catalog, I left The River alone, finding it too daunting to tackle after Born to Run, Darkness, and Born in the U.S.A.—not to mention Bruce's shinier latter day work. Once I'd finally taken time to listen and unpack the songs, I fell in love with The River but still wondered if it might have made a better single-disc affair. I figured that if Bruce had trimmed the record to it's best songs—which, at the time, I mostly deemed to be the slower, sadder, more serious cuts—it could have been his best record. Song-for-song, I might have been right: a 10 song record that includes "Independence Day," "The River," "Point Blank," "Stolen Car," "The Price You Pay," "Drive All Night," "Wreck on the Highway" and a few others could certainly stand up there with Born to Run in terms of wall-to-wall perfect material.

But that record would miss the point of what makes The River great. The songs would all be amazing, but the record itself would be too harrowing; too sad; too isolating. The sad songs are the soul of The River, but the mirthful rock songs are the heart. They're what makes this record "as big as life," and that fact was on full display on Sunday night. Sure, my favorite moments of the set were probably still the slow songs. I got choked up during "The River"; I was entranced by "Point Blank"; I felt my soul lifting heavenward during "The Price You Pay" and "Drive All Night." But hearing those songs alongside the stirring mission statement of "The Ties That Bind," the riotous block party of "Sherry Darling," or the loud crowd sing along on blistering bar band rockers like "Two Hearts" and "Crush on You" sold The River for me in a new way. Some nights, life is defined by heartbreak or family strife or fears of fading away. Other nights, it's about nothing more than drinking at a bar with your friends. Few albums encompass both sides of the coin quite like Springsteen's fifth.

I'm already at 2,000 words on this long, rambling piece and I haven't even encapsulated all of the amazing things about this concert, so let's go to bullet points for the big finish. Here are just a few memories from Sunday's show that I will never forget.

• Showing up way too early, missing out on the front pit lottery by less than 50 people, but still ending up at the very front of the general admission section, less than 50 feet from the stage.
• Being witnesses for the wedding of two people who got married on the concert floor, just so they could say that Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band played their reception.
• Knowing within the first two minutes of "Meet Me in the City" that the long road trip from Michigan had been worth it to be in attendance.
• Shaking Bruce Springsteen's hand (!) when he walked by our spot during "Hungry Heart."
• Seeing all of the E Street players at the top of their games, with specific notices for: Jake Clemons nailing his uncle's sax solos with newfound charisma; Nils Lofgren slaying the guitar solo during "Because the Night"; the Mighty Max Weinberg doing things at the drum kit that my non-percussionist mind can't even comprehend; Roy Bittan playing a piano solo ahead of "Point Blank" that was instilled with both a regal grace and a palpable sense of dread.
• Getting to scream the line "We learned more from a three-minute record, baby, than we ever learned in school" with my arm around my brother—probably the most apt lyric in the English language to describe our relationship.
• Shredding anything that was left of my vocal cords during a visceral, off-the-cuff rendition of "Born in the USA."
• Once again hearing all-time favorites like "Thunder Road," "Badlands," "Born to Run," and "Rosalita," sneaking glances back at the area towering around me and seeing every single person singing in unison.
• Ending the night on the bittersweet "Bobby Jean," the 35th song of the set, to officially make the Louisville show the longest of the tour so far.

Look, there will never be a better live act than Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. No one can match his passion, his mirth, his spontaneity, or his sheer stamina. This guy is 66 years old and he's be taking his shows past the 200-minute mark consistently every single night of this tour. It took me two to three days to recover just from having been in the audience. My voice was still a little groggy yesterday. How can a human being do what the Boss does up on that stage and not collapse from sheer exhaustion? This question is surely one of the great mysteries of the universe, but here's a non-mystery: The River tour is the year's must-see concert event and if you can get tickets, you should.

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.”