I agree hbwriter, but to me the comment "Come on, Mick and Keith. Musicians need to play. The Stones need to Roll", does not fit here, and it has nothing to do with the memory of CC and self-reflection regarding life and death. As mentioned above, there are many threads where people can post about their thoughts and wishes regardiung the Stones.

yes Koen, but this is just a message board on the internet. it's not the condolence book at his funeral.

Of course, it's just the internet, but that doesn't mean that people can just show some compassion and be considerate.

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ab

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71Tele

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keefriffhard4life
i wonder what songs bruce will retire from his setlists now

None. My guess is he'll get another saxophone player, not to "replace" Clarence ('cause you can't) but to preserve those parts of the music.

Some parts of the music can't be replaced: would YOU want to be the well-paid bastard that has to play Jungleland in the Big Man's absense? Sure, Crystal Taliaferro played the Born to Run sax solo with the Wilshire Blvd. Band in 1992, but there are sax lines on those albums that perhaps should be left alone. I'm guessing that a lot of the old catalog will be drastically rearranged.

On the other hand, can you imagine the optical waterworks of You're Missing with a video montage of Danny and Clarence? The 2002 shows were emotionally draining enough!

Well when they played Sandy in Tampa at the first show after Danny died,that was emotional enough. I don't know what they'll do as a replacement for the Big Man. But it's a little early to speculate.

Just listened to his solo album, Peacemaker, or peacekeeper, a few times today.
great album, beautiful music.
Listen to it, and enjoy
byeee
jeroen

I saw Springsteen live in the 80's.
I remember that I had been completely stunned by his awesome performance .A great musician indeed.

The Big Man will be sorely missed by all. I'm glad I got to see him play a number of times on the last tour - including 4 of the 5 final Giants Stadium shows in New Jersey, and the last show at The Spectrum in Philadelphia. So glad now I got to see Clarence play the entire "Born To Run," "Born In The USA" and "Darkness On The Edge of Town" album sets they were doing at those shows. I don't know how Bruce can ever replace him onstage so I guess he'll just have to retire a big chunk of his live repetoire. It's impossible to think of them doing songs like "Jungleland" and "Tenth Avenue Freezeout" without him.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2011-06-21 06:45 by TornAndFried.

man - i heard thunder road earlier - the live one from 75 - not even any sax in it - and i started crying

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hbwriter
man - i heard thunder road earlier - the live one from 75 - not even any sax in it - and i started crying

A local radio station did a different twist as a tribute this morning. Playing 10 songs with memorable sax solos. Can't you Hear me Knocking was one. Then they finished with Jungleland. Nothing like the solo on Jungleland to bring a tear to your eye.

Very sad. He seemed to have a joyful presence on stage.....

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sweetcharmedlife

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hbwriter
man - i heard thunder road earlier - the live one from 75 - not even any sax in it - and i started crying

A local radio station did a different twist as a tribute this morning. Playing 10 songs with memorable sax solos. Can't you Hear me Knocking was one. Then they finished with Jungleland. Nothing like the solo on Jungleland to bring a tear to your eye.

agree- i may not be a part of the full-time springsteen faithful - but jungleland? forget about it - one of the all time best - a forever classic

Exactly, hbwriter. It's a time of reflection and desperation for the loved ones who are living, understanding all things come to an end, and not wanting it to. Thanks for understanding.

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hbwriter

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Koen
Please leave your selfish desire about the Stones future out of this. This thread is about CC, RIP:

why is it so terrible if people reference the stones in an honest way on a stones site - regardless of the thread? i didn't find anything tasteless about that at all - it's just an honest gut-check from a fan and the sort of broad cross-referencing that happens a thousand times a day on this site. In many of our lives when someone we cherish passes, often it leads to some self-reflection/taking stock of our own lives - that's all this felt like - no more no less

My last post was in response to this. Anyway, not here to fight. Very sad about the loss of Clarence Clemons and what it does to the E Street Band! I've already posted 3 clips of CC.

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riverrat
Exactly, hbwriter. It's a time of reflection and desperation for the loved ones who are living, understanding all things come to an end, and not wanting it to. Thanks for understanding.

eloquently stated

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hbwriter

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riverrat
Exactly, hbwriter. It's a time of reflection and desperation for the loved ones who are living, understanding all things come to an end, and not wanting it to. Thanks for understanding.

eloquently stated

may god bless big man

the Big Man was loved by all and his presence was larger than life. His legend will live on as will his music, but it is a sad day for rock and roll, and life in general... to note the passing of time, which waits for no one.

Did he leave behind any wife or kids? I never heard of any.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011-06-21 22:24 by Duane in Houston.

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Duane in Houston
Did he leave behind any wife or kids. I never heard of any?

i thought he's been married a couple of times and i'd assume he has a kid or 2 from the marriages

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Duane in Houston
Did he leave behind any wife or kids? I never heard of any.

Married 3 or 4 times, I think. A few sons, one of whom has guested on sax with the E street band. First wife was Swedish and the one with him when I met him three years ago was Chinese.

Gutted to hear about this. He really was the face of that band and that sax really typified it's sound too. And a really kind and warm human being too.

RIP Big Man and thanks for a lifetime of great memories

[www.sun-sentinel.com]

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Duane in Houston
Did he leave behind any wife or kids? I never heard of any.

Clarence was actually married 5 times, and leaves behind 4 sons.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011-06-22 08:49 by TornAndFried.

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Chris Fountain
[www.sun-sentinel.com]

Sounds like a really nice service. RIP Clarence.

"It's just some friends of mine and they're busting down the door"

ROCKMAN

God Bless you Clarence forever,

For those wondering if the death of Clarence Clemons will mean the end of the E Street Band: Steven Van Zandt doesn't seem to think so. In a moving and eloquent tribute to Clemons on his syndicated radio show, Underground Garage, Van Zandt, after talking about the bond that the musicians of any great band have with each other, said: "We will continue to make music and perform. Let's face it, that's all we really know how to do. But it will be very different without him."

Here is some of what he said:

"Rock 'n' roll has lost an irreplaceable performer. The E Street Band has lost its second member. And, personally, I have lost a lifelong friend and brother. Rock 'n' roll historians will discuss in great detail and lengthy discourse the profound racial implications and effect of a white rock band in the early '70s having a black man with such a strong featured presence as well as the unmistakeable and dangerously unfashionable ... more than just a nod, but marriage to tradition, by the inclusion of, to many, the embarrassingly and hopelessly anachronistic saxophone. It was a time of reaching for the future. Glam had started. And yet Bruce Springsteen decided to keep a firm grasp of the past, as he looked ahead. Commercial suicide for anyone less talented than he.

"Band members have a special bond. A great band is more than just some people working together. It's like a highly specialized army unit, or a winning sports team. A unique combination of elements that becomes stronger together than apart. We become a part of each other and experience marvelous, miraculous moments in life that only we truly share. We will continue to make music and perform. Let's face it, that's all we really know how to do. But it will be very different without him. Just as it's been different without Danny (Federici), our first lost comrade.

"The quality of our lives is diminished every time we lose a great artist. It's a different world without Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Curtis Mayfield, Brian Jones and the rest. But like all of them, Clarence leaves us his work, which will continue to inspire us and motivate us, and future generations, forever. Rock 'n' roll is our religion, and we will continue to lose disciples as we go, but we pick up the fallen flag and keep moving forward, bringing forth the good news that our heroes have helped create, their bodies lost, but their spirits and their good work everlasting.

"And for the E Street Band, the heart of us, Clarence and Danny, will always be there, stage right. So thank you, Clarence. I didn't get a chance to say goodbye. But I'll see you again, soon enough. Thank you for blowing life-changing energy and hope into this miserable world with your big, beautiful lungs. And thank you for sharing a piece of that big heart nightly with the world. It needs it. You and that magnificent saxophone, celebrating, confessing, seeking redemption and providing salvation all at once. Speaking wordlessly, but so eloquently, with that pure sound you made. The sound of life itself."
[www.nj.com]

Bruce's eulogy.
[brucespringsteen.net]

From The New Republic:


Good-Bye to the Big Man
David Hajdu June 25, 2011 | 12:00 am

In the dozens and dozens of shows by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band that I’ve seen since the early 1970s, when I was a kid in New Jersey and Springsteen was, too, I’ve found something comforting—and something discomforting—in Clarence Clemons’s presence on stage. Clemons, the tenor saxophonist, singer, and tambourine player, died of complications from a stroke this week at age 69, and Springsteen, in an encomium issued hours after Clemons’s death, celebrated the outsized appeal of the bandmate he called “the Big Man.” As Springsteen noted, “He carried within him a love of people that made them love him. He created a wondrous and extended family.”

Clemons’s enormous popularity among Springsteen’s fans clearly had as much to do with his personality as with his long-diminishing musical contributions to Springsteen’s music. To acknowledge his primary contributions as extra-musical is not to say they were all less than musical, though, as the Boss himself suggested in his statement. “With Clarence at my side,” Springsteen said, “my band and I were able to tell a story far deeper than those simply contained in our music.”

Among the main themes of that story are loyalty and service, values that Springsteen has always prized in both the narratives of his songs and the meta-narrative of his life as a performer. Put gently, out of respect for his memory, Clemons was a saxophonist of limited capacity. Springsteen seemed to have known this but to have valued Clemons precisely for his limits. As he once described Clemons’s musicianship in an interview, “He plays the notes you want to hear.” Speaking for myself, I would have preferred sometimes to have heard more than the same few notes, always played the same way. But I’m a minority voice in Springsteen fandom, and I see in Springsteen’s four decades of loyalty to Clemons an almost self-sacrificing act of devotion to his public. To understand Springsteen, I find, it always helps to think like a Catholic boy.

When Clemons joined the E Street Band, four decades ago, he fit well in the woolly hybrid of rock and folk and funk and jazz that Springsteen was making at the time. But, as Springsteen’s musical style coalesced and his voice grew more rural (and I refer both to his musical voice and his speaking voice), there was no longer much call for Clemons’s growling sax. On stage, there was less and less for the Big Man to do but stand there, pat the tambourine, chant a bit in the background, toot a few notes, and wait for his solo in “Jungleland.” Steadily over the years, Clemons’s stage persona essentially replaced his music in the public eye, and no one mentioned the discomforting current of stereotyping in that persona.

The only African American in the E Street Band, sidelined and beaming in the enormity that came almost solely to define him, the Big Man became the Black Man as a symbol of physical prowess and mystical power. Springsteen, in concerts, would introduce him with stagey hyperbole that played teasingly off that image. “The minister of soul, the secretary of the brotherhood,” Springsteen would call him, and scream out his nickname, “the Big Man!” He could just as well have said, “the Black Man!” It is sad that Clarence Clemons had to go for the Big Man to die.





Source URL: [www.tnr.com]

that article makes my head hurt. he was a saxophone player of limited capacity? are they knocking his skills? he was a great saxophone players.

also he wasn't the only black man ever in the e street band

thanks again for your music Clarence
One love
jeroen