Big Man

by Clarence Clemons

  So she comes screaming out of the trees, naked, unable to turn or to slow down. She goes flying down the hill straight at the lodge. A waiter sees her coming and opens the front door and then the back door. She sails across the deck, right through the dining room, still screaming, still naked, and out the back door and into the parking lot, where she finally comes to a stop. She stands up, zips up the suit, steps out of the skis, gets into her car and drives away.

  I’m pretty sure that’s one of Bruce’s.

  Anyway, on this Friday afternoon we’re sitting here and we’re doing all the stuff I just told you about. Killing time. Now, we also do not have a name for the band yet. We were sort of “Bruce Springsteen and the Bruce Springsteen Band,” which was a little redundant, and Bruce never had that kind of ego. So this “What do we call the band?” question is hanging in the air. We’re starting to work a little steadier and things are happening, and the music is getting really good, so we’ve got to settle on something pretty soon.

  “Should I go knock on the door?” said Danny.

  “Blow the horn again,” I said.

  So he blows the horn. It’s starting to get twilight now. The lights are on in the house. The curtain gets pulled aside and there’s David holding up one finger. Course we all hold up one finger back at him.

  Then Bruce sighs and gives that little laugh of his. He turns around in the seat.

  “This band has spent so much time parked on this fucking street we should call it the E Street Band,” he said. That’s how it happened. Just like that.

  Sing Sing Prison, December 7, 1972

  Clarence

  It was 1972. Mike Appel had booked us in Sing Sing, which is a maximum-security prison in New York. He thought it would be a good way to get some free publicity, but only one reporter showed up. It was a guy from a music magazine called Crawdaddy. It turned out to be one of the scariest gigs that I have ever played. Make that the scariest. It was going to be a daytime show. We weren’t used to being awake in the daytime, so that was unusual, too. We drove up to the gate. We were all looking at each other because we did not know what to expect.

  I remember the guards being very stern and hostile. I could feel that they did not want us there. After getting through the gate we were escorted to this building, where we were roughly searched.

  It was the most sterile place I had ever seen. It was what I imagined a Nazi prison camp to be like.

  We were then hustled into the place. All the time I felt like my throat could be slashed by some disgruntled inmate at any time. These were some of the hardest-looking individuals I have ever seen, even on TV. As we made our way to the prison chapel where we were to play, I avoided eye contact with anyone on the way. When we got there, there was no time for a sound check. We set up our equipment as the room filled up with killers and thieves. Men who didn’t give a shit about their own lives, and I knew they gave less than a shit about mine. All I could think was Let’s start playing, get this thing over, and get the fuck out of here.

  Our roadie that afternoon was named Albee Talon. He was with us a lot in the early days. He plugged in the organ, the amps, and the mikes, and they all blew up. A stream of white smoke streamed from each of them. The prison had direct current instead of alternating current. All our mikes and electric instruments were dead. I suspected that we would be dead soon ourselves.

  By now the audience of murderers and other very bad men were getting restless and we were getting scared. We were a rock-and-roll band with no guitars or organ or bass or vocal. The crowd started do get more like a mob, and the tension on the stage began to grow into panic. What could we do? Bruce looked at me with one of those “What the fuck do we do now?” looks, and I picked up my horn and began to play “Them Changes,” which was a Buddy Miles song. Just the sound of the music, any music, calmed the crowd down a little bit, but we weren’t out of the woods yet.

  Vinnie picked up the beat, and pretty soon we had a groove going on. The audience started to get into it and before long we were rocking. Just sax and drums, but it was funky. Then I saw this guy in the middle of the audience holding an alto sax. He was a little guy. He got up and started to wail along with me. Now the audience of prisoners was really going nuts. Bruce was clapping his hands and dancing around. What else could he do? The crowd was cheering ’cause one of their own was now in the band. It seemed as if he was lifted up by their adulation and transported to the stage, ’cause the next thing I know the guy is standing next to me. He is the lost member of the E Street Band. We played that song for over an hour in every arrangement possible. The same song. It turned out to be the greatest one-song gig in the history of man.

  I remember at one point, maybe an hour into this monster jam, Bruce runs up to the edge of the stage and yells something to the crowd that almost brought the house down literally.

  “When this is over,” he said, “you can all go home.”

  Los Angeles, 1974

  Don

  Over the years a lot of the shows have gone past curfew. In the early days Bruce pretty much ignored curfews, if there were any, and kept playing until either he or the audience couldn’t take it anymore. Many shows went past midnight, and a few didn’t end until closer to one o’clock.

  I saw a show that didn’t start until two a.m.

  I was in the early years of my career as a television writer and producer, and I was always on the lookout for new talent to exploit. That’s the way the business works. And because I was getting shows on the air, agents and managers always wanted me to see their clients. That’s what brought me to the Troubadour nightclub on Santa Monica Boulevard at about eight o’clock that night. A friend of mine at Columbia Records had invited me down to see a few of their artists. The record company was trying to get more exposure for these acts in the media, so they had decided to throw what amounted to a private party with music.

  Rumors around town that week were that Dylan would be performing at the show. This was a complete lie but it did generate a lot of interest, and by the night of the show it was impossible to get into the club. That week, that night, this was the hottest ticket in town.

  I snagged a seat right in front of the stage at one of the long tables and ordered a beer. It shaped up to be a long night, and I needed to pace myself.

  At nine o’clock the show started with the Hawaiian duo Cecilo and Kapono. I have never been a big fan of Hawaiian music outside of Hawaii. It’s sort of like buying a cowboy hat while visiting Texas. The hat looks good and you look good wearing it—as long as you remain in Texas. But get on a plane and fly to New York, and your hat will look and feel stupid. Anyway, Cecilo and Kapono were good, but not many people in the room were interested. I guess they couldn’t sense that onstage ’cause they played their ukuleles for about an hour and a half. By the time they finished I had stopped pacing myself.

  There was a delay while the stage was cleared and then set up for a band. There was a lot of excitement in the crowd. Almost everyone was there to see either Dylan or Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. I was still buzzing from the show a week earlier at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, where they opened for Dr. John.

  The folks from the record company still had some reservations about just how commercial Bruce and the band were. A year before, they performed at a similar event and the night was less than successful. They had to follow Edgar Winter’s blistering set, which had brought the house down, and Bruce ignored the fifteen-minutes-per-act rule and played some pretty obscure stuff for closer to forty minutes. The businessmen were not yet convinced.

  At eleven thirty Roger McGuinn took the stage. The ex-Byrd was in fine form that night with a great backing band. He sang “We did it for the stories we could tell,” and everybody loved him. I just wanted him to stop because I was starting to fade and I hadn’t seen Bruce yet. Roger also played for an hour and a half. By that time I had gone past drunk and was well on my way back to sobriety. Since the bars in LA closed at two o’clock I had to ma
ke a decision. Do I really tank up and try to cruise through Bruce’s set or switch to coffee now? I switched to coffee.

  It would have been very difficult to imagine it that night, but I would be in another, bigger room watching Roger and Bruce perform together again in thirty-four years. It was inconceivable. That night at the Troubadour we hadn’t even been alive for thirty-four years.

  Roger’s set finally finished about one o’clock, and the next hour was a kind of slow torture as his band cleared the stage and the roadies took over. First they tore down Roger’s band’s equipment and then set up Bruce’s.

  The lights went down and Bruce and the band took the stage at two.

  It was worth the wait.

  The first notes of the set were played by David Sancious, who stood at the side of the open baby grand piano and played its strings like a guitar, signaling the beginning of “Incident on 57th Street,” and they were off. The East Coast bias in the room became evident when a huge cheer greeted the lines, “It’s midnight in Manhattan, this is no time to get cute / It’s a mad dog’s promenade.”

  It was an incredible show. The hour and the circumstances were certainly contributing factors but the band also kicked ass. They played “Spirit” and “Sandy,” and then the man who was to become my best friend took the spotlight and played his sax on an early version of “Jungleland.” The night finally came to an end about three-thirty in the morning with a marathon version of “Rosalita.”

  Leaving the club that night I felt like my life had been changed. I had never experienced that kind of connection with an artist and his music. I didn’t want to go home. Nobody did. I remember standing on the sidewalk talking to an equally jazzed James Taylor and his new wife, Carly Simon. We all felt it. We all knew that Bruce and the E Street Band were going to change the face of music forever.

  New Jersey Turnpike, January 7, 1973

  Clarence

  The first mistake was letting Bruce drive.

  He wasn’t used to driving and had a tendency to go either way too fast or way too slow. And he would alternate between the two depending upon what was on the radio or on his mind.

  He was driving too slow when the cop pulled us over.

  I was riding shotgun. Garry Tallent was in the backseat. The car belonged to our drummer, Vinnie “Mad Dog” Lopez, who was in the van with Danny and all the equipment. We were all on our way from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, where we’d played the Main Point, to Boston, where we would do seven nights in a row at Paul’s Mall.

  I wasn’t looking forward to it because we’d be bunking together in the attic of one of our managers’ mother’s. Ahh, the glamour of show business.

  But right then it was the joint in my shirt pocket I was worried about. I didn’t want to get busted. But two longhaired white boys and a big black guy in a car at night said DRUGS in capital letters to every cop in the world.

  I went looking for the joint under my poncho but couldn’t find it.

  “Shit,” said Bruce, as he pulled over and rolled the window down.

  It was freezing cold outside and the car had no heater. My teeth were starting to chatter already.

  “I hope Mad Dog doesn’t have any shit in this car,” said Garry.

  “Shit,” said Bruce again.

  “Shit,” I said, unable to find the joint.

  The cop approached the car holding a big flashlight. He walked around the back and then the passenger’s side, checking us out. Then he went back to his own car and got into it.

  “Maybe he’s leaving,” I said.

  “He’s calling for backup,” said Bruce.

  Bruce was correct. A few minutes later another cop car pulled up with flashing lights and sirens. The cops got together, compared notes, and approached the car from both sides. The one on the driver’s side shined the bright light directly in Bruce’s face.

  “Know how fast you were going?” said the cop.

  The light was so fucking bright we couldn’t see the guy’s face.

  Bruce shrugged. “Seventy?” he guessed.

  “Seventeen,” said the cop. “Let’s see some ID.”

  Minutes passed. Very, very cold minutes.

  “I wish they’d just take us to jail so I could get warm,” said Garry.

  I still couldn’t find the joint. Could it have fallen on the floor? Was it in the folds of my shirt? Where the fuck was the thing?

  The cops returned. Two flashlights, two hands on guns.

  “Everybody out of the car,” said the first cop.

  “Officer, I don’t understand—,” Bruce began.

  “Out of the car now!” the cop interrupted.

  We got out.

  We got patted down.

  We got searched.

  We had to take our jackets off.

  Then our shirts.

  Then our shoes and socks.

  It was twenty-two degrees. The ground was covered with ice.

  We unpacked all our bags and laid our clothes on the ground.

  The cops harassed us for more than half an hour before allowing us to get dressed.

  “You hang around with the Federici kid, don’t you?” asked the other cop at one point.

  “He’s in the band,” said Bruce.

  “We’ve had problems with him,” said the cop.

  No shit.

  Everybody in New Jersey had had some kind of problem with Danny at one time or another. He was a wild man. And yet the wild man and the guy named Mad Dog were peacefully on their way to Boston.

  I was in a state of near panic, ’cause now I knew for sure the joint must be in the car, and the cops were about to start their search. Shit.

  They had been pulling out seats and looking under the threadbare carpet for twenty minutes or so when one of them spoke.

  “Got something,” he said.

  He had been rooting around in the glove compartment on the passenger’s side.

  I knew I was dead. Bruce had a strict “no drugs” policy, and this could ruin everything.

  “What did you find?” said the other cop.

  The first cop extended his hand to show four black capsules.

  “Pills,” he said. “Looks like black beauties.”

  “They’re dog vitamins,” said Bruce.

  “What?” said the first cop.

  “The guy whose car this is, Mr. Lopez, has an old dog named Mabel. A bulldog. She takes a lot of supplements on account of her bad hips. Those are her vitamins. The cap must’ve come off the bottle. It’s in there someplace. Check it out.”

  They did, and Bruce was again correct. Which pissed the cops off even more.

  After an hour and a half of physical and verbal abuse, they finally had to let us go.

  We got back on the road and headed north. Garry was driving. Bruce sat in the passenger’s seat and I was in the back.

  “Assholes,” I said.

  “Let’s get some coffee,” said Bruce. “I’m freezing my ass off.”

  “Me, too,” said Garry.

  Almost unconsciously I reached under my poncho and patted my shirt pocket.

  The joint was there.

  It was some kind of miracle. I know the fucking thing wasn’t there, and then it was. I can’t explain it. But as soon as we got to the restaurant I went out back and set fire to the evidence.

  Los Angeles

  Don

  I first met Clarence in 1975. I’ve spent most of my life writing and producing television shows. That year I inherited Cher after her split with Sonny and embarked on my first big-time producing job, The Cher Show. This turned out to be more difficult than I had anticipated. For one thing, Cher herself really didn’t want to do the show. Oh sure, she had agreed to do it and had made a great pilot for the series with Bette Midler and Elton John as guests, but when it came time to do the first new episode she was nowhere to be found.

  I was sitting in my office on Beverly Boulevard with Tom and Dick Smothers, who had managed to arrive at ten a.m. even though they had
started their day in San Francisco, and Bill Cosby.

  A word about Bill Cosby: sometimes Mr. Cosby is not the friendliest guy in the world. He can be somewhat remote, somewhat cold. He was both of those things that morning, sitting across the room from me and staring with a malevolence usually reserved for Teutonic dictators. In his defense, however, Cher was not there and he was.

  “Where is she?” asked Mr. Cosby.

  “Let me call the house,” I replied. Moments later I was talking to Cher’s housekeeper, who was telling me something I didn’t want to hear. “She’s on the way to the airport,” she said. “She’s going to New York to have her face peeled.”

  I couldn’t make sense out of what I was hearing. Cher couldn’t be going to New York; this was my first show. Tom and Dick were here, smiling and ready to go. Bill Cosby was going to kill me. And what the hell did it mean to have your face peeled? I took the only course of action that I could think of at the time. “Oh, my God,” I said. “Was anyone hurt in the accident?” Bill Cosby stood up and walked out.

  Eventually Cher did return, and after her face healed so did Mr. Cosby and the Smothers Brothers. The rest of that story will be left for another time. As a young producer ready to change the way things were being done in the business, I wanted to book different kinds of guests on that show. Specifically, I wanted hipper musical guests. I wanted David Bowie instead of Pat Boone (I ended up with both of them), but most of all I wanted Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.