Authenticity has always been central to Bruce Springsteen’s brand, but as a master storyteller, it’s entirely possible that The Boss occasionally embellishes a memory, sprinkling a bit more drama or fairy dust onto a moment than reality might have provided. That’s why the legendary, almost folkloric tale of Springsteen’s first encounter with E-Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons might seem too good to be true—if not for the fact that the ‘Big Man’ himself confirmed the events.
“Bruce used to tell different versions of this story but I’m a Baptist, remember, so this is the truth,” Clemons said in one interview.
One thing everyone seems to agree on was that the night in question was a wet and windy one in September of 1971. At the time, Clemons was playing sax with the Asbury Park outfit known as Norman Seldin & The Joyful Noize, while another local group—a pre E-street “Bruce Springsteen Band”—was starting to build its own fanbase.
Clemons had previously been in an all-black soul band, but he’d joined the Joyful Noize as its sole African American member in 1969.
I wanted an adventure, something new,” Clemons said in a 2009 radio interview. “Rock n’ roll was new to me, because I grew up in a very religious background with very soulful music. But I wanted to rock. I was a rocker. I was a born rock n’ roll sax player.”
While playing with the Joyful Noyze, Clemons befriended the band’s singer Karen Cassidy, who was the first person to tell him he ought to meet “this guy Bruce” playing around town.
“It was about two months before I finally got to meet him,” Clemons recalled, “Because I was always working and he was always working.”
Clarence finally got the chance to seek out Springsteen on a September evening when the Joyful Noize had just finished up a matinee show at one Asbury Park club, and the Bruce Springsteen Band was scheduled to take the stage at another just down the road, a venue called the Student Prinze.
“Then a big nor’easter blew in,” Clemons said. “I was walking down to the Student Prinze and it was thundering and lightning. I mean, Bruce tells this story, but it’s really true. I walked into the club, and when I opened the door, the wind actually tore the door out of my hand and blew it down the street! So all the bouncers go running down the street after this door, and I’m standing there with this lightning and thunder behind me, and I walk in—this is, you know, a black guy walking into a white club. It’s like, wo, wait a minute.”
Skin colour aside, Clemons was also about 6-foot-4 and 17 stone (240 LBS), so his sudden appearance at the Student Prinze, backlit by a lightning storm, must have created quite a superhero sort of entrance.
“I found out who Bruce was,” Clemons remembered, “And I walked over to him and said, ‘I wanna sit in.’ And he said, ‘Sure, whatever you want!’ [laughs] So I sat in and it was a magical moment. I swear, I will never forget that moment. Right now when I’m on stage with Bruce I still feel that moment. It was something that all my answers, all those bands I played with, all the things I was searching for, and all I wanted to do was right there. . . . It felt like I was supposed to be there. . . . I looked at him, and he looked at me, and we fell in love.”
Roughly a year later, Clemons played his final show with the Joyful Noyze and officially joined the new E-Street Band just as Springsteen was set to record his debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park. The rest was history, of course, but that initial dramatic coming together of The Boss and The Big Man certainly wasn’t forgotten, as it was even re-told, with some theatrical additions, in parts of two famous E-Street Band songs: ‘The E Street Shuffle’ and ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out’.
The friendship between Springsteen and Clemons remained strong right up until Clarence’s death in 2011 at the age of 69.
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