Big Man

by Clarence Clemons

  “What’s in the case?” said Annie.

  “My saxophone,” said Jacob.

  “Why don’t you play it?” said Annie.

  “Oh, that would be cool,” said Jackie to Jacob. “Go ahead.”

  A few moments later the case was at Annie’s feet, and the boy was playing something beautiful while the girl leaned against him and looked at him lovingly. There was pure joy in her face. Annie snapped the picture. Then another. Then another. She pulled the camera away and looked at the shots. They were good. Very good. The first one was the best, though. In it she captured the instant he connected with some soul note that spoke to him in music. It was a beautiful picture.

  “Can I see?” said Jackie.

  “Here you go,” said Annie, handing them the camera.

  “Hey, that’s cool,” said Jacob.

  “Thank you,” said Jackie.

  “No problem,” said Annie. “Enjoy.”

  She walked away, down toward the small tunnel on the way to the Delacorte Clock and the East Side beyond.

  “Where do you want to go now?” said Jacob, putting the horn away.

  “Let’s go take a picture by the lake,” said Jackie.

  “Good idea,” he said.

  He looked at the photograph the woman had taken again, and he smiled.

  “What?” said Jackie.

  “This picture is good,” he said.

  Spain

  Don

  On the European leg of the “Magic” tour Clarence was a prisoner of pain.

  His knees had become so bad that walking anywhere was very difficult, so he tried to confine his movements to the stage.

  The rest of the time he stayed in his room. When he wasn’t eating or sleeping or doing one of the many kinds of therapy he employs, he sat by the window and looked out at foreign cities and people he would never meet.

  The highlight of his day was talking to Victoria via computer in the late evening. Without that and the joy that performing music still brings, he would’ve been a total recluse. Pain had forced the most outgoing of men to stay behind closed doors. Immigration issues had prevented Victoria from leaving the United States.

  “I miss her so much,” he said one night. “I cry real tears when I’m not with her. Yeah, I can talk to her ten times a day but I can’t watch her walk.”

  In Sweden, Bruce coaxed Clarence out on an off day to go sailing. Other than that, the Big Man never left his room in any city until I arrived in San Sebastián on July 14.

  I was traveling with my wife, Judy, a writer friend named Dean Lorey, and the famous comedian Damon Wayans. Damon and I had just finished a pilot for a new series, and he was looking to do some things out of his comfort zone. Spain and Springsteen were certainly that. Along with Clarence and his assistant, Lani, we had a fantastic meal in a hillside restaurant and went back to the hotel and closed the bar at about three a.m.

  It would be great to see the show through Damon’s eyes, as he had never seen Bruce perform before and was only vaguely familiar with his music.

  “Major Payne!” said Bruce. “My kids are beside themselves. ‘That’s Major Payne,’ they said.”

  “Yup,” said Damon. “And Dean here wrote it.”

  “So what brings you to San Sebastián?” said Bruce. He was very tanned. He and his family had gone to the local beach that day like any other tourists and had gotten some sun. He had evidently left his sunglasses on and had white circles around his eyes like a skier.

  “We just came to hang out with Don and Clarence,” said Damon. “We just saw the Temple of Soul.”

  “It’s unbelievable, isn’t it?” said Bruce. “I’ve got concrete walls and an old couch, and he’s got an entire fucking temple.”

  “It’s very cool,” said Damon.

  “This is their first show of yours,” I said. “They’ve never seen you before.”

  “Well, in that case we’ll have to step it up a notch,” said Bruce.

  About an hour before showtime Judy, Dean, and I were sitting outside the E Street lounge when Damon came out dragging Little Steven with him.

  “Look who I found,” said Damon.

  We all said hello and made small talk about his radio show, and Steven finally excused himself and left. After he left Damon shook his head and smiled.

  “What are the odds we’d run into him here?” said Damon.

  At first I thought he was kidding. Then I realized he wasn’t.

  “Actually the odds are pretty good,” I said.

  “Why?” said Damon.

  “Well, he’s in the band,” I said.

  “What band?” he asked.

  “This band,” I said. “Bruce’s band.”

  “Bullshit,” said Damon. “He’s an actor. He was on The Sopranos.”

  “Yes, but he’s also the guitar player in the E Street Band.”

  “No shit?” said Damon.

  I raised my right hand.

  “Swear to God,” I said.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said. “Bruce must be a huge Sopranos fan.”

  I don’t think he really believed me until he actually saw Steven onstage.

  He was equally amazed a few songs into the set when he recognized Conan O’Brien’s bandleader on the drums.

  Bruce held true to his promise to “kick it up a notch,” and the show was amazing. Patti was onstage for the first time on this leg of the tour, and the whole evening had a house-party feel to it.

  Damon took tons of pictures during that concert with a new camera he’d just bought, and he thoroughly enjoyed the show. We did one of those fast-out, police-escort things back to the hotel, and Damon waved to the crowds lining the street like he was in the band, too.

  “I thought I knew what it was like to be famous,” he said, as we drove through the crowded Spanish streets. “But there’s nothing like rock-star fame. And Clarence is amazing. I think he’s got to be one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. There are so many facets to him. I mean he’s black, but he lives in a white world and it hasn’t seemed to affect him. He’s still his own man.”

  Clarence had a particularly good night also. He knew he would. He had predicted as much in his suite the night before while sitting with Dean Lorey at three a.m. after a night of good food and friendship.

  “You see how I am now? I’m this nice easygoing guy, we’re laughing and having fun, right?” said Clarence.

  “Right,” said Dean.

  “When you see me on that stage tomorrow night you’ll be looking at a totally different human being. Another person entirely. You’ll be looking at the Big Man.”

  He leaned forward and smiled that brilliant smile.

  “And the Big Man,” he said, “is a motherfucker.”

  After the show Clarence did something he does often, which is to hold court in the hotel bar. He sets himself up and basically receives people. They are always respectful and awestruck and want nothing more than a signature or a photograph of themselves with the Big Man.

  I have never seen Clarence handle this situation with anything but patience and graciousness. He has a smile and a kind word for everyone and seems willing to sit with fans all night long. One night in Spain we sat in the lobby bar of the Maria Christina Hotel with Damon and Dean, and watched what seemed to be an endless stream of faces approach Clarence. It was an unusual situation for Damon, who went largely unrecognized in Spain. He spent the night photographing Clarence and the fans who stopped by. It was actually a lot of fun. It’s easy to forget the impact that Clarence has had on people’s lives. The emotion of the music touches people deeply, and they are anxious to communicate that to him.

  After San Sebastián the band headed for Madrid. Our plans to join them were interrupted when I came down with a stomach virus that kept me in bed for three days. Judy and I set our sights on catching up with the circus in Barcelona, and Damon and Dean headed off to Paris by train. On Friday morning we made our way to the San Sebastián airport. We got there at 9:4
0 for the 11:00 flight to Barcelona. At the ticket counter the woman from the airline said in broken English, “The flight is delayed, maybe for two hours, or cancelled… forever.” This did not sound good. I was still feeling weak having had little to eat for three days. “There is a flight from Pamplona to Barcelona leaving in one hour, which is a one-hour taxi drive away,” she said hopefully. She handed us boarding passes and luggage tags and pointed to the taxis lined up outside the small terminal building. “Of course there is no charge,” she said.

  This sounded reasonably optimistic. However “no charge” was not good news to the drivers of the beat-up old Toyotas, which served as taxicabs. No charge to them meant “no tip,” so we ended up with a sullen mutant who decided if he had to take us to Pamplona he was going to make the ride as uncomfortable as possible.

  A two-lane road runs through the beautiful mountains between San Sebastián and Pamplona. It rises and falls in elevation and is jammed with trucks and other slow-moving vehicles. We averaged 130 kilometers per hour. Our attempts to get this nail-biting fuckhead to slow down proved fruitless, and knocking him unconscious would have defeated the purpose. He dismissed us with a wave and sped up every time we spoke to him. Of all the people I met in my entire visit to this wonderful country, he was the only person I hated. I still hate him, and someday I will hunt him down and strangle him in an alley. He’ll be stumbling out of some Tapas bar some night in winter, and a crazed ninety-year-old American holding a lamp cord will leap out of the darkness and squeeze the life out of his worthless shit-for-brains head.

  Other than that the trip was good.

  We arrived at the Gran Hotel Florida about the same time as the Springsteen family. We checked in and crashed for a few hours before venturing outside to take a look around and get the lay of the land.

  The hotel is beautiful and sits near the top of the highest hill overlooking Barcelona. Next door is the Medieval Church of the Sacred Heart with its giant statue of Jesus, his arms outstretched in benediction over the city below. I say the church is next door but that’s not entirely accurate. The two buildings are separated by what looks to be Coney Island.

  A full-on amusement park is virtually on top of the church. It must be the world’s closest juxtaposition between Jesus Christ and a Tilt-a-Whirl.

  * * *

  Later, we ran into Dennis Miller and Brian Williams at the Camp Nou concert, a high-energy affair with an audience of over eighty thousand singing all the lyrics to all the songs. Brian Williams turned out to be very quick and funny. When I knew I was about to be introduced to him I thought I would say, “Since you come into our home every night I feel like you’re family,” then I planned to pause to allow him to say “Thank you,” or whatever, and then I would say, “So can I borrow twenty bucks?”

  “It’s a pleasure,” I said, when we were introduced moments later. “Since you come into our home every night I feel like you’re family.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And as a family member I want to talk to you about the way you’ve been dressing lately.”

  The Big Man was on fire in Barcelona. Offstage he moved slowly and felt all the miles, but onstage he really was a different man. A stunning “Jungleland” capped his final night in Spain. It was time to head home and to his new love, Victoria, and a new tomorrow, perhaps once again as a married man. Time would tell.

  Central Park

  Clarence

  One day when we got back from Europe, Don, Victoria, and I were riding through the park in a horse-drawn carriage after having lunch at the Tavern on the Green. One kid was sent over to our table by his parents with a pen and a napkin.

  “Are you Bruce Springsteen?” the kid said.

  “Do I look like Bruce Springsteen?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” said the kid.

  “Then why did you ask?”

  “My mother said you were… she said Bruce Springsteen.”

  “No, I’m not Bruce Springsteen. I’m Clarence Clemons.”

  “Do you know Bruce Springsteen?” asked the kid.

  “We’ve met,” I said.

  “I mean are you in the band with him?” said the kid.

  “Yes, I am,” I said.

  “Could I have your autograph?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll sign it ‘Bruce Springsteen’s friend, Clarence Clemons.’ How’s that?”

  “That would be great,” said the kid.

  * * *

  I sat back smoking a postprandial cigar while cruising through the park and riffing. Don loves it when I do this because my mind jumps around in space and time, and I’m likely to say anything. I started to tell stories that I knew neither Don nor Victoria had heard before.

  “Big Red was my grandfather’s mule,” I said. “He was a stump-pulling mule. I used to watch him work. It was an incredible sight. He would pull and strain so hard, with such intensity I thought he would explode. Every muscle in his body was working and bulging out, and his eyes were like fire. I expected him to breathe smoke from his nose. And he would pull and pull and pull without stopping until he got that stump out of the ground. He was unbelievable! And I said to myself, ‘I’m going to be like that. I’m going to have that kind of purpose and that kind of focus. And I’m going to work and work until my body looks like that.’ And that’s what I did. I modeled myself and my life and my work ethic after Big Red.”

  “Don’t stop now,” said Don. “Tell us some more weird shit.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll tell you the story of Rolling Thunder.”

  “The Bob Dylan tour?” asked Don.

  “No,” I said. “Rolling Thunder was an Indian medicine man. Jerry Garcia called me one night when I was living in a small town in Nevada and said that I should visit Rolling Thunder, who was in a hospital there.

  “So I went over there and walked into the room, and this old man is in bed. He radiated the most incredible energy I had ever felt come from another human being. He looked at me when I stepped into the room, and he waved me over to his bedside.

  “ ‘They cut off my leg,’ said Rolling Thunder. ‘Wanna see?’

  “I didn’t want to see, but he threw back the covers and showed me anyway. He’d lost his leg to gangrene. He’d gotten an infection somehow and was trying to treat it with herbs and sticks and clouds and shit, and it didn’t work. Anyway, he says, ‘I’d like you to sit with me tonight,’ and I said, ‘Sure,’ and so that’s what I did. I sat in a chair next to his bed and neither of us said another word all night, but I swear we were communicating the whole time. It was as if that whole room was vibrating with energy.

  “We remained friends for the rest of his life, which was about ten more years. He’d always call me as his last resort to bail him out of trouble or help him in some way. I loved that guy. Rolling Thunder.”

  The carriage turned onto Fifty-ninth Street.

  “Can you drop me off in front of my hotel?” I asked the driver. “I’ve got a handicapped sticker.”

  “Big Man!” yelled some guy passing by in the park.

  “Guilty,” I said, waving.

  I handed the cigar to Victoria, who took a drag. We now shared cigars. The things we do for love.

  “The first time I met Victoria’s parents, I open the door, get out of the car, and fall flat on my face. They’re standing there thinking, Is he drunk? Is he dead? It was a real ice breaker,” I said.

  Victoria laughed at the memory.

  “Tell Victoria your story about that guy,” I said to Don.

  “Which guy?” he said.

  “You know, the comedy writer guy. The one with what’s his name… Dorf,” I said.

  “Tim Conway,” he said.

  “Right,” I said.

  “He’s talking about a guy named Pat McCormick,” Don said. “He was this brilliant comedy writer slash actor slash lunatic back in the seventies and eighties out in Hollywood. He did legendary crazy things.”

  “Like what?” said Victoria.

  �
�Like one Thanksgiving at his house he brought out his newborn son, naked on a silver platter surrounded by fruits and vegetables, and served him to his guests, saying, ‘They were out of turkey.’ ”

  “Oh, my God,” she laughed.

  “That’s hysterical,” I said. Don Reo has some of the best show-business stories I’ve ever heard in my life.

  “Anyway, one day over at ABC he and Tim Conway are leaving the lot and walking to lunch at some restaurant, when this carload of tourists pulls up. Husband, wife, two kids in the backseat, and clearly out-of-towners. The wife says to Pat, ‘Excuse me, could you tell us how to get to the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard?’ and Pat says, ‘Why of course, madam,’ and he takes out his dick and points to the blue vein. ‘This is Sunset Boulevard, that’s where we are now,’ he said. ‘Just follow this three blocks and take a left here.’ He indicated a tiny red vein extending off from the blue one. ‘That’s Sunset. You’ll find the Chinese Theatre about a mile down on the right about here near this freckle.’ ”

  We rode on through the park a bit more. It was hot and humid, and the forecast was calling for evening thundershowers.

  Giants Stadium

  Don

  That last show in Jersey was off the chart,” said Clarence.

  He was right. I got to watch that show from on the stage, and by the end of it I was amazed and exhausted. It started at nine-thirty and went virtually nonstop for three hours and twenty minutes. I saw a lot of the four-hour marathons in the ’70s, but those included a thirty- to forty-five-minute intermission. The beast at Giants Stadium in the summer of 2008 exceeded those shows in terms of sheer performance and music played.

  “During the encore,” said Clarence. “I thought Bruce was trying to kill us. I didn’t think he was ever going to stop.” Then he smiled and drew on his cigar. He exhaled, lowered his sunglasses, looked at me, and smiled. “I loved every second of it,” he said.

  It had been quite a night.