Monday, June 20, 2011
Some bands break up; some bands fade away. The E-Street Band always had an exuberant everyman quality, and now it seems like it is coming to an end the way everyone does, with age and illness and death. Few musicians are more associated with youth and exuberance than Bruce Springsteen and his collaborators; for a long time he's been writing about mortality, and now it is catching up with them. Clarence Clemons was central to both the sound and the mythos, and he has left a Clarence Clemons sized hole behind. It always seemed to me that Danny Federici had a bigger influence on the composition of Springsteen's songs than has been generally acknowledged, but the loss of Clemons really feels like the end. Bruce will keep playing, and so will the other survivors, but it isn't going to feel quite the same again for anyone, us included.There's no shortage of Clemons tributes, but "No one else could have made 'Rosalita' sound like the band was keeping up with him instead of the other way around—he's there at every hairpin turn. Structurally, 'Born to Run' is completely different: Clarence leaps in, solo space clearly delineated to him, and he makes everything he can of it. He played sax the way Prince plays guitar: generously, using all the tricks he can pull out for their sheer entertainment value, yet you don't question his sincerity for a second."
// posted by Bill @ 8:09 AM 
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