Tried to post this on Facebook on the occasion of Clarence Clemons’s passing. Too long. So here you go. A couple adventures with the Big Man (and just dig that Eric Meola cover photo):
Met Clarence after a Springsteen show in Detroit, ’75 or ’76, while I was at Creem. When Bruce crashed (he never was into partying), I found Clarence, who was. It wound up around 3 am with me challenging the truly Big Man, an ex-college player, to some kind of football duel. Whereupon he jovially, but terrifyingly, set up in his 3-point stance and blasted me across the hotel room.
Hung out in New Orleans in ’78, too, but sober: two of us walking down the middle of Bourbon Street. White cop confronts Clarence, accuses him of stealing a purse from a nearby bar. Pure harassment, seeing as how we had yet to enter any bar. And little choice but to take it. I’ll never forget looking up at the Big Man afterwards to see tears welling in his eyes.
Big soul, big talent and big fun and taken too soon.
