Meeting Clarence Clemons
Bruce first met the late Clarence “Big Man” Clemons when he was playing at a club in Asbury Park. “A rainy, windy night it was, and when I opened the door, the whole thing flew off its hinges and blew away down the street,” Clemons once recalled. “The band were onstage, but staring at me framed in the doorway. Bruce and I looked at each other and didn’t say anything, we just knew.
Clarence Clemons and Bruce Springsteen, 2008. Photo By Tommy Holl/Shutterstock
“We knew we were the missing links in each other’s lives. He was what I’d been searching for.” He passed away in 2011. Springsteen would tell this story as proof that Clemons, the E Street Band’s personal Paul Bunyan, blew the doors off any room he was in.