Big Man Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2009 by Slam Alley Productions, Inc. and AMF Inc.

  Foreword copyright © 2009 by Bruce Springsteen

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  www.twitter.com/grandcentralpub

  First eBook Edition: October 2009

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  ISBN: 978-0-446-55824-2

  Contents

  Copyright

  Foreword

  A Note from Don Reo and Clarence Clemons

  From the Massive Desk of Clarence Clemons

  Prologue: New York City, 2008

  Norfolk, Virginia, 1950

  Norfolk, Virginia, 1958

  Norfolk, Virginia, 1960

  New York City, 1966

  Jamesburg, New Jersey, 1969

  The Legend of Puerto Rico, 1970

  Neptune, New Jersey, 1970

  Everglades National Park

  The Legend from Under the Boardwalk, Early ’70s

  Everglades National Park II

  The Legend of Daphne, 1972

  Neptune, New Jersey, 1972

  The Legend of the Phone Call, Beverly Hills, 1972

  Belmar, New Jersey, 1972

  Sing Sing Prison, December 7, 1972

  Los Angeles, 1974

  New Jersey Turnpike, January 7, 1973

  Los Angeles

  Blauvelt / New York City Stories, Early ’70s

  The Legend of the Highway, 2008

  The Motorcade, Part I

  Red Bank, New Jersey

  Florida

  The Legend of Key West, 1976

  Santa Barbara

  The Legend of the Big Man Meeting the Chairman, Miami Beach, Florida, 1979

  West Hollywood, California, 1985

  The Legend of Havana

  Guru

  Shea Stadium

  Sanctuary

  Dublin

  The Legend of Fishing with Norman Mailer, Florida (Date Unknown)

  Grandmother

  The Legend of Big Sur, 1982

  The River

  Burbank, California

  The Legend of Kaupo, 1983

  Los Angeles

  The Legend of Clarence Getting High with the Funniest Man in the World, Hollywood Hills, 1984

  Los Angeles

  Japan, 1989

  New York City

  New Jersey Turnpike, 1989

  The Legend of Echo Hill Ranch, Texas, 1992

  Montreal

  The Legend of Central Park, 2000 Spain

  Spain

  Central Park

  Giants Stadium

  The Legend of Peahi (Dates Unknown)

  Backstage

  The Legend of Clarence and Annie at Fenway, Boston, 2004

  Los Angeles

  New York

  The Motorcade, Part II

  Hollywood, Florida

  New York City, 2003

  Scotland

  Islamorada

  Manchester, England

  Stockholm, Sweden, 2007

  Los Angeles

  Singer Island, Florida

  New Jersey

  New York City

  A Song for Danny, 1950–2008

  The Night Skies over Europe

  The Legend of Clarence and Thomas (A Screaming Comes Across the Bar), 2008

  Tiburon

  The Wedding, Tiburon, 8/8/08

  New York City

  Boston

  Matecumbe Key, Florida

  Matecumbe Key II

  Dick Moroso

  The Ride Home

  Marathon Key, Florida

  Looking Back from Islamorada

  New York

  The Legend of Clarence’s Last Visit with Norman Mailer, Paradise Island, Bahamas, 2001

  Singer Island, Florida

  Hallandale, Florida, January 24, 2009

  Tampa, January 27, 2009

  Tampa, January 28, 2009

  Tampa, January 29, 2009

  Tampa, February 1, 2009

  The Legend of Pozo, 2009

  Acknowledgments

  To Danny, my teacher and my friend.

  You always did things first.

  “Chevy coma soma doma.”

  To Judith D. Allison,

  who has made everything possible.

  Foreword

  This book gets as close to the “truth” about Clarence Clemons as I can imagine. Mere facts will never plumb the mysteries of the Big Man. That being said, there are only one or two stories in this book that I could swear are not true. All the rest are adventures that may and could have happened to my great friend.

  Clarence has spent much of his life as a drifting spirit. Where he walks, the world conforms to his presence. For his size, “C” is an unassuming man. He does not impress himself upon you. He just brings it with him when he comes.

  The story I have told throughout my work life I could not have told as well without Clarence. When you look at just the cover of Born to Run, you see a charming photo, a good album cover, but when you open it up and see Clarence and me together, the album begins to work its magic. Who are these guys? Where did they come from? What is the joke they are sharing? A friendship and a narrative steeped in the complicated history of America begin to form and there is music already in the air. Forty years later, I read this book with the same questions still running through my mind.

  Enjoy.

  Bruce Springsteen

  A Note from Don Reo and Clarence Clemons

  This is not a standard memoir. We are storytellers, and the sections labeled “Legend” are, quite simply, stories that we have told over the years in cars, bars, planes, trains, and rooms in hotels and hospitals. Most of them contain some fact and a lot of fiction, and so you should not take them literally. Conversations and situations have been constructed and imagined, swapped around in time and place, embellished, and invented. These legends are written in the third person because that’s how legends are told.

  Everything else you can take literally. It is all factual and reported just how it happened.

  In the end, we wrote this book to shed light on the E Street story as well as share the truths, lies, recollections, and imaginings we’ve told each other over the course of thirty-plus years. The bottom line is this: we have amazing tales to tell, and they’re all here. We had great fun living and writing these stories.

  You should’ve been there.

  Don and Clarence

  From the Massive Desk of Clarence Clemons

  I’d like to add one other thing. As this book grew, one thing became clear—it’s impossible to tell my story without telling at least part of Bruce’s story. But so much of his story has been told elsewhere in so many different books and articles that the challenge became how to write about him in a new and different way. I wanted to give the reader a glimpse into the personal and private side of our relationship without getting too personal and private. I hope we accomplished that. My heart will always be filled with gratitude to Bruce for one simple reason: without Scooter, there is no Big Man.

  Prologue

  New York City, 2008

  Don

  I’m not going to make it,” said Clarence.

&nb
sp; We were sitting in his hospital room overlooking the East River. He’d had his second knee-replacement surgery two days before. The other knee had been replaced two weeks ago.

  “Don’t talk like that,” I said. “You’re going to be fine.”

  “I mean the Super Bowl show,” he said. “There’s no way. You can’t imagine the pain.”

  For him to say this, the pain must have been off the charts. I’d been with him through surgeries before, including three hip replacements, which are no walk in the park. But I had never seen him like this or heard him talk this way.

  “It’s too soon to say that,” I replied. “Give it some time. Take the drugs and rest.”

  “They haven’t made a drug that can touch this pain. I feel like I’m made of pain.”

  It was the first week of October, and the band was booked to play the half-time show at the Super Bowl in February. That was only four months away. In my heart I agreed with Clarence. I did not think there was any way on God’s earth that he’d be able to make that show.

  “Do you want to work on the book?” I asked. “Feel like telling me some stories?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “I’ve been having all these crazy dreams. Fever dreams about all the people in my life. My family, Bruce, music, writers I like…” He trailed off momentarily but soon picked up again. “Some truly bizarre stuff. These dreams—they’re full of crazy conversations in weird places. I’ve been thinking about my mother and father a lot. I guess that’s natural in this situation. They’re gone and I feel like I’m moving toward them fast.”

  “This doesn’t sound like you, Big Man,” I said.

  That was true. Clarence has always been one of the most positive people in the world.

  “I know, Don,” he said. “But I don’t feel like me.”

  He turned his head away and looked out the window. It was early afternoon, and the FDR was already jammed with traffic. A big barge was being towed upriver just below us.

  “I’ve never missed a show in my life,” he said.

  He didn’t look at me when he said it, because he wasn’t talking to me.

  Norfolk, Virginia, 1950

  Clarence

  My mother told me this story, and I love it with all my heart. —C.C.

  The man was drinking Coca-Cola; the woman was drinking ginger ale. All the other people in the club were drinking alcohol in one form or another. Not that it was all that crowded. The small room was about one-third full. All eyes were on the stage and the man playing the horn. His name was Sill Austin and he was great. He played with a soft intensity that was mesmerizing. The man and woman had walked two miles from their home through the cold December evening to see him. They rarely went out these days. Babysitters were a luxury they couldn’t afford. But when the man had seen the ad in the paper saying Sill Austin was booked at Frankie’s Lounge, he knew they had to find a way to go. They’d listened to the recordings over and over.

  “You’re going to wear a hole right through that thing,” she’d say to him every time he put one of them on the record player.

  “Then I’ll go buy a new one,” he always said in return.

  And now here they were in the same room with him, watching him play and create that magic.

  Watching Sill Austin play pretty for the people. He reached out and took her hand. She squeezed his hand in response.

  After the show they sat at the table for a while and finished their sodas. It felt like the old days when they’d first started going out. Before the war to end all wars.

  “If World War Two was the war to end all wars,” he said once, “how come they gave it a number?”

  “I think that was World War One,” she’d said, smiling.

  “Even worse,” he had replied.

  “Did you like the show?” she asked him, even though she knew the answer.

  “Yeah,” he said. He was never a big talker.

  She thought he looked handsome in his Sunday suit. The shirt was as white as his teeth.

  “Why do you think you like him so much?” she asked. “There are plenty of other horn players out there.”

  “He plays the music that I hear in my head,” he said.

  It was very cold when they stepped outside. The wind had picked up. The weather forecast was calling for snow tomorrow. Christmas lights glowed in a lot of the shop windows. They both pulled up their collars and started to walk. She put her arm through his and they stepped in rhythm, shoulder to shoulder.

  “I think that’s him,” she said.

  He looked at Sill Austin putting his horn case into the front seat of a new DeSoto.

  “Yeah, that’s him, ” he said.

  “Wanna say hello?” she asked.

  “No,” he replied.

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause right now it’s perfect,” he said.

  After the first mile she said, “Clarence wants a train set.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “From Santa,” she said. “Electric trains.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Then when he grows up he can become a Pullman porter.”

  “I don’t think that’s necessarily true,” she said, smiling. The cold made it hard to feel her face.

  “The boy’s going to be nine years old,” he said. “Time he grew up.”

  “Meaning what?” she said.

  “I’m not getting him trains,” he said.

  “He’ll be disappointed,” she said.

  “He’ll get over it,” he said.

  “So what do you want to get him?” she asked.

  He lifted his head and looked at her. He smiled.

  “A saxophone,” he said.

  Norfolk, Virginia, 1958

  Clarence

  I fell in love with Shirley.

  Unfortunately, Shirley didn’t know about it.

  She was a cheerleader, and she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. She was more beautiful than I could have imagined. She was tall, athletic, and the color of honey. Her smile made the world smile long before Mary Tyler Moore. I loved everything about her.

  She didn’t know I existed.

  I was a sixteen-year-old defensive end on the football team. Not a glamour position. To the prettiest cheerleader in history, linemen were invisible.

  But I forced myself to say hello to her when I passed by on my way to the field or the bench.

  Just a “Hey, how ya doin’?” but at least it forced her to make eye contact with me. She’d smile in response and sometimes say “Hey” back at me.

  I thought about her every night. I was obsessed with her. I could spend an hour just thinking about her lips and the way her teeth sparkled and how perfect everything about her seemed to be. I wouldn’t have asked her to change anything. Usually I found fault with girls. Not that I could be selective; the fact was, I was thrilled to spend time with any girl who showed any interest in me at all. The horn helped. I was softer when I played the horn, and that made them feel safe. Otherwise I felt I was just big and black and scary. Some girls were pretty but had lousy personalities or strange voices or bizarre laughs or some fucking thing that just rubbed me the wrong way. Most of the time I’d just ignore those things and try whatever I could think of to get into their pants, but my heart wasn’t in it—just my dick.

  Shirley was different. I couldn’t even think about fucking her. It seemed wrong, somehow. Sure, once we were married we would fuck all the time, but until then she was just too special, too fragile or something. I really just wanted to be near her. All the time. Alone. Just the two of us. If everybody else in the world died I didn’t give a shit so long as Shirley survived and would talk to me. Would touch my hand and look into my eyes and smile. I wouldn’t need food or water.

  She lived in Woodlawn, a full twenty miles from my house. I’d hitchhike over to her neighborhood and walk around. I liked treading the same sidewalk that she walked on. I liked going to the same supermarket and thinking how she probably stood right here in front of
the cereal and took her time picking out Corn Flakes or Wheaties or Cheerios. Later I found out all she ate was oatmeal. That was after she started talking to me. That was after I’d spent several weeks walking past her house hoping to catch a glimpse of her through a window. After a while I’d determined that her room was on the second floor of the wood-frame house and her window looked out on the street.

  “Oh, hi,” she said. “What are you doing in this part of town?”

  “You know,” I said, looking at the ground.

  “No, I don’t know,” she said. I stole a glance at her. She was smiling a little smile that made me think that she probably did know.

  “Just hanging around,” I said.

  “Just hanging around,” she repeated, lowering her voice and doing a fairly good impression of me. “Wanna come over to my house?”

  “Yes,” I said. I was thinking, Hell yes, and Shit yes, and Fuck yes, but all I said was “Yes.”

  “Well, c’mon then,” she said, taking my hand and leading me away.

  She was an orphan. Her parents had been killed in an accident when she was a baby, and she was being raised by her aunt Cara.

  Cara was fine with us sitting on the couch in the living room or out on the porch, but she kept a fairly good eye on us. Not that there was anything to worry about. We were just getting to know each other and finding out what music we both liked, and film stars and food and colors and everything else there was to discover, and there was a lot.

  We laughed easily. We both seemed to have the same sense of humor, and we both liked the “sick” jokes that had been going around recently like: “The murderer is dragging the little girl through the woods and says, ‘What are you crying for? I have to walk back alone.’ ”

  I made my way all the way over there every Sunday for the next two months. I didn’t care how far it was, as long as she was there on the other side. I loved her with that deep and complete first love that knows no caution or fear, only joy. That’s what I felt when I was with her, or when I looked at her in school or on the sidelines at a game, or even when I just thought of her or spoke her name: joy. She would be my wife as soon as we were old enough to get married, I was sure of that. If our first was a girl, we’d call her Joy.