Big Man Read online

  Backstage at a Springsteen show is not like the wild crazy days of old, the “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” days. Yes, there are women around, but I’ve never witnessed any overt groupiness. Clarence has been known to have a shot of Patrón before going onstage (okay, maybe more than one), but, outside of legitimate prescription medicines, the most exotic drug I’ve seen is Lipitor. The thing runs like a clock. This is due to Bruce’s personality and to the aforementioned George Travis, the man who produces everything but the music. He’s the first person I’ve seen upon arriving at every venue, and his demeanor remains the same in all circumstances: placid.

  In fact, everyone I’ve encountered operates at the highest level of professionalism. And some of the jobs that need to get done are unusual. For instance, consider that it takes at least five people to assemble the Clarence Clemons you see onstage. “Before they get to me I’m just a broken-down old man,” he says. But the combined talents of his assistant, his personal trainer and physical therapist, various doctors, and the hair and makeup artists produce the transformation from old man into a rock-and-roll icon. He then gets the handwritten set list from the Boss, runs through the night’s songs (although Bruce rarely sticks to the initial list), and stands in the hallway leading to the stage. He’s always first. When Bruce exits his dressing room, Clarence says, “Boss man walking! Boss man walking!” Then the rest of the band arrives. They form a circle of solidarity and then head out to, in the words of the late Terry Magovern, “conquer yet another city.”

  New York

  Clarence

  Did you ever get to see Count Basie?” I asked Don.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Several times in Vegas. He was playing at the Tropicana, and I was with Slappy White at the Flamingo.”

  “You worked with Slappy White?” I said.

  “My first job in show business was playing straight man for him and writing jokes. We were on the road for almost three years in the sixties. Our first gig was opening for Jackie Wilson at the Apollo in 1967.”

  “You’re an unusual white man,” I said to my old friend. It’s true, he is.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Anyway we were on the bill with Wayne Cochran and the C.C. Riders.”

  “Oh, shit,” I said. “I remember him from Miami. Big, tall white guy with huge hair, right? Sang like Otis Redding?”

  “That’s him. He had ten horns. First trumpet player was also his hairdresser. Wayne was wild. He dressed like Elvis even offstage. Used to walk around the casino in a spangled jumpsuit with a cape. Had his wife on one arm and his girlfriend on the other. I hear he’s a preacher now back in Georgia.”

  “I heard that, too.”

  “But I actually got to hang out with Count Basie. He used to like the old keno lodge at the Flamingo, and I met him and Sarah Vaughan there every night at six o’clock to play keno for a month,” he said.

  “Sarah Vaughan? No shit?”

  “No shit,” he said. “She was playing across the street at Caesars, and she and Bill were old friends, and we all had this keno jones, so we sat there every night playing five-dollar tickets. Nobody ever won much that I remember. They would just sit around telling stories and shooting the breeze. Basie wore this Greek fisherman’s hat all the time.”

  “Do you remember any of the stories?” I asked.

  We were in Campagnola on First Avenue on the Upper East Side. We had just ordered pastas and osso bucco with spinach in garlic and oil. We were drinking a bottle of Sassicaia.

  “Not one,” he said. “I was young and stupid and had no real sense of who these people were. We talked mostly about keno. I remember Redd Foxx came by a couple of times. I know we laughed a lot. But that’s about all I’ve got. I did go across the street to see Sarah one night, and I was blown away. I mean the woman could actually bend a note in a way that would break your heart. She’s the best singer I’ve ever heard in my life. We went up to see Basie twice. This was during the time that Sonny Payne was the drummer. Fantastic showman. Bill, not so much. He’d sit there at the piano and play a few notes and smile, but mostly he let the players play. That band had such incredible power. And they were playing in a small room. It was great.”

  “You were just a kid in Vegas when it was really Vegas,” I said.

  “Well, old-school Vegas,” he said. “It’s probably wilder now than it was then. It’s just that it was so much smaller. Everybody knew everybody. We’d go to a club after work and it would be filled with people working other shows on the Strip. I learned to take my sunglasses with me when I left for work at night, because when you walked out of one of those clubs at six in the morning the sun was vicious.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “When the sun comes up before you go to bed it feels like it’s calling you an asshole.”

  “And it’s right,” he said.

  “How many shows did you do a night?”

  “Three in the lounge. It was a rotating schedule with Wayne, the Kim Sisters, and us. One night a week we went on last at two in the morning. That was a disaster because Wayne did this big show at one o’clock, and when he was done everybody left. One night we went out there and there was nobody in the room,” said Don.

  “Nobody?”

  “Just the waitresses and the maitre d’,” he said. “And the rule was you had to do at least forty-five minutes.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Well, at first we just ordered drinks and played a few games of keno, because you could see the board across the casino from the stage. Then some guy stopped at the door. He was an older guy with a white beard. So Slappy says, ‘Hey, Santa, come on in and sit down. I’ll buy your drinks.’ So the guy comes in, sits in front of the stage, and we start doing the act.”

  “For this one guy?”

  “Yup. Plus we’re buying him drinks. Anyway, about twenty minutes into the act he gets up and walks out on us.”

  “No!”

  “Just walked right out. He hadn’t laughed once anyway, so we didn’t try to stop him. It was maybe the funniest thing that had happened in that room in years.”

  The pastas arrived. I had the special ravioli with ricotta, and Don had the penne with chicken sausage and a tomato sauce. We drank more wine and ordered a second bottle.

  “There was a two-week period where we did five shows a night,” he said. “The three in the lounge and two in the main room with Connie Stevens.”

  “How did that happen?” I asked.

  “The comic who was booked with her had to drop out at the last second, I don’t know why. Anyhow, we started out doing the dinner show at eight o’clock, which was about two hours after we woke up. I remember the smell of roast beef in the room filled with all these people who’d been up all day playing golf or sitting by the pool, and I hadn’t had breakfast yet.”

  “It was like that for me and Bruce in the club days,” I said. “We slept all day and stayed up all night every night. If I tried that now it would kill me.”

  “Me, too,” said Don. “Connie Stevens was a lovely woman who had gotten famous on a TV show called Hawaiian Eye. She played a character called Cricket. In any event, she also sang and danced and put on a hell of a show. So she finds out that this is my first time in Vegas.

  “ ‘That means you’re good luck,’ she says, and asks me to come to the crap table with her between shows. So I go with her. I’m her good-luck charm, right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “In twenty minutes she lost a bunch of money.”

  “Oh, fuck,” I said, laughing.

  “I don’t remember how much, but it seemed like a fortune to me,” he said. “It’s funny now, but at the time I was horrified. I felt guilty and frightened and I don’t know what else.”

  “She liked to gamble, huh?”

  “Well she did that night. Somebody in the hotel told me about all the entertainers who gambled there. Told me that Fats Domino was into them so deep that he’d be working there for free for the rest of his life. I don’t know if
that’s true, but that was the story.”

  I had heard similar horror stories over the years about entertainers getting in debt to the company store. It was a scary thought, so I put it aside and concentrated on dinner.

  “This ravioli is fantastic,” I said.

  A woman came over to the table from the bar. “You’re Clarence Clemons,” she said.

  “Guilty,” I said.

  “I’ve seen you guys fifty times,” she said.

  “Really?” I replied.

  “Well, at least ten,” she said. “Can I get a picture with you?”

  “Sure,” I said. I always try to say yes.

  She handed Don her cell phone, pulled out the empty chair next to me, and slid over. She put her left shoulder up against my right shoulder, looked at the camera, and smiled. Don had been through this before. He was there to snap the picture and hand the camera back to her. There was no need to speak to him unless she needed to give him instructions on how to operate the camera function on her phone. It’s not the easiest thing to hang around with me. You have to put up with being ignored and interrupted all the time. I know how much this annoys Don, and that amuses me.

  He took the picture and then another one just to be on the safe side, because everybody always says to do that.

  She reached out and snatched the phone out of his hand, looked at the pictures, then, seemingly satisfied, stood up.

  “Thank you so much,” she said to me. “I love you guys.”

  “Love you, too,” I said.

  She went back to bar and showed the pictures to the people she was with.

  “I hope she gets hit by lightning,” said Don.

  That made me laugh. “So did Connie talk to you after you’d cost her a big bunch of cash?” I said.

  “It was as if it never happened. She was married to Eddie Fisher at the time. The next night he comes backstage with a huge bag of black chips. He was coming from the tables where he’d just won something like twice what she had lost.”

  “Jesus,” I said. I never caught the gambling bug, thank God.

  “Yes,” he answered. “But years later Connie was one of the first people to use the Home Shopping Network successfully. She made a fortune selling cosmetics and got really, really rich.”

  “I love a happy ending,” I said.

  The Motorcade, Part II

  Don

  We got into the city of London itself and we didn’t slow down. I felt like I was on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.

  “I’m going to call Kate,” said Judy.

  Kate Merrick-Wolf was an old friend of ours, an artist now living with her family outside of the city. Cell phones now made it possible to be in touch with everyone all the time, so a few minutes later Kate was on the phone.

  Kate was a huge fan of the band and of Clarence, and she had been to many shows when she lived in California and also here in England. Other obligations had prevented her from attending the shows here this week.

  “Hold on,” said Judy. “I’ll put him on.”

  I reached out for the phone but Judy handed it to Clarence.

  “Say hello to my friend Kate,” she said.

  Clarence took the phone. Clarence always takes the phone.

  “Hey, baby,” he said. “What’s happening? Yeah, it’s really me. No shit.” He laughed and listened. “The sirens? We’re being chased by the police. Bruce stole some towels from the hotel and they called the cops.” We could hear Kate’s laugh from the backseat. The Big Man listened some more. “Well, next time you’ll come to the show and I’ll show you the Temple of Soul. You got it. All right, see you then. Bye.” And he handed the phone back to Judy.

  Kate was thrilled beyond beyond. And in December 2007 she did go to see the band when they came back through London and did in fact get to visit the Temple of Soul.

  Kate died on September 23, 2008, after a four-year battle with cancer. There are circles within circles, and in the end we all share the same fate. As they say in the circus, “We’re all Bozos on this bus.” I miss her. I miss her big laugh and her fierce intelligence. I know how much pleasure music brought to her and how much she loved Bruce and the band. I know how special that meeting with Clarence was. I know how she escaped from her pain and fear for the hours she spent in the arena that night. I know that that is priceless. I know that it’s a form of magic.

  There is relief when someone’s pain finally ends, but there will always be a void in the time and space they occupied. The balance of our lives is upset by death, and memories help us regain our footing. I remember the sound of Kate’s voice when she called to talk about the show and meeting the Big Man, and that makes me feel a little better today.

  September 23 is also Bruce Springsteen’s birthday. I hope it’s a happy one. He has brought so much happiness to others, he deserves some of his own.

  Hollywood, Florida

  Clarence

  One night Victoria, Don, and I went to the Hard Rock to see Chris Rock perform. At dinner before the show I was in a lot of pain. My back problems seemed to be getting worse.

  I try not to whine or complain, but Don says it hurts him to watch me walk. Stairs are my enemy.

  I was okay through the show. Chris was his usual brilliant self, and afterward we made our way backstage. No matter who you are, there is always a stand-around time when waiting to see a performer. The stars, me included, need a few minutes alone to come down from the performance or to take a shower or whatever. This, combined with people—usually drunk people—who are trying to get backstage and overzealous security people often leads to uncomfortable situations. I just leaned against a wall and suffered through it. By the time we got to see Chris about ten minutes later I had reached tap city, and I just couldn’t hang out.

  The nice people at the hotel produced a golf cart to take Victoria and me to my car. I felt badly about not spending more time with Chris, but sometimes things just are what they are.

  The tour would begin in Hartford in sixteen days.

  “Are you going to be ready?” Don asked me.

  “There’s no choice,” I said. “I’ll be ready. I don’t know if it’ll take medication, magic, or miracles, but I’ll be ready.”

  On his way back to his room on the fifth floor of the North Tower in the Hard Rock Hotel, Don was startled to find a display box by the elevator he had somehow failed to see earlier. For the uninitiated, the Hard Rock chain is decorated with rock-and-roll memorabilia ranging from gold records to guitars and articles of clothing. Combined with an aging baby-boomer clientele here in Florida, the whole thing is a little depressing. What startled him was a box behind Plexiglas containing a leather vest and a picture of Bruce and me onstage. In the photo I’m not wearing the vest. A sign proclaims that I wore this vest on the “River” tour.

  Don called me.

  He told me what he was looking at and asked if it was mine and if so how did it end up here next to the elevators on the fifth floor of a hotel. I said I had no clue.

  Don took four pictures of the vest and the display and sent them to me. He stood in front of the vest and awaited my reply. It came less than a minute later in the form of a one-word e-mail.

  It said, Fake!

  New York City, 2003

  Don

  Somebody once said that there are only six hundred people in the world and the rest is done with mirrors. I have marked my life by a series of coincidences, which probably stem from what I do for a living. Show business is a world unto itself, and that world is relatively small. But still there are things that cross each other in ways that are a little eerie.

  “There’s someone else here who’s in show business,” said the host.

  “Really?” I said. “Who?”

  “Come with me,” he said.

  He led me through the crowd into another room of the massive apartment. There, in the center of the room wearing a black suit, stood Robert Altman.

  I’m not good at parties. I was especially uncomfortable at this p
arty because I knew no one and had very little in common with the other folks who were there. The party was attended by the society crowd and was held at 555 Park Avenue. There was no occasion for it, just the opportunity to get together and celebrate each other’s fabulousness, which might be the best reason to ever do anything as a group. The doorman directed my wife and I to the elevator and said the apartment we were looking for was on the tenth floor. The entire tenth floor.

  My wife had a friend who had lived for years with the woman who owned the place. He had become part of this Upper East Side society and loved hosting these get-togethers. We were on our way back to California, having just spent several weeks traveling with Clarence, Bruce, and the E Street Band. That group was a lot easier to hang with than this one.

  I found a spot in a corner and was generally miserable when he noticed my plight and led me to Mr. Altman, whom I had never met.

  “Bob,” he said, “this is Don Reo. He’s in show business, too.”

  Robert Altman turned and looked at me.

  “I’ll let you two talk shop,” said the host as he left.

  Mr. Altman extended his hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said.

  “Likewise,” I said.

  “You’re in show business?”

  “Yes, I write and produce TV shows,” I said.

  “Are you holding?”

  “What?” I said.

  “Do you have a joint?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  He turned around and walked away.