The shot of Bruce Springsteen leaning into Clarence Clemons on the cover of Born to Run -- one with a guitar, the other, seen fully on the back cover, blowing his saxophone -- is one of rock's archetypal poses. Photographer Eric Meola caught the moment at his New York studio during a day of sessions in which he tried all kinds of things: outside shots of Springsteen in the shadows of a fire escape, inside shots of him listening to a radio and playing around with the guitar. "Other things happened," says Meola, "but when we saw the contact sheets, that one just sort of popped. Instantly, we knew that was the shot."
The session very nearly didn't happen at all. Meola, who got to know Springsteen, Clemons and Springsteen's manager at the time, Mike Appel, back around 1973, got the call from Appel to shoot some pictures. But Springsteen's marathon work on Born to Run caused him to cancel out on Meola so many times that the lensman very nearly bagged the project.
"One day I got really upset," he says. "I called up Mike and said, 'Hey, it's either going to be next time or never.'" Springsteen kept the next appointment, bringing Clemons with him. "He wanted Clarence on the cover from the beginning," says Meola, "and the whole thing of isolating them against a white background just worked."
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It was the loudest noise I’d ever heard.
It was June 24, 1993, and Bruce Springsteen was ending his "Human Touch"/"Lucky Town" tour with two New York-area shows, one at the Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford, N.J., the venue he’d opened in 1981. But this homecoming was different. Four years earlier, Springsteen had fired the members of his longtime E Street Band in favor of working with other musicians. He recorded two albums with studio pros, then toured behind the records with a new band put together shortly before hitting the road.
The fan reaction was mixed, to be kind. The touring band – though it featured some talented players – felt less like a new direction than an attempt to recreate the E Street sound without the actual E Streeters. It seemed as if that band’s 20 years of history had come to an ignominious end.
But there was something in the air that night in the Meadowlands. E Street guitarist Steven Van Zandt had come out to play on "Glory Days," and the crowd was buzzing when a horn section kicked into the intro for the E Street classic "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out." Then, in the last verse, when Springsteen sang the line "When the change was made uptown/And the Big Man joined the band," the Big Man himself – saxophonist Clarence Clemons – came on stage, resplendent in a black suit and white hat, horn in hand, and blew a riff that brought the crowd to its feet. They filled the arena with a sustained roar that was like nothing I’d ever heard before. It drowned out the musicians on stage. The building shook.
Of all the times I’ve seen Clemons perform, that night is one of my most vivid memories. Not only for what a great show it was – and the amazing outpouring of love that met his appearance – but for what it signified. Less than two years later, Springsteen reformed the E Street Band to record new tracks for a greatest hits album. In 1998, he released a box set of unreleased songs, most featuring the E Streeters, and then launched a full-scale reunion tour the following year. The E Street Band was back, this time to stay.
What the future of the band will be now, with Clemons’ death yesterday at age 69, from complications of a stroke suffered June 12, is uncertain. But for me at least, the E Street Band that I knew and loved will never exist again.
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