Last but not least, Clarence Clemons. That’s right. You want to be like him but you can’t, you know. The night I met Clarence, he got up onstage (and) a sound came out of his horn that seemed to rattle the glasses behind the bar, and threatened to blow out the back wall. The door literally blew off the club in a storm that night, and I knew I’d found my sax player.
“But there was something else, something - something happened when we stood side by side. Some, some, some energy, some unspoken story.
“For years Clarence has been a source of myth and light and enormous strength for me on stage. He has filled my heart so many night - so many nights - and I love it when he wraps me in those arms at the end of the night. That night we first stood together, I looked over at C and it looked like his head reached into the clouds. And I felt like a mere mortal scurrying upon the earth, you know. But he always lifted me up. Way, way, way up. Together we told a story of the possibilities of friendship, a story older than the ones that I was writing and a story I could never have told without him at my side. I want to thank you, Big Man, and I love you so much.