Lady Gaga tweets love for ailing Clarence Clemons
We’ve already posted about Clarence Clemons and his current serious health issues following a stroke. Bruce Springsteen sent out a message to his fans about the Big Man for whom he credits with providing the inspiration and unending awe that he needed to rock the house in only the way he and the E Street Band can.
By now, many of you have heard that our beloved comrade and sax player Clarence Clemons has suffered a serious stroke. While all initial signs are encouraging, Clarence will need much care and support to achieve his potential once again. He has his wonderfully supportive wife, Victoria, excellent doctors and health care professionals, and is surrounded by friends and family.
I thank you all for your prayers and positive energy and concern. This is a time for us all to share in a hopeful spirit that can ultimately inspire Clarence to greater heights.
Clarence recently made big news outside of his gig with The Boss when it was announced that he was to perform on Lady Gaga’s song “The Edge of Glory.” Mother Monster herself has performed with Springsteen and has discussed her admiration for his musical legacy in depth.
As a show of support to her friend Lady Gaga used her extensive Twitter power and asked her fans to put together videos of support and well wishes for Clemons. As you can imagine the results have been overwhelming. Here’s what Lady Gaga tweeted:
I won’t make a video but I’ll tell Lady Gaga and all of you that when I first heard Clarence blow the sax solo on “Badlands” live it was the moment when everything about the mystical powers of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band came alive in my soul. I thought I knew but until that moment I had no idea and I’ll never forget it. I saw Bruce looking over, a man 20 plus years older than the one who wrote the song, awash in the youthful vigor of the anthem. His face was glowing in the light of Clarence Clemons’ wailing call to arms.
I think the essence of what the Little Monsters find so appealing about Lady Gaga can be found in the closing verse of that song. It seems to me that she lives by this type of code:
“For the ones who had a notion,
a notion deep inside
That it ain’t no sin
to be glad you’re alive
I wanna find one face
that ain’t looking through me
I wanna find one place,
I wanna spit in the face of these badlands”
As thanks to Lady Gaga for using her considerable platform to increase the awareness of the greatness and wonderful humanity that is Mr. Clarence Clemons here’s a clip of the band tearing up “Badlands” from the Live in New York City DVD:
Can you believe Bruce cut that solo out in the original mix and when hearing the final album realized it NEEDED it. Good choice sir. One more piece – this is what Springsteen had to say about Clarence during his induction speech into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
“Oh now … 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 on stage (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 15 years Clarence has been a source of myth and light and enormous strength for me on stage. He has filled my heart so many nights — 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.”
You see little monsters, Bruce and Clarence were born in the U.S.A. and born this way.