?The Big Man? Clarence Clemons dies of complications from a stroke at 69

Clarence Clemons dies June 18, 2011 at 69 from complications from a stroke

?Tonight all is silence in the world.?

Numerous news outlets are reporting that founding E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons died earlier today from complications from a stroke. Clarence suffered the stroke on June 12th and was reportedly making a ?miraculous? recovery prior to the sad news being announced today. The Big Man was 69.

I?m sure I share the same feelings of loss as millions of other fans the globe over. It?s impossible to explain the importance of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band in my growth as a human being, and Clarence Clemons? horn was an essential ingredient in so many of their most powerful and soulful tracks.

Clarence Clemons saxaphone player from Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band

No doubt Bruce Springsteen has some of the best rock and roll vocals the genre has ever seen, and little would argue that the musical denizens of E Street have always been some of the tightest loose rock players to ever grace a stage or studio. But, as evidenced from the heavy rotation of Motown classics in his early setlists, Bruce always wanted an element of that Detroit soul in his songs ? and that burden was placed squarely on the immense shoulders of the Big Man, Clarence Clemons.

But in addition to the soulful vibrations on such epic explorations of the human condition as ?Jungleland,? Clarence and his horn playing were also able to bring an elevated grittiness to the band?s joyful and raucous numbers such as ?Sherry Darling? and Gary US Bonds? ?Quarter to Three,? a concert staple for a number of years ? including 1979 when Bruce and the boys went atomic with it at the No Nukes concert.

(Bruce is amazing I know ? and I would never ask you to take your eyes off of him ? but just listen to Clarence blow the hell out of that horn! That my friends is the sound of adrenaline!)


Quarter to three ? bruce springsteen by runawaydream

Yeah, I cried. Yeah, I danced around. Yeah, I danced around crying.

Everybody knows Clarence is a great rock and roll horn player, but a lot of folks don?t appreciate his softer side. So, I thought I might wrap up this tribute post with a couple clips highlighting the less riffy and more subtle side of Clarence, starting with his haunting intro to ?The River? from the Fleet Center in Boston, MA on August 26, 1999. It?s an audience recording, but don?t let that distract you from Clarence as he sets the mood for one of the most powerful songs about broken dreams ever written. I love how he gently hands things over to Bruce and his harmonica as if to say, ?OK Boss, I think they?re ready.?

This next clip is from the first Bruce Springsteen ?bootleg? recording I ever heard ? a CD titled Small Town Boy recorded at The Main Point in Bryn Mawr, Philadelphia on April 24, 1973. My younger brother had shoveled out a ton of money (I think it was $35 for the single disc) at a record show and I got a call from him telling me and my older brother (I was at his apartment at the time) to come home now. He didn?t say anything else.

When we got home we went back to his room and he motioned us to sit down. He turned out the lights and the song I am about to play came on.

That disc changed everything about how I was a fan of music. I can?t tell you how many hundreds of dollars I sent overseas for live CDs in response to ads in Goldmine magazine with only a slightly better than 50/50 chance of getting what I ordered. I was chasing that horse you hear heroine addicts talk about ? but unlike heroine addicts I caught it just about every time a new Bruce disc came in! And that doesn?t even compare to the horse that trampled me each and every time I attended a Springsteen show! (Which I?m guessing is somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 times)

But this post is about Clarence. Listen to this song ? I think it demonstrates the most basic element that The Big Man brought to the table for Bruce. It?s a great singer/songwriter tune right up until the 3:10 mark when Bruce says ?and in the night air you hear crying?? at which point Clarence Clemons literally breathes soul into it:

Bruce Springsteen and Clarence Clemons from the Born to Run album cover photo shoot

I just got off the phone with my younger brother who called while I was listening to that clip again ? he wanted to make sure I had heard the bad news. He told me that it just didn?t seem possible, that for us Clarence was always bigger than life. ?It?s like Johnny Cash,? he said, ?Johnny Cash doesn?t die.?

My brother was right. Johnny Cash doesn?t die. And neither does Clarence Clemons. He?s just waiting for the rest of us across the border?

I love you Big Man. And thank you for so, so much.

 
 
 
 

Top photo: Clarence Clemons with Bruce at the Amsterdam Arena June 18, 2008. (WENN.com)

Second photo: Clarence Clemons celebrates his 69th birthday at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino?s Paradise Live in Hollywood, Florida on January 11, 2011. (Jeff Daly/WENN.com)

PS ? I ran across this intro to Clarence from Bruce and I just had to add it:

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Clarence Clemons Died

Filed under: Clarence Clemons, R.I.P.

Legendary saxophonist Clarence Clemons died today of complications from a stroke he suffered back on June 12. He was 69. 

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Clemons, known to fans as the Big Man, was the most famous member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. His stand out work could (Read more...)

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Spears gets close to beau backstage

Britney Spears tweeted this photo of herself with beau Jason Trawick in her dressing room.

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Britney Spears tweeted this photo of herself with beau Jason Trawick in her dressing room.

Don't hold it against her, but Britney Spears looked like she wanted Jason Trawick's body as she hung out backstage on the opening night of her concert tour.

The pop star, 29, tweeted a photo from her dressing room showing her scantily-clad in a sparkly costume with her arms wrapped around her boyfriend of two years.

"It's Opening Night B---H!!!!" Spears captioned the photo.

Her Femme Fatale tour, featuring Nicki Minaj as the opening act, launched in Sacramento's Power Balance Pavillion.

"Can't sleep. WAY too much Adrenaline right now. Sacramento was on fire tonight," she tweeted after the show. "You ready San Jose? Cause I am!!!!"

The tour will take her across America, with three stops in Canada, through Aug. 25. She'll appear locally, at Long Island's Nassau Coliseum, on Aug. 2.


Spears showed a lot of skin as she performed her hits Thursday. (Roderick Trestrail II/AP)

And with just only one show down so far, Rolling Stone has already declared that Spears is "back ? hopefully this time to stay."

"The night belonged to Britney: She managed to prove that she's still progressing as a showgirl," the magazine said in its review. "Not only that, she's doing it better than even diehard defenders would've predicted."

Sounds like all that Trawick loving is doing her some good!

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Michael Lohan HIT By A Bus!


Michael Lohan just got into a car accident on the Sunset Strip -- when a metro bus crashed into his blue Jaguar in the middle of rush hour ... and TMZ's Mike Walters witnessed the whole thing.

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According to Walters, Michael's car was slowly approaching a stoplight near the Director's Guild of America when the bus was attempted to pass him ... and accidentally sideswiped Lohan's car.

Walters got out of his car and checked on Lohan -- who said, "Of course you're here when I get hit by a bus ... we exchanged information and everything is fine."

Walters says Lohan's car only appeared to have minor scratches and scrapes and Lohan was not injured.

TMZ -- we're everywhere.

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Source: http://www.tmz.com/2011/06/17/michael-lohan-bus-los-angeles-car-accident-sunset-strip-mike-walters-witness/

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Amber Portwood: Released From Hospital

After being rushed to the hospital earlier in the week, Amber Portwood was released from the St John?s Hospital in Anderson, Indiana on Friday (June 17).

The ?Teen Mom? star is said to have stayed in the medical facility for a 72 hours for psychiatric evaluation because of her suicide attempt.

Meanwhile, Portwood?s on/off boyfriend, Gary Shirley, set up an email account in order for fans to send well wishes to the troubled 21-year-old.

"The amount of positive support and energy has been overwhelming," Shirley, who shares custody of Leah, their 2-year-old daughter, tweeted. "Your support is too special to pass up. All emails will be screened and any positive message will be printed and given to Amber."

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Joanne Wilson Meets BlogHer Founder Lisa Stone

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Lisa was raised in Missoula, Montana that had a population of about 40,000 when she was growing up.   Like many communities, the population has grown and Missoula is much different now.  As Lisa put it, the biggest export out of Montana is probably the youth. 

She left too and shocked her family by getting into Wellesley College, one of the most prestigious women's colleges in the country. 

While she was in college, she went to visit her sister at Stanford University and realized that she was much more suited to the West coast.  After graduating, she moved to the Bay area and has yet to leave except for a short hiatus.  She got a job at a management consulting company working in fuel futures.  Learning about fuel and the areas of Europe that she was focused on lit an interest in her to become a journalist. 

She left consulting and found herself at the Oakland Tribune. 

At the Tribune she wrote and broke a series of articles about the FAA's lack of preparedness for an emergency. 

This got on CNN's radar and they recruited Lisa to work for them.  She was four months pregnant when Mark Carter hired her.  Carter was the chief strategist for CNN at that point and is now the Executive Director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists.  Lisa was at CNN when the Time Warner merger happened and everything changed.

Lisa was 30 years old, had been married eight years and had a one year old.  She left CNN and her marriage and went online.  She bartered her skills to work at Webtv so she could learn.  Lisa ended up at Woman.com where she launched a variety of sites from fun to serious.  Then Woman.com was bought by iVillage.com 

The whole woman's space was trying to find their place and roll-ups were happening in all verticals.  I lived through that era too. 

It was 2001 and Lisa became a Neiman Fellow at Harvard where they had yet to have an internet journalist accepted into the program.   She spent the first six months of the program at MIT watching games and the second half at Harvard analyzing business models to leverage this new tech world. 

Once the year ended she returned to the Bay area.  Lisa started working in social media, took a job with Law.com where she developed a sponsored network that got really high cpm's.  On the side she was blogging for the LATimes so she could keep honing her journalism skills.  People kept asking her at this point, it was 2004/5, where do all the woman blog? 

So in 2005, Lisa and her two partners who she met through the internet world, Elisa Camahort Page and Jory Des Jardins, launched Blogher. 

I love the story of how the name came to be.  Lisa was working for Jennifer Collins at Law.com.  She told Jennifer what she was going to create a site dedicated to a community of women that would be a place where women could publish/blog.  They were struggling with the name.  Sheblogs?  Jennifer, in one second, said Blogher.  And so Blogher was born. 

In 2011, Blogher is the fifth largest women's network.  They get 12-26 unique visitors a month depending on which analytic site you believe (Nielsen of Comscore).  My gut feeling is that is it somewhere in between. 

They are creating a new way for women to write and get paid for their influence and words. 

The verticals are wide from Green to Food to New Media to Money, Sports and Style.  Blogher puts on conferences too. 

I loved talking with Lisa.  We could have talked about women and business for hours on end.  It is always great to meet other women who are trying to change the world for women entrepreneurs.  If you haven't checked out Blogher, get on line and take a look.  A growing community where women speak their minds on a daily basis. 

This is an article by Joanne Wilson, a The NextWomen contributor.  Joanne's blog can be found here.

Source: http://www.thenextwomen.com/2011/06/15/joanne-wilson-meets-blogher-founder-lisa-stone

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Rih Rih Wears ?Rihanna Navy? Hoodie On Tour In Toronto [PHOTOS]

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Justin Bieber joined Chris Brown on his newest single, 'Next 2 You,' creating a post-apocalyptic world that will make teenage girls swoon. But is it a little too intense?

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