The wailing sax. It wails like the long tail of a lion, flicking itself up arrogantly, swaying, slithering, and always with its own personality from the lion; the lion can’t do without the tail and the tail can’t do without the lion – so goes the relationship between Bruce Springsteen and his sax player, the great Clarence Clemons. Fans of Bruce know that it wasn’t just the way Clarence wailed on that thing, but the light and humor he brought to the stage. In the personality department, no one in the music industry at all can compare with Bruce. Bruce is Mick Jagger and Keith Richards combined. He is John Lennon and Paul McCartney. He is both the genius and the enigma, the saint and the sinner, the hurricane and the rain.

I recently had a conversation at a school fundraiser with an actor. He was talking about his early days wanting to be in a Rock n’ Roll band, being from New Jersey. At one point way back when he found himself in Asbury Park auditioning for a club. The opening act before he went on were nobodys. He didn’t know the name of the band but when they took to the stage, the wiry lead singer launched into a version of Proud Mary that stopped him in his tracks. Everyone in the room quieted to watch this righteous bolt of lightning sing a bluesy, raunchy version of a classic. Now, of course, everyone does Proud Mary like that. But then, it was something new. When the singer got off the stage everyone wanted to know his name. And of course, his name was Bruce Springsteen.

Some people are born that way.

But the E. Street band was a whole different thing. It wasn’t just Bruce Springsteen. Sure, he could have been successful – lord knows – without his band but with his band? He was a religion.

Much of that religion was due to Clarence Clemons, who died this week. Clarence, forever immortalized in Tenth Avenue Freezeout:

The best collaboration between them is probably most famously Jungleland off of Born to Run – but I prefer Darkness on the Edge of Town, mainly because Bruce plays the guitar on that one and plays it really well.

The E. Street band did a lot of touring in the past ten years, after breaking up and reuniting. I was glad I got to see them play throughout the past twenty years. But it isn’t until one of them dies that the impact can be detailed, outlined and understood. Clarence Clemons, it turns out, was so much a part of the E. Street experience the audience loved him and needed him as much as Bruce did. And so we say goodbye to the future of the whole fucking city.

Rest in peace, big man.