Clarence Clemons and Bruce Springsteen spoke about each other with a level of love and tenderness that is not only rare in male friendships, but in platonic relationships as a whole. They acknowledged the ways in which they fit together and spoke about their meeting as though it were a cinematic event. Clemons said that after their dramatic first encounter, he and Springsteen had a near-magical moment when they played one song together.

Clarence Clemons knew he and Bruce Springsteen were important to each other during 1 song

Springsteen and the E Street Band were performing together before Clemons joined the group. He’d heard they were playing a concert nearby and decided to stop by and introduce himself. He recalled the cinematic moment he saw the band for the first time.

“A rainy, windy night it was, and when I opened the door the whole thing flew off its hinges and blew away down the street,” he told Mojo (via Land of Hope and Dreams). “The band were on-stage, but staring at me framed in the doorway. And maybe that did make Bruce a little nervous because I just said, ‘I want to play with your band,’ and he said, ‘Sure, you do anything you want.’”

They immediately grew close. Clemons said that he and Springsteen realized how vitally important they were to each other while playing a song for the first time.

“The first song we did was an early version of ‘Spirit In The Night,’” he said. “Bruce and I looked at each other and didn’t say anything, we just knew. We knew we were the missing links in each other’s lives. He was what I’d been searching for. In one way he was just a scrawny little kid. But he was a visionary. He wanted to follow his dream. So from then on I was part of history.”

He described their relationship as akin to lovers

Clemons said his deep connection to Springsteen was forged through music.

“It is a special energy that we create,” he told Daniel Rothbart. “Separately we are two strong, independent people but we really speak to each other musically. I enjoy what happens. We’ve been together so long now, that when he plays a new song and I hear it for the first time I can add my sound to it, he allows me that freedom. He knows how I play and sound and I guess he envisions what I’m going to sound like when he writes the music.”

They often embraced and kissed during performances. Clemons said that they were like lovers in that way.

“It’s like lovers,” he said. “There’s some showmanship too, but we do love each other.”

Bruce Springsteen spoke about the loss of Clarence Clemons

Clemons died in 2011. In Springsteen’s Broadway show, he paused during the song “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out” to reflect on his relationship with the saxophonist. 

“It was a story where… we remade the city,” he said (per GQ). “We remade the city, shaping it into the kind of place where our friendship and our love for one another wouldn’t have been such an exceptional thing.”

He spoke about what it was like to lose someone that important to him.

“He was elemental in my life,” Springsteen said, “and losing him was like losing the rain.”