How My Interview with Clarence Clemons Helped Mend a Broken Heart

In the face of romantic heartbreak, women have been known to cope in a variety of ways. Frequent crying is de rigueur, but you can only cry for so many hours a day. Complementary activities may include overeating, undereating, shopping, gambling, or writing a memoir or novel, such as Cheryl Strayed’s “Wild” (which requires really good hiking shoes). The less hearty among the sorrowful might slip away for a weekend cruise or spa visit.

Some women choose violence. After her second marriage ended, my Aunt Eleanor snatched the huge marlin that her ex had caught on a fishing expedition and had stuffed and mounted over the fireplace, threw it down in the garage and repeatedly ran over it with her car. This was not completely cathartic, but it was a start.

As for me, when I was mourning the loss of a relationship at age twenty-three, I bought my Teddy bear, Harold. He was a bit wider in the hips than I usually found attractive in a male, but I trusted that his eyes would never wander, and that I could always count on the constancy of his simple, quiet affection. I also cried on my therapist’s couch. But I still needed something else, and one day, I hit upon a crazy idea: I decided that the best medicine for my achy-breaky heart would be to bag an interview with Clarence Clemons, the sax player with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band.

Who among us didn’t have a “hungry heart” when we were young? In this way, Springsteen’s songs and their universal appeal spoke to me as well.

What did The Big Man, as his adoring fans call him, have to do with any of this? Just this: my ex had been the first to introduce me to Springsteen’s music, and from the first chords of Jungleland, Rosalita and of course, Born in the USA, I was an instant addict. The themes of many Springsteen songs were certainly distant from my reality. I didn’t grow up in an economically struggling town. I didn’t know anyone who worked on the highway, blasting through the bedrock, and I really had no ambition to drive a pink Cadillac or drag race on the streets. Many songs were laced with an undercurrent of anger or anxiety; others were about dreams delayed or even deflated. Yet the songs were also shot through with irrepressible youthful energy, eagerness for romance, and a no-holds-barred determination to fulfill one’s dreams wherever they took you, once you escaped the “darkness at the edge of town.”

Almost all young people dream of transcending the limitations of their upbringing, and I was no different. I also had dreams and was resolutely determined to achieve them. I also longed to find the comfort of lasting love. Who among us didn’t have a “hungry heart” when we were young? In this way, Springsteen’s songs and their universal appeal spoke to me as well.

Clarence Clemons was a huge part of the magic of the E Street Band, literally and figuratively. He was 6’4″ and massively built. I loved the way The Big Man infused his instrument with passion, with emotional highs and lows, with playfulness and a lovable showmanship. I doubt anyone who ever watched the E Street Band play could ever forget the experience.

One night my former boyfriend took me to see Clemons perform in a Hollywood club with his own band, the Red Bank Rockers. It was thrilling for me to see him up close, to hear him play his own music, and it was a night I will always remember.

I was a woman scorned, yet I was not filled with fury. Instead, I was filled with determination to show the former boyfriend that I was going places.

And so, when I discovered that Clemons was scheduled for a promotional tour in Los Angeles to promote the Red Bank Rockers’ first album, “Rescue,” I was seized with the notion that if I could only interview him for a story, it would boot my emotional recovery into “drive,” as opposed to having the gears continue grinding away fruitlessly in neutral. And what a coup that would be!

There were a few, trifling problems with this plan. First of all, it was an outrageous chutzpah. My qualifications to write about one of the most famous sax players in the country was just about zero. I couldn’t even tell you the difference between a tenor versus an alto sax, or which one Clemons played. I had no connections with anyone in the music industry, let alone someone willing to risk their reputation by helping me score an assignment like this. I could think of no magazine that would both be interested in Clemons yet also trust someone like me to write it. This was in 1983, when Springsteen and his E Street Band were phenomenally successful and internationally known.

And even if my madcap scheme succeeded, my romance would not rise from the romance graveyard. I was a woman scorned, yet I was not filled with fury. Instead, I was filled with determination to show the former boyfriend that I was going places. True, I seemed to be going alone at this point, but I’d worry about that later.

Could I really debase myself with an assignment like this? Of course I could. It was my last hope.

I began searching for potential homes for this story by scouring Writer’s Digest Marketplace, a doorstop of a book that listed thousands of book and magazine publishers by category or region. Where to even begin? At the time, I was still writing about elderly volunteers running the nation’s hospital gift shops. I scrolled through the listings, hoping to find a magazine that would be eager for a story about one of the best known and respected Black saxophone players around yet who wouldn’t be too picky about who was doing the writing. Having exhausted middle-brow publications, I was finally scraping toward the bottom of the editorial barrel, the mags no one had ever heard of and that paid a few pennies a word.

I decided to go about it from the other direction. If I could secure the interview first, the assignment would naturally follow. I called CBS Records and was connected to the publicist managing Clemon’s press schedule. After a quick introduction, she asked who I was writing for. I hedged, telling her I didn’t quite have it firmed up yet. She told me to call back if and when I had something real, then hung up.

Close to giving up, I found a listing for a Black men’s magazine, with offices here in Los Angeles. Their editorial mission seemed a bit less focused on the editorial and more on the pictorial. Could I really debase myself with an assignment like this?

Of course I could. It was my last hope.

I called the office, my heart pounding. I hoped my Papa Cohen up in Heaven was too busy studying Talmud to notice what his granddaughter, former editor of the Jewish student newspaper at UC Berkeley, was doing at this moment. I asked to speak to the publisher, who took my call immediately. “This is Emory,” he said in a southern drawl.

I introduced myself and told him I could get an interview with Clemons if he wanted the story. Would you like the story, Emory, I asked?

He wanted the story. He asked me for samples of my writing, which I brought over to him the next day. After he reviewed my clips he gave me the go-ahead. Mazel tov! I had my first X-rated journalism clip.

No longer at the studios, my interview with Mr. Clemons had been moved to the hotel where he was staying in West Hollywood. In his hotel room. This was an odd change and vaguely unsettling.

I called back CBS and tried to sound nonchalant as I told the publicist about my assignment. Satisfied, she provided the date and time to arrive at the studios for the interview.

I had been making all these calls from work, and the editor with whom I shared an office had been witness to all this personal business on company time.

“I did it!” I shouted to her, as quietly as I could, as our office door was open.

“You go, girl!” she said, both of us grinning.

I sat there in a daze. I actually could not believe this would be happening. A week later, CBS called. My heart sank; I was sure they had found out I was a fraudster and were canceling my interview. But no, they called to say the interview location had changed. No longer at the studios, my interview with Mr. Clemons had been moved to the hotel where he was staying in West Hollywood. In his hotel room. This was an odd change and vaguely unsettling.

A few days later, I was with my sister and our mom watching an interview with Clarence Clemons. I had been excited for my mom to see him, but I hadn’t really thought that through too carefully. Clarence was not called The Big Man for nothing. He was the size of three of me, wearing a Panama hat and an earring that, at that time suggested the kind of man you didn’t want your young daughters to be sequestered with in a hotel room. As soon as his large person filled the screen, I looked at my mother and watched the color drain from her face.

“You are NOT going to his hotel room!” she thundered. Mom rarely thundered, so this was serious.

“Oh come on, Mom!” I tried to humor her. “Journalists do interviews in hotel rooms all the time!” (Did they? I had no idea. It didn’t seem like a good idea to me, either, less and less so the longer I had to think about it.)

My story got a three-page spread, but I needed to edit out a cartoon on the third page before making copies and sending around to friends.

I hated to make my mom worry, but I wasn’t about to skip out on this adventure, a dare I had made with myself to recoup some of my damaged self-esteem. As I walked down the carpeted hallway to Clemons’ room, I was so jittery I was afraid my voice would bobble when I spoke to him. Did I have the right questions planned? Would my tape recorder work? Would he possibly try to get frisky if there was enough time between interviews?

In the end, Clemons was sweet, soft-spoken, patient when I asked him if he would mind stopping while I double and triple checked that my recorder was working (it was an ongoing paranoia of mine), and thoughtful. He spoke about the racism he experienced with his new album, as producers told him his music sounded “too black.”

He said the rock industry “was like a bleached blonde. They don’t want their black roots to show. . . you don’t hear the rhythm and blues.” He told the famous story about the night he first met Bruce Springsteen in a little club in Asbury Park. It was a windy night, and as Clemons opened the door holding his saxophone, he took the door clean off the place. When he asked Springsteen if he could play for him, The Boss said yes right away. No arguing with a man who can pull a door off its hinges when he walks in the room!

Clemons made it easy for me to do my job; he was an experienced interviewee and knew the stories he wanted to tell. When I rose to thank him and leave, he leaned in just close enough to give me what I’d call “an air hug.”

When the magazine was out on the street with my story in it, I dreaded going to find it. I had to go behind that curtain they used to have in magazine stands where “naughty magazines” were kept. I didn’t want to see any of those magazines or their patrons. Fortunately, no one else was behind the curtain. My story got a three-page spread, but I needed to edit out a cartoon on the third page before making copies and sending around to friends.

I sent a copy in the mail to my former beau, with a Post-It note on it where I had simply written, “FYI.” I wished I could have seen the look on his face when he saw the story. Maybe he thought I was nuts, and maybe for awhile I was. Even so, this crazy writing escapade did as much to restore me as several months of therapy. And when I showed the article to Harold, he was, as always, the picture of admiration.