we were up at the cabin in twain harte when i read the news. clarence clemons had died. i think it was in 1974 that we discovered bruce and the e street band. hope's older brother eddie heard them first...a few weeks later he got us tickets to the show in princeton. i'd never heard the e street band before that night. we smoked some very strong pot, (everyone but jim did - he wasn't into anything mind altering). when the band came out and sang "lost in the flood" it was a revelation. i'd never heard anything like it and neither did anyone else...that night began our year of bruce. it was all bruce all the time. eddie had a state of the art stereo system in his fully carpeted room (walls and all), and it was dedicated almost entirely to the e street band...
eddie, his wife, hope, mark, debbie, jim, and i were the regulars. jim was a bit of an outsider because he didn't grow up with us. he was a musician i dated once, and i brought him into the mix...there was a particularly unique and timely thing about jim...he sounded just like bruce springsteen when he sang...so he sang bruce's songs all the time, and sometimes that got a bit weird...the seven of us spent a lot of time listening, smoking and discovering great meaning in it all. it was so early in bruce's career that "thunder road" wasn't about mary, it was about angelina...
it wasn't long before we started following the band. some of us even made it all the way to washington dc once... that was the time we were invited to the soundcheck, (the band started to recognize us), the night i bought bruce a hot dog, and the time clarence asked hope out after the show. hope was really petite, about 5 foot tall and she was only 18 years old...clarence, was, well, he was the big man. hope was flattered, and i thought she should go, but she didn't.
as the years went on, bruce and the band got very famous, and hope, mark, debbie and i all ended up moving to san francisco. it wasn't until later that we learned that jim was having an affair with eddie's wife, which ended their marriage. she was waitressing at an asbury park club, and i guess jim was as close to bruce as she was gonna get...eventually jim moved to colorado, and we hardly had any contact other than a couple of letters here and there...in fact, i didn't hear from him for years until one morning, out of the blue, when my doorbell rang.
i was living on 24th street and debbie lived in the apartment upstairs. when the bell rang, i called out and asked who it was, and jim's voice answered...it freaked me out and i yelled down the steps that i had to go to work (i was a waitress at a cafe a few blocks away). i told him he should come back later...i knew something was very wrong...i had creepy chills when i heard his voice.
i guess i convinced him because he was gone by the time i left for work. i got to the restaurant and called debbie to tell her, but by that time, she knew...she sounded weird when she answered the phone...i said, "jim is here"... she responded in what sounded like a cheerful, "yes, i know", and then i asked if i should call the police...she said, "that would be nice"...and i did. the police were already on their way, though, because jim had put his fist through the glass door in the front of the apartment building and headed upstairs to debbie's place. he was going to save her from something or other... an earthquake i think. he had plans to take her with him...
the cops came, arrested him, and brought him to the hospital for observation. i found his parent's number and called to tell them what happened. i think they came and got him...my memory is a bit fuzzy around this...apparently, jim had been experimenting with psychadelic drugs which most likely threw him over the edge...we'll never know, because that was the last we ever heard from him or about him.
bruce went on to become a major player in the world of rock, with clarence at his side...and we early fans eventually went our seperate ways... i have no doubt, though, that when we hear bruce on the radio, we remember...and i'm sure we're all affected by the big man's passing...he was a huge part of it all...
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