To hiding on the backstreets. Hiding on the backstreets, Where we swore forever friends. On the backstreets until the end."

I wrote the previous Father's Day post yesterday afternoon. Last night, at approximately 7 pm we lost one of the greatest Sax players to have ever lived, Clarence Clemons. I felt his loss. I never had the oppurtunity to see him play with Springsteen live. And now, it will never be the same.

Naturally I heard the news via twitter, and ran to tell my dad. We skimmed the NYT article together and sat in disbelief. My dad quickly got up and came back with a huge poster I had never seen before. "I have to get this framed now, I got it at the last concert I went to." The poster is the cover of the "Born to Run," album. The classic image of Springsteen resting his arm on someone's shoulder who he is fondly smiling at. It is only once you open the album that you see whose shoulder he's leaning on--Clarence's. The poster is the album cover in full.

We watched the story on the evening news at 11 together. And then my dad pulled out his DVD of Springsteen's Born to Run album. It contained a bootlegged video of Bruce and the E Street band playing in London, the only footage of the band in full in their first 24 years together. We watched Clarence rock out on that sax during my favorite song, Jungleland. And then we watched the making of the album. Bruce poured everything he had into that album. And there's Clarence, talking about how much he loved Bruce and this album. And it gave me goosebumps. All the while my dad is sharing stories about Bruce, things I never knew about him and the band. I'm so lucky to have a father like him.

And I'm lucky that I'm starting to get to know him as a person, not just my dad. All these years I always attributed his love of "The Boss" to his adolescence, some teenage boy who admired from the start. My dad cracked a smile as he started telling me the first time he heard "Born to Run." He never really liked him bef Springsteen ore then, didn't get the big deal. He was driving with a girl he was dating at the time, and the song came on the radio (he explained AM/FM radio to me. I explained that while technology has advanced, I 'm still very much aware of what a radio is, and in fact an avid user) for the first time and she screamed and said "This is it! Pull over, pull over!" She wouldn't even let him keep driving. She made him stop and just sit there and listen to the song in silence.

As saddened as I am by "the big man's" death, I do not think I could have conjured up a more beautiful start to my father's day this year. At two in the morning, it was just my dad and I sitting in the living room reflecting on the loss of a legend, and our mutual love for great music.