Remembering Big Man's birthday, and two of his best live recordings, released a quarter-century ago

January 11, 2026

This year marks what would have been the 84th birthday of our beloved Clarence "Big Man" Clemons, born on this date back in 1942. (Happy Clarence Clemons Day 2026, New Jersey!) And just over two-and-a-half months from now, 2026 also will mark the 25th anniversary of the first officially released recordings of two of Bruce Springsteen's greatest songs: "American Skin (41 Shots)" and "Land of Hope and Dreams," both included on the album Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Live in New York City, officially released on March 27, 2001. (The HBO television-special version of Live in New York City premiered on April 7, 2001 and received its expanded-DVD release in November of that year.)

Clarence delivered crucial performances - two of his all-time greatest performances, actually - on both of those songs, which stood out and have stood the test of time among the handful of new songs performed by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band on their 1999-2000 "Reunion" tour. His is the first voice heard singing "41 shots..." at the beginning of "American Skin," and his mournful sax solo closes the song, fully articulating all of the pain and loss without any additional words needed.

On the other hand, in "Land of Hope and Dreams," his sax solo soars and lifts the song to new heights of glory, conveying just as much joy and hope as those "bells of freedom ringing" that Bruce was singing about just before Big Man began blowing his horn.

How importantly linked was Clarence Clemons to "Land of Hope and Dreams?" On the studio version of the song, recorded for Wrecking Ball after Clemons' passing, it's still the Big Man playing that sax solo (via a beautifully brilliant move by producer Ron Aniello, using archival audio of Clarence on sax from another live recording of the song.) And even at Clemons' deathbed, Springsteen lovingly sang a solo-acoustic version of the song to his bandmate and friend just before Clemons passed.

These two songs also serve as flip-sides of an essential message that Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band have consistently displayed, embodied especially well within the onstage relationship between "Scooter" and "the Big Man." As Bruce himself put it in the part of his eulogy for Clarence included in Wrecking Ball's liner notes, "It was a story where Scooter and the Big Man not only busted the city in half, but we kicked ass and remade the city, shaping it into the kind of place where our friendship would not be such an anomaly." Taken together, "Land of Hope and Dreams" gives us an immensely inspiring vision of what our lives, our communities, our nation, and our world could become, while "American Skin (41 Shots)" reminds us all too well of just how far away from achieving that vision we still are.

A quarter-century after their first officially released recordings, "Land of Hope and Dreams" and "American Skin (41 Shots)" remain as relevant as ever, if not more so, given our current state of affairs. Just last year, "Land of Hope and Dreams" even provided the name for Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band's most recent tour, in which they regularly took some of their greatest and most important political stands ever. Clearly, Bruce also was correct when he stated in Clarence's eulogy, "...I'll miss my friend, his sax, and the force of nature that was his sound. But his love and his story - the story that he gave to me, that he whispered in my ear, and that he gave to you - is going to carry on."