ABOVE: Federici (right) jams with his Boss, Bruce Springsteen
The death of keyboardist Danny Federici this last Thursday effected me in a real, immediate way. As in, I had a flight booked and killer tickets lined up for the Springsteen show in Tampa, Florida this coming Monday night, which has now been rescheduled to a date when I cannot attend. This will mark the first Springsteen tour since 1984 that I will miss (I already let the Texas dates go by since I had the Tampa deal set), and coincidently, it is a tour for his best record (Magic) since about that time. But enough about my woes...
Springsteen's E Street Band is unlike most "back-up" bands for major artists, in that it is an incredibly tight and close group of gentlemen of the road. The old cliche of bands being like family, that really does apply to the E Streeters. With the exception of Soozie Tyrell, the "newest" member of the band has been with them for 24 years. Federici had been with Bruce since the very beginning, playing with him in 1972 along the Jersey shore and making up the core of the original E Street Band. Federici's tasteful and fluid keyboards have been a pillar of the Springsteen sound throughout the decades. While he was never one of the more flamboyant or colorful characters on E Street (like, say, Clarence Clemons or Steve Van Zandt), his contributions to the sound of the band were just as essential. His most prominent moment in the spotlight was his wonderful organ solo on the Springsteen hit, "Hungry Heart".
Federici battled melanoma for several years, and in November of last year he took a "leave of absence" from the tour as his condition worsened. For purely selfish reasons, I wish he could have held on for another week or two. But in all seriousness, I will always appreciate his contributions to Springsteen's body of work, which in turn has been a major part of my life. RIP "Phantom" Danny Federici.
2 comments:
Typical rock star arrogance, too caught up in women, jetsetting, and terminal melanoma chemotherapy to actually show up for his shows and rock the Tampa Swampdome.
Serioulsy, thogh I agree, his ivory contributed more to the BS sound that I love than Clarence Clemens.
RIP
Spoke with my sister who went to the rescheduled Tampa show last night. Naturally, she says it was one of the best shows she's seen in a lifetime of concertgoing, that Bruce gave a passionate show in memory of his fallen comrade, and that they reached deep into rarely played tunes that were Danny's faves. Dammit.
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