By Dave Woodhall.
I woke up on Sunday morning to the sad news that two men who had done their bit to make the world a better place in their own, different, ways, had died.
The better-known of the two was Clarence Clemons, saxophonist with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street band, who died as a result of a stroke he suffered earlier in the week. Six foot five and as close to twenty stone as makes no difference, Clarence was more than just a sideman – he provided the soul influence to Springsteen’s blue collar rock’n’roll dream. There can’t be many sax players who were as much a part of the show as the band’s leader, much less when that leader was one of the all-time great frontmen. That Clemons, a black man, began playing alongside white musicians just a few years after the Civil Rights movement was at its height, in venues that not long earlier he wouldn’t have been able to enter, adds to his and his colleagues’ greatness. Integration isn’t just about making new laws – minds have to be changed as well. Black and white musicians working together to provide some of the finest music ever recorded did much to bring about a modern society.
Brian Haw may or may not have heard of Clarence Clemons. I would guess his musical tastes didn’t really stretch to that seminal sax solo on Born to Run, although he would have appreciated Springsteen’s homage to folk music and the band’s political commitments. Brian wouldn’t have been able to listen to much music at all over the past ten years, after setting up his peace camp in Parliament Square around the time of the invasion of Iraq. From then on his protest attracted much publicity, but what wasn’t so well known was that Brian’s father was one of the first British soldiers into Belsen towards the end of the war. Deeply affected by what he saw, he gassed himself twenty years later, when Brian was 13. I would guess this was the catalyst which set Brian off on the road that was later to see him swap his conventional lifestyle for the tent in which he lived for almost a decade.
When the law was changed and his protests became illegal Brian fought against eviction, and received worldwide sympathy. He was arrested on several occasions, the last coming on the morning of the state opening of Parliament, last May. Four months later he was diagnosed with throat cancer and in January flew to Berlin for treatment.
The best description of Brian came, strangely enough, from the Evening Standard, who called him “a noisy embarrassment” to the government. Others would call him an inspiration, a hero even.
Clarence Clemons and Brian Haw. Good men. The world is a lesser place for their passing.