Springsteen shares final moments with Clarence Clemons and more on Howard Stern show

Bruce Springsteen recounted his last moments with the late Clarence Clemons, who passed away in 2011, during a two-hour plus interview on Monday, Oct. 31, with Howard Stern on SiriusXM.

Springsteen played “Land of Hopes and Dreams” for the Big Man on his deathbed.

“I had a feeling he could hear me because he could squeeze your hand when I first went to him. There was some response to your voice and to you being in the room,” an emotional Springsteen said. “I took a hunch, and I knew he was going to die, so I had brought the guitar in and strummed the song called 'Land of Hope and Dreams.' Yeah, 'Land of Hope and Dreams.' It's a about passing to the other side. It's about life and death,”

Springsteen played a solo acoustic version of the song on the Stern show.

“It's a hymn,” Springsteen said. “It was the last song Clarence and I worked on a sax solo together on. It's probably one of my best songs of the last 20, 30 years, and so that was it. There was nothing else to say.”

Springsteen talked about his four-hour concerts, his search for a father figure, a supergroup he'd like to form, Halloweens in Rumson, and more in the expansive interview, which had none of the luridness Stern was known for early his career.

Springsteen, appearing for the first time on the Stern show, also played snippets of nearly a dozen songs on guitar and piano during the talk, conducted in the Manhattan SiriusXM studio.

So why does Bruce Springsteen play so long in concert? It's all about a “purification ritual,” said the Boss.

“I grew up in the Catholic Church, so you grow up with a lot of sin," he said. "Original sin and life and rituals are all about the ritual of purification, of the cleansing of your soul and your mind. A certain amount of that is good for you, but if you take it too extreme it's like anything else — it becomes your master.

“So a lot of my self-created rituals were rituals of purification, and I took it too far sometimes in my work.”

Stern asked Springsteen if he searched for a father figure after his family moved from Freehold to California and left the19-year old Springsteen alone in New Jersey.

“I always had father figures, right from when my parents left,” Springsteen said. “Sort of outlaws. I was living off the grid. My parents left in 1969, and I stayed in New Jersey and was living with the band, so you're not meeting any conventional people. ... Once it was a couple of college guys. They had ($3,000) to invest and they became my managers for a couple of years. And then there was a fella named Carl ‘Tinker’ West, who ran a surfboard factory in Wanamassa, New Jersey. He kind of took me under his wing. He was about 10 years older than me and he was a surfdog from the West Coast who came East. I lived with him in the factory for a couple of years.

“They noticed my talent, said you're worth something. 'I'll invest something in you,' ” said Springsteen, who also referenced the late Tex Vinyard of Freehold, and called him and West the "unsung heroes of rock 'n' roll."

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On the topic of rock heroes, Springsteen seemed open to forming rock supergroup with John Fogerty, Tom Morello and Neil Young. They're the musicians Springsteen has “had a lot of fun playing with.”

As residents of Rumson know, Springsteen is a fan of Halloween. The Springsteens used to go all in when the family lived in the borough in the '90s and 2000s.

“I'm a Halloween lover!” Springsteen said. “When we lived in Rumson our front yard was insane. We would invite the entire town — thousands of people would come on over. We had a whole movie set going on.

“We did it for a while and one night 4,000 people showed up. I looked at the street in front of my house and it was insane. Mamas and daddies were running up the road with their little babies, and I said somebody's going to get killed eventually here. ... I stopped doing it about 10 years ago.”

The interviewed ended with Stern's playing Springsteen's single, “Nightshift,” from his upcoming album of soul covers, “Only the Strong Survive.”

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Chris Jordan, a Jersey Shore native, covers music and entertainment for the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey. Contact him at @chrisfhjordan; cjordan@app.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Bruce Springsteen Howard Stern interview remembers Clarence Clemons