Rock stars haven’t churned out very many Father’s Day songs, but Bruce Springsteen had a nice one on his Tunnel of Love album. Here’s “Walk Like A Man” performed in 2005. With Clarence on our minds today, this seems doubly appropriate, even though it’s a sax-free solo piano version. (I suspect a lot of sons out there will also find some powerful resonance in this line: “Well I was young and I didn’t know what to do / when I saw your best steps stolen away from you.) Here’s to all my fellow fathers; we’re all just tryin’ to walk like a man.

As you may know, the title of this blog is an acronym of a Bruce Springsteen song. As you may also know, “Big Man” Clarence Clemons suffered a massive stroke the other day (details here). The greatest sax solo in rock ‘n’ roll begins at the 4:26 mark.

Try and get past the shaky video to key into the passionate performance and lyrics (see them here) of one of the best tunes from Springsteen’s 2007 album, Magic.

“Hell’s brewin’ dark sun’s on the rise
This storm’ll blow through by and by
House is on fire, Viper’s in the grass
A little revenge and this too shall pass
This too shall pass, I’m gonna pray
Right now all I got’s this lonesome day”
—Bruce Springsteen

Actually, since putting this Philly Creative Guide article together, which offers four object lessons in creativity drawn from Springsteen’s career, I thought of a fifth:

Viewing the familiar from a radically different perspective can offer unimagined rewards. In the late 1980s, Springsteen threw a hard curve ball to Tunnel of Love tour audiences waiting for the exuberance of “Born To Run.” Performing the song solo on acoustic guitar, the energetic thrill of escaping that “town full of losers” was replaced by a stark reality: What do the song’s protagonists do next? Though fans lost the thrill of an energetic set-closer, they gained a powerful new view of a familiar song. Or listen to his re-imaginings of decades-old songs like “Open All Night,” “Blinded By the Light” and “If I Should Fall Behind” on 2007’s Live In Dublin with the Seeger Sessions band. As one of my favorite Robert Hunter lyrics goes: “Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.” Sometimes creativity means forcing yourself to see the familiar from a radically new perspective in order to move forward … occasionally in ways you never anticipated in the first place.