One thing you learn pretty early on in Springsteen saxophonist Clarence Clemons’ memoir Big Man (Grand Central Publishing, 400 pages, $26.99, Oct. 21) is that you’re not going to be reading any of the real juicy stuff.

“Maybe I’ll write a book that has all the sex-and-drugs stories from the early years and publish it after all of us are dead,” Clemons writes. “Nah, I can’t do that either, ’cause now all of us have kids and grandkids.”

But beyond the fact that you know a lot got left out of Big Man — a nickname Clemons says came not from Springsteen but from a little old lady in Bloomingdale’s — there’s another complicating factor: A lot of the stuff in it never even happened. Clemons and his writing partner Don Reo label a good number of the chapters “Legends,” and promise that those sections include “some fact and a lot of fiction.” It’s unorthodox, but just think of the trouble James Frey could have saved himself if he’d included the same warning.

Still, you’ve got to read between a lot of lines to get the complete picture of Clarence Clemons from Big Man, since the way it’s written relies less on historical fact and more on the personality of its subject. Fortunately, Clemons has plenty of that to spare. (more…)