Bruce Springsteen has said he thinks every day about former E Street Band members Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici, whose deaths continue to shape his life and music. He describes the dead as still accompanying him through their spirit, energy and lasting influence, framing grief as a continuing relationship rather than a disappearance.

Clemons, the band’s saxophonist, died in 2011, while organist Federici died in 2008. Their absence informed Springsteen’s 2020 album Letter to You, alongside the death of George Theiss, his Castiles bandmate; songs such as ‘Ghosts’, ‘Last Man Standing’ and ‘I’ll See You in My Dreams’ address loss, memory and mortality.