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18 Apr 08 - 12:17 PM (#2319376) Subject: Obit: Danny Federici - E-Street Keyboardist From: Wesley S Sad but true. Only 58 years old. Obit story |
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18 Apr 08 - 01:25 PM (#2319434) Subject: RE: Obit:Danny Federici -E-Street Keyboardist(Apr2008) From: Lonesome EJ Another good man gone. Did he play piano on the Born to Run album, or was that Bruce? |
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18 Apr 08 - 01:35 PM (#2319442) Subject: RE: Obit:Danny Federici -E-Street Keyboardist(Apr2008) From: irishenglish I always thought Federici was more the organ player and Roy Bittan played piano. |
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18 Apr 08 - 01:40 PM (#2319449) Subject: RE: Obit:Danny Federici -E-Street Keyboardist(Apr2008) From: Wesley S I think Roy Bittan played the bulk of the piano parts on that release. Danny Federici played the other keyboard parts: Hammond organ, synths, accordian ect. |
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18 Apr 08 - 02:17 PM (#2319488) Subject: RE: Obit:Danny Federici -E-Street Keyboardist(Apr2008) From: Lonesome EJ As an aside, I saw Bruce live in a one-man show, and his ability on the piano was quite impressive. He performed a terrific rendition of Backstreets. |
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20 Apr 08 - 11:12 AM (#2320692) Subject: Obit: E Street Band's Danny Federici From: GUEST,Fantasma So surprised not to see any mention of this--or did I miss it? Lots to see on it at The Boss' website: http://www.brucespringsteen.net/news/index.html He passed away Thursday in NYC, only 58 years old. From Billboard.com: Danny Federici, the longtime keyboard player for Bruce Springsteen whose stylish work helped define the E Street Band's sound on hits from "Hungry Heart" through "The Rising," died last night (April 17). He was 58. Federici, who had battled melanoma for three years, died at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He last performed with Springsteen and the band last month, appearing during portions of a March 20 show in Indianapolis. "Danny and I worked together for 40 years — he was the most wonderfully fluid keyboard player and a pure natural musician. I loved him very much ... we grew up together," Springsteen said in a statement posted on his Web site. Springsteen concerts scheduled for tonight in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and tomorrow in Orlando were postponed. Federici was born in Flemington, N.J., a long car ride from the Jersey shore haunts where he first met kindred musical spirit Springsteen in the late 1960s. The pair often jammed at the Upstage Club in Asbury Park, N.J., a now-defunct after-hours club that hosted the best musicians in the state. It was Federici, along with original E Street Band drummer Vini Lopez, who first invited Springsteen to join their band. By 1969, the self-effacing Federici -- often introduced in concert by Springsteen as "Phantom Dan" -- was playing with the Boss in a band called Child. Over the years, Federici joined his friend in acclaimed shore bands Steel Mill, Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom and the Bruce Springsteen Band. Federici became a stalwart in the E Street Band as Springsteen rocketed from the boardwalk to international stardom. Springsteen split from the E Streeters in the late '80s, but they reunited for a hugely successful tour in 1999. Federici played accordion on the wistful "4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" from Springsteen's second album, and his organ solo was a highlight of Springsteen's first top 10 hit, "Hungry Heart." His organ coda on the 9/11-inspired Springsteen song "You're Missing" provided one of the more heart-wrenching moments on "The Rising" in 2002. In a band with larger-than-life characters such as saxophonist Clarence Clemons and bandana-wrapped guitarist "Little" Steven Van Zandt, Federici was content to play in his familiar position to the side of the stage. But his playing was as vital to Springsteen's live show as any instrument in the band. Federici released a pair of solo albums that veered from the E Street sound and into soft jazz. Bandmates Nils Lofgren on guitar and Garry Tallent on bass joined Federici on his 1997 debut, "Flemington." In 2005, Federici released its follow-up, "Out of a Dream." Federici had taken a leave of absence during the band's tour in November 2007 to pursue treatment for melanoma, and was temporarily replaced by veteran musician Charles Giordano. At the time, Springsteen described Federici as "one of the pillars of our sound and has played beside me as a great friend for more than 40 years. We all eagerly await his healthy and speedy return." Besides his work with Springsteen, Federici played on albums by an impressive roster of other artists: Van Zandt, Joan Armatrading, Graham Parker, Gary U.S. Bonds and Garland Jeffreys. |
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20 Apr 08 - 11:48 AM (#2320706) Subject: RE: Obit:Danny Federici -E-Street Keyboardist(Apr2 From: GUEST,Fantasma Thanks, for pulling it up & combining the threads. His definitive Hammond B3 sound will go down in rock history. Here is the NYT Obit, which explains the two keyboard thang: By JON PARELES Published: April 19, 2008 Danny Federici, a keyboardist for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band since it was formed in the early 1970s, died on Thursday. He was 58 and lived in Manhattan. His death, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, was caused by melanoma, according to Mr. Springsteen's Web site, brucespringsteen.net. Mr. Federici was Mr. Springsteen's collaborator since they jammed together at clubs on the New Jersey shore in the 1960s. "He was the most wonderfully fluid keyboard player and a pure, natural musician," Mr. Springsteen said in a statement. "I loved him very much. We grew up together." Born in Flemington, N.J., Mr. Federici began studying classical accordion at 7 before switching to electric organ and joining rock bands. He played at clubs in Asbury Park and made his first recording on a single by an Asbury Park songwriter, Bill Chinnock, whose bands included two other future members of the E Street Band: Vini Lopez on drums and Garry Tallent on bass. Mr. Federici and Mr. Lopez started their own band and invited Mr. Springsteen to become a member. "This skinny guy with long hair and a ratty T-shirt was an incredible guitar player and a good singer, so we asked him to join," Mr. Federici once said. The band was named Child and soon renamed Steel Mill, which built a strong reputation touring the East Coast. Mr. Federici was also in Mr. Springsteen's short-lived band Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom. He did not play on Mr. Springsteen's debut album, "Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.," from 1973, but he was in E Street when Mr. Springsteen introduced the band that year on "The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle." Mr. Federici remained in every E Street Band lineup, along with Mr. Tallent on bass and Clarence Clemons on saxophone, until taking a medical leave of absence in November 2007. Mr. Springsteen called him "one of the pillars of our sound." Like a gospel group, the E Street Band includes two keyboardists, one usually playing piano and the other an organ. Mr. Federici, whom Mr. Springsteen often introduced as "Phantom Dan," was the organist; he also played accordion for songs like "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)." His role in the band was most often supportive, filling out the harmony with beefy chords from his Hammond B-3 organ. But Mr. Federici is in the foreground with the organ solo on the 1980 hit "Hungry Heart." At times, to give the E Street Band its chiming, Phil Spector sound onstage, he played a keyboard-operated glockenspiel, one of few in existence. For much of the 1980s Mr. Springsteen kept the E Street Band on retainer while working with other musicians. Mr. Federici played on Mr. Springsteen's 1987 solo album, "Tunnel of Love," and was a member of its touring band. He was a studio musician on Mr. Springsteen's 1995 solo album, "The Ghost of Tom Joad." Through the years he played recording sessions for Joan Armatrading, Garland Jeffreys, Graham Parker and Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul, among others. Mr. Springsteen reconvened the E Street Band to record new songs on a greatest-hits album in 1995 and started touring with it again in 1999. "The Rising," Mr. Springsteen's 2002 record, was his first full album with the E Street Band since "Born in the U.S.A." in 1984. They have toured together often since its release. Mr. Federici, whose replacement after November 2007 was Charles Giordano, last performed with Mr. Springsteen and the band onstage in Indianapolis on March 20. They are still on tour, but have postponed some shows. Between E Street Band engagements, Mr. Federici led his own groups in clubs and released two albums of pop-jazz: "Flemington" in 1997 (reissued as "Danny Federici" in 2001) and "Sweet" in 2004 (reissued as "Out of a Dream" in 2005). He is survived by his wife, Maya; his son, Jason; and his daughters Madison and Harley. |
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21 Apr 08 - 12:03 PM (#2321574) Subject: RE: Obit:Danny Federici -E-Street Keyboardist(Apr2008) From: Stilly River Sage Interesting. I did a search on this "GUEST Fantasma," wondering why, when he/she is Johnny-one-note, here at Mudcat only to promote Obama, not to be a member or a music participant, and visiting no other threads save two Obama threads, that an obituary should turn up? I got it--Springsteen is endorsing Obama. SRS |
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21 Apr 08 - 06:10 PM (#2322007) Subject: RE: Obit:Danny Federici -E-Street Keyboardist(Apr2008) From: Stilly River Sage Pardon me, to demote Obama, typo there. |
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21 Apr 08 - 06:53 PM (#2322039) Subject: RE: Obit:Danny Federici -E-Street Keyboardist(Apr2 From: McGrath of Harlow It comes to the same thing. .................. A whole bunch of tribute clips on YouTube. And here's the Danny Federici Melanoma Fund |
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26 Apr 08 - 10:27 AM (#2326201) Subject: RE: Obit:Danny Federici -E-Street Keyboardist(Apr2 From: GUEST,Ghost of Tom Joad April 25, 2008 A Eulogy for Danny Federici Farewell to Danny By BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Let me start with the stories. Back in the days of miracles, the frontier days when "Mad Dog" Lopez and his temper struck fear into the band, small club owners, innocent civilians and all women, children and small animals. Back in the days when you could still sign your life away on the hood of a parked car in New York City. Back shortly after a young red-headed accordionist struck gold on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour and he and his mama were sent to Switzerland to show them how it's really done. Back before beach bums were featured on the cover of Time magazine. I'm talking about back when the E Street Band was a communist organization! My pal, quiet, shy Dan Federici, was a one-man creator of some of the hairiest circumstances of our 40 year career... And that wasn't easy to do. He had "Mad Dog" Lopez to compete with.... Danny just outlasted him. Maybe it was the "police riot" in Middletown, New Jersey. A show we were doing to raise bail money for "Mad Log" Lopez who was in jail in Richmond, Virginia, for having an altercation with police officers who we'd aggravated by playing too long. Danny allegedly knocked over our huge Marshall stacks on some of Middletown's finest who had rushed the stage because we broke the law by...playing too long. As I stood there watching, several police officers crawled out from underneath the speaker cabinets and rushed away to seek medical attention. Another nice young officer stood in front of me onstage waving his nightstick, poking and calling me nasty names. I looked over to see Danny with a beefy police officer pulling on one arm while Flo Federici, his first wife, pulled on the other, assisting her man in resisting arrest. A kid leapt from the audience onto the stage, momentarily distracting the beefy officer with the insults of the day. Forever thereafter, "Phantom" Dan Federici slipped into the crowd and disappeared. A warrant out for his arrest and one month on the lam later, he still hadn't been brought to justice. We hid him in various places but now we had a problem. We had a show coming at Monmouth College. We needed the money and we had to do the gig. We tried a replacement but it didn't work out. So Danny, to all of our admiration, stepped up and said he'd risk his freedom, take the chance and play. Show night. 2,000 screaming fans in the Monmouth College gym. We had it worked out so Danny would not appear onstage until the moment we started playing. We figured the police who were there to arrest him wouldn't do so onstage during the show and risk starting another riot. Let me set the scene for you. Danny is hiding, hunkered down in the backseat of a car in the parking lot. At five minutes to eight, our scheduled start time, I go out to whisk him in. I tap on the window. "Danny, come on, it's time." I hear back, "I'm not going." Me: "What do you mean you're not going?" Danny: "The cops are on the roof of the gym. I've seen them and they're going to nail me the minute I step out of this car." As I open the door, I realize that Danny has been smoking a little something and had grown rather paranoid. I said, "Dan, there are no cops on the roof." He says, "Yes, I saw them, I tell you. I'm not coming in." So I used a procedure I'd call on often over the next forty years in dealing with my old pal's concerns. I threatened him...and cajoled. Finally, out he came. Across the parking lot and into the gym we swept for a rapturous concert during which we laughed like thieves at our excellent dodge of the local cops. At the end of the evening, during the last song, I pulled the entire crowd up onto the stage and Danny slipped into the audience and out the front door. Once again, "Phantom" Dan had made his exit. (I still get the occasional card from the old Chief of Police of Middletown wishing us well. Our histories are forever intertwined.) And that, my friends, was only the beginning. There was the time Danny quit the band during a rough period at Max's Kansas City, explaining to me that he was leaving to fix televisions. I asked him to think about that and come back later. Or Danny, in the band rental car, bouncing off several parked cars after a night of entertainment, smashing out the windshield with his head but saved from severe injury by the huge hard cowboy hat he bought in Texas on our last Western swing. Or Danny, leaving a large marijuana plant on the front seat of his car in a tow away zone. The car was promptly towed. He said, "Bruce, I'm going to go down and report that it was stolen." I said, "I'm not sure that's a good idea." Down he went and straight into the slammer without passing go. Or Danny, the only member of the E Street Band to be physically thrown out of the Stone Pony. Considering all the money we made them, that wasn't easy to do. Or Danny receiving and surviving a "cautionary assault" from an enraged but restrained "Big Man" Clarence Clemons while they were living together and Danny finally drove the "Big Man" over the big top. Or Danny assisting me in removing my foot from his stereo speaker after being the only band member ever to drive me into a violent rage. And through it all, Danny played his beautiful, soulful B3 organ for me and our love grew. And continued to grow. Life is funny like that. He was my homeboy, and great, and for that you make considerations... And he was much more tolerant of my failures than I was of his. When Danny wasn't causing chaos, he was a sweet, talented, unassuming, unpretentious good-hearted guy who simply had an unchecked ability to make good fortune and things in general go fabulously wrong. But beyond all of that, he also had a mountain of the right stuff. He had the heart and soul of an engineer. He learned to fly. He was always up on the latest technology and would explain it to you patiently and in enormous detail. He was always "souping" something up, his car, his stereo, his B3. When Patti joined the band, he was the most welcoming, thoughtful, kindest friend to the first woman entering our "boys club." He loved his kids, always bragging about Jason, Harley, and Madison, and he loved his wife Maya for the new things she brought into his life. And then there was his artistry. He was the most intuitive player I've ever seen. His style was slippery and fluid, drawn to the spaces the other musicians in the E Street Band left. He wasn't an assertive player, he was a complementary player. A true accompanist. He naturally supplied the glue that bound the band's sound together. In doing so, he created for himself a very specific style. When you hear Dan Federici, you don't hear a blanket of sound, you hear a riff, packed with energy, flying above everything else for a few moments and then gone back in the track. "Phantom" Dan Federici. Now you hear him, now you don't. Offstage, Danny couldn't recite a lyric or a chord progression for one of my songs. Onstage, his ears opened up. He listened, he felt, he played, finding the perfect hole and placement for a chord or a flurry of notes. This style created a tremendous feeling of spontaneity in our ensemble playing. In the studio, if I wanted to loosen up the track we were recording, I'd put Danny on it and not tell him what to play. I'd just set him loose. He brought with him the sound of the carnival, the amusements, the boardwalk, the beach, the geography of our youth and the heart and soul of the birthplace of the E Street Band. Then we grew up. Very slowly. We stood together through a lot of trials and tribulations. Danny's response to a mistake onstage, hard times, catastrophic events was usually a shrug and a smile. Sort of an "I am but one man in a raging sea, but I'm still afloat. And we're all still here." I watched Danny fight and conquer some tough addictions. I watched him struggle to put his life together and in the last decade when the band reunited, thrive on sitting in his seat behind that big B3, filled with life and, yes, a new maturity, passion for his job, his family and his home in the brother and sisterhood of our band. Finally, I watched him fight his cancer without complaint and with great courage and spirit. When I asked him how things looked, he just said, "what are you going to do? I'm looking forward to tomorrow." Danny, the sunny side up fatalist. He never gave up right to the end. A few weeks back we ended up onstage in Indianapolis for what would be the last time. Before we went on I asked him what he wanted to play and he said, "Sandy." He wanted to strap on the accordion and revisit the boardwalk of our youth during the summer nights when we'd walk along the boards with all the time in the world. So what if we just smashed into three parked cars, it's a beautiful night! So what if we're on the lam from the entire Middletown police department, let's go take a swim! He wanted to play once more the song that is of course about the end of something wonderful and the beginning of something unknown and new. Let's go back to the days of miracles. Pete Townshend said, "a rock and roll band is a crazy thing. You meet some people when you're a kid and unlike any other occupation in the whole world, you're stuck with them your whole life no matter who they are or what crazy things they do." If we didn't play together, the E Street Band at this point would probably not know one another. We wouldn't be in this room together. But we do... We do play together. And every night at 8 p.m., we walk out on stage together and that, my friends, is a place where miracles occur...old and new miracles. And those you are with, in the presence of miracles, you never forget. Life does not separate you. Death does not separate you. Those you are with who create miracles for you, like Danny did for me every night, you are honored to be amongst. Of course we all grow up and we know "it's only rock and roll"...but it's not. After a lifetime of watching a man perform his miracle for you, night after night, it feels an awful lot like love. So today, making another one of his mysterious exits, we say farewell to Danny, "Phantom" Dan, Federici. Father, husband, my brother, my friend, my mystery, my thorn, my rose, my keyboard player, my miracle man and lifelong member in good standing of the house rockin', pants droppin', earth shockin', hard rockin', booty shakin', love makin', heart breakin', soul cryin'... and, yes, death defyin' legendary E Street Band. Visit the website for the Danny Federici Melanoma Fund, here. |
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26 Apr 08 - 10:50 AM (#2326208) Subject: RE: Obit:Danny Federici -E-Street Keyboardist(Apr2008) From: Dave'sWife Federici was one of those musicians whose name people don't know but whose contributions to a special sound were unique. My husband grew up on the Jersey Shore and I grew up in and around NYC where the Jersey Shore, along with Rockaway beach, was sometimes referred to as "The Irish Riviera". Having been born in 1964, I'm a bit too young to have fully appreciated the pre-Born To Run albums while they were new but once I latched onto Born To Run in the 6th grade, I quickly looked back to them. Of course, the albums that preceeded BTR are nothing like it and more a testament to a mythical shore I barely got to experience. Even so, as I grew older, it was songs like "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" that meant the most to me. In fact, the new CD, Magic, which I don't like much, has a song on it that was released as the second single which echos so much of that earlier song I love so well. it's called 'Girls In their Summer Clothes" and it has a few of those distinct Federici touches on it. There are some side-men who add so much to a band and whose presence you can always here and you miss it when it's not there or not proprerly exploited. For me Federici is right up there with David Lindley and James Burton in terms of the unique nature of their contribution to a band or singer's sound that they are known for. At least we can still listen |