It's twenty six years, almost to the day in fact, since I first saw the E Street Band break across a stage with the energy of a cavalry charge, the stamina of stream engines, and a joie de vivre that by rights ought to be bottled and handed out as tonic for the down-hearted. They were electric.

That concert was memorable for all the right reasons. I had never been to a stadium sized concert before, and this was at the old Wembley. The venue was brimming with thousands, all of us fizzing with eagerness the way champagne does in that nano-second before the cork's pulled.

I was very tired. I'd only had a few hours sleep that morning after finishing a Friday night shift at the restaurant I worked at; so too worn down to manage hours of standing, I persuaded the friend I was with ( a Canadian I think) to find somewhere we could sit.

Eventually we flopped on to a pair of seats, a few rows above the tunnel and one row below a slightly raised tier. This, we clicked moments before the gig opened up to Bruce counting the band in, was the Royal Box, and popping at the seams with Rock Royalty: in there was Sting, Ringo Starr, and George Michael, who was absolutely in the zone, head-banging and singing his heart out.

No doubt there were probably other members of the Rock Royal family in there, but it's just these I remember.

Next to me was a man on his own wearing a long, vibrant bandana, who I was initially sceptical of, too much the rock wannabe about him, I thought. Then I forgot all about him; the E Street experience does that to a person.

I only clocked him again when he moved from his seat and disappeared in the intermission between the band closing their set and the expected crescendo of encores to follow. I imagined he'd be heading out to Wembley Park station before the crowds poured out. Except I saw him again, this time striding on to the stage with the rest of the band for the encores. I'd been sat next to Steve Van Zandt.

That memory has n't gone, it's blurred a little around the edges, put that down to edge and distance from the event, but what I've never forgotten from that, or the other seven times I've seen the E-Street Band in full flight is that sense of utter exhilaration, every nerve intoxicated, every sense alive. Swashbuckling licks and riffs played by a band, never anything but at the top of the game, not their game, I mean the Game.

Today, I woke to hear the motor of the band, it's dynamo, Clarence Clemons had died. RIP. Those sax solos will never leave me.