Playing keyboards with Bruce in various bands along the New Jersey coast since the late ’60s, Danny’s tenure with the Boss is the longest of any of the E Street Band members. Since this is rock ’n’ roll we’re talking about here, though, the word “tenure” may present a more stable image than was actually the case. Between Bruce’s lawsuits, layoffs, bum managers, and just plain time off to pursue other projects over the years, there have been many breaks in the action, sometimes lengthy ones: Fifteen years separates the recordings of Born in the U.S.A. and The Rising, for example, and the band was “officially” disbanded from 1989 until 1999. But whenever Bruce has had a keyboard job to fill, Danny’s been the one to do it — the loyalty ran deep, and it ran both ways. Onstage, their mutual affection was obvious, even recently during the segments of the Magic tour that Danny was able to perform on, all the way right up to his last performance with the band on March 20 of this year.
The Phantom
In the E Street Band, there always seems to be plenty of room for musicianship and for personality. Danny provided loads in both departments. Fans all knew his nickname — “Phantom” Dan — and many assumed that it came from the subtle support role he assumed onstage, in contrast to the more flamboyant characters of saxophonist Clarence Clemens or guitarist “Miami” Steven Van Zandt. But the origins of Danny’s “Phantom” nickname have nothing to do with subtlety, coming instead from his talent for escaping the long arm of the law — literally — back when the dedicated men in blue from a number of municipalities would routinely attend Bruce’s performances in order to try to arrest the band for playing too loud or too long.
In fact, Danny’s talent for evasion developed early, coincidentally right about the time when he was learning his first instrument: the accordion. “My mother drove me to my accordion lessons,” he told us back in 1981. “If it wasn’t for her, I don’t think I would have kept it up. She always wanted me to practice: ‘You can’t go out and play unless you practice.’ Then after a certain point, it was, ‘Do you realize how much money we spent on music lessons? You’re going to practice.’ She also used to tell me, ‘If you play music, you’re going to have a good life. You’ll always drive fast cars and meet beautiful women.’”
Even with that kind of encouragement and incentive, Danny attempted a shortcut around his mother’s admonitions — but only once. “I was always into electronics,” he said. “I had a portable TV and a tape recorder up in my room where I used to practice. So one day I had this idea that I was going to tape myself practicing, which I did. I put the earphone jack in the TV, turned on the tape recorder, and watched TV. After about five minutes, I took the earphone out of my ear and called out, ‘Ma, how did that sound?’ She said, ‘That’s fine, that sounds real good.’ So I put the tape recorder back on and watched TV. Of course, she caught me about five days later.”
Once he graduated from bedroom practicing to dues-paying gigs, Danny formed a band called the Legends in which he played a Cordovox electric accordion through a Leslie. Eventually, he drifted down to Asbury Park, New Jersey. “I really liked the shore and the ocean,” he explained. “In those days it really didn’t take any money to live. You could always sleep at somebody’s house and drive home the next day. I was a real hippie, man; I had hair halfway down to my belly. So I just started hanging out down there, driving my flowered Volkswagon bus around with my organ in the back. It’s tough being a keyboard player, because if you’ve got a van, everybody wants to put their equipment in it. And if it breaks down, you pay for it; they don’t help you out at all.”
Asbury Park, of course, is Bruce Springsteen territory, and it wasn’t long before the two 17-year-old musicians met, after one of Danny’s club gigs. “I remember we were all sitting down in front of the stage,” he said. “Garry Tallent, Southside Johnny, Kevin Kavanaugh, and Vini Lopez, and Vini said, ‘Listen, why don’t we make a band?’ So Bruce quit his old one, and we started this band called Child. We got this big old flatbed truck, put all our equipment in the back, and drove to California to find our fortune.” The band focused on Bruce’s songs, and though they didn’t exactly find their fortune in L.A., they did change their name to Steel Mill, and they did open for some Chicago and Grand Funk Railroad shows. Then a dispute with the manager caused the band to self-destruct. It took a few years, but Bruce eventually did call his old buddy to join him following the success of Greetings from Asbury Park, and the rest is history.
The Musician
Danny Federici’s immense talent had a fantastic outlet in the E Street Band. But you have to admit that the situation was unique. After all, for the past 30 years there’s been an equally huge talent sitting across the stage from him: Roy Bittan. How many bands feature two keyboardists in such integral roles, for so many years, and with so much success? Not many. How did they manage it?
“Roy’s a technician, a very schooled classical theorist,” Danny told us in 1981. “Some of the subtleties he plays in the slow songs are so musical and so beautiful, they’re just not done in this business any more. But I didn’t like classical music. I quit taking accordion lessons when I found out that you couldn’t play jazz on an accordion. Then I fell into rock, and I’ve played in rock bands since I was 14 years old. So I’m more of a feeling player. I don’t play the same thing every night. I play the designated parts that the audience is familiar with, but the rhythms and feelings change.”
“Danny is a freer player than I am in a way,” Roy concurred in an interview with us in 1985. “He adds his particular thing to Bruce’s style quite well. I was very lucky to walk into a situation where this guy was doing what he does, and was able to play with me. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be in a band with another keyboard player where the two guys are clashing. That’s got to be horrible. We’ve got a great thing going, though. I don’t know how we do it, but somehow it works. Danny and I divide our parts pretty clearly. He does his thing, and I do mine. They happen to be two different things. I’ve never had a conflict with Danny. I always play the piano, and for the most part, Danny plays organ.”
One of the most eloquent spokesmen for the Danny Federici’s playing style is the man who has filled his boots in the E Street Band. When Danny finally needed someone to take his place in the band, Bruce called Charlie Giordano, who had played on the Seeger Sessions (read Michael Gallant’s interview with Charlie in the June ’07 issue, and here). Charlie had to get 50 songs under his belt in only a couple weeks; all reports are that he did it with aplomb, and Keyboard can attest to his success as well, having heard him in action with the band. “The whole thing has just been so sad,” says Charlie. “He was such a great player and such a big part of the sound of the band. Of course, I’m thrilled that Bruce called me. But it’s been a very emotional thing for everybody. It’s important to me to be respectful of the fact that Danny goes back with Bruce 40 years, with the other guys about 30 years, and then there’s what he means to the fans. It’s just a big loss. I think about him all the time. When I was filling in for him, he was very helpful and very nice to me. It really is such a loss, for the music, for the fans, for the band, for Danny’s friends and family. And that’s the most important thing to me.
“Danny was really great. I was a fan of his before anything. I first saw him with Bruce in ’74 in New York, at the Bottom Line. I just loved his playing. I went out the next day and bought the first two records. I became a big admirer.
“I’m pretty much playing the same parts that Danny played. They sent me a lot of live recordings, which really helped. That’s been my focus, to try to play what Danny played live, as close as I can.
“The organ and accordion are such a big part of his sound and his approach. It’s a very unique style. And I know I could never be that. I can get close to it. I’ve certainly studied it and transcribed a lot of the parts. But he was a special player. He was very smooth, and he had a lot of character to his very ornamented style. There was a lot that was unique to him. As a player, you can get close to that, but you can never really get it.”
Now that he’s a regular in the band, Charlie has been initiated into another daily element of life on E Street: unpredictability. “Oh, yes, we have what we call ‘audibles’ all the time,” he says. “In the middle of a set while we are playing the last chord of a song, Bruce will turn around to the band and tell us the name of the song he wants to do next. And you just have to do it, ready or not. That’s part of what this experience is. At first my heart was about an inch below my Adam’s apple. But now I understand that that’s how things work around here, and I’m doing my best to stay on top of it.”
E Street keyboard tech Marty Gelhaar is particularly well suited to comment on Danny’s playing style. A superb keyboardist himself, Marty has been observing the Phantom in action since 2003, when he joined the show as Roy Bittan’s tech. Being a Hammond tech at that, Marty paid special attention to Danny’s organ techniques. “Want to know his favorite drawbar settings? Here they are:
88 8800 000
88 8833 000
88 8833 034
00 4800 000
“He rarely used percussion, but if he did he used 2nd harmonic with short decay. He’d use C3 vibrato, but he had a tasteful way of applying it: He’d engage it when he’d go to the second chorus of a tune, or a new section. He’d also feather the expression pedal constantly, pumping it in time with the music. He’d use more drawbar variations in the studio, but live he used settings that emphasized the fundamental a bit more.
“One of his unique tricks was to use his right thumb to smash into a chord, much like most players would use the palm of their left hands to smash the keys on the lower manual. I asked Charlie about that, and he said, ‘Oh yeah, that’s an accordion player trick!’ He’d usually hit the root and seventh of a chord with his right thumb.
“On the lower manual of the organ, he’d pull out all the drawbars, and within the first two octaves, he’d sometimes just pound it with his left hand, making it spit with the key click, just for the rhythmic sound. Another cool thing he’d do was he’d feather the expression pedal so that when he’d go into the chorus, he’d kick the Leslie into fast and open up the expression pedal, then pull out the top two drawbars a bit. It made the sound sparkle. He was a master at that. He’d use tone as well as volume.”
Marty is particularly fond of several of Danny’s signature parts. “‘Sandy’ is an extraordinary example of his accordion playing,” says Marty. “That song is really associated with him. He gave that song so much character. The coda from “You’re Missing” from The Rising; that’s an example of how simple yet emotional his playing can be. He did some great playing on Magic, his organ lays over the track perfectly in “Gypsy Biker,” it’s the icing that holds that track together. It’s got only the 8' drawbar pulled out. “Hungry Heart” is excellent; it’s one of the rare occasions when he used percussion. He’d play the solo pretty much as he recorded it. “Livin’ in the Future” is a great solo, too, and one of the rare occasions when he used overdrive on the organ. Normally, he’d go for a very clean sound.”
As a tech, Marty’s life is just as affected by the liberties Bruce takes with the set list as Danny was and as Charlie is now. “Everyone has to have close to 200 songs ready to go,” says Marty. “Kudos go to Charlie, because he stepped into a big pair of shoes. He’s had to learn close to 200 songs.
“The gig isn’t really very relaxed, and I’ll tell you why. Bruce, even though he hands you a set list before the show, and it may be mere minutes before the show, he inevitably strays from that list. He’ll start calling ‘audibles’ at anytime: ‘Okay, let’s play this next.’ You have to keep an eye on him. He’ll walk over to whichever musician who starts the song — and that’s often Roy — make eye contact, and launch into something that’s not on the list.
“Everyone has to be ready on an instant. We techs have to be ready to grab the instrument and get the player up and running fast. All of us techs are really on our toes the whole show. The guitar techs have it way worse: There are a lot of alternate guitar tunings, and the techs have to be able to pass those guitars to their musician as soon as Bruce calls the tune. We have to watch him like a hawk.
“New songs? That’s almost an everyday occurrence at soundcheck. We try to get familiar with any cues there might be in the new song, like handing Roy the accordion, and knowing the key of the song so we can put it on the set list, and noting any moves that Roy or Charlie has to make, or any program changes, what instruments they play. Let’s say Roy’s on the downstage side of his rig, he’ll play the piano sounds from his K2600 triggering the Receptors, so he can be more comfortable playing both keyboards standing up. We watch them while they’re playing the new song, so we can tell what key it’s in; that’s when being a player comes in handy.
“Bruce may not play the new songs during the show, or he may only play one of the, say, three songs he’s brought in. But he sometimes brings in songs out of nowhere. Or if he has a guest musician playing, he might bring in a song from that band. Case in point: We played with the two main members of Arcade Fire, guitarist Wynn Butler and his wife, accordionist Regine. So the band learned one of their songs, ‘Keep the Car Running,’ from Neon Bible. When Roger McGuinn of the Byrds sat in, they learned ‘Turn, Turn, Turn,’ and ‘Hey Mr. Tamborine Man.’”
Speaking on behalf of Danny and Charlie as much as for himself, Marty says, “It’s about hard work. It’s not easy working for Bruce, because he expects a lot out of you. But he expects a lot out of himself, too. And he expects a lot out of his players. It really is a fun show. There are no backing tracks, it’s all live. It’s just a guy with a big band out making a big noise. And it works really well.
“Danny was a good man,” Marty concludes. “Even when his health was failing, he had a sense of humor. He faced his illness with courage. I don’t know if I’d be able to do that if it happened to me. He had such a unique style and played with such freedom. It’s such a big loss to musicians everywhere.”
A Selected Danny Federici Discography
Danny’s keyboard work graces every E Street Band recording from the very beginning, so a complete Danny discography includes everything in the band’s catalog.
Flemington (Music Master, 1997; reissued as Danny Federici in 2001)
Out of a Dream (V2 Records, 2005)
The Boss’ ’Boards
Bruce Springsteen is most often seen wielding a Telecaster. But the fact is that he’s written a lot of his songs at the piano, he often plays keys on his records, and he has a ton of organs and other keyboards in a warehouse. “Bruce is very involved in the choice of keyboard sounds for his recordings,” confirms tech guru Marty Gelhaar. “He has a remarkable collection of vintage equipment. He’s a very good keyboard player. He played a lot of the parts on the new album Magic himself. “Magic” has those oddball keyboard instruments all over it. To get the rigs ready to play those tunes live, I had to bring in some Mellotron sounds into the E-mu samplers, some from the Mellotron Archives CD-ROM, and others that I got right from the master drive, especially the keyboard tracks that were really stacked up. Those all come from [Magic producer] Brendan O’Brian’s archive; it was his Mellotron they used on the recording. There’s lots of Orchestron on the record, too. He used a lot of the sounds that weren’t very common on the Mellotrons, like the male choir sound. It’s all buried in the tracks. There’s even a pump organ on ‘Gypsy Biker.’
“It’s all about funky organs; Bruce loves ’em. He’s big on pump organs, Chamberlins, Mellotrons, and wacky old organs of all kinds, such as Ace-tones, Farfisas, and Voxes. We even haul two Farfisa Compact Deluxes and one Ace-tone just for the one song that they come out on: ‘Seaside Bar Song.’ Bruce knows not to call this one on the fly; when he soundchecks it, we know to have ’em ready. We’ll have ’em fired up and wired up, and we’ll walk ’em downstage and they flank Bruce.”
How to Rock a Glock
To generalize, Danny Federici’s musical role in the E Street Band focused mainly on the B-3, the accordion, and the glockenspiel, while his colleague across the stage, Roy Bittan, handled the piano and synth duties. In the late ’70s, Danny toured with a keyboard glockenspiel that sat on top of his B-3; given the large volume of sound the band puts out onstage, miking that thing couldn’t have been fun. In recent years, that all-important glock sound comes from a rather unlikely but clever source, as you’ll read in a few lines.
Marty Gelhaar, keyboard tech for Roy since 2003 and, as of the tour supporting Magic, for Danny and now Charlie Giordano, describes the intricacies of Danny’s rig. “The B-3s are owned by Bruce,” says Marty. “Danny’s been using these organs for years and years. They were rebuilt by John ‘Dawk’ Stillwell. Dawk is the guy who built the RMI electric piano into Jon Lord’s Hammond organ for Deep Purple. He was a bit of a mad scientist. At the beginning of the tour, I went in and replaced some of the things Dawk did with new Trek II components. We tour with two B-3s; the backup always comes with us, but we’ve never had to use it. We also have spare noises ready on a number of synths, onstage and in the racks, in one form or another. The Boss RT-20 is what we use for Leslie effects; it’s remarkably reliable, and sounds good out front.
“The MIDI output of the two Alesis keyboards is merged, so Danny or Charlie could use either as a controller at anytime. They’re used strictly as controllers, though. We run them through the DMC MX8; nobody makes a reliable rackmount MIDI patcher like this anymore. We have two; one’s a backup. The Alesis keyboards trigger sounds from the Alesis QSR and E-mu E4XT. Danny’s previous tech took a lot of Danny’s custom samples and squashed ’em down onto the Alesis PCM-CIA cards: His glockenspiel noise comes from there, and some Vox organ sounds. I resampled a lot of his Farfisa and Ace-tone sounds, and then put those samples into the E-mu. The Roland modules have the ‘Keyboards of the ’60s and ’70s’ expansion boards. A lot of the Vox and Farfisa noises come from there. Everything runs into the Behringer mixer; these are great products for 109 bucks. They’ve got 16 inputs, loud headphone outputs, and meters. As with everything, we have two, a main and a backup.”
How about the squeezebox? “Danny’s Excelsior is a very reliable and roadworthy instrument. Recently, Danny bought a smaller 72-bass instrument that was lighter than his 120 bass. Charlie plays a Fantini with a Sennheiser mic system from Alex’s Accordions in New York. The stereo outs on the accordions run in summed mono. The wireless systems are Sennheiser. We put cloth over the grilles from the inside to prevent feedback; that’s never a problem.
“Danny monitored through in-ears exclusively; Charlie’s doing it now, too. They both handled their own monitor mix from the 16-channel mixer that’s to the left of the B-3. If he wants to hear more of Roy or one of the guitar players, he can just turn him up.”
Couldn’t Say it Better Ourselves
Visit www.brucespringsteen.net to read Bruce’s eulogy for Danny Federici, and watch video of Danny’s last performance with the band.