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Tzruya “Suki” Lahav, an Israeli violinist who accompanied the E Street Band on a pivotal five-month tour between October 1974 and March 1975 – and contributed to the sessions for “The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle” and “Born to Run”, including the violin intro to “Jungleland” – died of cancer on April 1st. She was 74 years old.
Lahav came into Bruce Springsteen’s circle in 1972 when her husband, the sound engineer Louis Lahav, worked on “Greetings From Asbury Park”. “We were all young,” Suki told the Jerusalem Post in 2007. “[Springsteen] wasn’t a big star yet. Not yet. Just a unique artist.”
The following year, while recording “The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle” in Blauvelt, New York, Suki found herself in the vocal booth after a church choir that Springsteen had hired for “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” failed to show. Through several overdubs, they quickly turned Lahav into a one-woman choir – even though she wasn’t mentioned by name in the booklet.
Joined the E Street Band
In August 1974, after drummer Ernest “Boom Carter” and keyboardist David Sancious left the E Street Band to form the jazz fusion project Tone, Springsteen placed an ad in the Village Voice seeking a drummer, a pianist, a trumpeter and a violinist. After extensive auditions, he hired drummer Max Weinberg and keyboardist Roy Bittan – and decided to first try out Lahav as a violinist.
Their first concert took place on October 4, 1974 at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City. The set included an early version of the Born to Run epic “Jungleland,” and Lahav also contributed a haunting violin to the studio recording at the end. “The music was incredible,” she told the Jerusalem Post. “The lyrics were so rich; some of the most beautiful lyrics never made it to record. Everyone knew he was going to be a great artist. But we were all poor. Bruce was poor. We were all just completely sucked into this thing.”
Lahav and Springsteen created a stripped-down version of Bob Dylan’s “I Want You” that became the highlight of his stage show. Her violin work was also featured prominently in live performances of “Incident on 57th Street” – most famously at the legendary February 5, 1975 concert at Main Point in Philadelphia, which was broadcast on WMMR-FM and received wide distribution as a bootleg. (Lahav only appeared on stage for songs that required violin. Photos from her time with the band have barely surfaced to this day.)
Farewell and life in Israel
Her last concert was a double bill of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band with Orleans on March 3, 1975 at the DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, DC. That same month she moved back to her native Israel with her husband and finally left the Springsteen chapter of her life behind her.
Lahav enjoyed great success in Israel. She worked with the Israeli Kibbutz Orchestra, published two novels, wrote the screenplay for the 1996 crime film “Kesher Dam” and composed several hits for other Israeli artists, including “Derech Hameshi” by Yehudit Ravitz, “Yemei Hatom” by Rita and “Perach” by Gidi Gov.
“She wrote songs that touched people’s hearts,” her son Yonatan Albalak wrote on Facebook. “And she was a special, smart, sincere woman who loved life. She was the best mother I could have ever asked for.”
Springsteen’s lasting influence
And even though Lahav’s time with Springsteen was so short, she never forgot it. “What I took from him was the understanding that you can elevate yourself when writing songs,” she told Haaretz in 2023. “Soar with the text. You don’t have to stick to a restrictive coherence; you can just take off.”
