Stations of The Boss, 5: Shayne Fontayne Carries the Axe

Few details and eyewitness accounts remain of former Lone Justice guitarist Shayne Fontayne‘s stint accompanying The Boss on His controversial albums and tours following a move to LA and the dumping of His E Street Band. Even fewer free images survive on the Web of Fontayne alongside The Boss, with Fontayne’s knees bent, guitar slung low, and bandana tied around his thigh, as the scriptures describe him. For our fifth work of art in the Stations of The Boss series, mixed-media artist Cam Sutton, of Shelby, North Carolina, worked from stills of the live clip that introduced this piece.

“I had little choice,” says Sutton, “His people must have scrubbed the Web clean of photographic evidence of this collaboration.”

According to a document that Sutton uncovered identified only as “presskit_bio.pdf,” Fontayne was merely a passerby, compelled to serve The Boss at the request of producer Jimmy Iovine.

In January 1992, Shane received a call from Jimmy Iovine who said, “Hey Shane, a friend of mine wants to know if you want to go out on the road.” “Who’s your friend?” Shane responded. “Springsteen,” Jimmy replied. Bruce had just seen a rerun of Saturday Night Live on which Shane had performed with Lone Justice. Springsteen had taken a departure from his E-Street band and was looking for a different set of musicians to take out on the road. The only guitarist asked to audition, Shane was invited to join the band. To start, there was a small industry show at The Bottom Line. Then there was an appearance on Saturday Night Live. “Bruce had never done network television before. He asked my opinion on whether or not he should do Saturday Night Live and I told him it was one of the biggest rushes I had ever had.”

Although Fontayne is barely remembered by His fans, the video clip demonstrates the support he provided the beaten, weary Springsteen. Sutton premieres his work of art and explains his thinking behind it following the jump!

Stations of the Boss, 5: Shayne Fontayne Carries the Axe, by Cam Sutton

“Obviously my work combines a few images from the video. If you pause the video at 1:55, you can see the tremendous strain that The Boss is under. I’ve studied countless hours of live video tapes (not to mentioned attending more than 30 of His shows) and the only other time I saw as troubled a look on His face was an acoustic show in 1997 at the Austria Center in Vienna. As He approached the second chorus of ‘Balboa Park’ He noticed that his B string was a little flat.”

Sutton continues, “The image of Shayne is from 2 minutes and 7 second into the performance, during his self-assured solo. He’s taken the axe for a handful of measures and the, after he hands it back to Him you can see at the 4:27 mark at revived, fiery Boss. For artistic purposes I took the liberty of flipping His image to the left side of the frame. He did not actually solo lefthanded.”

Not the artist, Cam Sutton, who asks that we respect his privacy, but baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Don Sutton.