Tzruya “Suki” Lahav, an Israeli violinist who toured with the E Street Band during a pivotal five-month between between October 1974 and March 1975 — and contributed to the The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle and Born to Run sessions including the violin intro to “Jungleland” — died from cancer on April 1. She was 74.
Lahav came into Bruce Springsteen‘s orbit in 1972 when her husband, record engineer Louis Lahav, worked on Greetings From Asbury Park. “We were all young,” Suki told the Jerusalem Post in 2007. “[Springsteen] wasn’t the big star. Not yet. Just a unique artist.”
The following year, during the sessions for The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle in Blauvet, New York, Suki found herself in the vocal booth when a church choir Springsteen invited to sing on “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” failed to show. Through the use of several overdubs, they essentially turned Lahav into a one-woman choir, even though she wasn’t officially credited in the liner notes.
In August 1974, after drummer Ernest “Boom Carter” and keyboardist David Sancious quit the E Street Band to form the jazz fusion band Tone, Springsteen placed an ad in the Village Voice seeking out a drummer, pianist, trumpet player, and violinist. After extensive auditions, he hired drummer Max Weinberg, keyboardist Roy Bittan, and he decided to try Lahav out on violin, at first only on a trial basis.
Her first gig took place Oct. 4, 1974 at New York City’s Avery Fisher Hall. The set featured an early version of the Born to Run epic “Jungleland,” and Lahav wound up contributing a haunting violin to the studio rendition as well. “The music was incredible,” she told The Jerusalem Post. “The lyrics were so rich; some of the most beautiful lyrics didn’t ever make it onto record. Everybody knew that he was going to be this big artist. But we were all poor. Bruce was poor. We were all just completely into this thing.”
Lahav and Springsteen worked out a stripped-down rendition of Bob Dylan’s “I Want You” that became a regular highlight of his stage show. And her violin work was also featured prominently on live performances of “Incident on 57th Street,” most notably on the famous Feb. 5, 1975 show at Philadelphia’s Main Point, which was broadcast on WMMR-FM, and circulated widely as a bootleg. (Lahav was only onstage during songs that required violin. Very few photos of her time with the group have ever surfaced.)
Her final concert was a Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band double bill with Orleans on March 3, 1975, at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. Later that month, she moved back to her native Israel with her husband, putting the Springsteen chapter of her life behind her forever.
Lahav found tremendous 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 hit songs 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 posted on Facebook. “She was a special, wise, pure-hearted woman who loved life. She was the best mom I could ever ask for.”
And even though Lahav’s period with Springsteen was incredibly brief, she never forgot it. “What I took from him was the understanding that when you write songs for music, you can soar,” she told Haaretz in 2023. “Soar with the text. You don’t have to stick to some limiting coherence; you can just soar.”
