{"id":372024,"date":"2026-04-02T23:47:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T23:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/372024\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T23:47:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T23:47:09","slug":"e-street-band-violinist-tzruya-suki-lahav-dead-at-74","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/372024\/","title":{"rendered":"E Street Band Violinist Tzruya ‘Suki’ Lahav Dead at 74"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTzruya \u201cSuki\u201d Lahav, an Israeli violinist who toured with the E Street Band during a pivotal five-month between between October 1974 and March 1975 \u2014 and contributed to the The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle and Born to Run sessions including the violin intro to \u201cJungleland\u201d \u2014 died from cancer on April 1. She was 74.<\/p>\n

\n\tLahav came into Bruce Springsteen<\/a>\u2018s orbit in 1972 when her husband, record engineer Louis Lahav, worked on Greetings From Asbury Park. \u201cWe were all young,\u201d Suki told the Jerusalem Post in 2007<\/a>. \u201c[Springsteen] wasn\u2019t the big star. Not yet. Just a unique artist.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 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 \u201c4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)\u201d failed to show. Through the use of several overdubs, they essentially turned Lahav into a one-woman choir, even though she wasn\u2019t officially credited in the liner notes.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn August 1974, after drummer Ernest \u201cBoom Carter\u201d and keyboardist David Sancious<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tHer first gig took place Oct. 4, 1974 at New York City\u2019s Avery Fisher Hall. The set featured an early version of the Born to Run epic \u201cJungleland,\u201d and Lahav wound up contributing a haunting violin to the studio rendition as well. \u201cThe music was incredible,\u201d she told The Jerusalem Post. \u201cThe lyrics were so rich; some of the most beautiful lyrics didn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tLahav and Springsteen worked out a stripped-down rendition of Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cI Want You\u201d that became a regular highlight of his stage show. And her violin work was also featured prominently on live performances of \u201cIncident on 57th Street,\u201d most notably on the famous Feb. 5, 1975 show at Philadelphia\u2019s 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.)<\/p>\n

\n\tHer 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tLahav 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 \u201cDerech Hameshi\u201d by Yehudit Ravitz, \u201cYemei Hatom\u201d by Rita, and \u201cPerach\u201d by Gidi Gov.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe wrote songs that touched people\u2019s hearts,\u201d her son Yonatan Albalak posted on Facebook.<\/a> \u201cShe was a special, wise, pure-hearted woman who loved life. She was the best mom I could ever ask for.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd even though Lahav\u2019s period with Springsteen was incredibly brief, she never forgot it. \u201cWhat I took from him was the understanding that when you write songs for music, you can soar,\u201d she told Haaretz in 2023. \u201cSoar with the text. You don\u2019t have to stick to some limiting coherence; you can just soar.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tzruya \u201cSuki\u201d Lahav, an Israeli violinist who toured with the E Street Band during a pivotal five-month between…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":372025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[19633,146,85,46,178741],"class_list":{"0":"post-372024","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-bruce-springsteen","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-suki-lahav"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}