SONY/COLUMBIA 1992
- I Don’t Want To Go Home
- Fever
- This Time It’s For Real
- Love On The Wrong Side of Town
- Without Love
- Havin’ A Party
- Got To Get You Off My Mind (live)
- Snatchin’ It Back (live)
- You Mean So Much To Me (live)
- Little By Little (live)
- Got To Be A Better Way Home
- This Time Baby’s Gone For Good
- I Played The Fool
- Hearts Of Stone
- Take It Inside
- Talk To Me
- Next To You
- Trapped Again
LINER NOTES
Sweeter than honey. Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. Believe it.
In 1976 there was disco and punk rock, and on the Jersey shores, a new music steeped in oldies, mixing the Stax/Memphis Sound with Phil Spector. It came out of Asbury Park, a decaying ressort town 60 miles south of New York, where Bruce Springsteen had the vision, Southside Johnny had the soul, and Sugar Miami Steve Van Zandt had quite a bit of both.
They had all played together in too many late ’60s/early ’70s Asbury Park bars and bands alond with a number of similary arpiring musicians whose names would soon make up Springsteen’s E-Street Band and Lyon’s Jukes. At one point, Southside and Miami counted 48 bands together – in two years. During one of them, Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom (which also included Springsteen and maybe 30 other musicians,) Southside Johnny got his nickname – a reference to Chicago’s South Side, home of the blues.
Southside Johnny had grown up listening to black radio and absorbing the blues, jazz and r&b influences which coalesced into the Asbury Jukes – the 10 piece ensemble of guitars, keyboards and horns which took its name from it leader’s heroes, Chicago blues-harp player Little Walter. Walter’s band was called his Jukes, and Southside was himself a harpman. Southside gave his Jukes the “Asbury” designation both as a hommage to Walter and to the home of two clubs that were so important to the development of his sound: the Upstage Club, and later, the Stone Pony, where legendary record man Steve Popovitch fell in love with the band, signed them to Epic in 1976 after Miami Steve produced a demo at the Record Plant in New York.
The debut album “I don’t want to go home” was finished in short order, and sizzled with the r&b-infused energy that became the hallmark of the emerging Asbury Park Sound. Like so many of the songs chief tunesmith Van Zandt wrote for Southside during his stay at Epic, it briliantely took the elements of classic rock’n'roll and made it into something altogether new.
“It’s one of the first songs he wrote for the album,” recalls Southside Johnny. “It’s a great Drifters-style song, still one of my favourites, and one of the songs I’m known for, that defines who I am as a singer. Steve really did a lot of things in it, but it was the feeling that he was going for. It was also somewhat autobiographical, though he made it general so others could relate.”
Also produced by Van Zandt (as was all of the material Southside recorded during the Epic years), the yearning cut typifies the sound and subject matter of the Jukes: heartbreakingly romantic, yet so colorfully arranged and dynamically changed that you couldn’t help but sway with the save-soul-driven fervour that trombonist Richie “La Bamba” Rosenberg delighted in on stage. Then there was the voice – raspy edged, yet warm and rich and above all else, so real, like a guy you know that you’ve known a long time and had spilled a lot of beers with and cried into a lot more but most important you’re still together.
The first album also had Van Zandt lucious “Sweeter than Honey”, Springsteen’s “You mean so much to me” and “Got to get you off my mind”, and old Solomon Burke song which the Jukes cut because the Rolling Stones didn’t. The versions on this collection, as well as “Snathin it back” are taken from a promotional album recorded live at the Bottom Line, with Ronnie Spector reprising her album duet role on “You mean so much to me”, which led to her touring with the group.
“She was one of the icons of girl groups,” says Johnny, “but the one we liked, because all the others were sort of pristine and virginal and she was nothing like that but from the streets like we were. She didn’t know who we were and was very sceptical because she’d been hit on so many times, but we were obviously such big fans that she realized we were sincere and not trying to use her. SHe had this feelings of open emotion, that she wasn’t hiding things but being very up-front.”
Springsteen’s “The Fever” meanwhile, became a standart. A showstopper at his early shows, Springsteen offered it to him after he himself had outgrown it. “I couldn’t believe he was giving this to me, which I considered one of his best. But I didn’t wise him up! I just took it and ran!”
The second album, “This Time It’s for Real” was released in 1977. Van Zandt’s title track was written in his appartment the afternoon before a Stone Pony gig. “We were trying to finish up the lyrics and go over the arrangements, and the band came in and we were so excited we learned it in five minutes and did it that night! Back then, the enthusiasm carried you over – if we were more astude and aware of public scrunity, we’d never have done it, because it’s a fairly complicated song. If we’d have thought about it we’d have waited a couple days and really learned it! But everybody felt we could do what we wanted to do, even if we failed, it was okay. We were fully aware that we could fall on our faces at any moment! But we didn’t think about it that much, because we knew if it didn’t work, something else would.”
Other album tracks included here are “Love on the wrong side of town”, by Springsteen and Van Zandt, and “Without Love”, an Aretha Franklin song which properly honored a major inspiration. Sam Cooke’s “Havin’ a party” was released as the title track of a “best of” compilation, an as a promo single whose B-side was Junior Wells’ “Little By Little”, which gave Southside a blues-harp showcase.
The rest of this set comes from the last Epic studio album, the magnificent “Hearts Of Stone”. “Got to be a better way home”, “This time Baby’s gone for good”, “I played the fool”, “Take it inside” and “Next to you” were Van Zandt compositions, “Talk to me” was Springsteen’s, and “Trapped Again” was a collaboration between all three superpowers. The title track was Springsteen’s as well.
“That song was probably the apex of the early Jukes – the culmination of everything we tried to do. The first album went straight from the stage to the studio. The second was the experimentation phase, and the lessons all came together on the thrid album. We’d learned enough to make a professional record,but weren’t too jaded! And we were determined to make the best album. We recorded eight songs and threw them out and started right over, and the record company went through the roof! It was just one of those moments in life when you feel you got to put all on the line, and everybody felt that way, and it shows in the music.”
In the words of the chorus, it was “the last dance, the last chance, for hearts of stone,” condensing all the hopes and dreams of 10 young guys from New Jersey – and one extraordinary talented and also young New Jersey producer/songwriter/sideman – who ruled the world and who knew it.
“That was Asbury Park,” concludes Southside Johnny. “We had a great pool of musicians to call on and the people allowed us to be free and to play whatever we wanted.”
Indeed, it was a truly golden period for rock’n'roll. Of course, Southside Johnny Lyon, Bruce Springsteen and Miami Steve Van Zandt have long gone on to other musical pursuits and activities. But like all great rock’n'roll, the Asbury Park Sound, and all it’s promise, while not longer at the forefront, remains there still, forever in your heart.
by Jim Bessman
PRODUCTION
Original Recordings Producer: Miami Steve Van Zandt
Compilation Producer: Bob Irwin
Digitally Remastered: Vic Anesini, Sony Music Studios, New York, NY
Product Manager: Penny Armstrong
Art Director: Carol Chen
Photography: Mitchell Funk, Steinbecker-Houghton, Don Hunstein
Packaging Coordinator: Hope Chasin