RHINO 1993
- I’m So Anxious
- All I Want Is Everything
- Vertigo
- Paris
- Living In The Real World
- Why
- Long Distance
- Love When It’s Strong
- Why Is Love Such A Sacrifice
- Murder
- Trash It Up
- Captured
- New Coat of Paint
- Walk Away Renee
- Little Calcutta
- All I Needed Was You
- Better Days
- It’s Been A Long Time
LINER NOTES
“I remember the states of mind I went through in the decade this album covers. There were times of great euphoria, and depressions so deep I thought I’d never crawl out of them. All of that is reflected in the material. But, in the long run, it’s the music that needs to speak, not the artist. I’m glad that I got the chance to make these records (even the ones that nearly killed me), and I hope some pleasure is gotten from them.”
Southside Johnny
A native Jersey boy, “Southside” Johnny Lyon made his rep as frontman for the world’s greatest bar band, The Asbury Jukes. He paid his dues and sang those blues, along with rock, r&b, reggae, country & western, and just about every other kind of popular music, coming up in the Asbury Park scene of the late ’60s and early ’70s alongside compadres Bruce Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt. His early days of recording – the first three albums – have been erroneously deemed his finest hour. Not so. Not at all. Get outta here.
This collection is proof of the contrary, refuting that myopic view. Yes, those three Epic albums were surely gems, especially the landmark of rock and soul “Hearts of Stone”, but they represent just three years of Southside Johnny’s potent career. “All I Want Is Everything – The Best Of Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes (1979 – 1991)” tells the rest of the story, covering more than a decade of changes, evolution and reunions, with deeply affecting music for consoling the heart and dancing into the night.
This compilation begins after a transitional time. Van Zandt, aka “Miami Steve”, “Sugar Miami”, and these days, “Little Steven”, had contributed much as a guitarist, songwriter, arranger, vocal foil, and share visionary with Southside, but now was devoting his time to Springsteen’s E-Street Band.
“Bruce was becoming very famous,” Southside explains, “With all the sharks swimming around his little raft, he needed someone he could really talk to, and he and Steven vere very close. That left the writing cores to whoever was around. Our guitar player Billy Rush and I started writing. I don’t remember how Billy joined, you’d have to ask him; we needed another guitar player, he came to an audition and played with us a long time at the Stone Pony.”
Recorded in 1979, with a move from New Jersey and New York studios to to legendary Muscle Shoals, Alabama, “The Jukes” was a debut on a new label, Mercury. Producer Barry Beckett arrived at a crisp-and-crackling sound that brought the Jukes more into a modern production context, stepping away from the references to the past. Unlike the often dreamy romanticism of Van Zandt and Springsteen, Rush’s songs were struggles against disorientation and disillusion, caught in a whirlpuul of claustrophobia brought by an ever-constricting world.
The original album kicked off with “All I want is everything”, carpe diem, all or nothing, a claim on the world, a blast-in-your-face, powered up Jukes rave. “I’m so anxious” was next. In both songs we’re inundated with information and media babble (it’s gotten worse, hasn’t it?). The singer wants to bust out, and music is the answer, but it’s his curse to “scurry like a rabbit in the maze”. The imperial Rome horns, as South calls them, burst through those restraining walls. “Living in the real world” offers slight romantic respite, but love here is a cushion, not an escape.
Southside’s “Paris” is a lesser-known yet stunning ballad that longtime fans still cry out for at shows – and sometimes get. It remains for the cowriter (with Rush) a personal and sentimental favourite. “As a kid growing up in a little town in New Jersey, I always wanted to see Paris and London and all that,” Southside says. “We were doing our first European tour and we were going to play Paris. We were going to come in that afternoon, play one show and then leave, so I was going to have maybe two hours off there. We got there and somebody had burned down the club where we were supposed to play – I swear I didn’t do it! And it just so happened that a couple of the dates we had after that had been shifted around, so I went from two hours to five days in Paris with no work. It was great – I walked all over the city, met a lot of people, had many a great adventure, including to get my laundry done in French. I love the city, and it still gives me a thrill when I go over there, but when I play the song, the French go, “Eh?”
With a rythm as a tilt-a-whirl as it’s title, “Vertigo” is full of dread and foreboding, horns pumping adrenaline through the sweat and fear, haunted by nightmares. “We tried to turn the Twilight Zone theme into this anxiety-ridden thing,” South says. “Typical Jukes party stuff.”
For 1980′s “Love is a Sacrifice”, South and Rush took over production chores themselves. If “The Jukes” main theme was the world closing in, this album was more traditional in that it addressed all the self-doubts and internal anxieties over relationships. The album opened with an apology, “Why”, Steven Becker’s drumroll lighting the fuse, South on the defense, Ed Manion’s sax feeding right into a guitar solo.
“Love when it’s strong” may be the best song Rush ever wrote for the band; it’s certainly the most hopeful statement about the power of love. Listen to South’s titanic pained vocal of adoration over the achy-sweet melody, horns raining down behind him while female-dominated echoes his words. No wonder the would often open or close shows from that period with the song.
“Why is love such a sacrifice” became another live stunner, full of swealling drama, till Southside brings it down, the drummer maintaining the beat while the audience picks up the chorus as a chant. “We force that on them – you have to sign a release at the door and learn all the words,” South quips.
“Murder” beginns with a delicately plucked acoustic guitar, electric squeal in the background. The song rises on paranoia and self-doubt, suggesting sleepless nights when we dwell on those who can’t escape our memory. “Long Distance” is more a matter-of-fact, capturing a lonely soul reaching out from the road.
During this time, the band expanded to it’s largest size ever, tacking on three backup singers, one of them a young Patti Scialfa, future E-Streeter and Mrs. Springsteen-to-be. “We called them the chicken sisters,” says Southside. “That whole period, ’79, ’80, we toured a lot. A lot of bands put out records, wait, do one little tour of America, then Europe. We always toured until it was time to make a record.”
The next record was a live one and the last for Mercury: “Reach up and touch the sky” is full of encore numbers and cover medleys. Meanwhile Southside worked as technical advisor on the film “Eddie And The Cruisers”. Who knows bar bands better than he? It was ironic that while advertising a movie band on the finer points of yesterday, he should make his most modern dive (or belly flop, as some would say) into a commercial calculated recording.
The 1983 album “Trash it up”, the first album for the mirage label is still an object of scorn among fans. And South ain’t to crazy about it either. “I didn’t want to make any more records – that happenes eventually – then Billy said he had a bunch of songs, we did demos, and somehow Nile Rodgers heared them and said he wanted to produce. I said ‘Fine, I don’t have a clue what I want to do, you both work it out – I’ll just sing.’ I didn’t have enough focus to say ‘Let’s not do this, let’s do that’ They were both looking to me for leadership, and I didn’t have that at this point.” The result was perhaps the most uncharacteristic album of South’s carreer, though the title track is a funky bit of playful fun, and not that bad at all.
The following year brought “In The Heat”. The “Asbury” moniker had been dropped, and Rush and Southside were coproducing again, as habitual horn lines and conventional R&B leanings took a backset to synthesizer programs by Larry Fast. “Captured”, an electronic lush love song, curiously foreshadows what South would try to do with “Slow Dance”.
Quintessentially Jukey is the cover of Tom Waits’ “New Coat Of Paint”. One can almost hear the clink of shot glasses and martini olives bouncing down the bar, feel the smoke thik enough to make your eyes water, as Southside blows the harmonica, the wall of horns intact. These days in the live sets, it’s often an opening or encore number.
The next two years were another period of passages. Rush left the band to spend time with his family and raise his children. Guitarist, songwriter and singer Bobby Bandiera , who’d sung backing vocals on “In The Heat” was plucked from the Asbury Park band “Cats On a Smooth Surface”. “We’ve adopted a foster child,” South would say onstage. The taunts were a ruse, for he found a kindred spirit. “Bobby’s a true rock’n'roller, the last of a unfortunately dying breed,” he says, “We became best friends, and he made it fun to play again. Not that it wasn’t before, but with all the dates it had become a chore. If I’m not having a good night, I look to Bobby. He takes over and forces things into the right direction. He was a godsend.” Pause. Here’s the punch line. “He’s also the stooge, the patsy.”
With Bandiera and other new players, 1986′s “At Least We Got Shoes” was a creative shot in the arm, full of strong originals and covers. Producing with engineer John Rollo, South came to terms with more modern recording techniques. He turned in a masterful, anguished performance of The Left Banke’s ’60s hit “Walk Away Renee”, which was even a semihit on the charts. “I went away on tour, and the label told me ‘It’s gonna be a hit – we’ve got it on the radio’ Came back and it was, ‘Gee, we really dropped the ball on that one.’ What can you say? Live is nine to five against. As the guy said, roll with those punches.”
Though even more a departure than “Trash It Up!”, “Slow Dance” on Cypress in 1988 was much more personal and the first “Jukeless” album. “I caught a lot of flak for that one too,” Souths says, “but I didn’t really want to make another Jukes album. I wanted to make an album for my wife.” Songs were blanketed in synthesizers, giving him a chance to shine as a singer and deliver that valentine.
While recording, Southside would travel from New Jersey to New York City by the Port Authirity station, where he’d find the bleak, despairing sight of the homeless in the morning and wandering crack addicts at night. The experience inspired the album’s odd man out, “Little Calcutta”, the only track in blues framework and the most overtly political song he’s ever written. The tension between South’s harp and Bandiera’s guitar expresses the misery he saw, while the mayor just whishes “they’d disappear”.
After the usual Juke touring, South temporarily relocated to Los Angeles and played club dates with a pickup band dubbed Blues Deluxe. A retreat of sorts, he eschewed all Jukes material, just playing blues standarts. By the start of the next decade, he was back out front with the Jukes again. Little Steven joined him for a number of the shows, and they made plans to work together again. There was a lot of talking before. He and Van Zandt wanted to make an album that addressed where they’d been, yet said something of the man they’d become.