- I Don’t Want to Go Home
- The Fever
- You Mean So Much to Me
- Sweeter Than Honey
- Love on the Wrong Side of Town
- This Time It’s for Real
- Hearts of Stone
- Talk to Me
- Take It Inside
- This Time Baby’s Gone for Good
- All I Want Is Everything
- I’m So Anxious
- Paris
- Living in the Real World
- Love When It’s Strong
- Restless Heart
- Long Distance
- Better Days
- Coming Back
- It’s Been a Long Time

Now, what do we have here? This 2CD set is actually an AUSTRALIAN release by RAVEN Records, a label which is specialized in re-issues and compilations of American artists. How does that go together? Well, I don’t know. But why not? I mean, when the Japanese American German music mafia can keep Kyle Minogue up in the charts, then an Australian Label can publish compilations of American artists like Linda Ronstadt, British heroes like Manfred Man or New Jersey’s own Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes!

This compilation is only the second since RHINO’s 1993 release ALL I WANT IS EVERYTHING, which does cross labels by combining tracks which originally have been released on EPIC, MERCURY and IMPACT. That’s a strength of this record, but it is also a weakness.

While we get a decent selection (I would have picked one or three different songs from each era – but that’s a matter of taste!) of the first two record companies Johnny has been dealing with and three songs of the BETTER DAYS album, almost the whole 80s are missing. There is no track from the 1983 MIRAGE release TRASH IT UP, where I would have picked at least the title track, while Johnny might be glad that RAVEN didn’t. There is also neither any song from the other two MIRAGES releases IN THE HEAT or AT LEAST WE GOT SHOES. And this is not to be forgiven.

While IN THE HEAT would have given the golden NEW COAT OF PAINT, the great debut of Bobby Bandiera on SHOES could have been contributing the hit single WALK AWAY RENEE or the wonderful UNDER THE SUN… But they didn’t. Here we have just a 9 year gap in representing Southside Johnny’s recording career, where he was as busy putting records out and promoting them all over the world, as hardly at any time ever since.

I understand, that license politics are a cruel stuff to work with. I do have a lot of respect for the labor of love to publish such a compilation – because I seriously doubt that it will sell enough that RAVEN would make a big profit and I’m quite sure that Johnny won’t make any at all out of this. This is not as bad as all the SONY compilations since the 90s, which just re-pack the same record again and again – and where John also doesn’t get 2 cents worth of royalties… nobody needs that!

But, yes, I did buy the album! Because its a rarity! A collectors item from Down-Under. It’s nicely packed and carries some short liner notes by Mark Deming (AMG) as well. Nothing more.
Klaus Boettger

DISC ONE:

- When The Doors Are Closed (live)
- Hitchhike (live)
- I Don’t Want To Go Home (demo)
- Fever (demo)
- Sweeter Than Honey (demo)
- Without Love (live)
- Got To Get You Off My Mind (live)
- This Time It’s For Real (live)
- Love On The Wrong Side Of Town (live)
- She Got Me Where She Wants Me (live)
- It Ain’t The Meat (It’s The Motion) (live)
- When You Dance (live)
- Got To Be A Better Way Home (demo)
- All I Want Is Everything (demo)
- I Remember Last Night (demo)
- The Time (demo)
- Where Can I Go From Here (demo)
- Wait In Vain (demo)
- Paris (demo)

DISC TWO:

- Security (demo)
- Vertigo (demo)
- Long Distance (demo)
- Let Me Hide (demo)
- I Played The Fool (live)
- Hearts Of Stone (live)
- Talk To Me (live)
- All I Want Is Everything (live)
- Love Is A Sacrifice (live)
- I’m So Anxious (live)
- Trash It Up (live)
- New Romeo (live)
- Future In Your Eyes (demo)
- Expressway To Your Heart (demo)
- You Can Count On Me (demo)
- Hard To Find (demo)
- Walk Away Renee (demo)
- Under The Sun (demo)

DISC THREE:

- Lorraine (demo)
- I Only Want To Be With You (demo)
- I Should Have Said I Loved You (demo)
- Heart Of Saturday Night (acoustic)
- Under The Boardwalk (live)
- C’mon Caroline (live)
- Broke Down Piece Of Man (acoustic)
- Comin’ Back (acoustic)
- Goodbye Blues (acoustic)
- Take It Inside (acoustic)
- I Talk To The Night
- Rosa
- Blue Radio
- Train Kept A-Rollin’
- Time Is Running Wild
- King Of The Night
- Into The Mystic

DISC FOUR:

- Better Days (live)
- All I Needed Was You (acoustic)
- This Time Baby’s Gone For Good (acoustic)
- Dark End Of The Street (acoustic)
- All Night Long (acoustic)
- Somebody To Love You
- Gladly Go Blind
- 99 Degrees
- I Will Be Strong
- Christmas Is For Everyone
- Living With The Blues (live)
- She’s Still In Love (live)
- Tired Skin (live)
- Comin’ Back (live)
- Rebel Rebel (live)
- Into The Harbour (live)

Two and a half years in the making, dozens of days rooting through dusty boxes of cassettes and reels, hundreds of hours listening to, agonizing over, and transcribing archival analog material into digital, uncounted cold pizzas and headaches…all-culminating in the long-awaited (maybe), first and only (probably), Jukes box set.

Over five hours of demos, live tracks, album drops and acoustic stuff dating back over three decades. Much has never been heard before (except by us). Four CDs plus a bonus CD. A 40-page book containing thousands of words of historical material and pictures for those of us who can’t read. Something for everyone…all in JUKEBOX. This is a “gotta have” for all Jukes fanatics!

Source: SouthsideJohnny.com

- I don’t want to go home
- You mean so much to me
- The fever
- Love on the wrong side of town
- Got to be a better way home
- This time it’s for real
- Hearts of stone
- This time baby’s gone for good
- I played the fool
- Some things just don’t change

SONY 2001

- I don’t want to go home
- You mean so much to me
- The fever
- Love on the wrong side of town
- Got to be a better way home
- This time it’s for real
- Hearts of stone
- This time baby’s gone for good
- I played the fool
- Some things just don’t change

- I Don’t Want To Go Home
- Hearts Of Stone
- All I Want Is Everything
- I’m So Anxious
- It Hurts
- Living In The Real World
- On The Beach
- Restless Heart
- Vertigo
- (Why Is Love Such A) Sacrifice

- Got to Be a Better Way Home
- Broke Down Piece of Man
- Check Mr. Popeye
- Hearts of Stone
- When You Dance
- Talk to Me
- Fannie Mae
- First Night
- Got to Get You off My Mind
- Some Things Just Don’t Change

- 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.

- 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

- I Don’t Want To Go Home
- Broke Down Piece Of Man
- Talk To Me
- Love On The Wrong Side Of Town
- Fever
- Trapped Again
- Without Love
- When You Dance
- This Time It’s For Real
- Havin’ A Party

[ BUY ONLINE ]

The first ever Southside Johnny compilation.