Southside Johnny And The Asbury Jukes - Biography

The last time I saw the Jukes live was at the Spectrum in Philadelphia, PA December 26, 1978 with a bunch of people that drove down from New Jersey including my younger brother and my very good friend Patty. It was festival seating, which means no assigned seats, you just find a seat and hope there is not a stampede like the Who concert at Cincinnati Ohio where there were fatalities. It was about 10 degrees F outside (which is -10 C for you UK and Euro people), so we froze our balls off walking in from the car.

The Jukes were great, even though this was the first time I saw them at a venue that wasn't a small club like the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, NJ, where they played several times a week as the house band back 1975-76 (I just looked it up, it said three times a week). Southside was the leader of the band, but the man who made things happen was his friend Steve Van Zandt, who you might remember as Little Steven, guitar player in the E Street Band, the host of Little Steven's Garage radio show or from the Sopranos on HBO. In 1975, he joined the E Street Band in time to help finish the album Born To Run; he was the one who arranged the horn section on Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out. Bruce and the E Street Band went on a promotional tour right after Born To Run was released summer of 1975, but whenever he got a chance, Miami Steve (his nick-name back then) got together with the Jukes and plotted their future, which was breaking out of the Stone Pony and becoming a national band.

The big break came when Steve got an Epic Records executive to listen to a 4-song demo he had the Jukes record, which resulted in being signed to their first major record deal.. Funny, just a year before, Bruce had a virtual gun to his head as he worked non-stop on Born To Run, knowing he might lose his record deal if BTR failed to sell like his first two albums. Steve and Southside were poor musicians working every night in bands I can't remember at the moment (see I am definitely not copying this from wackopedia). Now Springsteen was the messiah of rock n' roll and the Jukes were getting ready to cut their first album. It couldn't last.

Everybody in New Jersey who followed the Shore bands remembers what happened; Bruce had a huge falling out with his manager, Mike Appell, and a judge granted an injunction locking him out of the studio indefinitely, which ended up being a year. He had to go back on tour to scratch out a living while his money was all tied up in a legal battle. The one good thing was Steve had more time to devote to the Jukes.

The new album was called I Don't Want To Go Home, after a song written by Miami Steve. Springsteen pitched for his friends and gave the band 2 songs he had written in 1973, The Fever and You Mean So Much To Me. Now you have to remember he is one of the all-time greats of rock and roll; if you look at all of his albums, or at least the first 10 or so, they all say B. Springsteen as the songwriter on every side. He wrote the words and the music to all those great songs. What we learned about 20 yearsl ater when Tracks came out was that he also had a mountain of other fine songs that he recorded but never released, because they didn't fit with the plans for the album he was working on. He cut 50 songs off Darkness because he only had room for 10, and this meant songs like The Promise, Sherry Darlin, Drive All Night, Ramrod, Point Blank, Independence Day, The Ties That Bind, and so on all had to wait for The River or Tracks to be heard.
Anybody who went to a Jukes show in those days will remember that we couldn't wait for The Fever, You Mean So Much To Me, Love On the Wrong Side of Town, Trapped Again and Talk to Me to be played, all songs that Bruce gave to the band. The other major thing that he did for them was show up at their gigs without warning, often with members of the E Street Band like Clarence Clemmons. He showed up just often enough to create a real probability that he could show up at the show you were at and everybody would go crazy.
The album came out Spring 1976 and the band was scheduled to kick off a tour May 30, 1976 at the Stone Pony. Everybody was there including Bruce, Steve, the E Street Band and about 300 people trying to squeeze into that little building. Click to read about this instantly legendary show May 30, 1976. I will enter all the information and my pictures for that date. The music has never been officially released, but I have a great copy I cleaned up for myself of 10 tracks, including Springsteen and the rest.

More about my adventures with Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes at a later time.

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