[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar, in for Alison Stewart.

[MUSIC - Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes: I Don't Want to Go Home]

Kousha Navidar: That's a live 1991 performance by Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, who were the first house band at the legendary Stone Pony. Since it opened 50 years ago, it's been the anchor of the Asbury Park music scene. Now its story is told in a new book titled I Don't Want to Go Home: The Oral History of the Stone Pony. The book includes interviews with Steven Van Zandt, Southside Johnny, Patti Smith, the Jonas Brothers, Jack Antonoff, and other legendary musicians, including, of course, Bruce Springsteen who wrote the foreword, as well as people like actor Russell Crowe and at least two former governors of New Jersey.

In short, it's a comprehensive look at a place that is one of the most important music venues on the East Coast, if not the country. I Don't Want to Go Home is by Nick Corasaniti, and he joins us now. Hey, Nick, welcome to the show.

Nick Corasaniti: Thanks for having me.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. Listeners, we know you've got experiences to share, so we want to hear from you, too. What are your experiences with The Stone Pony? What's the most memorable performance you've seen there? Why isn't it an important place for you? Give us a call. We're at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. You can also text us at that number. Or if you have a memory about Asbury Park in the 1970s you can share, hit us up, we're at 212-433-9692 or DM us on socials. We're on X and Instagram, we're @allofitwnyc. Nick, let's dive into it. I got to say today is publication day, June 4th. Congratulations.

Nick Corasaniti: Thank you.

Kousha Navidar: June 4th is a significant day in music history, for it was on this date 40 years ago that this album was released.

[MUSIC - Bruce Springsteen: Born in the U.S.A.]

Kousha Navidar: So, is it a coincidence that your book is being released on the anniversary of Bruce Springsteen's best-selling album?

Nick Corasaniti: I'm going to call it kismet, maybe. Certainly not necessarily planned, but maybe in the cosmos, this is what it was always meant to be.

Kousha Navidar: Lovely. Tell me, why an oral history?

Nick Corasaniti: A place like the Pony that's been around for so long, to me, is just filled with stories, and when you have so many people who've come through there, so many characters, like you were saying, who are in the book, from Bruce and Stevie and Southside to the Jonas Brothers to Zack Wild to Russell Crowe, I felt like you want to hear from them. You want to hear their stories as they tell it. When you weave it together in an oral history, I think you really get a sense you get pulled inside the walls or even outside the walls in Asbury Park, as I try and do a few other times, in a way that normal prose, I don't think can really convey.

It's just so fascinating to hear pretty much unedited from their mouths what the place was like, and so, that's, I think, why an oral history was the best fit for a place that's just meant so much to so many people and seen so many different iterations of itself.

Kousha Navidar: Tell us a little bit about the process then. How many people did you reach out to? How many hours of tape did you record?

Nick Corasaniti: Oh, hours and probably weeks of tape, to be perfectly honest. I interviewed over about 170 people. Not everyone ended up making the final cut of the book, and there was over 200 interviews because I talked to a lot of people multiple times. I talked to Springsteen twice. I talked to Eileen Chapman, I think the most. I think I interviewed her about eight times.

It took a long time. This started as an article in the New York Times in 2018, and my first draft that I filed to my editor was about 15,000 words, which is about 13,000 too much. All of it felt so vital. I mean, you always over-file, but I was like, there's more here. I was actually talking to my former editor, who's now the managing editor of the New York Times, Carolyn Ryan, and she was like, "There's a book here." That's when we kind of started going down the road. While it was a four-and-a-half-year journey, it really was more like full-time occupation for the past year.

Kousha Navidar: What surprised you about these interviews? Did you feel like you got a diversity of opinions, or was everyone just like, yes, The Stone Pony is great?

Nick Corasaniti: Well, I think you got a diversity of opinions as to why The Stone Pony helped them, but I don't think everyone was like, "It's great." There was a really interesting interview I did with Dan Jacobson, who runs a local newspaper in Asbury Park called the TriCityNews. When Asbury was really struggling in the late '90s and early 2000s, and the people who were there were trying to start to build it back, so many people from out of town were coming to The Stone Pony and leaving immediately, and he was like, "It started to bother me because our only reputation was we have this thing that people come to and leave, and they don't understand that there are people still living here, and like, yes, it's bad, but we need to build it back."

There was a few people who were like, "I respect it for what it is, but I wish people saw what else was in Asbury Park." Yet, so many artists are playing Mary is different. It's not the way you would ever make a rock club now, right? Most are long hauls with a stage in the back, and everyone can get as close as they want, and bars on the side. The Pony is very wide, but very shallow. For an artist, you really feel like the fans are on top of you.

I was interviewing people who played, like Mike McCready from Pearl Jam. He's played every venue possible. They started in bars and basements, and now they play arenas. He was like, "It was so fascinating to be on that stage and looking out at a crowd that felt like it was on top of me that I could read their beer labels, and that was not something I'd felt in forever." I think it feels different, but similarly important to so many different artists, and that really came across as I was talking to them.

Kousha Navidar: Listeners, if you have an experience with The Stone Pony, we want to hear from you. What's your most memorable performance you've seen there? Have you had an artist who was able to read your beer can while you were watching them perform? Give us a call, we're at 212-433-9692. Nick, we've got some calls, and I'd love to take Jeanette from Denver. Hey, Jeanette, welcome to the show.

Jeanette: Hi, how are you?

Kousha Navidar: Good, thanks. What's your experience with The Stone Pony?

Jeanette: Well, I'm from Spring Lake, a few towns away from Asbury Park. I would go there when I was 18. I would see Bruce sitting at the bar, in the back bar, just having a beer, and eventually, he would get up and start jamming with Southside Johnny and The Jukes. It was awesome. I also saw Boz Scaggs play there. It was a safe, fun environment. I have five brothers, and one night all of us were there, and I think we got home at 4:00 AM. It was the best time and cheap and a great environment.

Kousha Navidar: Wonderful. Jeanette, thank you so much for that call. We've also got Mike in Manhattan. Hey, Mike, welcome to the show.

Mike: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I grew up in Jersey, near Asbury Park in the '60s and '70s, and went to see many great shows at The Stone Pony and a lot of other important venues that were in Asbury then. The city was starting to decline, but there were still a lot of great places to see music.

Kousha Navidar: Wonderful. Mike, thank you so much for that, and I love that you mentioned the evolution of both Asbury Park and The Stone Pony, because the book is really a history of both The Stone Pony and Asbury Park. Both have had booms and busts. Can you, Nick, tell us how they're intertwined?

Nick Corasaniti: Yes. I've always said the whole reason I wanted to do this book about The Stone Pony was because I wanted to tell the story of Asbury Park's renaissance. It's really come back if you're there now. It's a relationship that's not a mirror, but they're deeply interwoven. As Asbury was starting to decline in the late '80s, and it was struggling like a lot of small towns where industry was leaving, developers were making the kind of wrong bets, and local governments were kind of beholden to them, it starts to crater.

As it cratered, it started to drag The Pony down with it, but I think because of the Springsteen and Southside and national acts like she mentioned, Boz Scaggs coming, it still was a little bit more resilient in that late '80s kind of first nadir, but then in the late nineties, when it really got bad, it bottomed out and The Pony couldn't withstand it, and it also closed for more than two years before it was reopened.

As it started coming back in 2000 with Dominic Santana as the owner, Asbury slowly started to come back, and so, it is this kind of interwoven relationship where one--- I don't want to say one can't succeed without the other, but they really do kind of depend on each other in a way that I don't think a lot of venues have that same relationship with the town.

Kousha Navidar: One part of the history of Asbury Park that I found interesting, I think probably a lot of people have forgotten, is how segregated Asbury Park was and how that led to even riots in 1970. Can you tell us more about that?

Nick Corasaniti: Yes. The town of Asbury Park is almost divided by train tracks, and the east side of town, which is closer to the ocean was mostly white, upper middle class, especially in the '60s, and then on the West Side, was mostly Black neighborhood, but it was also a thriving neighborhood. Springwood Avenue was a main street that had jazz clubs that all the legends played at, Ella Fitzgerald, Sam and Dave. They all played there.

It led to an intermingling of musicians in a way that would eventually impact how Bruce Springsteen wrote his music. Garry Tallent was over in those clubs, playing bass with some of those artists. Vini Lopez wasn't old enough to get in, so he would just stand outside and listen, but the economic opportunities on the East Side were quickly dwindling for people on the West Side. That led to a lot of tension in the 1970s.

This was something that was happening in a lot of towns and cities across the country at that time. In Newark, right before then, was a much bigger and unfortunately, much more tragic riot, but in the summer of 1970, it erupted into riots that destroyed the West Side of town, where the largely Black population lived. It really decimated that neighborhood, and it's still struggling to come back. It started a lot of flight out of Asbury Park and the ocean doomed the schools. It left this once booming resort that was a destination for even people from New York City, in question.

Kousha Navidar: Listeners, we're talking about The Stone Pony, the venerated music venue in Asbury Park and the city of Asbury Park itself. We're talking to Nick Corasaniti about his new book, today's publishing day, it's called I Don't Want To Go Home: The Oral History of The Stone Pony. We're taking your calls and your texts. We're at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. If you've got a memory of The Stone Pony, or memory of Asbury Park from the '70s, give us a call, send us a text, 212-433-9692.

I'm going to read out some text, then we'll go to a call. Here's the text that said, "I remember the riots seeming a plume of smoke over the city, still a very segregated city." Got another text that says, "The Pony and AP are forever linked to Jersey Shore legend. Please come visit us this summer. We are the Gold Coast of Northeastern US," and then two smiley emojis. Shout out to the Gold Coast of the Northeastern US. We've also got Peggy from Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Hey, Peggy, welcome to the show.

Peggy: Thank you. I grew up in the area and my sister was a regular on Sunday nights at The Stone Pony. This would be the early to mid-'80s when Cats on a Smooth Surface would be playing, and Bruce often showed up unannounced. My sister was coming back from the bathroom making her way to the stage. We grew up in the bar business, so she knew how to part the crowd. She's weaving her way through, but she gets stuck. All of a sudden, she feels someone on her shoulder saying, "No, no, don't stop, keep going." She turn around, and it's Bruce Springsteen, trying to make his way to the stage to just jump up and surprise the crowd that night.

Kousha Navidar: Peggy, that's such a cool story. Thank you so much. Nick, I listen to Peggy and I think there are probably so many local stories. How many locals did you talk to you as a part of this?

Nick Corasaniti: Oh, dozens. From bartenders to just patrons to bouncers, there were just so many people had these stories and these personal interactions with Bruce Springsteen or Steven Van Zandt, or Southside Johnny. They're just like that, like in the crowd, in a way that's almost unfathomable now. Bruce, especially after Born in the U.S.A. comes out. He's one of the most famous people in the world, it's like him and Michael Jackson.

Imagine now, if Taylor Swift just started going to a small bar, like the frenzy that would happen after that, and it was happening on a weekly basis, as she mentioned with Cats on a Smooth Surface summer of 1982, Bruce was there almost every Sunday. He was never billed. He never was paid or anything like that. It was this randomness and this spontaneity that created this addiction to the place and everyone had those moments with a real rock star.

Kousha Navidar: You mentioned Southside Johnny. The book's title comes from a Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes song, and I think we deserve one more Southside Johnny song before we go to break. Here he is performing the song. It's Been a Long Time with Steven Van Zandt and Bruce Springsteen. Let's listen.

[MUSIC - Steven Van Zandt and Bruce Springsteen: It's Been a Long Time]

Kousha Navidar: We're talking about the book, I Don't Want To Go Home: The Oral History of The Stone Pony. Listeners, if you've got an experience with The Stone Pony or at Asbury Park, give us a call, we're at 212-433-9692. We're here with Nick Corasaniti. When we come back after a short break, we're going to take more of your calls and talk more about the history. Stay with us.

[MUSIC - Steven Van Zandt and Bruce Springsteen: It's Been a Long Time]

Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar, and we are here with Nick Corasaniti, talking about I Don't Want To Go Home: The Oral History of The Stone Pony. It's his new book that is getting published today. Congrats again on that Nick. It is about The Stone Pony and Asbury Park and the music legends that have frequented this legendary music venue. Listeners, we're also taking your calls and your texts. 212-433-9692. If you've got a memory about either the city or The Stone Pony itself.

Now, Nick, lest anyone think that the music that gets played at The Stone Pony is limited to classic rock, let's offer a corrective. The Jonas Brothers have performed at The Stone Pony and you interviewed them for your book actually. They first played before they were 18 years old. Tell us about it.

Nick Corasaniti: Yes. A little-known story in Pony history is that before the Jonas Brothers were signed or anything, they were just another band that was trying to make it in New Jersey. They inked a gig at the Pony, but there's rules that you either have to be over 18 or 21 if you're going to play late, if there's liquor being served, so they had to play a little bit earlier in the day. It wasn't a sellout. This is mid to late, I think it's 2005 Asbury Park. It's coming back, but the boardwalk still a slightly dangerous place.

Here's these younger teen Jonas Brothers running around with flyers being like "Please come to our show." They said that when they were playing, they were getting heckled a little bit by some of the people in the back who were like, "What is going on here?" It was right before they would take off. There's actually a picture in the book of them playing as very young artists wearing Tiger Beat shirts. When the VMAs came back to New Jersey, they wanted to go back to the Pony and Asbury Park and play there, because it meant something to them.

I think a lot of New Jersey artists actually have this connection to their home, these roots. Even artists who would move away like The Lumineers, they're thought of as a Colorado band, but West is from New Jersey, and as soon as you start talking about it, it flows out. There's something I think about being a musician from this state as South Side called the joke state, that it's just a deep root and a deep pride that's always there no matter who the artist is, and Jonas Brothers are another example of that.

Kousha Navidar: It's interesting like you said, they made their triumphant return at the 2019 MTA Video Music Awards and they performed live at The Stone Pony. Let's listen to them from that performance. Here they are playing Sucker.

[MUSIC - Jonas Brothers: Sucker]

Kousha Navidar: That was the Jonas Brothers playing Sucker live at the 2019 MTV VMAs from The Stone Pony. I said MTA before, they were not playing on the A train or something. I've got to say it, Nick, we're talking about this during the break, it is so vibrant and visceral to hear those live recordings and the way that you describe the stage where it was shallow and wide, you can feel the energy almost. I want to go to a caller. Dan in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. Hey, Dan, welcome to the show.

Dan: Hey, thank you for taking my call. Appreciate it.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. What's your memory?

Dan: I just wanted to give a shout-out to The Stone Pony Summer Stage. I've been to some shows inside, but the Summer Stage they open up in the summertime is also super cool. I'm in my early 30s, what some might call an elder emo. I've seen some really, really fun postcard core and pop punk shows there. It's been a staple of the summer. I go every year. I have a couple of shows planned this year. It's just a really cool vibe, really cool venue. This is a great conversation. I'm really enjoying hearing more about it.

Kousha Navidar: Dan, thank you so much. Elder emo respect. Got to love that. Nick, your experience with The Stone Pony starts with Jersey's punk scene. Tell us about it.

Nick Corasaniti: It does. My first concert ever actually was the Warped Tour in 1998 with my dad, which was held in The Stone Pony lot. I grew up in the New Jersey punk scene, which was taking place in basements and church halls, and legion halls. It was very DIY, but it was so influential to what would become modern emo. My Chemical Romance comes from there and they now sell out arenas, bands like Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, if they're not from Jersey, they were playing in Jersey, the starting line Midtown. Midtown is from Jersey.

All of these bands were playing there, and The Pony was our big stage and eventually, we got Starland Ballroom. That's what drew me in initially. I was obviously young and very into punk. I loved Bruce growing up in New Jersey, but punk was what was guiding me there and what brought me there to see bands like Less Than Jake, Catch 22, Blink-182 before they were very big.

It was a great place to see a show, and it was funny because as I was mentioning, it's a weirdly laid-out thing. In these shows where pitter and crowd surfing is part of the experience, it's very different when a pit forms in a very shallow crowd versus a deep thing. There was numerous times you caught astray elbow or a shoot of the head or anything like that, but it just made it all the more special.

Kousha Navidar: Well, Dan who just called us before, I want to give out a shout-out to you for using the phrase elder emo. I think that it's a great segue into the next clip that we have. Let's listen to one of the bands that you, Nick, talked about, The Bouncing Souls. Here they are playing Ghosts On the Boardwalk.

[MUSIC - The Bouncing Souls: Ghosts On the Boardwalk]

Kousha Navidar: That was The Bouncing Souls playing Ghosts On the Boardwalk. We're talking to Nick Corasaniti about his book, I Don't Want to Go Home: The Oral History of the Stone Pony. We're taking your calls listeners about your memories of The Stone Pony of Asbury Park. Give us a call. We're at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433 WNYC. Nick, The Stone Pony seems to be musically heterodox. Yes, there are the Jersey greats like Springsteen and Southside Johnny, Bon Jovi, et cetera, but they book punk acts, they book rappers, they book folks that we just listened to.

How did The Stone Pony survive longer term? It feels like it circled the drain several times, like you mentioned, actually files for bankruptcy in the '90s. It closed, it reopened. How did they weather all of those storms?

Nick Corasaniti: Well, sometimes they didn't. As you know, they closed twice. I think what's really interesting is in the first iteration of the Pony from '74 to '91, it was like a neighborhood bar with a good stage. It was where Bruce Springsteen was playing and Southside Johnny, and you had these house bands and you had this scene that was so vibrant. As they got older and as the city started to crumble, that faded away, which I guess, the bottoming out and the end of that was when it closed in '91.

It quickly was bought and reopened, but it was very different. It became a music venue. It was no longer open seven days a week. It didn't have live music seven days a week. You couldn't just go in and get a beer. It was now a venue. A guy named Tony Pallagrosi saw music changing. What's funny is he was once in the Asbury Jukes, so he was playing in the Pony in the late '70s.

Then he became a music promoter. The music that they started playing in the '90s was working in the nineties. It was alternative rock, it was punk, it was jam. There was Mo and bands that were really big in the '90s jam scene were playing there all the time. In part because, and I love this idea, punk, and jam have fans that are fearless for very different reasons. Punk fans, they're fine with violence, they live on the edge, they're going to go anywhere.

When CBGB was open, it wasn't in the best area. You still went and saw your shows. Jam fans will go where the music is. They'll follow the dead into the desert, but they'll go. Punk and jam is what really kept the pony alive in the '90s. When it closes just due to everything in '98 and it reopens in 2000 with Dominic Santana, it blends that. It brings back Bruce and John Eddy, and Southside and music that had made it what it was. It still stayed true to, I think, the music that was getting popular. Emo was becoming very big at the Pony at that time. It's used that mix all the way to this day.

Kousha Navidar: Wow. We've got some texts and a call. I want to read this text. I think it's an interesting question you might be able to answer. What was the best band out of that area that never really "made it"?

Nick Corasaniti: Oh, wow. I'll go with a band called Lord Gunner. They were fronted by a guy named Lance Larson. It's tough to find recordings. I wasn't alive when they were at their peak, but they were playing the Pony and they were packing it out in a way that was bringing a lot of locals who were fervent fans of the band. Lance Larson was such a frontman.

He would do all sorts of crazy stuff. There's stories in the book about him breaking glass on his head in the middle of songs, and then he grew an afro and he was getting glass caught in it and trying to pull it out and was cutting his hands, but he didn't care. That's how hard he played. They got signed. There was a couple of bands that would get signed in the late '70s on that coattails of the Springsteen sound. They never really made it out of Asbury Park, but they were still really, really good.

I think that would probably be it from that era. From the punk era, there's just so many bands that are still beloved in the state that either broke up or just never really caught on. I think of one called Lanemeyer that I loved going to see and Jack Antonoff, who was actually in a punk band before Bleachers called The Outline. He was in a lot of those basement shows that I was talking about earlier.

There's a picture that Lanemeyer just put up of Jack Antonoff in the crowd with dyed blonde hair. I think in a recent interview, he's like, "I'm going to use some of their lyrics for an upcoming song." When you have a local venue that even when you're just doing national acts, but you're allowing local bands to either be battles of the bands or open up for big ones, that's a big thing The Pony does now is local artists get to open up for major artists.

A guy I love right now, Bobby Mahoney, I think he's playing sometime next week. He's opened up for some major bands like Bon Jovi and it's got that still tied to the local scene and still promoting the national acts too.

Kousha Navidar: Well, we've got time for one more caller. Let's go to Tim in Bridgewater, New Jersey. Hey, Tim, welcome to the show.

Tim: Hey. Hi, how are you? Thanks for taking my call. This is a great show. I'm really enjoying it. I'm a little bit older probably than the typical emo person. I'm a 58-year-old that got into it later in life from my eldest son. All this talk about The Stone Pony is really cool. I'm actually now going to a show on the 12th to see The Used. I'm a huge Used fan. I saw them there twice before and just this Summer Stage thing has been amazing. This is just really, really fun to hear. I just appreciate this show.

Kousha Navidar: Tim, thank you so much. I appreciate you calling in. There's a text that just came through that I'd like to read. It says, "Also, while I appreciate the music saved Asbury Park slogan, it does not speak to the fact that gay bars and Black bars kept Asbury Park going when the city was in some of its worst years of struggle." Thank you so much listeners for doing that. That is a really important part of the history as well, right, Nick?

Nick Corasaniti: It's a crucial part of the history. You see all the shirts that say music saved Asbury Park, and that's an important part of the spirit, but it never would've had the opportunity to save Asbury Park if it wasn't for the LGBT community. They came to Asbury when there was nothing there and invested and built a community there that was so open and welcoming and kept it coming. It's still vibrant to this day like the Pride Parade in Asbury is a massive citywide event. We closed down streets. It's such an important part of Asbury's history and culture to this day.

Kousha Navidar: Well, let's go out on some music. As we talked about earlier, today is the 40th anniversary of the release of Born in the U.S.A. Here's a clip. We're going to play it in a second of Bruce playing at The Stone Pony. Before we go to that, I just want to say, Nick, thank you so much for joining us. The book is, I Don't Want to Go Home: The Oral History of the Stone Pony. It's by Nick Corasaniti. Today was publishing day. Nick, thank you so much.

Nick Corasaniti: Thank you, and if I could just say one more quick thing, we're throwing a massive party at the Stone Pony this Saturday that's going to be everything in the book. We're going to have a house band. There's going to be special guest appearances. Some that are not billed, others are from great bands like Skid Row, The Gaslight Anthem, Bouncing Souls, The Smithereens, Mark Ribler from the Disciples of Souls leading the music. It's going to be a blast, it's going to be like everything we talk about in the book, and we'd love to see you there.

Kousha Navidar: Can you say one more time when that is?

Nick Corasaniti: It is Saturday, June 8th, 7:00 PM, music at 8:00.

Kousha Navidar: Wonderful. That was Nick Corasaniti. We're going to go out on some music as we talked about. Today was the 40th anniversary Born in the U.S.A. Here's a clip of a show Bruce played at the Stone Pony four days later, June 8th, 1984 in what was a surprise show. While many people didn't know for sure Bruce would show up, they were sure glad that he did as you'll hear from the crowd singing along. Let's listen.

[MUSIC - Bruce Springsteen: Born in the U.S.A.]

 

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