Fifty Years of Icons and an Iconic Music Venue
Review of "I Don't Want to Go Home: The Oral History of The Stone Pony" by Nick Corasaniti
Truth is stranger than fiction is a cliché for a reason. One of the most celebrated of strange truths is a music venue across the street from the Atlantic Ocean.
Entrepreneur and computer programmer Jack Roig bought a shuttered bar at the corner of 2nd and Ocean Avenues in Asbury Park, NJ, without so much as walking inside to look at it. He opened it amidst a snowstorm on February 8, 1974. The name of the bar was inspired by a shirt worn by a short-lived romantic partner of Roig’s. One patron spent one dollar on opening night (and Roig didn’t want to take it from him). Fortunately, Roig and his partner, the late Butch Pielka, persevered with sedulous drive.
Within a few years, The Stone Pony was one of the most famous rock clubs in the world and the locus of a thriving music scene with one of the world’s most famous songwriters and performers. It arguably saved a city that was already a thriving music hub for decades but was starting a long, precipitous decline (that was fortunately reversed). The Stone Pony now hosts both indoor concerts with a capacity of several hundred and, from May to October, outdoor concerts at The Stone Pony Summer Stage with a capacity of four thousand.
Nick Corasaniti, a politics reporter and former “Jersey Correspondent” for The New York Times, has put together a riveting page turner, an overview of the club’s history with anecdotes, details, and reminisces by those who were there over the decades, from musicians and band managers to bartenders and bouncers. I Don’t Want to Go Home: The Oral History of The Stone Pony (Harper) is recommended to anyone interested in Asbury Park, the State of New Jersey, the music business, live music in general, or the famous and not-so-famous players interviewed (as all of the above are ineluctably intertwined).
Corasniti organizes the book in rough chronological order, starting with the venue’s prehistory. Bruce Springsteen, Steve Van Zandt, Southside Johnny, and others remember The Upstage, the short-lived club in downtown Asbury Park where they engaged in long, informal jams into the early morning hours. This ethos would be revisited in later years at The Stone Pony (though the later jams were streamlined and more song-oriented, as the artist’s interests and modus operandi changed and developed). Corasiniti’s interviews with the club’s denizens recount its history and its own development. It started as a neighborhood bar with local bands establishing residences several nights per week. Eventually, it courted national acts who were attracted by the club’s mystique and Springsteen’s frequent, unannounced (and unpaid) guest appearances. (An elaborate, organized phone tree existed to alert others about those guest appearances. When Springsteen was seen in the club, alert regulars would call a network of fans from a payphone inside the club. The call recipients would call others, soon attracting hundreds to the club in the Seventies and Eighties.)
Later, the staff remembers how changing laws and law enforcement hurt The Stone Pony as the Eighties wore on. A raised legal drinking age and aggressive traffic and “DUI” enforcement severely impacted business and contributed to the club’s first closure in 1991. (The problems with those policies, and their effect on, inter alia, live music, is a topic for another day.) And the book chronicles the ups and downs of venue and city over recent decades, as new owners like Steve Nasar changed a neighborhood bar into a more formal music venue. This meant young people could be legally admitted since it was considered a concert venue, not a bar now. The venue’s fortunes were mercurial, but the city’s fortunes were mostly down until recent years. While the club struggled through vicissitudes, its city was mostly down circa the 1990s and early 2000s, felled by political corruption, crime, and urban blight. The Stone Pony was about the only reason people visited Asbury Park until a confluence of factors led to the city’s current renaissance. A new music scene took shape that was more punk-centric (and is now multigenerational and the best kind of diverse); developers revitalized the oceanfront with new residences and businesses; and Sea Hear Now, the annual festival spearheaded by photographer/director Danny Clinch and Tim Donnelly, draws thousands of people every September to see some of the most known and notable artists. (Springsteen and the E Street Band are scheduled to headline this year for the first time.)
Corasiniti’s interview subjects include locals such as Springsteen (who penned the book’s forward), members of New Jersey legends The Smithereens and Skid Row, promoter Peter Mantas, and New Jersey governors past and present. Semi-local New Yorkers include CJ Ramone, Jesse Malin (see here, here, and here), and Patti Smith. Other interview subjects include John Cafferty, Gary US Bonds, and Huey Lewis, who played a secret show with the News billed under the name The Sports Section. Unfortunately, some Pony regulars, like Clarence Clemons, Danny Federici, Joey Ramone, Johnny Ramone, and Pielka, are no longer available for interviews.
Most of the book’s shortcomings are those expected these days, where inadequate proofreading and rushing into print is common. A few of the prominent interviewees are not listed in the extensive dramatis personae in the front of the book. The book could also benefit from a basic chronology of events. (E.g., it is not explicitly stated exactly when the club closed and reopened over the years, which it did twice.)
Regardless, I Don’t Want to Go Home, named after the Van Zandt composition that became Southside Johnny’s signature song, is an engaging, amazing reading experience that brings to life bygone days when bands and comrades played until 3AM or later seven days a week, music scenes to rival any other thrived, and evolving traditions that endure today were forged. The 1.61 square miles that are Asbury Park have loomed large culturally for well over a century, but this half-century-old venue is as notable a part of Asbury Park, or cultural, history as any other phenomenon.