[intriguing synth music]
[gentle piano music]
[seabirds calling] [flames crackling]
["Growin' Up" by Bruce Springsteen]
- There was a certain moment in time
when something happened here.
It wasn't happening any place else.
That mattered.
- Asbury Park, it was like Disney Land.
- Asbury Park was a honky-tonk town.
To us, it was this exotic feast for the eyes and ears.
- You just floated a foot off the ground all day long,
lifted by this great music all the time,
coming out of stores and clubs.
- We took a little bit from here,
a little bit from there, a little bit from soul,
little bit from pop, a little bit from the sound
on the West Side of the tracks, you know.
And we kind of combined it all into the sound
that this town and little part
of the Jersey Shore became known for.
- The Jersey sound, whether it be
Southside Johnny or Bruce Springsteen
or Gary U.S. Bonds, that Jersey sound
is distinctively and uniquely Jersey.
It's not black Jersey, it's not white Jersey, it's Jersey.
It defines us as a group, not separate and apart,
but it brings us together.
It's soul, is what it is.
- Asbury Park's music history goes way back,
and a lot of has been ignored til now,
and we wanna give it some recognition.
Any city that wants to move forward
also has to recognize its past.
♪ Growin' up
♪ Work it back now
[groovy rock music]
[dramatic orchestral music]
- [Big Joe Henry] Asbury Park had been
the creation of James Bradley,
a Methodist who made a fortune
selling canon brushes to the Union Army in the Civil War.
He founded Asbury Park and named it
for his faith's first bishop in the United States.
He wanted to create a barrier for the Methodist
enclave of Ocean Grove, found to the south of Asbury,
from the excesses of the town to the north,
Long Branch, whose wine, women and gambling ways
Bradley found wanton and depraved.
- Over the years as the big hotels
started to come up, they had to compete with Long Branch,
which had alcohol and gambling,
and all the presidents went to Long Branch,
and eventually, Bradley capitulated.
It became a big playground on the Jersey Shore,
so you would go to Ocean Grove to pray,
and you'd to Asbury to party, basically.
- Asbury Park was a honky-tonk town.
They had pinball machines, [smooth rock music]
and rides and hotdogs and popcorn,
and I grew up in Ocean Grove, the town next door to it,
but we would cross over the little bridge.
There were bands playing all the time
and drunks and women of the night.
To us, it was this exotic feast for the eyes and ears.
We just loved it as kids, 'cause it,
Ocean Grove was a wonderful place to grow up in,
but it was boring, and Asbury Park was this
great sea of sin [laughs].
- [Big Joe Henry] From its very inception,
Asbury Park has always been a tale of two cities,
literally separated by a set of railroad tracks.
Tours from New York would pour out of the cars
into the prosperous and fashionable East Side of town
to enjoy the luxurious hotels and spend their vacation
dollars in the restaurants and nightclubs there.
On the other side of the tracks lay the West Side,
where for over a century, Italian immigrants
and African Americans had made their homes
and built their businesses.
- The West Side was created as soon as the large hotels
came here and they needed maids and they needed cooks
and they needed butlers and carriage men.
- Tension between the West Side and the East Side
has been a part of the city its inception,
historically going back to the very, very beginning.
- African Americans and the Italians, the Jews,
were not really permitted east of the tracks
for all intents and purposes.
- Blacks were not allowed on the boardwalk.
My grandfather's known for being a sand-sculpturer
on the Asbury Park beach.
He was really more than just an artist,
he was actually an activist as well.
People used to come from all over to admire his work,
and they would throw coins down.
And he did wear like a fez and some kind of robe thing.
He was sneaky enough to say hey,
I'm gonna find a way to be on the boardwalk,
and that way was to be dressed in a fez
so they really weren't quite sure,
and even if they did know, they could use the excuse,
well we didn't know he was black.
- Asbury was always a little bit of a mini city,
and it carried with it all the same plagues
and problems and injustices of the day.
[melodic folk music]
- Asbury Park was one of the last integrated beaches
here at the Jersey Shore.
In between the casino and Ocean Grove,
you have what was called Chicken Beach.
That's where the blacks were allowed to go swimming
during the summer time.
And there's still hard feelings over that, even today.
- But the reason why that particular plot
of the beach was available was because it was
called the Muddy Hole, some called it the Chicken Beach.
And it was because that was where the black people went,
where the servants went, and it was also the place
where the sewage washed up.
- Asbury Park was legally segregated
until probably into the late 1940's, early 1950's,
and of course after that was defacto segregation.
The main thoroughfare in the West Side is Springwood Avenue.
- Springwood Avenue, in its hay day,
was the living room for West Side residents.
It was the boardwalk for the West Side of resident.
It was the playground for the West Side residents.
It was home.
- We would go and sit in a car
or maybe go get a sandwich and sit on Springwood Avenue
and watch the people go up and down Springwood Avenue,
dressed sharp, comin' out of clubs,
just fun to see, it was a show within a show.
- Everybody thought of Springwood Avenue,
it was the jazz Mecca on the shore.
There was so much going on in the early days,
they had the Elks, they had the Turf Club,
they had Big Bill's, they had Madonna's,
they had the Orchid Lounge, it was so many places
that you could go hear some real good jazz.
- All the top acts used to go in all these clubs,
and if you were playing in New York, you would go there,
if you were gonna go on your way to New York,
you would stop in Asbury, do some gigs,
and then go to New York.
- My father used to take me to the Orchid Lounge,
to put like Kenny Burrell, Grant Green,
all those kind of organ trios or guitar trios
who'd come through there.
And I was way underage, but because my father
knew the owner, he would let me come in with him,
and the music was amazing back then, just inspirational.
To see that level of musicianship
up close like that was stunning.
Totally, totally motivated me and inspired me.
- Jack McDuff, Charles Earland,
James McGriff, Jimmy Smith, Pat Martino, guitar player,
Grant Green, Joe Dukes, Ron Carter,
oh god, it was, all these cats I saw at the Orchid Lounge,
you know what I mean, and it's like,
and Pat Martino's white, you know, so what's the big deal,
it's beautiful play, it doesn't matter
what color you are there, you know what I mean?
It was like everybody was there.
- People drifted back and forth across the tracks.
Springwood Avenue was a huge center
of African American culture, and you went over there
for things, for clothes, fishes,
for music, you went to the Orchid Lounge,
where it was a black club, but you could be white
and go there and there wasn't any problems.
They played a lot of jazz, but they also had
soul entertainers come in.
[soulful rock music]
- West Side there, it was just great.
I mean, when we were kids, we would see
all the top blues guys besides the jazz guys,
B.B. King, Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins,
all the great B three players played it then,
Orchid Lounge, and we'd stand outside and listen you know.
- If you were walking down the street
on a Saturday night, when I got a little bit older,
12, 13, 14, there'd be all these clubs,
and they'd have the doors open and there'd be bands,
and they'd be doing "What I'd I Say"
by Ray Charles, but they'd be using the dirty lyrics,
and there'd be a saxophone player, you know,
and it just was, it was exciting to us
because none of that existed in our little town.
- The players and the scene at that time
was really kind of happenin', and it was,
there was an education to be had
every time you walked through a door.
- Music on the West Side did have a big influence
on what was going on along the shore area.
Part of that was because a lot of black artists
would get to play in the white clubs on the East Side,
and musicians from the East Side would cross
over into the West Side and go into the clubs
and listen to what was going on there and draw from that.
No form of music exists in a vacuum,
everybody's influenced by everybody else.
- The popularizing of black music
that occurred in the 40's and 50's and early rock n' roll,
it brought, you know, it brought African American
culture into the mainstream.
♪ You ain't nothin' but a hound dog ♪
♪ Cr-cryin' all the time
And if you look at Elvis, he crossed racial lines,
and he had a lot of soul and a blackness to him,
those things had a good part to play,
I believe, in the emergence of the civil rights
struggle in the early 60's.
- Music is the only art form that half created
by blacks, half created by whites.
I think it's one of the main reasons why,
you know, integration happened.
You got immediate racial common ground.
- I'd always said, if you wanna see true integration,
just get with musicians, man, just, just,
there's where you see it.
You see how people can unite and work together.
♪ Gonna tell Aunt Mary 'bout Uncle John ♪
♪ He claim he has the misery but he's havin' a lot of fun ♪
♪ Oh baby, yeah baby, woo [rhythmic clapping]
♪ Baby
- Motown, makin' black records for white kids.
Rock n' roll certainly, Little Richard invented it,
and Chuck Berry was the first major artist,
most influential cat, Bo Diddley had the beat,
you know, they were gods, gods.
♪ Hey, Bo Diddley [crowd cheering]
♪ Hey, Bo Diddley
We grew up in the Renaissance period,
it's just the greatest music ever made,
it was such a big part of our culture,
I mean it was everything to our whole generation.
[upbeat rock music]
- [Big Joe Henry] Since it's very beginning
as a Gilded Age getaway, Asbury Park has always provided
a showcase for A-list talent
and a spawning ground for new artists,
with music being one of the only connectors
reaching across the tracks between
the East and West Side of town.
By 1968, Asbury boasted some 73 clubs,
bars, and ballrooms featuring live music,
in a town of just one square mile.
- Every place you went had music.
I mean, it didn't make any difference
if it was a hotel, corner room,
a little lunch place, a bar, a restaurant,
there was music everywhere.
- I think it was 1964, Ray Charles initiated
the Galaxy of Stars down there with Moe Septee.
So we were used to having, you know,
top notch, world-class acts coming through Asbury Park.
- I guess I was about 16, ["You Keep Me Hangin' On"]
dad drove us down to Convention Hall to see Vanilla Fudge.
That was my first time to Asbury Park.
Great stuff, great stuff.
♪ You just keep me hangin' on
- The fact that rock and roll grew out of Asbury Park
was in no small measure due to Moe Septee,
who brought rock and roll all summer long,
all the great English groups, you name it,
they played Convention Hall.
♪ People try to put us down [talkin' 'bout my generation] ♪
♪ J-just because we get around [talkin' 'bout my generation] ♪
- The Who, Herman's Hermits, and Blues Magoos,
that was all one show.
My high school math teacher was,
his summer job was the head of security
at the Convention Hall, so Mr. Michler,
if you're out there, I would show up and he's like
6'5" or somethin' like that.
And you know, the tickets were like two dollars
or somethin', I didn't have two dollars.
He would just look and he would just go, go in.
- In 1966, I went away to camp, summer camp,
but I came back, guys in my class had a group at the shore,
and their parents somehow knew Moe Septee
and got booked onto the opening slot for Herman's Hermits.
Their drummer couldn't make it, and they called me.
Playing at Convention Hall, if you played there,
I mean, to us in New Jersey, that was like playing
Shea Stadium when The Beatles played there.
♪ Your love for me has got to be real ♪
- Rolling Stones at their peak,
you could see them ever summer at Convention Hall,
every major act came to Asbury Park.
- The rides were going,
Rookies believe or not in the casino,
there were shows both in the casino
and the Conventional Hall.
It was great from then on.
[audience cheers]
- [Big Joe Henry] In a town jammed with venues
for A-list talent and top-40 clubs,
one place would be completely unique, the Upstage Club.
With no liquor license, Upstage would be
about one thing, music.
- There were plenty of after-hours places around here,
but they were for drinking.
This was the first after-hours place
that was devoted to music and devoted to young people.
[groovy rock music]
- When we were like 16, 17, there was,
you know, nowhere you could play.
But we could go there and play til five in the morning,
and you know, play for hours at a time
in front of like a packed house.
Where else can you do that when you're 16, 17 years old.
- There was a place that was needed
for us kids, because we couldn't go to the bars,
and we were fortunate to have a place where we could
enjoy music and dance and meet girls [laughs].
[intense rock music]
- Wow.
It was the beginning of something important, you know.
Yeah baby.
It was the beginning of us coming into our own,
you know, coming into our own world.
- It's your youth, it's your youth,
it's when things were wide open
and when a little bit took you a long way.
Wasn't much to the place at all
except what people brought to it.
It was one of those places that there was a certain
moment in time when something happened here,
it wasn't happening anyplace else, and that mattered.
- [Big Joe Henry] The brainchild of Asbury Park beauticians
Tom Potter and his wife Margaret,
The Upstage was meant to be a club for musicians only.
- I knew about its opening before it actually opened,
'cause Tom would invite musicians, I was playing in a band,
probably The Moment of Truth or Speed Limit 25,
one of those, you know, thousands of bands
on the Jersey Shore, and they used to invite
musicians after they finished at two o'clock,
three o'clock in the morning, up to his place
in Asbury to sit around and jam
and play something other than the top 40
that they had been playing all night.
- After I found out about The Upstage,
I told Steve, and then Steve came up
and he blew everybody away too,
'cause Steve was a hell of a front man and guitar player.
So then, this became our hang, you know,
the two of us were here every weekend,
and we were inseparable.
- Here's where we met like most of the people
that we know to this day.
The freaks and misfits and outcasts,
we all hung out here together.
The genius of Tom Potter, Tom and Margaret Potter
to have like a little sanctuary for the freaks.
It was one big happy, freaky family, it really was.
- When Tom initially had the idea to do this,
we arrive, and you started cleaning
and sweeping and painting, and then he came in
and started his magic of what he would do on the walls.
- It was a psychedelic electric club.
The walls were black and DayGlo painted,
and you walked into it, looked like a fun house
you were walking into, it was jet black walls
with this fluorescent paint, and although it was
a crazy kind of carnival kind of atmosphere.
[invigorating rock music]
- I remember when Tom first floated the idea,
he's like you know, for people to haul stuff
up and down two flights of stairs
is just not gonna work out, he says,
what would you think if I built amplifiers into the stage?
I said, well if you do it,
there's gotta be a lot of speakers.
And he took me at my word.
He put a lot of speakers, the whole wall.
- That whole thing was like a wall of guitar sound
and the PA all at once, so we didn't need columns out here.
- He had the front of the stage,
where like footlights would be on a conventional stage,
there was a rack, and in this rack were the amplifiers,
Bassmans, Band Masters, Super Reverbs.
- So there was four outputs in each one
of the Fender Bassmans, so now you had
a potential of eight guitar players can play at once.
- All the amps were there, and all you had to do
was take your chord, plug it in to the thing
and tell 'em what speakers you wanted
and you were off and running.
- And then you had to bring an instrument,
you just showed up and it was all done for you.
So us being being the lazy people we are,
that sounded like just our kind of place.
- The wall of sound, there it is.
[dynamic rock music]
- A kid with a cheap guitar that couldn't afford an amp
could come here and play because there was amps here
for him to play on.
If you were a kid drummer and you wanted
to learn how to play the drums and you're just learning,
you could come here, there was drums here to play on.
You didn't have to have a drum set.
There's no place around like that,
nobody's gonna set that up for anybody now.
Everything's way different.
- Tom was an ornery old guy, but had a vision,
he had a great vision.
- He was a party animal.
- And Tom was this big, garrulous,
goatee, very beatnik-y, you know,
Bohemian, sex on his mind [laughs],
just huge, cursing, quite cheerful character.
- [Tom] What the hell's going on?
Oh, got it workin' now [laughs].
Ladies and gentlemen, The Odyssey!
[upbeat rock music]
- He saw a place for the youth of that day,
don't forget it was the 60's.
He wanted a place that would encourage and nurture
creativity, primarily through music.
- Tom Potter, what a nut, what a great guy,
but he was this great, big, tall, bearded, beer-belly guy,
and he was crazy, he was just absolutely,
he was a hairdresser who looked like a biker.
- Tom was just, character, you know,
he had decoupage icebox with all these cutout nudes on it,
and whatever it was.
- Had this operatic-type, monster-loud voice,
and he scared me at first.
- [Tom] You like that?
I don't hear you people in the back!
[crowd cheers] There,
did you hear me back there?
- [Male Speaker 1] He had his little set of rules,
and everybody had to toe the line
or he'd call around one of the bouncers
to toss 'em down the stairs, you know,
just literally drag 'em out.
- Was always a thrill to go up the stairs
and you know, I'd bring an acoustic guitar
and sit in here and there, and Tom would say,
alright, you go up with him and you do this,
and you know, you play with this guy,
and he was like the ringmaster, you know, Tom Potter.
- [Tom] Sunday night, Margaret
and The Third Floor will be playing.
[crowd cheers]
I think you wanna join them.
- Margaret's hard to, she's hard to sum up in a few words.
- Margaret was initially
of indeterminate sexual origin [laughs].
I came up one night and there was some young kid
playing the guitar, and then I noticed
there was a little breast hanging over
the top of the guitar, and that was Margaret
and The Distractions [laughs].
- 'Course Margaret was just one of those
wonderful people who just, you know, you instantly love.
- She cut my hair, she cut a lot of people's hair,
'cause that was her main job, hairdressing,
she had her, the band, the house band,
the Margaret and The Distractions.
- She was punk before anybody knew what punk was.
Her stage presence was extraordinary.
There were people that just didn't understand
what she was all about, 'cause she wore unusual clothes
and she had an unusual voice,
and she, she was happenin', she was,
she was lightning in a bottle.
- [Big Joe Henry] The Upstage did not really crank up
until after all the other clubs closed.
When Asbury's best of the best
would climb an endless flight of stairs to jam until dawn.
- He had an only game in town thing here,
because even though some of the bars
were open til three, that still left Tom
two hours of the evening that he had all to himself.
- You'd be up there, and like three o'clock,
there'd be guys who just finished gigs
on the boardwalk there, and they'd be strollin' in,
comin' in with their axes and stuff.
- Now the first floor was like a coffee house,
you know, like a little restaurant.
The whole trick was you had to like,
make your bones on the first floor,
you know, you had to prove you were good enough
to get to the second floor, you know.
- And the place had gotten a sort of hip cache
so that musicians, soon as they were done
with their bar gigs hustled over here
to see who was here, who was playing,
to play the music they really wanted to play
that they couldn't play in the bars.
- You come down to Asbury, you look around
for some guys to jam with, everybody's over there
at The Upstage.
- It was fundamentally a jam club,
people came up and you saw what everybody's chops were.
- Guitar players used to come try and knock
each other off here.
Be me and Garry Tallent playing the bass,
and Southside singer or Alby Tallon would sing,
or Bruce would come in a jam, Miami Steve,
I think Ricky Disarno convinced him to come in and play,
Rick was always here, Davy Sancious was always here.
Lot of people.
- I was scared to go in there.
I seen guys going in there and never came out [laughs].
Bruce used to go in there.
Disappeared for three or four days at a time.
- I came here by myself.
I brought my guitar, made my way up the stairs,
I played "Rock Me, Baby," Jeff Beck style [laughs].
You know, just played it with everything I had.
["Rock Me, Baby"]
Doin' just about everything,
settin' off all the fireworks I could.
- Bruce, he was up there with Little Vinnie Roslin.
And me and Danny where over there by the door,
Margaret was standing there, said,
oh jeez, look at this guy.
Margaret said, yeah, he's got a lot of charisma, don't he?
- I think the first time I saw Bruce,
you could see that he did something special
to the people, you know, the reaction of the people
that nobody else did.
- You can tell when suddenly you've got
everybody's attention [laughs].
I could feel that moment happening.
- You knew that this guy was headed for greatness, without--
he got up on the stage and he commanded your attention,
commanded it, not by his, not by anything
other than his charisma, he just stood there
and played and sang, and you could tell
that this guy was goin' places.
- And by the time I got off stage,
I'd made a lot of new friends [laughs].
- Danny said, you know, I think we wanna
start a band with this guy, and I said, you should,
this guy's, you know, he's got a gift.
- When you've got a really good,
when you were one of the best in the place,
then you were, then you ran the jam upstairs.
If you jammed all night, you got paid five dollars.
If you ran the jam, and only a few of us ran the jam,
Bruce, Garry Tallent, or Ricky Disarno,
it was only a few guys who run the jam all night.
And they got 15 dollars, so that was big money.
- We would arrange the jams, we'd send four guys up there,
but three of the guys, you knew that they could make music,
and you would put one new guy with those three other guys,
and you knew that if this guy even struggle,
there would still, that was your job,
make sure that there's real music goin' down,
not just an open jam that didn't make any sense
with musicians who couldn't play.
- Oh man, I saw a lot of great jammin'.
Billy Ryan used to drop in, I'd say Van Zandt
and Springsteen and Disarno were the three
that I remember more than anybody.
I remember Bruce liked to finish the night
with a tune by Ten Years After called "I'm Going Home."
To end the show, I'm going home,
30 minutes later, he finally went home [laughs].
- Used to come in after a gig at first,
and then I started to play with Bruce,
and we'd come here and stay all night,
til five o'clock in the morning every night,
[laughs] it was, it was fun.
- You hone your craft here, you get to know each other,
get to play with different people,
get to play different styles, that's what it's all about,
you know, playing with Bruce one night
and Billy Ryan another night, that's different styles.
- You start to learn how to perform,
you learn how to interact with an audience,
how to interact with other band members,
that whole interaction, that energy
that is what rock and roll is all about, you know.
- I learned almost everything I know
about performing and singing from those three years,
two and a half years at Upstage,
because it was like our college.
And I loved it, and I learned not to be afraid
of being on stage.
- You were just getting little snippets
of history every time you turned around.
The thing that you would never hear again
would be on that stage, you know,
or the two people that you would probably never see together
play again, you know, it would on that stage,
and I think that people who were true musicians
and true musician listeners knew it and loved it.
- In The Upstage, there was a handful of black musicians
who braved the East Side because they were interested
in a wider, a more diverse style of music.
- Garry Tallent was standing there next to Bruce,
and they were organizing a jam session,
and he goes, you wanna, do you wanna play, you wanna sit in?
I said yeah.
- First time I saw Davy Sancious here,
he was revolutionary, looked like a,
barely a teenager, he looked like.
But he was electric on stage, he,
first of all, he had enormous stage presence.
He danced, he went up and down the keys,
he played better than anybody you'd ever heard.
And he was just, wow, where did that kid come from?
He came from 10th Avenue and East Street, you know.
- And at the end of the jam, they were letting out,
it's like five o'clock in the morning now,
and we're all walking home or, you know,
walking to our bicycles or whatever,
and Bruce and I were walking next to each other,
and he goes, I'm about to start this,
start another band, we're about to break up this band
I'm in, Steel Mill, I'm gonna start up a new band.
Would you like to play keyboards in it?
And you know, the rest is history as we say.
- David called me up and says, you know,
Bruce is looking for another drummer,
and why don't you come on down to the club
and you know, meet us and check out the band and stuff,
so I went down there to the club and heard 'em.
Bruce was playin', I was like checkin' 'em out,
I was yeah, this is rockin' man, this is pretty good.
And you know, this guy is rockin' his ass off,
and it just snowballed after that.
- People drifted back and forth
across the tracks, just as the ways
we didn't wanna be tied down to just pop music
or white rock and roll, they didn't wanna be
tied down to just R&B or soul music,
so those adventurous minds tended to cross tracks
and meet here.
- What's unique about The Upstage club
is it's one of the first times
where African American musicians
and white musicians, they all got together
to jam together, you know, that's where you can see
some of the influence of the West Side
probably coming in to The Upstage club,
it was the first time that there was
this mixture of cultures in one place
for burgeoning rock and roll, you know,
and that's why I say, it was kind of a proving ground there.
- I'm proud of being part of both sides of the track,
you know what I mean, the West Side and the East Side.
I was able to cross over and play with anybody
on that side and come back home
and play with anybody on this side.
So yeah, definitely I'm proud to be a part of that.
- My girlfriend and I answered an ad
in the Asbury Park Press.
Somebody was looking for two singers
with a gospel sound, and my girlfriend called me up
and said, I think this is us.
And I'm like, are you sure that they really are looking
for some singers that are just a couple of chicks
to come up through this factory, you know.
She said girl, let's get in there and just sing, you know.
So we went in, my name is Bruce Springsteen,
he introduced himself, you know,
he put on a little Van Morrison and said
the sound that he was kind of looking for
for this 10-piece band that he was putting together.
And we just looked at each other and we said,
let's sing, you know.
And before the day was over, he said you girls got the job.
[catchy pop music]
- Clarence was a local figure of some renown,
because he played in a band called
Little Melvin and The Invaders,
which was an all-black band with the exception
of Garry Tallent, and they played in the black clubs
that surrounded Asbury Park.
So the night Clarence came in,
needless to say, he was larger than life,
got up on stage, blew that saxophone
like it was a force of nature,
and was a natural creature of Asbury Park and the coast.
There's only one, there's not gonna be another one.
- We didn't lead with our interracial-ness,
we led with our musicianship, really.
Because Bruce was the best guitar player around,
nobody played like Clarence, I was pretty good
at what I was doing, Ernest Carter was amazing,
Garry's fantastic, so you know,
and Danny as well, all the, that's where the power was,
in the expression itself.
♪ Good ol' Melinda, sure can make a man smile ♪
♪ Ooh, oh-ee baby, now you're drivin' me wild ♪
- [Big Joe Henry] Because Tom Potter
insisted that bands perform original material,
The Upstage became a crucible for young talent,
a late-night meeting place where the best musicians
on the shore could connect and were encouraged
to develop their own style, rather than cover
top-40 hits for the tourist crowd.
- You wanted to do your thing, you could do it in Asbury.
It was here, this is where you had to go.
- You could do anything you wanted
at The Upstage club, you could play any
kind of music you want, and we did,
we took advantage of that.
People were writing songs, Bruce most notably,
but Steven too, a lot of people played their own things.
- It's just at that moment when that whole shift
in the culture was happening from the top 40,
from show business, you know, formal show business,
which is what the bar scene represented
at that point with the top 40 being required.
And became more about personal expression.
- For a musician, it was the best place,
'cause you could cut your teeth and you could try new ideas.
- There was some cool shit happening there,
'cause they try anything up there.
- That was one of the first places
where you could begin to do original stuff,
but Bruce was the one who really insisted
on doing like, his original stuff.
And we got into trouble at some point
with club owners because [laughs],
that's really not what they wanted, you know,
they wanted like a kind of jukebox situation,
but he insisted on doing his own stuff,
and you know, we did it.
♪ The way you do them things
♪ That you do
♪ Oh I, oh I, oh I, oh I, oh
♪ Everybody
- [Big Joe Henry] It was in the apartment,
an abandoned beauty parlor in this building
four and a half decades ago that New Jersey's favorite son
captured the poetry and tragic beauty of this seaside town.
["It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City" by Bruce Springsteen]
- Well, the first record, I had lived next door
in the beauty salon in Tom's apartment,
which was a flight upstairs, then the beauty salon
was second floor, I wrote all the songs
in the back of the beauty salon on,
on a spinet piano that I had from my aunt, my aunt gave me.
So the songs were called from characters
both real and imagined from the streets
of Asbury Park, you know, there was also
the carnie atmosphere, the street atmosphere,
the sort of punk poetry was just a part
of the town and the city at that moment,
so that was how I translated it.
You know, I passed the postcard stand and I went, hm.
I like this, this is me, you know, this is where I'm from,
these are the people I'm talkin' for,
people from Asbury Park, people from New Jersey.
You had Southside bringing in an enormous amount of blues.
Stevie and I played, you know, a lot of R&B
and rock music of the day, and then I guess
I was the first to start playing my own music.
Basically unlike Dylan or Beatles
or, you know like I said, who were,
I believe were musical revolutionaries,
we were more alchemists, you know,
we took a little bit from here,
a little bit from there, a little bit from soul,
little bit from pop, a little bit from the sound
on the West Side of the tracks.
And we kinda combined it all into the sound
that this town and little part
of the Jersey Shore became known for.
♪ I want to know if love is wild ♪
♪ Babe I want to know if love is real ♪
- Upstage was literally like the,
it was a Liverpool of America.
Bruce Springsteen, of course, came out of there,
and all, most of the members of his band.
Southside Johnny came out of there,
David Sancious, when he was a young kid, came over there.
- Incredible musician, one of the best musicians
ever came out of this area was David Sancious.
- Billy Ryan was a monster, a monster.
I was in New York at the Brill Building,
and there was a guy in there that had been working
with Hendrix, says, what in the hell
was that I saw on that stage?
I said what, he said, that boy on guitar
was as good as Eric Clapton and Jimmy Hendrix,
what the hell is he doing in Asbury Park.
- It was fun because the music was so good.
There were lots and lots of great musicians
coming through there, and a lot of them
had become, had risen to the top.
- I like to tell ya, you know, I was dedicated,
I was, I knew I was gonna make it,
you know, I was relentless, and I had the, you know,
I was persistent, that's bullshit, okay.
I was not capable of doing anything else [laughs].
And when the smoke cleared, you know,
the two freaks who really were not capable
of doing anything else, who were left standing,
which was me and Bruce Springsteen.
[mellow instrumental music]
- [Big Joe Henry] But the glory days
for The Upstage and for the once-grand Asbury Park
came to a sudden and almost fatal crash
on the Fourth of July, 1970, when a tragic flaw
in the very foundation of the town
finally gave way and brought everything down with it.
It promised to be a big holiday weekend.
The Fourth fell on a Saturday, and local vendors
were hoping crowds would come to the boardwalk
to beat the heat and enjoy a full bill of entertainment.
Glory Road was booked to play The Upstage.
Mrs. Jay's had acid rockers, The Applecore.
Over on the West Side, the Houston Person's trio
was at the Orchid Lounge,
and Norman Seldin & The Joyful Noyze
was at the Banjo Palace in Long Branch.
Patton was playing down at the Paramount,
Hello Dolly! at the St. James,
and Airport at the Mayfair.
Promoter Moe Septee had two big shows
booked at Convention Hall, Ten Years After
on the fourth, followed by Jethro Tull on the fifth.
And London it-girl Petula Clark
was set to make a guest appearance
at Steinbach's department store on Cookman.
And then for reasons which are still not clear,
the pot just boiled over.
- Black people started complainin' that in these areas,
there was nothing for the blacks beside the bars.
Some people started complainin' that
the meat markets were selling bad meat.
East Side had everything for whites, everything.
- If you don't have the jobs, if you don't have
the recreation, if you don't have the single-family housing
in the sense, that's, what we had was overcrowded.
And for us, those who lived on the West Side,
coming up, we didn't have access to all of the things.
- This guy comes to Asbury Park high school
and he says he's a Black Panther
and he's bringing up all this violent stuff,
and it wasn't the people who lived in our community,
it was the people on the outside coming from other cities
and places coming down to cause problems.
- There was rumors that it was gonna happen.
But not rumors that reached the East Side,
it was on the West Side.
There was a place called Al's House of Hits
that was on Springwood Avenue,
and he knew what was going on,
and he would say, you know, Nicky Vartin,
next week or so and so, these guys are coming in.
- I got the minutes from one of the meetings
that I had with the Mayor, Chief of Police,
and I told 'em that what the young people were saying,
the restlessness, they had nothin' for 'em to do, no jobs.
Our police department was not prepared for a riot.
- But the city was tense, and eventually it exploded.
- It was the Fourth of July, 1970,
and I was standin' right here,
corner of Atkins and Springwood Avenue.
- Me and Bob had gone down to open up for the late set,
and we're setting up our bar stools,
we sit down there at the door to the sidewalk,
and we saw on the other side of Main Street
at Bankers Furniture, the sidewalk's full of people,
what's going on?
- All of a sudden, out of the blue,
the young man that was standing next to me
pulled out a Molotov cocktail, lit it,
and threw it at a car that was passing by.
It went from just another quiet day
to, all hell broke loose.
- And it happened so quick that all of a sudden,
people are rioting in the streets,
they're burning buildings,
they're attacking places and people.
- Heard glass break and then saw a guy throw
a Molotov cocktail into the building.
And I turned around to Bob,
and he was already halfway up the stairs.
I grabbed the bar stools, locked the door behind me,
and ran up and called the Asbury Park police,
and said something like, there's a riot going on.
[sirens wail] [dramatic instrumental music]
- [Big Joe Henry] The Asbury Park Press
reported the trouble had started at 11 p.m.
and was out of control by four Sunday morning.
Mayor Mattice ordered a state of emergency.
[helicopter blades spinning] - We heard helicopters,
I guess it was National Guard going over head,
we heard gun shots, I remember running out of there
and running all the way home.
[screaming and crashing] - You look out there,
you saw people breaking the windows,
setting fires, they were just ripping
and robbing and stealing.
- By that time, we were angry, we were angry.
I'll try to rationalize it, I can't,
I can't rationalize it, but I know that
once you start something, you're in it,
you know what I mean, once it got started,
we were in it, we did what we could,
we did what we had to do.
- I was livin' in the Surfboard Factory,
climbed on top of the water tower,
and the clouds billowed, billowed of the shore for days.
- I can remember that the very first time I was out,
and we were playing, and we saw a big cloud
of black smoke, and we were wondering,
what is that, it's like the whole sky turned black.
And of course, we didn't know that it was the riot,
but we later did find out.
We were playing, black kids and white kids playing together,
and it seemed like the next day we had,
we were in different worlds.
- [Big Joe Henry] Police Chief Tommy Smith
reported the Asbury Fire Department
was being stoned and attacked as they worked
to fight the fires raging up and down Springwood Avenue.
- We go down there where the, like the fire engine
and the truck, and we used to have a tiller man
which is in the back of the truck,
and he'd steer the back
and the front guy would steer the front.
And that poor bastard, whoever it was in that tiller,
you know, they'd throw piles of bricks at him,
everything, it just, I mean, it was pitiful.
Yeah, and how you come out alive was beyond me.
- I'm sitting on my porch looking at this,
and all of a sudden, all the fires,
after about an hour and a half,
we're looking, I said, dad, look at that.
Rats runnin' down the street, lice and rats and rodents
just comin' down, runnin' away from the fires.
- [Big Joe Henry] Police from seven surrounding towns
rushed to Asbury's aid as the trouble began
to spread to Neptune with broken windows
and a robbery at the Neptune dinner.
- I remember that day very well,
coming over here because everybody was concerned
about The Upstage club, I mean,
all the buildings in the area were burning,
especially to one block west of here,
the whole block was burning.
- The heat from Bankers, the furniture store,
you could feel it at the front of The Upstage.
You could feel it, I was on the roof of The Upstage,
you could feel it.
- My grandfather was on the roof
with a shotgun and watching all of the chaos
take place below.
- The weirdest thing, he had a friend of his
from Philadelphia who just happened to be in town
who played Scottish bagpipes.
And he went up on the roof and played the bagpipes
while this, we could hear gunshots and flames going up.
- And I remember guys that, you know,
I used to think were very nice, sweet guys,
gettin' riffles and standing on the roof.
Like it was hunting season, you know.
It got weird for a minute there.
- I was sitting on the stairs by the front door,
and some dude opened the door with a lit Molotov,
and I pointed my shotgun at his head,
and I said just go away, and he did [laughs].
- [Big Joe Henry] By Tuesday, the commuter train
from New York was skipping the Asbury station,
Jersey Central Power and Light had cut off power
to a six-block area around Springwood Avenue,
and the protesters presented a list of 22 demands
to Mayor Mattice, including the removal
of City Magistrate Eugene Capibianco.
- There are multiple things that could have caused it.
When you live in a city like this
where it's 40% black and there's a,
not enough employment for our youth
and there's so many social ills
that would have to be corrected.
- [Big Joe Henry] And then 100 New Jersey
State Troopers joined the fray and shut it all down.
- Troopers makin' sure that you did not get
across Main Street.
- Right here at Memorial Drive and Springwood Avenue,
seemed like the whole community was lined up.
And they had bricks and bottles and stuff,
and as we were running, they were throwing
over our heads at the oncoming police officers.
- Everybody was there who had a gun
and protect Asbury Park from the riots
going from the West Side to the East Side.
- The Asbury police at the time were pretty aggressive,
you know, for this area.
- As we were running along Springwood Avenue,
the police were shooting, they were shooting,
and we thought that they were shooting pellets,
but a young man that was running with me got shot,
he got hit in the leg with the .38,
and it went through his leg, hit an artery.
I borrowed a woman's petticoat,
she ripped her slip, and I made a tourniquet out of that,
and I actually saved his life.
- It truly was ugly, you know, I can remember
the State Troopers, two in the front, two in the back,
and they got this guy squashed in the middle.
Pulled him over, guy took his keys,
opened up the truck loaded with gasoline,
Molotov cocktails, everything, I was like,
these Troopers annihilated these guys, they pulverized 'em.
- You're hearing about people being accosted
by the state police and put in trunks of cars,
and you're scared, everybody's scared,
you don't wanna go out, you don't wanna walk the streets.
You can smell fire, smoke everywhere,
you know, that was a very dark, very dark time.
- [Big Joe Henry] When the smoke cleared,
eight big buildings had been completely destroyed by fire,
75% of the businesses on Springwood Avenue were damaged
and closed, never to reopen.
[mournful instrumental music]
- All the citizens of Asbury Park
have been irreparably damaged.
I observe that the burnings were indiscriminate.
Many black businesses were burned, as well as white.
It took no great judgment for me to conclude
that this is a disaster area.
- [Reporter] Whatever happens now,
Asbury Park will never again be the same.
This small but tragically typical ghetto,
the rioting has meant a venting of long-simmering anger,
a desperate expression of frustration.
The people of Asbury Park's West Side
don't feel much like talking now.
They too are shocked and worried
about the chances for a really better tomorrow.
Jeff Kamen, NBC news.
- Some of the people lived on Springwood Avenue
above the stores, and it was like slumlord, you know.
They just got tired, they say, well if you tear it down,
they got to build us something new,
they gotta build it up.
They wouldn't have any idea that it was gonna
be like this now, what it is now.
- They were living in terrible conditions,
so they burnt it down, and it was,
you know, really mind-boggling
that it happened in our little corner of the world.
You had seen it in Detroit and Newark and like that,
but in Asbury Park, it just seemed so strange,
but it was understandable.
- It was just a phenomena, it was, sort of a tired
of being sick and tired kinda thing,
and they exhibited it, their anger
and their frustration in a violent way.
- When it happened in Asbury, it didn't surprise me.
Growin' up in the late 60's, you see,
I remember the marches, I remember graphic images
of water hoses down in Alabama.
When Martin Luther King was killed and Bobby Kennedy,
and I remember the rise of the Black Panther Party.
When they shot the kids at Kent State,
I remember seeing that on television,
I was like, what are they doing?
What are they doing to these people?
- It was a sad moment in the city's history,
but it probably needed to happen, it needed to happen.
- [Big Joe Henry] And the town of Asbury Park
was started on a steep and destructive spiral
which would bring it over the course
of the next several decades to a state
of complete urban blight.
- When the riots happened, everything closed up.
Took the wind out of everybody's sails.
- Many of us that grew up in this town
went to either the Boys Club or any number of places
where we didn't know race issues at that time,
and it was a rude awakening in many cases,
because for a lot of those people,
they were living those issues every day of their life.
[ominous instrumental music]
- Not everybody on the West Side participated
in the riots, but it seemed that everybody had to pay
for the problems that existed.
They weren't involved, but they found it hard
to find jobs, they were considered to be trouble-makers,
even though they might have tried to help out,
even after the riots, they were looked upon
as being violent individuals,
and individuals that couldn't be trusted.
- I don't know if they were being punished,
but just the money factor was not there.
The investors decided not to invest in that particular area,
and it made the people very, very disheartened.
But they just felt that we were being ostracized
and really, the West Side was just there.
The riots really, really turned Springwood Avenue
and the West Side outside down.
We lost all of the stores and the atmosphere
and the ability to really enjoy ourselves on the West Side.
I guess loss, a lost art,
as far as the music scene was concerned.
- And I think that has a long-term impact,
in fact, individuals who grew up in that era,
they don't even have the memories
of what it used to be, that is their life,
that's all they know, is the void
of the West Side of Asbury Park.
- [Male Speaker 2] Asbury Park went through
what a lot of cities went through during that time period,
taking the educational system down
and the property values down was probably the main thing
that started Asbury into its downward spiral.
Did the riots play a factor?
Yes they did.
Did they ruin Springwood Avenue?
Yes they did.
Could the city have recovered from it?
Yes it could've.
- What really kept Asbury Park down
was the greed, it was the corruption, it was the disrespect.
There were really some basic politics
played in Asbury Park, of corruption and control.
[smooth folk music]
You had all sorts of shenanigans going on.
Families members for generations being hired,
not because of qualifications or because of what
they could bring to the city,
but just because of those connections.
So it really was the old-fashioned, good-ole-boy network.
- In the early 80's, the city concocted a scheme,
they're gonna sell the entire beachfront.
- Asbury Park used to have the most grand theaters
at the Jersey Shore.
The Mayfair was torn down over, what,
a tax dispute between the city and the owner.
- The guy that was gonna buy it
had no construction experience,
no development experience, he was a,
quote, financial planner.
- [Ed] And then you had the revenue from the parking meters
evaporating in between collection and the bank account.
- I'll make a long story short,
they were gonna sell him every building
from the power plant to casino
to all the pavilions, the Convention Hall,
every building on the beachfront, one million dollars.
- People dismantled this town and put it in their pockets
at the expense of other people.
[explosions]
- [Big Joe Henry] Despite the hurdles,
there were occasional sparks of life along the boardwalk.
In the 80's, local builder Henry Vaccaro
led an attempt to revitalize the waterfront.
- [Vaccaro] I'm the guy that started the re-development,
and we brought Danny Devito to Asbury,
he had the world premier of his movie
Throw Mama from the Train at the Berkeley
Carterwood Hotel, and then he had
the premier across the street at the Paramount,
I mean, this was, it was, it was good times.
- [Big Joe Henry] But a lost summer season
due to a sewage spill and the SNL crisis
bankrupted Vaccaro and his partners.
- We had the period of time between the 80's and 90's,
which is 10, 20 years even after the riots,
where it's very barren, it's void.
There's nothing to reach for, there's a void of music,
there's a void of purpose, this spirit is broken.
- [Big Joe Henry] Asbury continued its long death spiral
until only one light remained lit on the Asbury shore,
the famed Stone Pony.
[invigorating rock music]
- We were pretty much, at that point,
the only business that was operational
on the oceanfront, but for the most part,
people weren't coming to Asbury Park
for any other reason other than to listen to music.
[upbeat R&B music]
- You got the gig at the Stone Pony,
and that's where we started out.
Steven was working with The Dovells,
an oldies act at the time, plus he was also working
on the New Jersey Turnpike.
This is a guitar player, magnificent guitar player,
songwriter, ranger, brilliant musician,
and he's out there with this Jack Henry,
and his hands would be like this,
and he'd be covered in asphalt, and I'm like,
Stevie, you can't do that, you know.
And so eventually, he joined the band that I had,
and we renamed it the Jukes,
and he kinda took over direction.
- We changed the sound of a bar band.
We had horns and almost, any bar band has to have horns.
- The sound was good, you know,
they would give us free drinks, which was key for me.
- I think we started on whatever the worst night was,
you know, Monday night or something.
- And we built a following, and then they gave us
Sunday night, so we had Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday,
the three worst nights of the week to play.
And we built up quite an audience.
- It was like, you know, 50 people, and then 100,
and 200, and then they fixed the roof [laughs].
So maybe, maybe we won't close.
- We had a vast repertoire of songs,
people would come and jam, Boz Scaggs came one night,
Jim Messina, Bruce would come down and jam.
- [Steve] We had a little notoriety,
had gotten a little publicity,
so Bruce hanging out with us, you know,
brought a little bit more attention,
and so all of a sudden, we created a scene.
- And then they started to have other acts come in,
you know, The Ramones would come in, say,
or some band that had a following somewhere else.
- Rolling Stone magazine used to have,
the last page used to be a live review.
Miles Davis at the Fillmore, or you know,
Grateful Dead over here, or that,
and for us, they did Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays
at the Stone Pony [laughs], the Jukes.
- It's the same everywhere, I mean,
it's why local bands remain important,
because huge part of the thing that threads people together,
you know, you get a night of that,
the next day, back at your job, out on the street,
eh, it doesn't seem quite as bad.
These things make a difference.
Everybody's broken, so we are the fixer of broken things.
- And that residency was pretty historic,
lookin' back on it now.
- And it became more of an international place,
but at the beginning, it was just another
knockdown bar in Asbury Park, and it just grew from there.
♪ I don't wanna go
- Biggest difficulties we had here
was the perceived notion that Asbury Park
was very scary place, it was violent,
it was a place you didn't wanna come.
So we did a lot of events to get people back into the city.
- As the Mayor of Asbury Park,
I'm gonna declare Asbury Park to be the music capital
of the Jersey Shore.
[smooth soul music]
- You could feel it, things were startin' to happen again.
Most of the clubs were only open on Saturday night,
then they were doin' Friday night,
and then Thursday night, and then Sunday,
you know, and it just sort of came together,
but as it came together, the people started coming back.
You could feel it, you could feel that the music was back,
and it just, just as it always carried the city before,
it just happened again.
- Right now the awesome power of music is behind me.
In navarrio, Joe, Joe Grushecky and The Houserockers.
[crowd cheers] [intense rock music]
- Light of day opened up slowly over the last 18 years.
One of the initial things, and important things
that I think it did was, it was another thing
that told people that there was life in Asbury Park,
that people would come here.
- A lot of us, you know, really are music experiences
is basically centered on Asbury Park,
and we kind of migrated here, we were drawn here
by it in a way, so we felt we had to give something back.
Now we're probably bringing in 10,000, 12,000 people
'cause we have a downtown come for another.
- Asbury Park is very important to us,
because of the history and because of the mythology
surrounding it.
[crowd cheers]
♪ Nancy, who says
- [Big Joe Henry] At the other end of the boardwalk,
Shep Pettibone opened the Paradise Nightclub,
followed by the Empress Hotel,
destinations designed to cater to the LGBTQ community.
- Straight people come into Paradise,
and they're like, wow, how did I never know this was here?
That's definitely the first thing they think of,
maybe not the first, the first probably is,
just so you know, I'm not gay.
Second thing is, wow, this place is wonderful.
[crowd cheering] [club music]
We are open for everyone, everyone is welcome,
that's always been part of Shep's motto.
I watched him give a speech that he had a vision
to bring people together, especially on a dance floor
where they can feel home and free and not afraid.
That definitely is what he created
when he bought and opened Paradise.
- And it was amazing thing in the first couple of years
of being here to have that type of establishment
open and be a draw, and it became a draw in and of itself,
like even though nothing else was ready
for the people to come, the people came.
- Everything else was just floundering a bit,
that Empress Hotel found a way to move forward,
and that Paradise, the Paradise club
was the happening place, and yes it was a gay club,
but I had fun going there myself.
- The good thing about Asbury, like I said,
it was a little bit of a city,
so the rules were a little more wide open.
Yes it was a gay bar, the people came across the tracks
either way a little bit, it was just a little more urban
and slightly more sophisticated.
It was dangerous still, I mean, it wasn't easy
for any of those folks, but it was,
there were places there for you to go.
That was, made Asbury very, very, very unique.
- Asbury Park, New Jersey, Jersey make some noise.
- I've said it a thousand times,
the gay community played a huge part in saving this town.
Great things are happening, and when the gay community
decided they would set up shop to some extent,
in downtown and Cookman and all the rest of it,
and have all these galleries and great restaurants,
it was a great thing.
- And then they took it to the next level
because they've started to invest in Asbury Park.
And not just businesses, actually a lot of 'em
are business owners and actually residents.
- It got so low that it was like an open space,
you know, it was an open city.
And the gay population come down
and begin to be real creative in town
and bring the town back.
They had some musicians, some artists come in,
and it was a place where suddenly,
there was room to create.
The fact that that was the foundation
of the new Asbury Park, and that it's been able
to hold on to that part of its identity
while being developed is a great thing.
- I think pretty much in Asbury,
being gay is tolerated everywhere.
Gay people came to this town,
renovated the beautiful Victorian houses,
and put their flag up, one of the first things they did.
- Am I proud of that flag behind me?
I think it's an important visual.
It's one of the things that, to people who come to visit
who might be gay, they get a sense,
they get an immediate sense of community,
an immediate sense of welcoming.
So I'm proud of it for the message that it has,
especially in light of some of the things
that have happened in the world.
I wanna make sure that I have a symbol
that welcomes anybody that wants to come to my town.
The two flags always fly together
because you can't be this without that.
[uplifting alternative music]
- There's been a rehabilitation,
if you will, of the East Side.
Simultaneously, there should have been
the same thing going on on the West Side,
but absolutely nothing has really happened
or changed on the West Side.
There's no real measurement, if you will,
of anything like what's been already taken place
on the East Side.
- West Side is still in dire need of development
and share in some of the prosperity
that come to the city.
You forget when Springwood Avenue burned,
a tremendous loss of African American culture in the city.
And that's never quite come back
the way it was at one time, you know,
that'd be nice to see at some point.
- Music moves, and music unifies,
and music is the soul of Asbury Park.
- [Big Joe Henry] In a watershed moment,
music returned to the West Side of Asbury Park.
- Tonight, the Asbury Park Music Foundation
has the honor of bringing you all
one of the most historical concerts in over 40 years.
- [Big Joe Henry] For the first time
since the death of legendary Springwood Avenue,
a concert series was held in a new park
where the Great Cubas once stood,
the first public music on the West Side
in more than four decades.
- Put your hands in the air, come on!
[exciting soul music]
- We have five concerts out at the park, jam packed.
Not only the people from the West Side,
but even more maybe came from elsewhere.
[crowd cheers]
- [Big Joe Henry] And although the death
of Springwood Avenue has silenced
the world-renowned jazz and blues of the West Side,
[upbeat gospel music]
the power of music lives on in the community.
- Music, music is powerful because it is therapeutic.
I know secular music has a way of moving people,
but there's nothing like the spirituals.
It is somethin' that kept our people,
even during the very difficult time in this country
as African Americans, and it is somethin'
that holds us, that keeps up even now.
[moving gospel music]
- This was a place where Ella Fitzgerald sang
and B.B. King and Duke Ellington,
the biggest, the greatest.
Can we bring that spirit back?
Well, then you'd have to bring
those kinds of people back, you'd have to have
more Bruce Springsteens walkin' the streets
of Asbury Park and shakin' hands with people
and saying to those on the East Side,
hey, why don't you bring some of these people
over here from the West Side and show 'em
what we got and see what they got,
because they have somethin' to offer.
- You have to proceed as if problems can be resolved,
and as if the sun's gonna rise in the morning,
and those better days are waitin', so.
- Let me tell you somethin', that same,
that same artistic blood that ran
in the veins of the forerunners
are in their grandchild and their great-grand children.
There's some very, very talented people here,
still, just waiting for an opportunity
to express their greatness.
[smooth rock music]
- [Big Joe Henry] In the shadow of the legendary Upstage
stands the future of music in Asbury Park,
the shiny, new Lakehouse Studios.
- You good?
- Mm-hmm. - Alright.
We're ready, we're ready.
[tuneful guitar music] - The kids are experts
in one thing only, what they like [laughs].
You know?
And what do they like, they like music.
- Power music is alive at Lakehouse.
The intention of Lakehouse was to create a place
to nurture young musicians to out into the world
and sing their song.
What does it mean to go to Lakehouse?
- It's really cool there, actually,
like, there're really cool people there like this person
right here. [laughter]
- The Lakehouse is so important,
what John has done there is picked up the slack
where our government has let us all down.
Because when I was a kid, there were a lot of art programs,
there were a lot of music programs,
things that exposed you to areas
that you might not otherwise be exposed to.
- For me, from as early as I can remember,
it was really about music.
Music changed my state, literally changed my state.
It made life better, and I was all in.
- Music saved my life, I mean you know,
I don't know what I would do without it,
I was raised in New York City, actually in Queens, New York,
not a great neighborhood, not a lot of ambition,
just drugs and gangs.
If it wasn't for music, I wouldn't have any direction.
You're connecting to this,
I want you to connect to the audience.
I see kids all the time, comin',
walkin' through our doors, they're broken
they're you know, not holdin' their heads up.
I guess out of place at their school,
and they come to us at Lakehouse
and they find their niche, they find their family,
they find their home, they find their artistry,
creativity, all that, man, just really turns
a person around, you know, gives them direction
and a path to walk on.
[uplifting instrumental music]
We're gonna do somethin' called a rock and roll ending.
You know what that is?
- Yes.
- What's a rock and roll ending?
Go ahead.
Power of music at Lakehouse is also kids from different
neighborhoods, people of different religions,
different nationalities, social-economic upbringings,
comin' together, they're all here,
and they play in bands together,
and the only thing they see is that
you're playing C chord, I'm gonna play a C chord,
and that's how we align.
Here we go, one, two, three.
[chaotic rock music]
- [Big Joe Henry] Some of the brightest lights
in Asbury Park are a group of 10 and 11 year olds
called the Lakehouse Junior Pros,
who've played more than 50 professional shows
since being formed in 2015.
[drumming]
- Jeremy's a star, and when I say a star,
he has light in him.
He's humble, he knows that, you know,
he can do some damage on the drums,
but he never acts that way, he comes in,
and he's ready to learn.
[drumming]
- I don't really care, like, who people like,
like gay, lesbian, bi, what skin color they are,
their religion really, all that matters is practicing
and making a good career out of music.
[enrapturing rock music]
- Everybody can relate to like, a certain band.
And like, me and Jeremy, we both love Blink-182.
And like, we don't care that people say
that band's bad, and that's how we bond,
'cause we both like it, so it like brings us together.
[powerful rock music]
- Zakya walked, and I always tell this story,
she walked through our doors, she was nine I think,
not even, eight.
Not even four foot tall.
I asked her, I said, what do you wanna play?
And she thought for a second and she pointed at the bass.
And I said the bass, 'cause nobody ever says the bass,
they wanna play drums, they wanna sing lead,
you know, or rock out on the guitar.
She wanted the bass, I put it on her,
it was huge, and she's been non-stop since.
- At first I was like, oh my gosh,
oh my gosh, what I am doing,
oh my gosh, I'm not gonna be on stage,
oh my gosh, what am I, dah, dah, dah.
And now I just said, okay, hi, and then I just keep playing.
- [Big Joe Henry] And the Junior Pros
were invited to record an original song
with some of the veterans of The Upstage club.
- Uh oh, trouble's here.
[tuneful rock music]
♪ Divin' deep in the city
♪ Though we knew there was work to be done ♪
♪ On the boardwalk those girls look so damn pretty ♪
♪ On the circuit those machines came for us ♪
♪ Those poundin' hearts
- [Big Joe Henry] And the Junior Pros
were invited to play that original song
at the Prudential Center in Newark
to a sold-out audience of 16,000.
♪ Dreams were waiting to scream ♪
♪ Were playing in time to our hearts ♪
♪ There mad dogs and guns that were waiting their turn ♪
♪ As a legacy waiting on tape
But the biggest dream comes true moment
for the Junior Pros came just a week later
when they were invited to play a sold-out
Paramount Theatre in Asbury Park.
On the bill with The Upstage veterans,
Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes,
Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul,
and one very special surprise guest.
[exciting rock music]
♪ She finally got the letter she was dreaming of ♪
♪ Johnny wrote and told her he had fell in love ♪
♪ As soon as he was married he would bring her back ♪
♪ And build a big mansion by the railroad track ♪
♪ So every time you heard that locomotive roar ♪
♪ She'd be standing there waiting in the kitchen door ♪
♪ Bye, bye, bye, bye
♪ Bye bye Johnny, goodbye Johnny B. Goode ♪
- I think Asbury Park is a microcosm of the world
because there's so much here, and there are,
there's this polarized Asbury Park
with an East Side and a West Side,
and I think in anything in life,
having those two poles, putting them together
is when the electricity and the opportunity happens.
[invigorating rock music]
♪ If I had a dollar baby
♪ Every broken heart
- Music does bring people together.
It is a bond that stood us in good stead
when we were musicians, teenagers.
♪ Blues is my business
♪ And business is good
- It's that universal heartbeat, right,
that universal dance of life, you know,
that we all have in common.
- It was just a way of being part
of something bigger than you are.
I think people need that when things are bad.
♪ When I woke up this mornin' Lucille was not in sight ♪
♪ Asked my friends about her but all their lips were tight ♪
♪ Lucille, please come back where you belong ♪
♪ Ain't done nothin' to you, I don't wanna do you no harm ♪
[catchy rock music]
- Your job is to provide proof of life
to people that they're simply not alone,
that there is an us that is real
and that gets called up when the band leader
counts off, one, two, three, four.
There is a community that's brought forth,
there's a commonality that gets pulled out of people
that means something, has a direct result on their lives
and their life when they take it out of the building.
- The East Side and the West Side
can learn somethin' from the musicians
in Asbury Park, that we're able to come together
and work on harmony once we just not think about
color and those things that separate us,
well, let's think about some things
that bring us together, the things that cause joy
and happiness in our lives.
And if we can sing together,
we can definitely work together.
♪ Go go
♪ Go Johnny, Johnny B. Goode
- [Male Speaker 3] One more more time folks, everybody.
♪ Go go
♪ Go Johnny go go
- They always say it's darkest right before dawn,
so we've been through the darkest hour.
We're not where we need to be, but you know,
we're definitely headed in that direction.
Asbury is never going back.
The only thing we're gonna be is the new Asbury Park.
[crowd cheers]
[laughter]
- [Male Speaker 4] Anybody wanna go home?
- [Crowd] No!
[upbeat soul music]
- [Male Speaker 4] I was hopin' you'd say that.
Come on baby.
Alright!
Everybody clap your hands!
♪ Oh, oh, oh
♪ I know the time is getting late ♪
♪ But I don't want to go home
♪ I'm in no hurry baby, time can wait ♪
♪ 'Cause I don't want to go home ♪
♪ Listen
♪ Listen to the man sing his song ♪
♪ I don't want to go home
♪ Baby
♪ I don't mind to stay all night long ♪
♪ I don't want to go home
♪ Because
♪ I know we had to try
♪ To reach up and touch the sky, baby ♪
♪ Whatever happened to you and I ♪
♪ Baby, I don't want to go home ♪
♪ Look at all the people saying, well ♪
♪ I don't want to go home
♪ I know why, 'cause in their minds ♪
♪ They've all been there, that's right ♪
♪ I don't want to go home
♪ And one more thing
♪ I know the words to the song are real ♪
♪ I don't want to go home ♪ Yes I do, baby
♪ I know it's talking about the way I feel now ♪
♪ I don't want to go home
♪ I know we had to try ♪ I know, I know, I know
♪ To reach up and touch the sky baby ♪
♪ To try
♪ Whatever happened to you and I, baby ♪
♪ I don't want to go home
♪ Now dig this
♪ I want to hear people laughing ♪
♪ And having a good time, baby
♪ I want to know why she told me she had to go ♪
♪ Why did she leave me so sad and lonely ♪
♪ Oh, somebody tell me why, tell me why, tell me why ♪
♪ I know it's time to go
♪ I don't wanna go home
♪ Brother, play the blues for me soft and low ♪
♪ I don't wanna go home
♪ 'Cause I gotta go
♪ I know we had to try ♪ No, no, no, no, no
♪ To reach up and touch the sky ♪
♪ What happened to you and I, darlin' ♪
♪ I don't wanna go home
♪ Somebody tell me, please
♪ I don't wanna go home
♪ 'Cause I gotta know
♪ I don't wanna go home
♪ I don't wanna go
♪ I don't wanna go back home
♪ 'Cause there ain't nobody with me back home ♪
♪ I said to give me one more ♪ I don't wanna go home
♪ I'll tell ya ♪ I don't wanna go home
♪ One more for the road ♪ I don't wanna go home
♪ For that long, long lonely road ♪
♪ I don't wanna go home
♪ For that long, long lonely road ♪
♪ I don't wanna go home
♪ For that long, long lonely road ♪
♪ I don't wanna go home
♪ For that long, long, long, long lonely road ♪
♪ I don't wanna go home
♪ For that long, long, long, long lonely road ♪
♪ I don't wanna go home
♪ Bartender
♪ I don't wanna go home
♪ Give me one more for the road ♪
♪ I don't wanna go home
♪ For that long, long lonely road ♪
♪ I don't wanna go home
["I Don't Wanna Go Home"]
- This is it.
Last man out.
It's the end of Upstage, time for somethin' new.