A Conversation with Southside Johnny – HuffPost 5.31.13
Mike Ragogna: Johnny, hey. Tell me a little something about this new Playlist collection Sony released. Did you have any input?
Southside Johnny: I had some input in that they asked me what I didn’t want on it. There wasn’t anything I really didn’t want, so most of the songs are things that I’m glad to have remastered and put out again.
MR: Let’s do a quick history lesson. How did Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes come together?
SJ: I had gone to Richmond, Virginia, because there was a scene down there, and I moved back from there in ’71-’72. I needed to start a band, so I joined one and eventually took over, as us emperor types do. We started adding the horns; Steve Van Zandt came aboard, and it turned into what I’d always wanted, but never had, which was a horn R&B band. It’s been like that ever since. You know, we do rock ‘n’ roll, blues and all sorts of different things, so it isn’t any one style that we adhere to, but that’s what it started out as.
MR: You go into quite a bit of detail in your historical liner notes.
SJ: I hope they’re historical and hysterical. (laughs)
MR: (laughs) They are. Tell me about your relationship with Bruce Springsteen.
SJ: Well, we were teenagers all of us — a lot of us. In the Asbury Park area there was this club called The Upstage club that opened, and we would all gravitate there after our teenage gigs because we didn’t want to go home. We wanted to go play more, jam, meet other musicians — and girls would come there too, you know? We all met up there, and we would hang out ’til five o’clock in the morning jamming, talking and playing records for each other. It was just sort of this enclave of musicians that became sort of a lyceum. I had a lot of blues records that they hadn’t heard, they had a lot of garage band records that I hadn’t heard; Steven liked reggae… It was just this cauldron of different musical styles, and we were just soaking it up like a sponge. I guess we influenced each other, and those bonds that you form when you’re seventeen, eighteen and nineteen years old, when you’re determined to do something… But you don’t know if anyone’s going to pay any attention — you don’t lose those bonds. Those are things that you go through together and they last with you forever. When Bruce has a song that he doesn’t think fits on an album — or at least he has done in the past — he’s given it to me, which is a great, great gift. I remember when he gave me “The Fever,” I couldn’t believe it. I said, “This is going to be a hit record for you.” He said, “Ah, it doesn’t fit the album.” He didn’t have to ask me twice. (laughs)
MR: And that song has become one of your trademarks. Even though, as you say, you have a sound that encompasses a lot of different musical influences, you have a style that has been pretty consistent over the years.
SJ: I don’t know about that. We’ve done the Tom Waits big band album, a solo album, a folkish album, we’ve done a blues album — you know, you try to do different things. But The Jukes are The Jukes, so when you make a Jukes record, it’s going to have horns on it, and that takes it into a certain territory. On Pills And Ammo, our last studio album, there was a lot more rock ‘n’ roll guitar solo things featured. So it’s a very versatile thing, having a horn section, as long as you don’t let it control you. It adds a great excitement and a great texture, but you have to make sure it’s doing what you want it to do at the time. Otherwise, it does take you into soul and R&B territory, which I love–I’m not against that–but I want to be versatile enough to do other things too.
MR: Everybody thinks of a certain moment in time with Asbury Park. Do you look at Asbury Park now as having a specific role in delivering folks like you and Bruce Springsteen? Was there something so strongly happening there that it just couldn’t help but become a national phenomenon?
SJ: I think mostly there were a lot of places to play. We had lots of bars, and especially during the summer, people wanted to go dance and drink, so we got to play in a lot of places even though we didn’t do Top Forty and those sort of things. The Asbury Park audience, and all through New Jersey, were very open to hearing what we wanted to do. Bruce was lucky that way, I was lucky that way. They always let us play what we wanted to on stage, and if they liked it, they let us know, and fortunately for us, they did like it. We didn’t have to conform to anybody’s expectations, and I think that freed us up to become what we have become. I’ve always been very grateful to the Jersey audiences for being that open-minded. When Bruce first started to write songs to play with his band he had before The E Street Band, people would want to hear all these songs. Of course, he was a great performer, but not everybody gets a chance — a lot of times people will walk out if they don’t know the material. So, hats off to Asbury Park. They gave us the chance to create our own music.
MR: Looking at the music scene right now, are there any new artists or albums you’ve been listening to lately that have really popped out?
SJ: I always hear stuff. I listen to some college radio stations off and on, and some more eclectic radio stations, and you hear things. But you don’t always catch who it is, so I have a hard time. There is always something interesting going on. I like The Wood Brothers, but they’ve been around for a while. I heard something the other day that I really like, Colin Linden. There’s a lot of good music being made out there. Some of it is rootsy, some of it is very experimental. I’m not big on the electronic sound, so dance beats don’t really move me all that much, but no matter what era it is somebody is making good music. You just have to be open to it.
MR: Your love cover of “Having A Party” is incredibly popular. What would you say is the most iconic thing about your live performances? Like, what is it that makes somebody say, “Only those guys can do that”?
SJ: (laughs) That’s a loaded question, Mike. I think it’s the free wheeling attitude we have on stage, where we don’t follow a set list. If someone shouts out a song that we don’t really know, we could try to play it. We’ve even written songs on stage. We try to let the music come out and lead us, and lead the audience to wherever it is they want to go. It’s very much a collaborative effort, but it’s also very spontaneous. It’s not so much that we jam for long solos all the time, but we’re willing to try any kind of music, and on the night if someone wants to play a cha-cha, we’ll do a cha-cha. We are open to our own impulses and other people’s impulses, and I think that’s key to keeping it fresh, lively, and making sure the audience doesn’t see the same thing over and over again. Also, the band doesn’t want to play the same thing night after night — we never have and we never will if I’m in charge.
MR: So you literally are “Having A Party” all the time.
SJ: Yeah, we’re trying to make music. The way you make music is by letting it come out. You can rehearse until you’re blue in the face, but if you’re not open to some breeze that comes across the stage and blows you in a different direction, then you’re really not making music, you’re just putting on a show. I’m not in showbiz, I’m a musician.
MR: That’s a nice way to put that. I’ve been looking at Playlist, and of course, there are all these fan favorites included. Are there any tracks on here that are a particular favorite, either from the studio side or performing live?
SJ: Well, “The Fever” opens us up to a lot of things. You can do it slow, you can do it fast, you can play different styles. “The Fever” is one of those great songs that can lend itself to a lot of different feels. I have a small acoustic side project, and we do that just with acoustic guitar and harmonica sometimes, and it really works that way too. That’s one of those songs that you can do forever because you can always find something different in it. It’s a great, great song.
MR: After “The Fever,” we’ve got “I Don’t Want To Go Home.”
SJ: I always loved that song. Even if I don’t want to do it, when they start it and the audience starts yelling, I’m lifted up. I mean, I’m there for that too. I’m not there to put something over, I’m there to get lifted up emotionally from the music and the audience response too. There’s still a barrier between us and the audience, so I’m trying to break that down every night. If people want to hear it, and when they start to get involved in it, I get involved in it too.
MR: Playlist also includes “This Time It’s For Real.”
SJ: That’s a great rock ‘n’ roll song. That’s the song you pull out when you think things are flagging a little bit, or if the audience isn’t quite responding. It’s such a kick ass song that it gets people on their feet and gets your juices flowing too. You see, I get to do these songs live, and I know how they work, so they’re all my favorites. I’ve been blessed with this material. I’m not going to s**t you, I’m lucky to have these songs. I could do a lot of things — I could do blues, I could do my own songs, I could make up stuff — but as long as I have these kind of songs to rely on, I know that I can never go wrong because I can always pull one of those out.
MR: A couple of my other favorites that were included in this collection were “Broke Down Piece Of Man” and “Without Love.”
SJ: Yeah, “Without Love” works with the horns. They love that. They get to come up front and play, and the audience cheers, then I go, “Okay, get out.”
MR: (laughs) And then there’s this interesting track called “Love On The Wrong Side Of Town.”
SJ: Yeah, that’s a true story — that’s a Steven story. I think we’ve all been through that — inappropriate relationships, or at least society thought they were inappropriate.
MR: And that leads us right into “Why Is Love Such A Sacrifice.”
SJ: That’s another subject we’ve all been through. We don’t do that song as much as we used to — I don’t know why. You know, when you have over twenty albums and two hundred thirty songs that are recorded — and the band knows another hundred songs just off the cuff, anything from “Mustang Sally” to “Brown Sugar” — if I were to call any of those songs, the band would be able to play it, even though we’ve never played it together or rehearsed it.
MR: You have had quite an extensive body of work. Do you ever feel like you’re now in a mentoring position?
SJ: (laughs) I’m no role model for anyone. It’s like Lawrence Taylor used to say, “Look, I get paid to hurt people. Why would you use me as a role model?” (laughs)
MR: (laughs) Okay, regardless, what advice do you have for new artists?
SJ: Just love it. You’re lucky that you get a chance to play. It’s a tough grind, and it’s a ridiculously hard business. A lot of times there’s just no joy to be felt from people and there’s a lot of negativity. A real musician knows, when they sit down to write a song with someone, or when they play in front of people and they get lost in it, that’s what they should be doing. So even though the rewards can be scant at times, when you hit that golden moment, when you’ve sung a song or written a song that works, that’s the reward. Stardom, money, all of that is peripheral. Really, the best thing you can do, if you feel it when you perform or when you write, don’t listen to what anybody else says, just go ahead and do it. You can always go work at the Post Office.
MR: Nice. How many days a year does the band perform?
SJ: I don’t know anymore. We used to do two hundred fifty. I think maybe it’s one hundred now, or one hundred and ten, then you add side projects, charity shows and other stuff, so I guess one hundred twenty or thirty.
MR: I remember that you used to be playing literally nonstop. You’d always see an advertisement for Southside Johnny & The Asbury Park Jukes everywhere.
SJ: Yes, we would play five nights a week for months and months at a time. I don’t want to do that anymore because at the end of six months, you have no idea who you are or where you are. It’s not fun, there’s no reward; it’s just complete fatigue and burnout. I don’t need to get burned out anymore, I’ve done that.
MR: Do you miss the early days, the sort of awe of it, doing it all for the first time?
SJ: Not really because it still is exciting to me. One of the things I promised myself years ago is that if I didn’t like it anymore, I wouldn’t do it. I’m still doing it, so I must like it. It was great when we first went on the road and we got to play in all these odd, beautiful places like Pittsburgh — Cleveland, Akron, Ohio. We just played last month in Burnley, England. I had never been to Burney, and it’s great. I mean, you go into a place that you’ve never been to before, and a lot of them have never seen you, so it’s still the same thrill.
MR: England must love you because of the whole Northern soul thing.
SJ: Yes, we get a lot of that, but they’ve always liked us. When we first went in ’77 and toured with Graham Parker, they thought we were the typical American band. They thought every band had a horn section, so it was kind of funny. We had a great time, and we still do.
MR: Is there anything about Southside Johnny or Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes that we need to know that we might not?
SJ: You know, I don’t think you need to know anything, but I’m a bird watcher.
MR: I never knew that.
SJ: I’ve gone all over the world to look at birds. I take my binoculars with me when we go on tour, and then when we have down time, I get in a plane, get in a car, and drive, or I go to Costa Rica or Spain and I look at birds. You get out in the woods, forest, rain forest or desert and you’re away from everything. The only thing that exists is you and the environment. You don’t even have to look at birds, you’re just away from all the worry and concerns. It’s great therapy for me. I just like it as a chance to get away. You could ask a lot of people, “Do you want to go bird watching with me?” And ninety-nine percent of them would say, “No.” And that’s the answer you want.
MR: (laugh) Right, more room for you! Thank you so much for your time, this has been great, Johnny.
SJ: Thanks. Bye.
Transcribed by Ryan Gaffney