It was the Saturday before Labor Day 2023, and the cool air off the ocean at Asbury Park, New Jersey, told you that summer was fading fast. Yet, the announcer introducing Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes for their annual outdoor show, which for years had been held on July Fourth weekend, did so by insisting: “It’s not summer until this happens.”
The 4,000 or so fans and beach bums crammed into a fenced-off lot outside the famous Stone Pony bar knew what the guy meant. Asbury Park had been the Asbury Jukes’ home turf for a half-century. For Jersey Shore natives and devotees of a certain age, Southside Johnny Lyon is their stirring, authentic, unpredictable voice of summer – more so than that other native son who might be conducting “the wave” in a football stadium anywhere on planet Earth.
If Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes’ annual show at the Asbury Park beach meant, for certain aging rockers, that summer had arrived on the Jersey shore, this summer is oddly incomplete. The Jukes organization unexpectedly announced in December 2024 that Johnny had retired from touring because of health issues. He had recently turned 76 and had left the stage mid-way through what became the band’s final show, on December 14th at the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, apparently unable to continue.
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The reaction to Southside Johnny’s sudden retirement was largely predictable. National media reports emphasized Johnny’s nearly 50-year run (the Jukes began in 1974) and described him as the keeper of a mythical “Jersey Sound”, rooted in his early friendships and collaborations with Bruce Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt. There wasn’t much mention of what Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes had been doing for, say, the last 30 or 40 years, which was mostly performing for a small legion of fans on the East Coast and, now and again, in Europe, and putting out a series of albums on Johnny’s own label.
On Stage Southside Johnny Was the Real Deal
Southside Johnny deserved better. He wasn’t just a Springsteen mascot or the leader of an unrepentant bar band (another common description over the years). He was a link to American popular music from the 1940s to the 1980s, when blues, soul, jazz, and garage rock created a new pop culture. He was a bluesman, a soul shouter, a moving balladeer when the mood struck him.
Ah, Johnny’s mood. He didn’t just play the genres of music he grew up listening to in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, adjacent to Asbury Park. He was a throwback to those days on stage, blissfully unaware of modern, choreographed stage shows. Southside Johnny was an honest, in-the-moment performer who strangled his mic with both hands, jumped in place with his eyes closed as the Asbury Jukes played, and sang from his toes. He let his mood determine the pace of each Jukes gig.
On many nights, this meant scrapping the set list, pushing and prodding the band (its members watching his every flinch for what would come next), laughing at himself, gently mocking the crowd, and then launching into some Jukes rave-up with utmost respect and heart. Johnny was never a singer of so-called “blue-eyed soul”, as he growled more like the late Memphis blues great Little Milton than, say, Hall & Oates.
On other nights, if you could sense that Johnny wasn’t at ease, that something didn’t feel right; he could turn in an uneven, awkward performance, maybe kicking over a fan’s drink on the lip of the stage. He told BroadwayWorld.com in 2018 that seeing Iggy Pop had once confirmed his approach to playing live. “I didn’t want to be the cool guy; I wanted to be the crazy guy.”
Southside Johnny didn’t fake a thing. He was real, always.
The Asbury Jukes Had Their Own Jersey Sound
I know I’m writing about Johnny in the past tense. He could, of course, return to performing, perhaps in a more limited way, at any time. As of July 2025, however, all was quiet on the Jukes front, with Johnny having kept a low profile since the retirement announcement. Photos of him on social media, at a Mets game with other Jukes, at a “No Kings” rally in New Jersey, and attending a Springsteen show in Milan, showed him looking well.
I got turned on to Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes in the late 1970s because of, yes, my teenage infatuation with greasy “Born to Run”-era Bruce Springsteen. I grew up in South Brooklyn and then Staten Island, close enough to Jersey that I could often find my way to Jukes shows. Johnny was sure to sing Springsteen-penned songs like “The Fever” and “Talk to Me”, and the Jukes’ signature tune, Van Zandt’s “I Don’t Want to Go Home”, so being part of the crowd was like hanging out with the E Street family. Tthere was always a chance Springsteen would show up.
The Jukes’ shows were exciting, but I didn’t totally get their classic, horn-driven R&B sound, which was more bluesy and less theatrical than Springsteen’s anthems. I didn’t yet grasp how the roots of American music pulsed through the Jukes’ sound – Jimmy Reed and Big Joe Turner, Ray Charles and Sam and Dave, even Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday. That’s the music Johnny Lyon’s parents played when he was growing up, and the music he cares about to this day.
Van Zandt, then known as “Miami Steve”, really crafted the Jukes’ sound for Johnny, writing songs and producing albums that melded blues, soul, and sweet ’60s rock hooks. Van Zandt would later reclaim this sound for his own Disciples of Soul.
Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes started on a major label, Epic, with three well-received albums that brought a gritty, salt-and-surf vibe to classic blues and R&B. They had high hopes for a horn-driven sound that, in retrospect, couldn’t have been more at odds with the soft Top 40, prog rock, and disco of the 1970s. Their pinnacle, 1978’s Hearts of Stone, often regarded as one of the best albums of the ‘70s, is a collection of lovers’ laments as chiseled and raw as a long walk home in a cold rain.
By the mid-1980s, however, as Springsteen went global, the Jukes saw their national profile decline. Southside Johnny tried different things to get a radio hit, including a clunky Niles Rodgers-produced disco record, but nothing took hold. Johnny took some time off, moving to Southern California and then Nashville, and I lost track of him.
These Aren’t Springsteen Crowd-Pleasing Sing-Alongs
By the early 2000s, the Asbury Jukes hit what would be their stride for the second half of their long run. They would tour up and down the East Coast and strongholds like Cleveland, playing bars and small theaters, mixing in regular visits to Florida, California, and Europe. Southside Johnny started his own label, Leroy Records, and released a string of small-batch albums that were true to Johnny’s vision and would become the Jukes’ legacy.
I caught several Jukes shows, including a couple of free, outdoor shows on the summer circuit, and was hooked. The Jukes played authentic rock and soul for fans who knew the difference, meaning adults old enough to have waited on Ticketron lines. Southside Johnny put it on the line every time out, regardless of the venue or audience. While Springsteen’s crowd-pleasing sing-alongs lost their appeal to me (if no one else), I couldn’t wait for the next Jukes show.
The Jukes continued to put out little-heard albums, including gems like Messin’ With the Blues (2000) and Into the Harbour (2006). Johnny also showed his chops on two unique projects, Grapefruit Moon (2008), a collection of pristine big-band versions of early Tom Waits songs, and Detour Ahead (Record Store Day, 2018), a long-planned album of Billie Holiday covers.
Southside Johnny would do countless telephone interviews with radio stations, weekly newspapers, and early blogs to promote upcoming gigs, sounding at ease with his stature and pleased that his modest audience gave him the freedom to be himself musically. As he told a Dutch fan site in 2016: “We are up there to find the night, find the music. Let the audience take us places, take the audience places. It can’t be the same every night. It’s not making music that way. It’s wonderful that the Eagles can go out and sound exactly like their records. But I never wanted to do that. I just can’t do the same thing night after night.”
He had long decided that Springsteenian fame was not for him, anyway: “I don’t want people coming up and taking my picture as I am walking down the street or talking to me while I am eating lunch,” he told broadwayworld.com in 2018. “I don’t want to have anything to do with that.”
Why did he keep touring into his 60s and 70s? As he explained to a blog, markrosenman.com, in 2010: “I remember lying in bed with speakers right next to my ears, listening to Ben E. King, Otis Redding, and Sam and Dave. The music just transported me. To think that someone might do the same with one of my songs is mind-boggling.”
The Jukes Rotated Around Mainstay Southside Johnny
Southside Johnny somehow maintained his on-stage persona as new Jukes regularly replaced departees. A Jukes fanatic once charted over 100 musicians who had played with (and mostly left) the band. Two of the best-loved Jukes, trombonist Richie “La Bamba” Rosenberg and trumpet player Mark Pender, went on to play in Conan O’Brien’s TV house band.
From the start, Southside Johnny always had a music director-type alongside him – a consigliere, co-songwriter, and sometimes on-stage foil. After Van Zandt, it was guitarist Billy Rush, then guitarist Bobby Bandiera (still a Jersey presence and fan favorite), and then, until the end, keyboardist Jeff Kazee.
Kazee, a manic performer and terrific singer with a broad musical palette, was Johnny’s perfect partner for the Jukes’ final stage. He could hit the notes Johnny no longer could, and his keyboards kept the Jukes’ sound hot and swirling. He also led a final version of the band that stayed together for over a decade, embracing Johnny’s let’s-see-what-happens vibe and keeping performances fresh when fans may have accepted a bit less.
The final version of the Asbury Jukes consisted of Kazee, bassist John Conte, drummer Tom Seguso, guitarist Glenn Alexander, and the horns – saxophonist John Isley, trombonist Neal Pawlty, and trumpet player and horn arranger Chris Anderson.
I saw Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes play for the last time in September of 2024 at Tarrytown Music Hall in the New York City suburbs. It turned out to be ten shows from the end. It was one of those nights when you could tell from the start that Johnny was in great voice and spirits. He was stoked to sing Jukes’ staples he had bellowed 1,000 times before, like “Trapped Again”, which he co-wrote with Springsteen and Van Zandt, and “Without Love”, co-written by Ivy Jo Hunter and Aretha’s sister, Carolyn Franklyn, for maybe 700 fans.
Johnny, then 75, prowled the stage in his standard jeans, laughed with fans in the front rows, spun himself around with his eyes closed, and sang snippets of Ray Charles’ “What I’d Say” and Count Basie’s “Rusty Dusty Blue”, pumping his left arm to the rhythm. The Jukes closed with two of their most popular songs, Springsteen’s “Talk to Me” and their beloved cover of Sam Cooke’s “Having a Party”.
Looking back on Southside Johnny’s long run, it was fitting that he had made “Having a Party” something of his own, as Cooke is one of his musical heroes. At the same time, the song’s throwback lyrics, with references to doing the twist and the “Mashed Potato, with Cokes in the icebox, served to connect the whole span of American music that Johnny gave life to night after night. “Let me tell you, Mister, Mister DJ/ Keep those records playin’/ ‘Cause I’m a-havin’ such a good time/ Dancin’ with my baby…”