Southside Johnny’s new live album immortalizes the band’s relationship with Cleveland

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Go to any Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes present as of late (the band nonetheless performs frequently up and down the East Coast) and also you’ll discover a new, coveted merchandise amongst followers.

In early June, Cleveland Worldwide Information launched the live performance album “Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes Dwell in Cleveland ‘77,” commemorating the forty fifth anniversary of the Jukes’ Could 2, 1977, present at Cleveland’s Agora.

The recording of the live performance, which aired stay on WMMS through the influential radio station’s glory days, has been a preferred buy amongst followers. Solely there’s one one that has but to listen to it – Southside Johnny himself.

“I haven’t heard it or seen it but. I’m the low man on the totem pole” laughs “Southside” Johnny Lyon through telephone. “I used to be speaking to our merch man the opposite night time and he’s like, ‘Oh I offered 13 of them tonight. I stated, ‘You may have it? How come I don’t have it?’ I assume I’m the one one.”

Nonetheless, regardless of taking part in 1000’s of exhibits in his profession (together with greater than 30 stops in Cleveland) Lyon says he remembers the particular nights. And Could 2, 1977, was one of many extra exceptional ones, with “Miami Steve” Van Zandt on guitar and the nice Ronnie Spector becoming a member of the band on stage.

“Cleveland was the primary place exterior of our little space within the Northeast that performed our file they usually performed it loads,” Lyon remembers. “WMMS hyped it they usually hyped us. After we obtained on the market to play and it was simply an incredible expertise.”

[Listen to an audio version of this story in the latest episode of the CLE Rocks podcast HERE]

From New Jersey to Cleveland

In 1975, Asbury Park, N.J. discovered its place on the musical map because of the success of Bruce Springsteen’s now-legendary third album “Born to Run.” Musicians and Springsteen friends like Lyon and Van Zandt have been a significant a part of the New Jersey scene.

Regardless of hitting the street with the E Avenue Band in 1975, Van Zandt maintained a detailed relationship with Lyon, producing Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes’ four-song demo. The discharge made its method into the fingers of Cleveland’s Steve Popovich, then the vp for A&R at Epic Information.

On the energy of a handshake take care of Popovich, the Jukes recorded and launched their debut album, “I Don’t Need to Go Residence,” produced by Van Zandt, on Epic in 1976.

“Steve Popovich was such an vital a part of my life,” Remembers Lyon. “He actually was a music man and he understood us. He was one of many few individuals within the music enterprise I may discuss to.”

With Popovich, the Jukes’ Cleveland connection was established. WMMS and its high disc jockey Child Leo, who launched the market to Springsteen a number of years earlier, put “I Don’t Need to Go Residence” and Southside’s follow-up “This Time It’s For Actual” into heavy rotation on the station.

“Individuals linked with that blue-collar mentality that New Jersey and Cleveland shared,” says Popovich’s son Steve Popovich Jr., now president of Cleveland Worldwide Information. (His father handed away in 2011.) “At the moment, I don’t suppose there have been actually every other markets embracing Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes like that. And as soon as Cleveland and the followers embraced you, they have been followers for all times.”

Highway to the Agora

The Jukes’ rigorous tour schedule took the band in every single place in Europe in early 1977. Once they returned to the USA that Could, the group’s first cease could be the Agora.

The venue had turn into a hotbed of music within the Midwest, internet hosting future Rock & Roll Corridor of Famers like Elvis Costello, AC/DC, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Tom Waits, Blondie and Low cost Trick, all early of their careers however supported closely by WMMS. The Jukes’ Monday, Could 2 sold-out live performance was set to air stay on the station’s airwaves.

“These days, you most likely couldn’t get 50 individuals to come back out to a Monday night time present at a venue,” says Popovich Jr. “However Cleveland was a breakout market for lots of those nationwide acts. It was across the similar time my dad based Cleveland Worldwide Information. It was a particular time, and the Jukes went there on a Monday and the place was packed to the gills.”

Listening to the live performance through “Dwell in Cleveland ‘77″ reveals Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes as a spark plug of a stay act within the early phases of its profession. “This Time It’s For Actual,” a file that featured greater than two dozen contributors together with the Jukes and members of The Drifters, The Coasters and The Satins on backing vocals, was a spirited album. In a stay setting, the Jukes soared proper from the opening sounds of the album’s title observe during a stirring cowl of Sam & Dave’s “You Don’t Know Like I Know.”

Because of WMMS, a number of of the songs have been already acquainted to followers, together with a canopy of Springsteen’s “The Fever,” which had been circulating on cassette tapes at widespread radio stations in markets like Cleveland, Boston and Philadelphia. The Jukes’ mixture of heartland rock, blues and soul produced a celebration vibe for a band wanting to make a reputation for itself.

“We performed 5 nights every week again then,” says Lyon. “We simply stayed on the street for years. It value me my first marriage and lots of my well being. It was grueling however we had our probability. So, we have been gonna take it. We tried to kill it each night time.”

Southside and Ronnie

Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes had already performed Cleveland a number of occasions in 1976. However the 1977 present was distinctive, partly due to a particular visitor.

The Jukes have been joined on the street by Ronnie Spector, lead singer of the Ronettes and the lady known as the unique “dangerous lady of rock and roll.” It’s a reputation Spector earned and relished.

“Ronnie wasn’t like Diana Ross and the Supremes the place issues have been cutesy. She was a tricky chick,” says Lyon. “She was very positive of herself and had an virtually punk perspective that individuals liked. After we performed in England for the primary time in ‘77, the Intercourse Pistols got here to the present. They got here to see her, not us.”

Spector sung on the Springsteen-penned “You Imply So A lot to Me,” which served because the closing track from Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes’ debut album. She additionally teamed with the E Avenue Band for a canopy of Billy Joel’s “Say Goodbye to Hollywood.”

The model grew to become the primary single launched by Cleveland Worldwide Information in 1977. The recording earned the E Avenue Band members an important paycheck at a time when a lawsuit stored Springsteen and the band out of the recording studio.

“The E Avenue band members have been going by some laborious occasions,” Popovich Jr. remembers. “Steven [Van Zandt] reached out to my father and informed him what was happening. My dad stated, ‘I’ve obtained this track right here written by Billy Joel. Why don’t you guys go in and again up Ronnie Spector on the observe? I’ll pay you double, triple scale’ which was most likely a month’s wage for these guys. It most likely saved the E Avenue Band at the moment.”

Persevering with a legacy

Spector, who had simply eased out of semi-retirement, carried out “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” with Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. Almost 15 years faraway from The Ronettes’ heyday, Spector’s voice stands out on the “Dwell in Cleveland ‘77″ recording, radiating with the pop magic that made her the signature voice of producer Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound.

Popovich Jr. and Cleveland Worldwide Information secured a take care of Ronnie Spector and her staff to have the Agora efficiency be a part of the stay album in 2021. Spector handed away in January 2022.

“We’re extraordinarily grateful that they gave their blessing on her being on this album,” says Popovich Jr. “It makes all of it that rather more particular now.”

“Dwell in Cleveland ‘77″ is the second in a collection of stay releases Cleveland Worldwide has deliberate that captures the legendary live shows of assorted artists that passed off in Cleveland. The album is presently obtainable on CD with a vinyl launch deliberate for later this yr.

“I’ve gone by my father’s storage models, which included reels from lots of these exhibits on the Agora, which I had digitized,” says Popovich Jr. “I simply began listening to those unimaginable recordings which were sitting dormant for 45 years. What I’ve decided and what I consider is that this can be a legacy label and there’s no higher house for these recordings than for them to come back out by Cleveland Worldwide Information.”

For Lyon, “Dwell in Cleveland ‘77″ serves as a reminder of his band’s relationship with Cleveland, a metropolis that has performed an integral half in his profession for greater than 4 a long time.

“There’s was an actual affinity between the viewers and the band,” says Lyon, now 73. “We needed to show our price and I believe Cleveland needed to show that they’re a rock and roll city, which they’re and have been. They have been simply nice to us.”