Keith Meyers/The New York Times

It’s Memorial Day Weekend, 1976, and nearly 1,000 people pack a tiny club in Asbury Park, N.J., to watch a local band and a local legend named Bruce Springsteen, share their mix of rock and soul with a wider world that had all but written off this struggling seaside city for good.

Fast forward to this past summer: More than 4,000 crowd the club’s lot three nights in a row to see another local band return home. The crunch of guitars and pounding punk rock reverberate off the nearby luxury condominiums that are signs of the city’s rising economic fortunes.

Since it opened in 1974, the club, the Stone Pony, has been the beating heart of Asbury Park, a beacon for musicians and fans alike. But its survival, much like that of its host city, has been a constant battle, a story of resilience and revival, of sold-out shows and shuttered windows.

Here is the renowned club’s history, as told by the owners, musicians, staff and fans who have called its dark black interior and low-slung stage home.

Some comments have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Asbury Park was only a few years removed from the race riots of 1970, which were set off by unrest about equal employment opportunities, and many longtime residents were fleeing the city.

About the same time, the Jersey Shore’s vibrant music scene had lost the Upstage Club, a proving ground for future rock legends. Musicians who had moved to town for the all-night jam sessions at the Upstage were looking for a place to play.

Jack Roig An original owner of the Stone Pony

I never wanted to open a rock club. And I definitely didn’t want anything in Asbury Park.

Stevie Van Zandt Guitarist for the E Street Band and the Asbury Jukes

The riots had pretty much cleared what was left of the town out. It was left to us misfits and rogues and renegades and outcasts who moved in.

Bruce Springsteen Musician

If you were living and breathing in Asbury Park at the time, you were a bit of an eccentric. So there were a lot of local musicians, a lot of funny people into their own thing. It was just a place that had its own personality.

[Read a full transcript of our interview with Springsteen.]

Van Zandt

Bruce had turned me on to Upstage, which was the club down the street from what would be the Pony. We all moved to Asbury Park because of that club. We were literally living off that club, only making like $15 a night. When that closed, we just looked around for the next thing.

Springsteen

You were still in hostile territory in those days. There weren’t many places you could go and play what you wanted to play. Most of them were Top 40 bars.

Roig

I strolled up to this closed spot, the Magic Touch. It was the future Pony. The front doors, still the same front doors, they were painted black. Each door had a circle in it. I looked in the door, and I said, “O.K. I’ll buy it.” Never went in the place. Talk about stupid.

The first day of the Pony, it was snowing. I think about eight inches of snow fell on Asbury Park that night. Thank God the band canceled, because only one person showed up, a guy I knew from the train. That was it. I rang $1. But we ended up doing well until around two weeks after Labor Day, and then the bottom fell out. I kept it open because I always believed if you close, people will never come back.

Van Zandt

I was jamming with Southside [Johnny], and he was in a blues band at the time. And we decided to start a new band. We’re looking around for a place to play and that summer, I guess there had been a hurricane or a big storm, and we came to the Stone Pony and half the roof had caved in.

Up till then, the rules were if you play the bar, you had to play what they call Top 40. But the Pony was just trying to stay open. So I said, “Listen. We’ll come in on your worst night,” which I think was Sunday night or Monday night, and “we’ll charge you nothing. We’ll just take the door. You guys take the bar, but we get to play anything we want.” They had nothing to lose.

Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes outside the Stone Pony in 1976. Richard E. Aaron/Redferns, via Getty Images

Roig

I think we paid them $135 for the night. And we did it a second night, but not too many people came again. And I said, “Hey, I’m so far in the hole now. Do it again.”

Van Zandt

First week it was 50 people, then next week 150, and then 300.

Southside Johnny Vocalist for Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes

We could only get Sunday night, then Tuesday night, then Thursday night, which are the worst nights because people still have work. Even when we were drawing 600 people a night, on a Sunday night in the winter, they still wouldn’t give us a weekend.

Van Zandt

But then they fixed the roof, and before you know it we had the first successful residency. And we went to three nights a week, and they expanded the club and we went to like 1,000 people a night.

Springsteen

I went up there to see Steve and Southside Johnny because they actually started at the Pony. We started at the Student Prince. So I might have went up there to see them, or to see some local bands, local guys. They had a regular residence at the Pony, I think three nights a week, and so we used to all go and hang out there and play. And that’s my recollection of when I started to go to the Pony.

[Share your memories of the Stone Pony]

Vini “Maddog” Lopez Former Drummer for Bruce Springsteen and Cold Blast and Steel

I had started playing with a new band, Cold Blast and Steel, and John, our bass player went to Jack and begged: “Let us play here. Let us play here.” So they let us play one Sunday afternoon. And then we got Wednesday nights.

Robert Santelli Former reporter for The Asbury Park Press

On Wednesdays and Sundays, religiously, we would show up. We’d be bleary eyed at work on Monday mornings and Thursday mornings because we’d close the place. At the time, there was no reason for tourists to come to Asbury.

Springsteen

It was just a little, hanging-on-by-a-thread, blue-collar beach town that happened to be our home.

Roig

The local bands were the ones that kept the place going. We were able to open seven nights a week with music.

Springsteen

It was just a local, friendly, convenient place that had a good feeling to it, and I suppose at that time it kept me kind of locked into the area and the local music scene while I was having my initial shot of success.

Lopez

We’d get out of there at 3 a.m., and our motto was, “To the Jeff, to the Jeff, to the Jeff, Jeff, Jeff.” Because the Jefferson Hotel had a little bar underneath that was open till 5 a.m.

Springsteen

I went [to the Stone Pony] just because my friends were playing there. And they made it conducive for you to come and stay and hang out. Jack and Butch [Pielka] were running the place at the time, and they were just friendly bar owners and were glad to see you.

Roig

The same week that Bruce was on the cover of Time and Newsweek, there were about 300 people lined up outside waiting for us to open. I walked out front and I looked down the line, and I stopped in my tracks. “What the hell is that?” And there is Bruce, digging through his pockets. He never carried any money, but he’s at the end of the line and is looking through his pockets to pay the cover charge, which was like $3. So I went and dragged him past the line and into the side door.

Van Zandt

Bruce would come down just to play. Just to hang out. He was there pretty much from the beginning.

Springsteen

I generally enjoyed when Southside played, and Stevie, because they’re exceptional. To see that band in a club was quite exceptional. They had the horn section, which not a lot of people had at the time. They played a great selection of soul music and blues. And it was a very, very exceptional band to have in residence two or three nights a week in your clubs. So those were my favorite nights.

Southside Johnny

Life centered around the Stone Pony. If you had a night off, you went to the Stone Pony. Bruce would come and jam. Everybody would come and jam, ’cause it was so open and free. The stage was a good enough stage. The sound system was pretty good. We could get free drinks, which was key. You could rock out as loud as you wanted for as long as you wanted.

By the mid-1970s, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes were a draw on the Jersey Shore. But a live radio broadcast of an album release by the band, with a not-so-surprise appearance by Springsteen, gave music fans around the country a sample of the horn-driven sound cultivated in Asbury Park.

Lee Mrowicki Longtime D.J. at the Stone Pony

I was working at WJLK, the local radio station. One day the general manager comes into the office, “Do you think we can air a live concert?” The guy from Epic Records, the guy that signed Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, knew the local station and wanted a live concert for their album release. They tried WNEW-FM first. But they wanted in writing that Bruce would play. And, of course, Bruce doesn’t do that kind of stuff. So they refused to air the concert.

Southside Johnny

We had rehearsed, actually rehearsed, and we had material down. We were ready to be heard. One of the thrills about that night is that we finally got to show what we could do to people who never had seen us before. We had been playing to an audience that had seen us. And they knew and they liked us. But this was a chance to kick ass on a somewhat national stage, and I was champing at the bit to do it.

Eileen Chapman Former manager of the Stone Pony and a current city councilwoman

My parents had a fudge and nut shop right in the corner of the casino, a few blocks from the Pony. One of the guys who worked nearby said to me, “I’m going over to the Pony. Bruce is doing a broadcast with Johnny.” So I closed my shop, and as we’re walking over from the casino to the Pony, there are people lined up around the whole block. News cameras and radio stations and everything.

Santelli

It was crowded as all hell, and it was hot, and it was super exciting because I’d never seen so many people in the Stone Pony at that time. We were, I’m sure, way, way over fire code. But the excitement of it all, it just felt like this was not only the Pony’s coming out, and the Jukes’ coming out, but it was also a sense of validation.

Southside Johnny

It was a chance for a club in Asbury Park, New Jersey, the joke state, and one of the joke towns of joke state, to get some recognition all around the country because there was this night of live music.

Mrowicki

There were people from WNEW-FM there, and they came over to hang out with me, and we got to know them. And I said, “You guys taking turns kicking yourselves in the ass? Because Bruce is coming on.”

Springsteen

It was just a great, great night.

Southside Johnny

After that show, there would be people coming from all over. We would get people from England and Spain. One fanatic would come from Spain and spend three days in Asbury Park sleeping on somebody’s floor and come to our two nights and then see whomever was playing the next night.

Santelli

Once that show happens, and once it gets out that Bruce hangs out there regularly and jams with bands like Cats on a Smooth Surface and others, then it becomes a pilgrimage site. And every time people come to New Jersey and they’re Springsteen fans, they feel like they have to make it down to the Stone Pony.

Springsteen had hopped onstage for jam sessions since the Stone Pony’s earliest days, but his skyrocketing stardom and more frequent appearances throughout the 1980s amplified the club’s renown. Fans called “Bruce watchers” descended on the Pony, hoping to catch the arena-packing musician in an intimate setting. But eventually, even the allure of national acts and Springsteen’s star power wasn’t enough to counter the drag of a beaten-down Asbury Park.

Santelli

Jack and Butch weren’t stupid. They knew that if word spread that Bruce Springsteen was going to jam with Steve and Johnny and the Jukes that night, the place would fill up.

Roig

I think 556 was our legal capacity. I got 1,100 in there one night.

Springsteen

I went to the Pony from about the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. That’s sort of the golden age of the original Pony. It was about that decade, as far as I can remember.

Southside Johnny

I loved it when Bruce came up. I could take a break, and he’d do a bunch of singing. But there was real tangible excitement when he showed up. The downside of it was that people would be coming to see him, and he didn’t come every night.

Bruce Springsteen performed at the Stone Pony in 1982.

Chapman

You could definitely tell who in the audience on any given night was a Bruce watcher. They’d walk from the front to the back and they’d look around, look around, look around. Walk back to the back bar, look around, look around, look around. Then there were times when Bruce would actually come in and he’d come to the back bar, and this whole group of people would just follow him pretending they weren’t looking at him.

Roig

We used to get mail from all over the world. Just addressed to Bruce Springsteen, U.S.A. And it’d be delivered to us. I bet we would get 50, 100 posts a week. And he’d come in and we’d say, “Here’s your mail.”

Springsteen

We would play the Stone Pony [in softball], which was always hilarious. The E Street Band had a team. It was pretty good. And we would play the Stone Pony and other bars in the area, and they were just great.

Springsteen on the softball field. John Correa

Mrowicki

Barry Bell, who used to be Bruce’s booking agent, was a semipro fast pitcher. And we had a bunch of guys who used to play slow-pitch softball, so when Barry comes on, all of a sudden these guys are seeing 60-mile-an-hour fastballs. Bruce always played second base.

Springsteen

Clarence [Clemons, the saxophonist for the E Street Band] could swing the bat, you know? It was as simple as that.

John Correa

Roig

I always get a kick out of everybody who says, “Springsteen started there!” No, no, no. Bruce did not start there. He had two albums out already. We started with him. So you have to face reality. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know, maybe I’d be shining shoes at Grand Central.

Springsteen

We were at the Green Parrot in Neptune, and they had original bands, and there were a few other places we went. But there wasn’t any place quite like the Pony. The Pony was our home away from home, and that was just the way it stayed.

Bobby Bandiera Guitarist for Cats on a Smooth Surface

I remember the night Bruce first started playing with us. He was at the Pony and we were on a break. I was up there tuning my guitar. He just came up, said, “Hey Bob,” because he knew my name from people in the audience yelling my name out. He said, “I’m Bruce, Bruce Springsteen, can I come and play with you guys?” That was it. So he would come out every Sunday and play with my band.

Chapman

I was managing the bar next door, and it was supposed to be open till 2 a.m. But when Bruce came to play the Pony, we’d take all the clocks down and, right in front of people, we’d move them to 2 and say, “O.K., last call, time to go.”

Springsteen

The Pony was laid out very strange. The stage didn’t project into the club long ways. It was kind of on the side of the club. And so there was a relatively small amount of people that could fit in there and really experience the band. You were close to everybody and the ceiling was low, and it was a classic sort of rock club.

Roig

Bruce would always call before he was coming down, like, “We’re going to come down. The band is going to get paid though, right?” Not meaning his guys. How do I pay him? Give him half the deed? He meant pay the band on the schedule that night.

Bruce Springsteen joined Steven Van Zandt, also know as Little Steven, on stage at the Stone Pony in 1987.

Springsteen

Funny thing is, I don’t remember it being that much of a problem or a hassle for me. I went regularly all through “Born in the U.S.A.” I mean, I saw Patti [Scialfa] before the “Born in the U.S.A.” tour, and that’s how she got in the band.

Peter Mantas Former Manager for Bon Jovi and the Atlantic City Expressway

Asbury Park, this was the land of dreams for Jon Bon Jovi. We were 16-year-old kids coming down here from Sayreville, N.J. Jon idolized Bruce. His whole early years were listening to Bruce bootlegs. Maybe Jon could be next, you know?

The goal was to play the Pony. Then we get our break, our first gig in Asbury Park with Atlantic City Expressway at the Stone Pony. Turns out it was one gig and one gig only. Because the night of the second gig, our bass player got caught with a fake I.D. So we couldn’t play that night.

Chapman

By the mid-to-late ’80s, a lot of the early house bands that were bringing a lot of people, they were kind of falling apart. And the loyal locals weren’t coming back. And Asbury was still a ghost town. So I think the Pony needed to step its game up a little bit and bring in some national names.

Roig

The national acts, man, all the demands. They forget who owns the place, who’s making the money. I didn’t understand it.

Chapman

It was hard to balance the good nights and the nights when people just didn’t come without national acts and you had all that overhead. There were times that I lent Butch and Jack money to put down as deposits for national touring bands coming in.

Southside Johnny

Between Bruce’s “Greetings from Asbury Park,” Jon Bon Jovi’s album, us and the Asbury Jukes, and all these young rock ’n’ roll acts coming to play, it made Asbury Park, as you say, a destination, a hip town in a sense. But it was still a blighted neighborhood. It was worth your life to walk the streets at night.

John Correa

Lopez

One time, a group of like 30 people came to the Pony on a tour bus. They pulled the bus right up to the stage door, so all you had to do was go out the stage door and go on the bus. Later in the evening, as the band’s playing, these people went out the side door to get into the bus and they got rolled. Right there at the side door of the Pony. Beat up and stole their stuff. After that happened, that’s when the bouncers would walk you to your car.

Southside Johnny

There were briberies going on. The fire inspector would come in and we’d be way over capacity, and bills would change hands. And there were incidents where I think they threw out a member of the Pagans, or one of the motorcycle groups, and there was a big rumor that they were going to come in and so here are Butch and Jack up on the roof with shotguns, and all the bartenders are carrying pistols and I’m like, “Oh, great.”

Roig

There were financial problems because of liquor law liability. One year they wanted $185,000 for liquor law liability. And that didn’t count your normal liability, or your fire, or anything like that. That’s a pretty tough knot for a place that size, especially in Asbury Park when you’re charging $4 to come in. So we ran with no insurance. And then we wound up with a million lawsuits.

Mrowicki

One lawsuit was because of the Ramones. The Ramones love playing in Asbury. And back then, the punk movement is just starting to really blossom. Wasn’t really here in Asbury, but that’s the first time we saw a mosh pit. And to some people it was cool to spit on people. So this one guy spits on Joey Ramone. So Joey takes the mic stand and tries to remove the guy’s nose. Bam. And this guy is bloody like you wouldn’t believe.

Roig

It’s stacked against you. And it still is. And if you don’t have insurance, then you’re done. That’s what put us under.

Springsteen

It was sort of the end of an era and all that. But the town was straining and changing.

Liability lawsuits forced Roig and Pielka to close the Stone Pony in September 1991. Steven Nasar, of nearby Deal, N.J., bought the club in bankruptcy court and reopened it a year later.

But Asbury Park was weathering some of its toughest times, and a decade of struggles followed. While the Pony continued to lure the occasional marquee band, it failed to develop a loyal local audience. The growing punk rock and underground dance scenes attracted younger patrons, but after eight years Nasar shuttered the club.

Mantas

Asbury Park, 1992, 1991, man, this place was rough. The years we were hanging out down here, it was rough, but there were a lot of clubs.

Santelli

When Jack and Butch closed the Pony, it was a shock, because it seemed so resilient. It seemed almost like it was Teflon — that no matter what happened to the town, the Pony was going to survive simply because it was the Pony, and it had such a great international reputation. You just separated the fate of the city with the fate of the club simply because it had such roots in contemporary rock ’n’ roll history.

Mantas

Then Steve Nasar took over and reopened it, but it was just different.

Chapman

He did a lot of younger acts, mosh kind of bands, for the most part. So it brought a whole different scene.

Southside Johnny, right, with Bobby Bandiera in 1998. Michael J. Treola/Associated Press

Greg Attonito Vocalist for the Bouncing Souls

We would go through Asbury Park, we’re talking about 1991 or 1992, and that was the place where you didn’t want to go. The town was still really scary. But we loved it, too. It was just literally a ghost town except for the Stone Pony.

Pete Steinkopf Guitarist for the Bouncing Souls

I remember when Green Day was coming on their big “Dookie” tour and our good friend Tim Chunks was working for them, and the opening band from their show had to cancel or something.

Bryan Kienlen Bassist for the Bouncing Souls

It was such short notice to play that giant of a show, and we were just kind of a local band who was kicking around. And Tim brought it up so casually. “What are you doing this Saturday?” We’re like, “Oh, nothing.” He was like, “Good. You’re opening for Green Day at the Stone Pony.”

Attonito

It was sort of like the Mecca to get to was the Pony.

Brian Fallon Singer and Guitarist for the Gaslight Anthem

First show I saw at the Stone Pony was the Bouncing Souls and a band called Blank 77. That might have been the first show that I realized was at a rock club. And I felt a similar vibe. I was like, “Oh, this is exciting. This is the Bouncing Souls, and they’re playing these songs that I love and there’s more people singing along. I want to be here.”

Chapman

But then Nasar renamed it Vinyl. And it got even weirder. And then he made everything pink.

Mantas

It was like, all ravers, just a dance night. It was like, “Ugh. This is not the Stone Pony. Sort of like the Phony Pony.”

Chapman

That didn’t last that long. And then it was empty.

Santelli

It was eerie. It didn’t feel right. There was a sense of loss that made me very uncomfortable driving past it. I think I speak for others who thought, wow, once the Pony closed, it’s hopeless now. There’s truly nothing that can possibly bring this place back.

The closing of the Stone Pony in 1998 had some wondering if this time it would be for good. But a Jersey City businessman named Domenic Santana saw an opportunity in the club and the city. Soon enough, the Stone Pony was again on the rise, and Asbury Park was ushering in a new era of development and reclamation along the oceanfront.

Yet amid the gold rush, the property where the club sat drew the attention of developers, setting up another battle for survival.

Domenic Santana Owner of the Stone Pony from 2000-03

I was looking to invest somewhere and heard about Asbury Park. The first day I came here, it was a foggy, foggy day, and I looked down the boardwalk to the casino building. And out of the fog, I see a man in a wheelchair coming out. And I said to myself, “Oh, my God, this is for real?” But I fell in love with it.

I called my mom, my grandpa, and said let’s take a drive. When we pulled into town, my mom was in shock. She said, “Look at this. Look around. This is a ghost town.” I drove to the front of the Stone Pony and so help me God, there were two buses full of tourists, all with their cameras taking pictures in front of the shuttered Pony, taking pictures of that dilapidated sign. And I turned around and said, “That’s why.”

Van Zandt

You would hear about tourists going down there when it was at its most vacant and just a wasteland. There were still tourists going down there to see where we started.

Santana

The most important thing was bringing everything and everyone back. So I told Lee Mrowicki and everyone, “Hey, I’m not going to resurrect something that wasn’t ready. You’re an intricate part. I’m a Juanito-come-lately. You’re the one who has roots in here. I need your input here. This place needs you.”

Mrowicki

I sat and talked with him for awhile. He says, “Yeah, we want you to come back and just help me make it back to the way the glory days were.” That’s what happened, and it worked. It worked from day one.

Springsteen

I don’t think anybody expected it initially to come back. So it was kind of a surprise, I suppose, when it did.

Domenic Santana, a former owner of the Stone Pony. Keith Meyers/The New York Times

Santana

The only way I was going to hit it out of the park was if I got the governor here, a conservative Republican governor. And everybody said, “She’ll never come down for the ribbon cutting. Because you know what rock clubs are associated with: sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, God forbid. She’s never going to touch that.”

But on opening weekend, [Governor Christine Todd Whitman] came. It brought attention to Asbury Park, and that’s what I wanted. It wasn’t about the Stone Pony. It was about this endangered American treasure, this city. We believed that rock ’n’ roll would resurrect the city.

Mrowicki

I saw Bruce one day at a place called Jersey Freeze in Freehold, N.J., having lunch, and we start talking. He says, “How’s the new guy?” And I said, “Well, he’s got a good heart,” for one thing. And that, to Bruce, is probably more important than anything else. Eventually Bruce shows up, gives it the blessing.

Santana

All of a sudden, development, developers came out of the woodwork.

Chapman

They were going to take over the whole oceanfront.

Santana

But I was like, I’m not going to let you build condos around me. The battle was to let it be known that the Stone Pony is the Eiffel Tower of Asbury Park, and we’re not going nowhere.

Chapman

We said to Don, “I bet if we start this ‘Save The Stone Pony’ campaign,” it’ll catch on. But Don kept saying, “No, no.” Then he came in the office one night, and he looks angry, and he said, “Start your ‘Save The Stone Pony’ campaign.” So I got a bunch of people together. We called these bands. We got the word out internationally. We did a parade on a horse down Ocean Avenue.

Santana

Everybody knew I was having lunch with Andrés Duany [the master developer hired by Asbury Partners, a development group]. And that I was going to come and tell them about my meeting and what was the future of the Stone Pony. At lunch, he told me, “You’re not going nowhere.” But I didn’t tell anyone anything. I wanted to keep the army angry.

I had a rally waiting for me at the Stone Pony after the lunch. So I came on the stage across the street, and I said, “Guys, I’m sorry, the bulldozers are coming.” So we marched down the street. And the developers realized, “Oh, this guy’s going to cost me money. This guy’s going to fight.” And they gave me a contract.

Caroline O’Toole General Manager of the Stone Pony from 2003-present

I had never actually been to the Stone Pony until my first day of working there. And I knew that I was going to give this my all because one, it was the Stone Pony, and two, it was the chance to be part of rebuilding a city, a city that growing up I came to a lot with my parents like every other kid who lived around here.

We got everything in a range of knowing what the overhead was, what we were going to need to keep it going, because even a developer wasn’t going to lose millions of dollars trying to keep the Stone Pony alive. There were two parts of it. There were the national acts that you needed, and there was bringing the local people. When you didn’t have a national act, you needed your locals to fill your nights.

Chapman

The Bouncing Souls were a lifeline at that point.

The Bouncing Souls at their Home for the Holidays event in 2007. Mike McLaughlin

Steinkopf

We started doing our “Home for the Holidays” show. It was like a four-day thing we did at the Stone Pony, right after Christmas. We started it because, in the wintertime, there was nothing to do in Asbury Park.

Attonito

So we’re like, let’s do like a local thing to bring people to town, get the whole town involved, and the Pony was the only place you would think of doing this.

Kienlen

We would sort of curate events around the shows to get people to go explore the Cookman Avenue corridor and the Main Street corridor. Tell people to go check the new movie theater and we’re going to show punk movies there.

Fallon

The Souls sort of bridged the gap first between the Springsteen era, rock ’n’ roll stuff, and the punk stuff. And they sort of melded that together. And then we kind of followed suit and just took it in a different direction.

O’Toole

Little by little, it was coming back. We were putting a good security presence at the Pony, people knowing that when they walked inside the building they were safe.

Chapman

And having the Warped Tour here, and then Bamboozle happened, I think, the year that the developers took over. So the Warped Tour and Bamboozle just began to bring in a younger audience, which we need to survive because otherwise you would’ve just had the Bruce watchers.

Springsteen

It’s an attraction for people all over the world now. And they put on some pretty big shows, and they have their summer stage.

Chapman

I actually bought the first Stone Pony summer stage. My husband had given me $15,000 to buy a new car. But my friend Tinker — you know Carl “Tinker” West, Bruce’s first manager? Yeah, him. So I’m talking to Tinker, and Tinker’s telling me, “You know, I have my original stage in my trailer. I’m going to get rid of it.”

I drove to Tinker’s shop. He opened up the trailer. All I could see is decking. I bought Tinker’s stage on the spot. I told him I didn’t know how to put it together. So he gets this piece of paper, and he makes these dots on it. I couldn’t even tell you what this was, and he says, “This is how it goes together.” But I was lost. So he sends his guys down, and they built the stage.

And then my husband came in from work, and one of the bouncers said to him, “Hey, have you seen your new car?” And he said, “No. Did we get a car?” And the bouncer said, “Yeah, that stage outside, that’s your car.”

Springsteen, right, joined Mike Ness of Social Distortion onstage in 2008. Mark R. Sullivan/Home News Tribune, via Associated Press

O’Toole

It struggled until I want to say probably 2008, when we were able to actually just be bigger outside.

Springsteen

It’s much more of a real venue now.

Steinkopf

It was our home. That stage and those shows were the most comfortable the Bouncing Souls ever were.

O’Toole

Almost every artist, national or local, they get on that stage and they talk about it. They talk about being on the stage of the Stone Pony. Whether it’s Kiefer Sutherland, or Kenny Chesney, or the countless Patti Smith concerts, every time they’re up there, they talk about it.

Springsteen

It ended up being a little bit a part of the mythology of the town and those particular years, and that became a small part of the story of Asbury Park and spread around the world. So, if anybody told me that somebody in Holland would ever even know the Stone Pony, I would have been shocked.

Kienlen

Every time you step on that stage, you think about Springsteen. We do. I think all of us do.

Julio Cortez/Associated Press

O’Toole

The day after Clarence Clemons died in 2011, we just opened the doors during the day. Kyle Brendle [the house promoter for the Stone Pony] said, “Let’s just open so people have a place to come if they want to.” Well, thousands of people came. Thousands throughout the course of the day. We were playing blues music and a memorial started to build out on Ocean Avenue.

At one point, I was standing by the soundboard and we put on “Greetings: Live from New York.” And “10th Avenue Freeze Out” came on, the point where he goes, “And the Big Man joined the band.” Everybody was in a circle and like I said, at that point, people were standing in the back because you couldn’t even get inside. When that part of the song came on, I can’t tell you the feeling that room had, that I had. At that moment, I knew I would never experience that again.

Fallon

I mean, there was the first foolish person that said, “I think I’m going to open a business in Asbury Park, and right now it’s a train wreck.” But they did it, and that’s the thing. It worked. That’s why [Gaslight Anthem] decided to do those three shows in a row outside [in 2018] for the first time. It’s like, if we can do it with this town, like you can take and make something out of nothing.

Fallon and his band, the Gaslight Anthem, on the summer stage in 2018. Mark Krajnak

Springsteen

I’m kind of the Ghost of Christmas Past. I can invisibly walk down the boardwalk and everybody is busy going about their own current business. So it’s nice. Bit of a surprise it didn’t happen sooner. I mean, it was a beautiful town only an hour out of the city. But things happen in their own time.

Attonito

You can’t buy history. And that’s the thing: Obviously gentrification happens in all these cities and you have all this backlash, and is it good? But luckily, I think they can’t carve music out of Asbury Park.

Southside Johnny

I think rock ’n’ roll acts have been a huge part of the renaissance of Asbury Park, even though it took 20 years. Because once Bruce put out “Greetings from Asbury Park” and all of us went out on the road with Asbury in the name and all that, people came here.

Springsteen

I’m sure it was like bar life in a thousand other towns going on simultaneously. There was that one club where your local musicians gathered and would get up onstage and play. I think the only thing that was exceptional about it was that it was unexceptional. Looking back on it, it was just a very down-home place where that group of musicians who inhabited Asbury Park at that moment could gather and be together and create.