You'd think a guy like Johnny Lyon would have been a gimme as far as success in the music business goes. He certainly had all the necessary ingredients. Start with the fact that he was, and still is, one of the best white soul singers in the business. When you add to the mix a crack band anchored by one of rock 'n' roll's best horn sections, and then figure in a close relationship with guys like Bruce Springsteen and Steven Van Zandt writing and producing the lions share of the material, you'd think this guy's path to superstardom would've been a slam-dunk.
Or so you'd think anyway...
As it turned out, the man better known to the world as Southside Johnny was never quite able to escape the shadow of his more famous pals from Asbury Park, NJ. After the initial promise of his first three albums for Epic Records in the seventies — the third of which, Hearts Of Stone is considered by many fans to be something of an unheralded masterpiece — the label then dropped him.
Since then, Southside Johnny and his Asbury Jukes have toiled on through decades of revolving band members and record labels, playing an endless series of gigs at the same sort of juke joints and roadhouse venues they started out in way back when. Yet, even though I'm sure Southside himself has spent more than a few restless nights pondering what might have been, I still get the feeling that he's basically okay with it. What may have been the music world's ultimate loss still comes down to what really matters most for guys like these who live, eat, and breathe this stuff. And that is the music itself.
1978: Live In Boston is a recently unearthed concert recorded back during that giddy time when Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes seemed to be right on the cusp of making it really big. Recorded on a particularly cool night in 1978 just a few days before Christmas at Boston's Paradise Theater, this album has long since been an out-of-print collector's item coveted by fans. It has just now been reissued by indie label Airline Records, in a no-frills sort of package that includes little in the way of remastered bells and whistles. Well, other than newly written liner notes anyway.
Which is just fine, because what is actually captured here is a smoking hot
performance, featuring several songs from those first three great albums. Southside Johnny himself — who is revered by many of his Asbury Park brethren as one of the finest white blues shouters this side of Mitch Ryder — has never sounded better.
Article comments
1 - Mark Saleski
good stuff glen. i happen to have a copy of this from when it was called Live! At the Paradise Theater.
i could swear that both "Trapped Again" and "Vertigo" got airplay on rock radio back then. maybe they were just more popular in maine or something.
oh, and speaking of La Bamba. i've heard the La Bamba/Southside big band record of Tom Waits covers...phenomenal. it'll be out in the fall.
2 - JC Mosquito
I always though SS Johnny never made it because it was too retro for the publics' taste - too classic r&b.
3 - SFC SKI
First off, great review, and thanks for posting. I think this concert might have been released on cassette. I know that the cassette I had from that time period is not the same concert as the live albums I have seen over the last few years on CD. I think a full song list should be part of a music review.
Southside Johnny was indeed played on the radio, at least in Philly, Jersey, and Massachusetts, and Colorado as well. Around that same time period, Jack Mack and the Heart Attack also gained some fame, and Roomful of Blues was packing the clubs up and down the East Coast circuit.
Why were they never famous? Because there ain't no justice in the music world.
4 - SCOTT
JOHNNY LYON IS THE GREATEST WHITE R&B SINGER HANDS DOWN. WHY HE NEVER MADE IT HUGE I HAVE SEEN HIM OVER THIRTY TIMES. HE ALWAYS WILL HAVE A ALBUM ON THE TOP 100 ROLLING STONE LIST