#310 The Stone Pony: An Oral History w/ Nick Corasaniti
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 29 July 2024
⏱️ 52 minutes
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Summary
The Stone Pony and its hometown of Asbury Park, New Jersey are iconic settings in the story of some of America's greatest rock musicians, including Bruce Springsteen, Steven Van Zandt, and Southside Johnny Lyon. The Pony's path from high-risk passion project to iconic venue was, however, anything but direct; from its founding in 1974, the club was caught in the greater forces at work in late-20th century America.
So how did the Stone Pony thrive when so many other venues closed? And what set Asbury Park apart from so many other American towns? In this episode, The New York Times' Nick Corasaniti joins us to talk about his new book I Don't Want To Go Home: The Oral History of the Stone Pony (Harpers, 2024) and what he learned from interviewing Bruce Springsteen and dozens of other musicians and industry professionals who helped make the club into what it is today.
If you enjoy this episode, make sure to check out our episodes on The Kinks with Mark Doyle and The Allman Brothers' At Fillmore East with Bob Beatty.
This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Bob Crawford. |
| 0:06.4 | I'm Ben Sawyer. |
| 0:07.6 | And this is the road to now. |
| 0:10.1 | Summertime edition. |
| 0:11.8 | Summer time. |
| 0:12.5 | We have been, Bob, how many miles of road have we traveled? |
| 0:15.5 | Like, in the last three weeks, I've been back and forth across the country twice. |
| 0:19.5 | You know, this is when I want to be on break and we were going to have a summer break. |
| 0:25.1 | And we've had, we've had a summer break, as many of our listeners know, but I had to come off |
| 0:29.8 | break to have this conversation because our good friend Doug High emailed about a new book |
| 0:37.0 | about the Stone Pony, which is a famous rock club in |
| 0:42.1 | Asbury Park, New Jersey, home of Bruce Springsteen. |
| 0:46.1 | And the author, it's not one of these rock journalists. |
| 0:49.9 | It's not one of the, this isn't like David Mankoni or some of the rock music writers we've |
| 0:54.9 | interviewed Ben. |
| 0:56.0 | This book is written by Nick Korsenidi. |
| 0:59.6 | The one guy that might have been on the road and we'll be on the road more than both of us. |
| 1:03.7 | That's right. |
| 1:04.8 | He is, as you probably know, is a political journalist for the New York Times. |
| 1:09.4 | And this is his first book. So Nick, welcome to |
| 1:14.1 | The Road to Now. Oh, thanks so much for having me. So, you know, when I just got to say this, |
| 1:20.0 | Ben, real quick, when Doug, you know, told me about this book and connected us about this, |
... |
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