The Stone Pony w/ Nick Corasaniti
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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.
Bob's new book, America's Founding Son: John Quincy Adams, from President to Political Maverick, which drops on March 10! Make sure to check out the book page at the Zando site and preorder your copy!
This episode originally aired as episode 310 on July 29, 2024. This rebroadcast was edited by Ben Sawyer.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Ben Sawyer and this is The Road to Now. |
| 0:08.7 | Today on the show, we look at the iconic Asbury Park, New Jersey venue, The Stone Pony. |
| 0:14.7 | Our guest is Nick Koresaniti of the New York Times, author of this book, I Don't |
| 0:20.0 | Want to Go Home, The Oral History of the Stone Pony, which of this book, I Don't Want to Go Home, the oral history of the |
| 0:21.9 | Stone Pony, which came out in 2024, as did this episode originally. And it's just a wonderful |
| 0:27.9 | story told through the interviews he's done with so many people, musicians, business people, |
| 0:33.4 | just a variety of people who inhabited this space. He talks to Bruce Springsteen. He spoke to my personal favorite, Jay Maskus. |
| 0:40.1 | And to me, it was such an interesting concept of a way to organize a history that would |
| 0:45.1 | really tell itself. |
| 0:46.4 | And I hope you guys enjoy this conversation. |
| 0:49.3 | Bob and I are busy this week. |
| 0:50.9 | We are recording a couple of new episodes, including one on Bob's new book. |
| 0:54.9 | If you haven't pre-ordered America's Founding Sun, check that out. |
| 0:58.2 | Link is in the episode description below. If you're listening on your podcast player, you can click |
| 1:02.7 | there. And we look forward to sharing all these episodes with you. As always, patrons, you |
| 1:07.4 | guys are awesome. Thank you for supporting the show. You keep it going. If you want to join |
| 1:11.0 | us, it's patreon.com slash the road to now. Everybody else, if you have not rated us yet on Apple Podcasts |
| 1:18.1 | or Spotify or like this on YouTube, please do that. It helps support the show. It costs you no more |
| 1:24.2 | than a mere number of seconds. And in return, you have our thanks. |
| 1:29.1 | Hope you're all having a great week and you enjoy this episode. We'll be back with a new one next week. |
| 1:34.2 | Take care. |
| 1:36.4 | Our good friend Doug High emailed about a new book that has come out about the Stone Pony, |
... |
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