Song of the Day 12/3: Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, “I Don’t Want to Go Home”
Though it was never released as a single, this became one of the defining songs of the Jersey Shore sound. Southside Johnny sells the perennial show-closer with his impassioned blue-eyed growl over a horns-plus-guitar hook.
It’s as much Steve Van Zandt’s signature song as anybody’s. Van Zandt wrote it for Jersey bar singer John Lyon, and also arranged it, produced it, along with the band’s entire debut album, on which he also sang and played guitar. It made the Jukes a national act for a while, and though recording became sporadic after the ’80s the act goes on. Over the years more than 100 musicians have been Jukes.
Van Zandt has performed the frequently over the years — with Johnny, Bruce Springsteen, as Little Steven with his band the Disciples of Soul, probably at home in the shower. You get the feeling he really means it. Hell, he and Southside Johnny were singing it as recently as October at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park. Trigger warning for Boomers: Watch this and you will feel really old.
Great song. The purity and righteousness of “Jersey Shore sound” needs more than three bands though. (2.5 bands?) It needs to be central to the curriculum at Julliard, Berklee and elsewhere.
If you have Sirius, and you’re on a long trip, there is no better companion than Little Steven’s Underground Garage.
And, hey, he was in The Sopranos where, as he said, ‘The hair does 90% of the acting.”
Love me some SSJ! Thanks for the feature!
His piano player, Rusty Cloud, is a fellow member of the Brandywine HS Class of 1969.