Asbury Park: Riot, Redemption, Rock ‘n Roll | Little White Lies

Asbury Park: Riot, Redemp­tion, Rock n Roll

22 May 2019 / Released: 22 May 2019

Words by Aimee Knight

Directed by Tom Jones

Starring Bruce Springsteen

Two men performing on stage, one playing an electric guitar and the other singing into a microphone.
Two men performing on stage, one playing an electric guitar and the other singing into a microphone.
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Anticipation.

Getting sponsored ads for this on every platform.

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Enjoyment.

Blinded by the light entertainment vibe.

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In Retrospect.

For Springsteen completists and rock music boffins.

Bruce Spring­steen and Ste­vie Van Zandt delve into the ori­gins of the New Jer­sey sound.

Any city that wants to move for­ward has to recog­nise its past,” says Char­lie Horner, one of the world’s lead­ing experts on rhythm and blues music. While the sen­ti­ment is uni­ver­sal, he’s refer­ring specif­i­cal­ly to New Jersey’s Asbury Park: a sea­side city that’s home to 16,000 peo­ple and the sixth best beach on the Jer­sey Shore.

For some, the town is syn­ony­mous with Bruce Springsteen’s debut album Greet­ings from Asbury Park, NJ’; its cov­er art made from a quaint, mid-cen­tu­ry post­card. By con­trast, this earnest doc­u­men­tary pulls back from the kitschy image and, in doing so, makes room for oth­er musi­cal, cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal his­to­ries born in the Liv­er­pool of Amer­i­ca.” (Spring­steen fans needn’t fret, though. Direc­tor Tom Jones spends plen­ty of time with Jersey’s num­ber one son.)

Asbury Park: Riot, Redemp­tion, Rock n Roll charts the title town’s many sagas. Once a turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry coastal resort, it’s now home to (often over­lap­ping) com­mu­ni­ties of blue-col­lar work­ers, LGBT folk and, of course, musi­cians. Archival footage and pho­tos viv­i­fy the old board­walk of yore, while a bevy of local his­to­ri­ans piece togeth­er the city’s hey­day as a hotspot for r&b, jazz, doo-wop, soul, and rock music from both sides of the tracks.

For years the African-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty lived most­ly on the West Side of the town’s divid­ing rail­way line, where acts such as Count Basie, Bil­lie Hol­i­day and Duke Elling­ton cre­at­ed a cul­tur­al bridge to the white folks of the East. That is, until increas­ing­ly dire liv­ing con­di­tions sparked a race riot on 4 July, 1970.

With care and con­cern, the film recounts the civ­il unrest that dev­as­tat­ed the city’s once vibrant West Side. Locals such as Ernest Boom” Carter (once a drum­mer in the E Street Band) and Josephine Ham­ma­ry gen­er­ous­ly share mem­o­ries of that trau­mat­ic week – the social and eco­nom­ic effects of which still blight the precinct today. This makes for the film’s most nuanced, cap­ti­vat­ing and sen­si­tive passage.

In com­par­i­son, oth­er sec­tions feel like a live read­ing of a Wikipedia page. The first two acts are laden with talk­ing-head inter­views; walls of sound unto them­selves. They’re ham­pered by an osten­si­ble lack of mov­ing image archival. (Beware the curse of the his­tor­i­cal doc, slow­ly track­ing across pho­tos, ad infini­tum, until some­one dies.) Nar­ra­tion by local disc jock­ey Big Joe Hen­ry has plen­ty of char­ac­ter but, at times, favours a VH1: Music First’ vibe that feels out of place in a cin­e­mat­ic feature.

Towards the end of the film, Jones meets the pre-teen rock­ers of Lake­house Music Acad­e­my. Had the kids been intro­duced ear­li­er in the nar­ra­tive and their rock n’ roll rites of pas­sage revealed beat by beat – the lit­tle tack­ers learn­ing local his­to­ry along­side their glob­al audi­ence – this may have invig­o­rat­ed some of those edi­fy­ing but dense sec­tions with a more filmic, show, don’t tell’ approach.

Still, many view­ers will drop in pure­ly for the Spring­steen con­tent, which does not dis­ap­point. Anoth­er high­light fea­tures E Street Band gui­tarist Steve Van Zandt – also a singer, song­writer and Sopra­nos star in his own right – explor­ing the for­mer Upstage Club where, appro­pri­ate­ly, he’s almost out­shone by his adorable Cav­a­lier King Charles Spaniel.

Over the film’s clos­ing cred­its, Lit­tle Steven and the Dis­ci­ples of Soul croon I Don’t Want to Go Home”, orig­i­nal­ly record­ed by his South­side John­ny and the Asbury Jukes. Despite the tune’s melan­cholic mood – not to men­tion this town’s trou­bled his­to­ry – it’s clear that Asbury Park remains deeply mean­ing­ful to its sons and daugh­ters, prodi­gal or oth­er­wise. They may have grown up but, in many ways, they’ve nev­er left, and that’s the whole story.

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