Bob Santelli: Educating Future Generations
(Originally published Sep 28, 2021)
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Robert Santelli
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When people a hundred years from now read about American icons like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen, they’ll most likely be reading the words of Bob Santelli. One of the original Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame curators, he also co-created The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles and the first-ever interactive music museum, (MoPop in Seattle).
Bob Santelli is currently the Executive Director for the Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music at Monmouth College.
It’s not just America where Santelli’s influence is profound. Ravi Shankar [1920-2012] is a legend worldwide but in India, he’s a saint. Santelli just returned from that country to spread the Shankar gospel there for generations to come.
How does a handsome blonde-haired blue-eyed kid from the Jersey Shore go from being a beach bum who surfs, loves Bruce and can string a few sentences together to become someone who literally moves the music forward with his innate passion for the subject.
It’s a heady leap.
If you’re Bob Santelli, you start by doing music reviews for the Asbury Park Press and the Aquarian Weekly. You move to California to get your Masters in American Civilization. You write for Rolling Stone and the New York Times. You get in so good with Jaan Wenner that he asks you—with four others—to spearhead the inception of The Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame.
So you move to Cleveland. It’s the mid-‘70s. You raise a family there. Then Paul Allen calls.
Paul Allen [1953-2018], visionary, investor, philanthropist owner of the Seattle Seahawks of the NFL, and the Portland Trail Blazers of the NBA, is the man who started Microsoft with Bill Gates. Forbes listed him as the 44th-wealthiest person in the world. He calls you, after six years in Cleveland with The Rock’n’Roll Hall Of Fame, to head The Experience Music Project in Seattle, which resulted in the Pacific Northwest’s premiere tourist attraction, the multi-million dollar Museum of Popular Culture.
You don’t turn down Paul Allen. He flies you and your family way west, wines and dines you, and offers you a new life. Your wife is already sick of Cleveland, and falls totally in love with the beauty and majesty of the great state of Washington. It’s a no-brainer. You find yourself in charge of 425 people with a 75-million-dollar annual budget.
“I was a kid covering rock’n’roll down the Jersey Shore. I don’t even know how I did it. It was so stressful. I worked my ass off 18 hours a day for seven years. But what an education!”
Mike Greenblatt: So the last time we spoke, you were headed to India for the Ravi Shankar centennial.
Bob Santelli: India was crawling with people! It was so impossibly densely populated. Cars drove on the sidewalks to avoid cows in the street, stopping and waiting for them to cross because cows are considered holy there. Sacred. It was fascinating. I had to be super-careful not to get sick.
MG: I remember your first book.
BS: My girlfriend—now my wife—supported me for the year it took to write Aquarius Rising: The Rock Festival Years. It sucked but it put me on the board.
MG: Wait a minute. That book didn’t suck! And I have a quote on its back cover.
BS: I know you do! I remember being very grateful for it at the time.
MG: What were your thoughts when Paul Allen called you out of the blue?
BS: Who me? Are you crazy? I was a kid covering rock’n’roll down the Jersey Shore. I don’t even know how I did it. It was so stressful. I worked my ass off 18 hours a day for seven years. But what an education!
MG: Then it was on to building the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, becoming its Executive Director, yet you and your family remain to this day in the Pacific Northwest.
BS: We’ll never leave. You wouldn’t believe how gorgeous it is there.
MG: And you brought the Grammy Museum to New Jersey in Newark.
BS: Yeah, at least a satellite of it.
MG: What was your last book?
BS: This Land Is Your Land about Woody Guthrie.
MG: Woody spent his last years in New Jersey.
BS: Correct. Before that, though, I did a book with Bruce and a book about Bruce. And I have another Woody book set for release in the fall that I wrote with Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter.
MG: Is there a Jersey Sound?
BS: No. There was no such thing as the San Francisco sound either. Bands and artists have different musical viewpoints. It’s impossible to have one sound and if you did, it’d just be clones of each other. And that’s certainly not the case in New Jersey, a state that has incorporated a multitude of different sounds. How can one fathom the Asbury Park sound with the alternative-rock sound of Hoboken? You can’t. How can you go from The Four Seasons to Whitney Houston? Frank Sinatra to The Shirelles? Bruce to The Bongos? No way. No such thing. But, what there is…is a Jersey attitude. A sensitivity. A feeling. It’s a hustle. It’s a streetwise sensitivity. It’s a blue-collar epic. It’s a reflection of the state. But it’s not any one sound.
Look at the Count Basie Orchestra from Red Bank who folks in the ‘30s construed as a Jersey Sound. Or Long Branch drummer Sonny Greer of the Ellington band. And don’t forget in the 1980s, myself and my colleague, Eileen Chapman, who is the Director of the Bruce Archives today, put together the Jersey Shore Jazz & Blues Festival and it became the biggest jazz festival for many years throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. We honored the late guitarist Tal Farlow at one such event. He lived down the shore for many years. Clarinetist Kenny Davern too. Clearly, you gotta look at the 1920s and early ‘30s in Asbury Park where there were a lot of Black clubs presenting jazz. Al Di Meola too. In fact, a lot of that jazz-rock fusion stuff comes straight outa Jersey.
MG: But would you at least agree that The Holy Trinity is Bruce, Southside and Miami Steve?
BS: Yes. Those three are the architects with Steven Van Zandt first, moreso than Bruce. Because of the horns. That’s Steve’s love. And, of course, he does two things. He carries that to the Asbury Jukes and he helps Bruce create that sound on Born To Run.
MG: Especially on “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.” His horn charts make that song what it is.
BS: No doubt. It’s the landmark Jersey Shore album. Steve had a lot to do with how that whole album sounds. I always try to give credit to Steve because he obviously gets overshadowed by Bruce. You can’t deny Bruce, of course, but when you talk of the Asbury sound, now THERE, there’s a consistency of sound, no doubt. Jon Bon Jovi has said a million times how he’s influenced by that sound but his music is altogether different. It’s Hair Metal! In ’77, ’78, ’79, every local band playing the Stone Pony had that Jersey Shore sound. They had to! They had to have that soul platform in which to create that rock’n’funk sound.
And when I dug deep, as I have for countless articles, Steve was always the guy. When you listen to his Disciples Of Soul, a band that he put together after he left Bruce in the mid-‘80s before he returned, it’s Asbury to the max. He has an incredible knack to put horns in a rock’n’roll format. He makes them shine. I consider him the supreme architect of the Asbury Park Sound.
MG: Let’s talk venues. Everybody talks about the Stone Pony but what about Upstage?
BS: Upstage was a club unique unto itself because it was after-hours where The Holy Trinity, as you say, crafted their vision. They also had a folk club downstairs, like a coffee-house, for acoustic music. That was very very important in terms of having all these guys from the E. Street Band cut their musical teeth. Steve and Bruce would jam there. But the thing is, it was short-lived. It ends with the Asbury Park race riots in 1970. It really wasn’t like any other club anywhere. Originally a jazz club, Upstage was always all about jamming. Blues-Rock mostly. Key of E blues. Exceedingly influential in establishing the stars who would come out of it years later. It also birthed that funky sound Asbury became synonymous with. Still, it does not compare in terms of importance to The Stone Pony because Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes became the house band there to popularize that sound. And the media jumped on it. Bruce on the cover of Newsweek and Time in the same week had legions of reporters hitting the Pony. The press made it out to be like The Cavern in Liverpool.
MG: Does The Fast Lane enter into this at all?
BS: Oh yeah. The Fast Lane would be Club #2 right behind the Pony. But it came after. Despite booking locals, they consistently presented the New Wave coming out of England: Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Joe Jackson, Lene Lovich, Ian Dury, Wreckless Eric, that whole Stiff Records roster, they all played there. It became a prominent stop for Brits invading America. Of course, the Pony continued its popularity remaining very true to the Asbury sound, if you will, and because its popularity was so huge, artists playing The Fast Lane would then go jam at the Pony, and the more press it got, the more it became one of the foremost stages in the country. In the world even. That can’t be denied. But The Fast Lane played a big role in broadening Asbury’s sound. Bon Jovi’s early bands like The Rest and The Atlantic City Expressway—a Jukes cover band—played there. In fact, Bon Jovi became popular straight from that club, although, he, as a young kid of 16, played the Pony when he wasn’t even supposed to be on that stage yet because of his age. Jon hustled. I recognized it early on. He had a great head for business. Always did. An astute businessman. When we became friends, I first realized it, when he agonized over changing his name to Jon Bon Jovi or keeping his real John Bongiovi name. I told him, “listen, man, I’m Italian, you’re Italian. Keep your name.” He didn’t. Probably for the best.
Plus, Jon was such a good-looking kid that the girls were wetting themselves over him. The Pony knew how old he was and took that chance but when the New Jersey Alcoholic Beverage Control came, they’d have him shuttled out the side door so they wouldn’t get caught hiring an underaged kid. Those were golden days, man. Between The Fast Lane and The Pony—mostly the Pony—I spent four, five nights a week in those clubs in the mid-‘70s before California. If you look at some of the articles you assigned me at the Aquarian, it's always at one or the other.
MG: That’s right! You were my Jersey Shore correspondent.
BS: And I wasn’t married yet so I could go all the time.
MG: You’re known for being friends with Bruce. How does that work? It’s like being friends with The Beatles. He has a crew that purposely keeps him shielded.
BS: Yeah, I know. It’s true. He does.
MG: Tell me about your relationship with Bruce.
RS: I first saw Bruce Springsteen in 1968. Man, when I think about that, I was a little kid, basically. We had just moved down the Jersey Shore right by the beach from Hudson County. I was a musician, joined a band, and they took me to a coffee house in Red Bank. There was this guy playing guitar and singing onstage. Now, I thought I knew a lot about music at the time. I had spent weekdays in Greenwich Village hanging out by The Cafe Wha and Gerde’s Folk City where I got to see Bob Dylan, one of my other heroes. So I knew a lot about the whole folk scene, right? But here’s this skinny guy onstage playing Tim Buckley! Nobody from my little beach town knew Tim Buckley. And I love Tim Buckley. I couldn’t believe it! He takes a break and I go up to him.
“Hey man, I didn’t think anybody knew about Tim Buckley down here.”
“I really like him,” Bruce answered.
Then, when I was writing for The Outlook, the college newspaper of Monmouth College where I went from ’69 to ’73, Bruce played there with Steel Mill like 11 times. I saw every show. So I got to know him really well. Years later, I did a book with E-Street drummer Max Weinberg, The Big Beat. I knew all the E-Street guys from The Pony, Gary, Danny, Clarence. When Max asked me to do the book with him in the early ‘80s, I got deeper in. When Bruce wanted to do his first book, Songs, I got the call.
But look, I’m not going to call Bruce Springsteen my friend like you’re my friend and just give him a phone call. That’s not how it works with us. Yes, we have a relationship, particularly now with the Bruce Springsteen Archives, and he’s been very good to me. In fact, I had to talk to him recently about this upcoming announcement which I cannot disclose yet. But I know that it is a relationship that has been, and continues to be, very beneficial to my career and I’m forever grateful for the access he has afforded me over the years. I respect him way too much to treat it casually so I really don’t ever bother him unless it’s business. I do not, under any circumstances, take advantage of that. I learned that early. He’s a very private individual. I respect him as a person and certainly as an artist. It’s an interesting conundrum when you’re friends with someone who is so world-renowned. You have to respect that. And I do.
UPDATE:
Santelli was recently named the new Executive Director of Monmouth University's Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music. His book with Woody Guthrie's daughter Nora Guthrie--"Woody Guthrie Songs & Art; Words & Wisdom," can be bought here.