HAVING A PARTY

Live 31 Aug 1978 version

Info

The above lyrics are for the live 31 Aug 1978 performance of HAVING A PARTY at The Agora in Cleveland, OH, with Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes. This rendition of HAVING A PARTY features a bit of Curtis Mayfield's IT'S ALL RIGHT as an intro.

Bruce Springsteen and Southside Johnny performing HAVING A PARTY during the 31 Aug 1978 show at The Agora, Cleveland, OH (from proshot video)

The 31 Aug 1978 Show

This Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes gig was scheduled for the evening of 30 Aug 1978. That same evening Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band were performing a concert at Richfield Coliseum in Richfield, OH. As an attendee recalled, "Southside's gig started about three hours late because, as he stated, they had to wait for their lead guitarist Steven Van Zandt to get done with another gig across town." So technically speaking Southside's gig (or at least the second set) took place in the early hours of 31 Aug 1978.

Bruce Springsteen and some members of the E Street Band joined Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes onstage during the second set. Springsteen shared vocals on THE FEVER (which also featured Clarence Clemons), I DON'T WANT TO GO HOME (on which he also played guitar), and HAVING A PARTY (which also featured Roy Bittan). Garry Tallent and Clarence Clemons stuck around for at least one more song, STAGGER LEE.

The gig was videotaped for a television show called "Onstage At The Agora". The show, which lived for only one season, was broadcast on Cleveland's WEWS-TV and simulcast on WMMS-FM. Southside Johnny's concert was the second show to be taped for the series.

Bill Payne, a director at WEWS-TV, was hired to direct the concert at The Agora. "On the night we shot this, it was a complete surprise when Bruce showed up — we weren't told that he would," Payne recalled in 2015. "So, when we shot the numbers with Bruce I had no idea that they would not be broadcast. I wasn't told that until two days after I had edited the Bruce segments into the show that it wouldn't be broadcast." The show was set to be broadcast that week. "The concert was a hot mix (meaning I cut it live) and the music hadn't been remixed either. Since I had the four cameras in isolation I was going to remix the video in post and synch the remixed sound onto it." Then the next day Jon Landau called The Agora founder and owner Hank LoConti telling him that he can't use the footage of Springsteen. It seems that Springsteen's management didn't want his first ever TV broadcast to be a jam with another band.

Though the Springsteen portion of the concert was never broadcast, the audio version of the full concert was often replayed on WMMS-FM. Moreover the complete footage, dubbed with the radio broadcast audio, has circulated among collectors for many years going back to the VHS days. "So I was only allowed to air the first hour with just [Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes] and erase the parts with Bruce," Payne said. "I took a 3/4-inch copy of the concert before I had the tape operator erase it. I thought I had the only copy, because I had never shown it to anyone, but I guess the tape operator didn't erase it until he made at least one copy and probably more."

Credits

Thanks Jake (ol'catfishinthelake at BTX and Greasy Lake) for the lyrics help.

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Page last updated: 15 Oct 2015