Sorry, Boss — I'm just not your biggest fan
Others who gigged there on the way up: Blondie, the Ramones, Elvis Costello on his first transatlantic tour. Van Morrison shot a video at the Pony because he thought it had a cool atmosphere. But it's the Boss's lingering aura that is the draw, obviously.
Making me something of an imposter. This isn't a pilgrimage to the source of the river. I'm not the biggest Springsteen fan. I know I'm probably missing something. There's enough people out there willing to testify to his genius and since he's taken a stand against Donald Trump, his standing in Asbury Park is greater than ever. Supportive signs in the shop windows, defiant messages on white tees, a real hagiography.
All wasted. I used to spend a lot of time at tournaments with our golf correspondent, Derek. Absolute Springsteen nut. Golf writers spend a lot of time in the US. Derek had seen his hero dozens of times. The running joke was my lack of appreciation, exaggerated to a regular assertion that Springsteen was rubbish.
• This singer is Bruce Springsteen's heir — here's why
Actually it was more nuanced than that. If I had just trashed Springsteen, Del could have dismissed me as an idiot. But I always qualified it by saying I liked some Springsteen. Which is true. I like it when he doesn't sound anything like how we imagine Bruce Springsteen. So, not good time rock and roll or Born in the USA. Streets of Philadelphia, I love. And his cover version of Dream Baby Dream by Suicide, New York punks with a cheap synthesizer.
And that, I think, made it worse. It's like the old joke about the difference between a dummy and a dummy's dummy. The former believes everything he reads in the Sunday Sport; whereas the latter believes some of the things he reads in the Sunday Sport.
By the way, blue-collar Bruce did not actually come from Asbury Park. He played here. Asbury Park is nice, rather posh. Cool, artistic community, very liberal, very gay. Lovely, picturesque, colourful wooden-boarded houses, as many pride flags as there are stars and stripes. You'd be happy to live in Asbury Park. And it's on the sea.
I'm here because the tournament I'm covering ends at Meadowlands in New Jersey. The stadium is in the state, the NFL teams that call it home are the two from New York, the Giants and the Jets. Most visitors will stay in New York. But I've done that many times, for work, on holiday. So here I am on the eastern seaboard.
And it's America, and quite an important part culturally, so you still get that feeling of being on a film set. You drive the New Jersey Turnpike, like Tony does in the title sequence of The Sopranos; you come off at toll booths like the one where Sonny Corleone is ambushed in The Godfather. Frank Sinatra came from New Jersey; so did rap originators the Sugarhill Gang.
Then, on the Garden State Parkway the other day, there it was: the Jon Bon Jovi Service Area. How great is that? Why don't we do this, name mundane road stops after local rock stars? A Johnny Rotten Little Chef just off the North Circular. A Dave Gilmour Drive-Thru Starbucks and Shell garage at the top of the M11.
You'd be proud, wouldn't you, in Jon Bon Jovi's shoes? He loves it. Called the naming — it was previously the Cheesequake Service Area — a career highlight. I think I'd turn up there one day a year if I was him, put on a uniform and get behind the counter at Auntie Anne's just to see the look on people's faces.
Thinking on it, though, Cheesequake? What a name for a band that would be. Better than Bon Jovi. Although that may have been spoiled for me on discovering there was a tribute act from Yorkshire, called By Jovi. Now they should definitely have their own service station.
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