TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Democrats and Republicans are gearing up for legal battles over who won the presidential election. Trump has repeated his claim that the only way he can lose is if there's voter fraud. He's urged police officers to be on the lookout for voter fraud, but doing so may violate some state laws. Democrats are concerned that the facts may be irrelevant, as they were in 2020, if Trump claims to have won despite all evidence against that claim. Both parties have enlisted hundreds of lawyers. Georgia is one of the most closely watched battleground states because the State Election Board has new, expanded powers, and the majority of members are aligned with the far right of the Republican Party.
My guest is Nick Corasaniti, a national political correspondent for The New York Times focusing on voting and elections. I was also surprised and delighted to find he's also the author of a new book about the club in Asbury Park where Southside Johnny got his start, the club which Springsteen and Steven Van Zandt called home. The book is called "I Don't Want To Go Home: The Oral History Of The Stone Pony." Stone Pony was the name of the club. Springsteen wrote the introduction. We'll save time to talk about the book. Corasaniti lives in Asbury Park and Brooklyn.
Nick Corasaniti, welcome to FRESH AIR. Why do you think lawsuits are inevitable no matter which party wins?
NICK CORASANITI: I think all we have to do is look at what's been happening this entire year. You know, if we go back to the 2020 election, which was so defined in that postelection period by dozens of lawsuits, by the Trump campaign, seeking to overturn the election on all sorts of different rules and false claims of fraud, it's continued. And, you know, the Republican National Committee is not being shy about this at all. They proudly tout their election integrity unit, which is staffed with dozens of lawyers. And they've been filing lawsuits all across the country already. They've been in Arizona and Nevada and most recently in North Carolina. And so I think when you see this number and this breadth, I should say, of legal activity leading up to an election, given how the last election went, it seems pretty clear that this is going to continue.
GROSS: Trump has said that the only way he'd lose is if there's voter fraud. What is he doing to create the suspicion of voting fraud, even though no one has even voted yet?
CORASANITI: What the former president has been doing is pretty consistent with almost what he's been doing since 2016, which is casting doubt on the electoral process and focusing very specifically on certain methods of voting. Now, one method of voting that he's been particularly focused on since 2016 is mail voting. I was covering his campaign back in 2016, and I remember sitting in an airplane hangar in Colorado, and, you know, the then-candidate was going through his normal stump speech, but he veered off 'cause Colorado votes significantly by mail. And he started saying, you know, I don't know how you could trust these mail ballots. Someone could just look at one and throw it over their shoulder and never get it counted. And it was the first sense that I got that he really, you know, had this doubt about mail voting.
Now, if we were to fast-forward to 2020, during the pandemic, Democrats greatly embraced voting by mail as their preferred method of voting. And so when the postelection period came, and it was time to try and overturn or, you know, challenge the results, he focused on those same mail ballots. And it had followed, you know, a prolonged period of rhetoric - false rhetoric - that, you know, the mail voting was either rife with fraud, able to be manipulated, or could be, you know, tweaked in a city or in a precinct to get results that, you know, some corrupt official might want. It's very, very, very important to say that that's never happened. Voter fraud in the United States is extremely rare. There's never been evidence that, you know, would've impacted any presidential election in recent history.
So if we were to look at 2024, Trump is pretty consistent. You know, he's still focusing on mail voting. But a new argument that has really become almost bedrock in the Republican Party - not just what Trump's saying - is this idea that undocumented immigrants or noncitizens are voting. It's been a legislative push in Congress. It's been a focus of multiple state legislatures that there's this somehow wide swath of noncitizens who have been casting ballots in federal elections.
Now, it's important to say that currently is illegal, yet there's legislative pushes that there needs to be a new law saying it's illegal. And that entire, I think, argument or that entire idea is designed at undermining faith in the elections and creating this specter, even though it's not necessarily a truthful one, that the voter rolls are dirty. And it's tying it to one of the most hotly contested flashpoint issues of the election in immigration.
GROSS: He's threatened that election workers are among the people who could be accused of election fraud and prosecuted. What are you hearing from election workers about their fears of being prosecuted?
CORASANITI: It's been a mix of, I think, defiance but then also, you know, resignation and frustration. They're all saying, this isn't going to affect how we do our job. You know, we're here to count the votes or to process the votes, and that's what we're going to do. We're not going to let politics sway us one way or the other.
But some that I talked to, you know, said that in the back of their head, they're like, I wonder what this consequence means, or they've even already experienced, you know, threats from Trump supporters. Some have gotten death threats. Some have seen their homes swatted. And so they have to live in this world that they never expected getting into, you know, the normally bureaucratic, apolitical world of election administration. And so they're all very resilient and defiant that that's not going to impact their jobs, but they also, I think, have expressed that it's kind of hard to ignore.
GROSS: So Trump recently spoke to the Fraternal Order of Police, and he urged them to watch out for voter fraud. Let's hear what he said.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DONALD TRUMP: You're in serious trouble if you get caught trying to find out what are the real results of an election. It's an amazing thing. Do you ever see that? They go after the people that are looking at the crime, and they do terrible things to them. But the people that committed the voter fraud and everything, they can do whatever they want to do. It's so crazy. And I hope you, as the greatest people - just as great as there is anybody in our country - I hope you watch for voter fraud.
So it starts early. You know, it starts in a week, but I hope you can watch, and you're all over the place. Watch for the voter fraud because we win. Without voter fraud, we win so easily. Hopefully, we're going to win anyway, but we want to keep it down. You can keep it down just by watching because, believe it or not, they're afraid of that badge. They're afraid of you people. They're afraid of that.
GROSS: Nick, is that voter intimidation? He's telling the police that these fraudulent voters are afraid of police, implying that the police should use that fear to find voter fraud so that Trump can win.
CORASANITI: I think it - certainly, were it to be carried out - would be challenged by voting rights groups, Democrats and probably even some Republicans - that that would amount to voter intimidation. It's also pretty important to note that a couple states have very specific laws that, you know, outlaw uniformed police officers having a kind of patrolling presence in - at polling places during elections.
And, you know, there's a very dark history in the Jim Crow South about uniformed police officers and voter suppression within the Black community. So a combination of history and state laws and then the kind of instruction that the former president was giving to these police officers could certainly amount to voter intimidation or possibly even more unlawful behavior.
GROSS: What role are police supposed to play in an election?
CORASANITI: The way that it's been described to me by a lot of, you know, kind of democracy groups is a willing partner to kind of help make sure everything is safe while also making sure that their presence isn't necessarily felt. The police can have an intimidating effect on a lot of communities. So, you know, I think it's the States United Center has an actual guide that they did with Georgetown Law, outlining steps that police officers could take, being in constant contact with local election officials, asking them what they need, how they can help, while also not trying to be too proactive. They do definitely play an important role when something gets out of hand. And, you know, as we were talking about earlier with all the threats to election officials, law enforcement is, you know, a big partner in making sure those election officials are safe and voters are safe at the polls.
GROSS: Who is supposed to watch out for voter fraud?
CORASANITI: It's a combination of, you know, poll watchers, poll workers, election officials, secretaries of state, and law enforcement. And it's something that's kind of been, I think, warped a lot over the past few years, that there needs to be these vigilante groups or that, you know, the police are the main people looking for voter fraud.
Every election that goes through has multiple checkpoints for security, checking against, you know, double voting, making sure voters are who they are, confirming their identities, checking the numbers of votes. This is done by local election officials, secretaries of state. Some states have mandatory audits. And when there's challenges or suspicions, you can fight that in court, as well as refer it to secretaries of state or state attorneys general. So it's a big, big infrastructure that touches on multiple parts of government that protects against voter fraud and has been doing it, you know, for decades.
GROSS: Well, let's take a short break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Nick Corasaniti, a national politics correspondent for The New York Times, covering voting and elections. We'll be right back after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF CUONG VU AND PAT METHENY'S "SEEDS OF DOUBT")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to the interview I recorded yesterday with Nick Corasaniti, national politics reporter for The New York Times, who's covering voting and elections. Do you have any sense of what lessons Republicans think they learned from Republican attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, what they're likely to try again or improve on, or what strategies they're likely to abandon because they failed badly in 2020?
I think one thing that, you know, a lot of those who worked with former President Trump to try and overturn his 2020 loss, who are still involved in the process, they realized that they were kind of ill-prepared in terms of gathering evidence to back up their claims. You know, so many of the court challenges that were filed in the post-election period in 2020 fell apart under scrutiny without any evidence. A lot of the claims were kind of done in real time. And so what I think some of this pre-election litigation and actions and voter challenges is leading up to is to create that kind of evidence or preponderance of evidence, I should probably say, that they didn't have in 2020, in the event of a loss, if they do decide to try and challenge it, they can point back to these things. And that was something that they did not have in 2020.
So swing states are likely to determine who wins the presidential election. One of the key swing states is Georgia. And Georgia surprised people by going for Biden in 2020. Trump tried to overturn the results. There was that infamous phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2, 2021, in which he asked the Secretary of State to help him find 11,780 votes, which is what Trump needed to win the state. He also tried to convince Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to use emergency powers to block the certification of the results.
Now Democrats are worried that the Georgia state election board, which now has a majority aligned with the far right of the Republican Party, is going to interfere with the results of the election. You describe the three new members of the state election board in Georgia as aligned with the far right of the Republican Party. Why do they fit that description?
CORASANITI: The rules that they've been passing have been very closely aligned with some of the priorities out of either the kind of right-wing network of election activists or, you know, kind of right-wing think tanks trying to set new election policy, and also some of the more kind of conspiratorial wings of the right-wing election activists network. You know, this whole idea that local election officials have a role in certification, which is the, you know, kind of formal tallying up of the score and officially signing off on an election by local election officials.
That idea has often been found within the far-right communities of the election world. But the Georgia State Election Board just passed a rule almost doing exactly that. And so as they were taking on these rules, that, even other Republicans were saying are problematic, or possibly illegal, it shows that they've been if not taking instruction from, at least aligning themselves policywise with a lot of more right-wing election policy and theories.
GROSS: My understanding is that - maybe this is a cynical version of it, but part of the reason that the board has expanded powers is to take power away from Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who declined to help Trump overturn the results of the election in 2020.
CORASANITI: That indeed has been the consequence of a law passed in Georgia in 2021 in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election when lots of Republicans and Trump supporters were very angry with Secretary Raffensperger. So that law removed the secretary as a voting member and as chair of the board and turned it over mostly to the partisan-controlled state legislature and then gave parties the ability to appoint a member. So what started in 2021 has led us to this point.
GROSS: So Trump was at a rally in Georgia in August in which he praised the new far-right members of the board. Let's hear what he had to say.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: I don't know if you've heard, but the Georgia State Election Board is in a very positive way. This is a very positive thing, largely. They're on fire. They're doing a great job. Three members - Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares and Janelle King - three people, are all pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory. They're fighting. Are they here? Where are they? Where are they? Where are they? Thank you. What a job. Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
GROSS: Nick, it seems like praising very partisan members of the Georgia State Election Board isn't the most ethical thing to do. I mean, isn't the election board supposed to be fair and nonpartisan, and shouldn't a candidate not be singling out certain members for praise because of their positions?
CORASANITI: I think it's important to step back and just think about how rare this is. You know, presidential candidates, as they, you know, bounce back and forth from different swing states, they're talking about issues, the most important part of their platforms that they think voters care about, you know. For Trump, it's been immigration. It's been the economy. It's been inflation.
So to take a break from that and to focus on three kind of, you know, bureaucratic election officials at the state level, whose names very few voters would even know, I think shows the outsize focus of the former president on the entire electoral process, and his hope to be able to sometimes bend some of these election officials to his will. We can look back to 2020. You know, he was calling election officials in Michigan, saying, I don't think you need to certify. He called the Secretary of State in Georgia, saying, help me find votes. So, it fits this pattern that, you know, former President Trump has shown of focusing on these election officials and trying to, you know, exert his influence over them.
GROSS: What can the state election board in Georgia do to refuse to certify or to delay certification past the December 11 deadline? And if they did that, that would disenfranchise all Georgia voters.
CORASANITI: That would be the worst case scenario. I think what's important to understand is the Georgia State Election Board itself does not have a specified role in certification. That happens at the local county level. So what the board did though, was create this period where election officials are able to conduct their own, quote-unquote, "reasonable inquiry" into anything they want. And this would be new powers for local election officials, you know. As we said earlier, the idea that voter fraud is to be hunted out by the local election officials is a new idea. It's often been courts and law enforcement and secretaries of state.
And so within that reasonable inquiry, you know, if we were to go down this worst case scenario path, an election official could say, hey. I think I see fraud here or seize on other claims. I don't feel comfortable certifying. And though it is legally required, and a lot of Democrats expect courts to compel local election officials to certify, it hasn't necessarily been tested, at least in Georgia.
And so should that go to either a partisan judge or keep snowballing into this kind of disrupted process, then you could see it getting to a question of, will they even be able to meet the certification deadline for the electoral college? And that throws into question, you know, a whole bunch of votes and processes, of which the law is still very clear you must certify. But, again, every test is a test of our election law. And I think that's where the biggest concern about disrupting certification could lead us.
GROSS: Are there election workers who are very confused about what they're supposed to be doing now with these new rules?
CORASANITI: You know, I was in Georgia for a training that the secretary of state held for election officials across the state. And almost universally, they expressed frustration with the state election board, not necessarily universally on the merit of the rules, but just the simple act of adding new rules and changing rules this close to an election. A lot of these election officials have already trained their poll workers. And so when a rule changes, they have to bring them back and say, actually, you know, this isn't the case. You can now do this, or this is now that.
And changing that could actually, you know, lead to more problems. And I think that's what the secretary of state in Georgia was telling the state election board, that, you know, by adding these rules so late, you're increasing the likelihood that there could be human error or other problems, and thereby making the election less secure. It's taking that election integrity argument that often motivates so much of some of this right-wing policy and kind of turning it against them.
GROSS: Well, let's take a short break here. Then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Nick Corasaniti, national politics reporter for The New York Times, covering voting and elections. He's also the author of a new book about the club in Asbury Park that Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt called home. It's also the club that launched the career of Southside Johnny. The book is called "I Don't Want To Go Home: The Oral History Of The Stone Pony." We'll talk about that after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BADLANDS")
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: (Singing) Light's out tonight - trouble in the heartland. Got a head-on collision smashing in my guts, man. Caught in a crossfire that I don't understand. But there's one thing I know for sure, girl. I don't give a damn for the same old played-out scenes. Baby, I don't give a damn for just the in-betweens. Honey, I want the heart, I want the soul, I want control right now.
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to the interview I recorded yesterday with Nick Corasaniti, a national politics reporter for The New York Times who covers voting and elections. He's also the author of the new book "I Don't Want To Go Home: The Oral History Of The Stone Pony." The Stone Pony is the club in Asbury Park that Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt called home and that launched the career of Southside Johnny.
A recent law in Georgia expanded the ability of citizens to challenge a voter's eligibility. How would somebody else know whether you're eligible to vote or not?
CORASANITI: This gets at what's been one of the biggest movements, I think, among right-wing activists over the past four years, and that's this idea that regular citizens can do their own investigations and then file challenges to voter eligibility. Now, these investigations can take any form. Some of them have been going door to door, knocking on, you know, apartment buildings, saying, does this person live here? They've been comparing death notices to voter rolls, or they've been using this database known as the National Change of Address database, which is, when you move, you can file it with the Postal Service. All of these, you know, fact points could indeed mean that a voter is either moved or shouldn't be on the rolls anymore, but they're certainly not exhaustive.
And so what the laws in Georgia have done is expand the ability for, you know, voters to challenge others' eligibility, but it's also expanded the grounds on which they can be challenged. And so in the most recent law, it says that this National Change of Address form is a database that could be used to make up an argument to challenge a voter. You know, the National Change of Address form does not necessarily mean that you can't vote there anymore. You know, there's all sorts of state laws about when you move and where you can vote, and it's certainly not exhaustive in its reliability. So adding those databases and removing caps on the, you know, voters who can challenge has created this kind of avalanche of voter challenges that's been coming into Georgia county election offices over the past four years.
GROSS: Are there fears that this will lead to spying on neighbors or intimidating neighbors?
CORASANITI: Yeah, there was a lawsuit. You know, there was an organization in Georgia, True the Vote, that challenged over 300,000 voter registrations or voter eligibility in the 2021 Senate runoff for Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. And Fair Fight, which is the voting rights organization in Georgia founded by Stacey Abrams, the former Democratic candidate for governor, they made the argument that, you know, these mass voter challenges amounted to voter intimidation. A judge knocked down that argument and said, no, this wouldn't amount to voter intimidation.
But, you know, a lot of voting rights activists still contend that the process of challenging a voter, especially a low-information voter who's not necessarily following the ins and outs of the news on, you know, election administration, might get a card that says, you know, you've been challenged. You need to prove your identity this way. They could interpret that as, oh, I don't know if I, you know, have the right documents to vote this time, and I miss voter registration deadline, or I don't want to get in trouble, so I'm not going to vote. And you could see how it could kind of snowball.
GROSS: Describe for us, if you could, the teams of lawyers that Democrats and Republicans have gearing up for challenges to the election results.
CORASANITI: So this election is notable just in how public and pronounced the legal teams are for both sides. And, you know, both the Harris campaign and the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee have been, you know, sending out press releases and releasing news stories, announcing, you know, their total number of lawyers. And they're focused on both this preelection litigation and postelection litigation.
So on the Republican side, you know, one of the biggest announcements of the RNC, once Michael Whatley took over as chair with - or co-chair, I should say, with Lara Trump, was this election integrity force. And it's a mix of, you know, they say - I think it's a hundred thousand poll workers and watchers combined with all of these lawyers. And it's lawyers in swing states and in, you know, reach states in either direction and at the national level that are going to be focused on what they call election integrity issues.
Now, on the Democratic side, they've kind of brought a lot of different aspects of their legal apparatus in-house. They've moved their voter protection program, which is, you know, often designed to deal with specific challenges to a voter who has issues with, say, their identification or their mail ballots or witness problems or registration or anything like that. They brought that within the legal apparatus.
And then they've brought back in Marc Elias, who's a very vocal liberal lawyer, to handle recounts and some of the postelection litigation and then this kind of very specifically structured team under the Harris campaign and the DNC. So it's kind of created, you know, this legal arms race, in a sense, of dozens, if not hundreds of lawyers on both sides prepping litigation for, you know, this voting period right now and then in the expected postelection challenge period after election day.
GROSS: Let's take a short break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Nick Corasaniti. He covers elections and voting for The New York Times, and he's the author of the new book "I Don't Want To Go Home: The Oral History Of The Stone Pony." The Stone Pony is the club that Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt called home in Asbury Park, and it's also the club that launched the career of Southside Johnny. We'll be right back after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF DICE RAW SONG, "PREGUNTA")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Nick Corasaniti. He covers elections and voting for The New York Times. He's also the author of a new book called "I Don't Want To Go Home: The Oral History Of The Stone Pony."
So I want to talk with you about your new book 'cause I was so surprised that Nick Corasaniti, the New York Times political reporter covering elections, also has this book about the club in Asbury Park that launched Southside Johnny's career, where Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt - the place they called home. What inspired you to write it? What did that club mean in your life?
CORASANITI: So my experience with both the Stone Pony and Asbury Park start in the very late '90s. I was very into punk music, and, you know, I was going to this place on the shore to see the Warped Tour or bands like Less Than Jake that - you know, the place was a ghost town. It had been kind of decimated by decades of racial strife and corruption and the kind of small-town plight that, you know, happened across America for much of the '80s and '90s.
And that was my initial experience to - with Asbury Park, but it was also intoxicating. You know, it was this weird, warped town on the Jersey Shore that I could go see these punk shows or punk festivals in the Stone Pony or convention hall. And, you know, I did that through probably the mid-2000s. And then work and college and moving to D.C. and getting on the campaign trail kept me away from Asbury Park for about 12 years.
And when I came back as the Jersey correspondent for the Times in 2017, I couldn't believe what I saw, which was that Asbury Park was a bustling shore town with, you know, a gleaming tower of multimillion-dollar condos, a bustling main drag on Cookman Avenue. And I wanted to tell that story in the Times from my experience, from my perception and then also everything that the town had gone through. I wanted to capture the spirit of what had made Asbury different. And that was, you know, its music and its ties to Springsteen and music history that goes back to even, you know, blues and jazz artists and R&B.
And so I looked at the shorefront, and I was like, hey, the Stone Pony's still there, remarkably, right? CBGB's has gone. All these clubs have gone, and the Pony's still there. And so I thought, that can be my narrative Trojan horse to tell an important story about small-town America, to tell an important story about a town that means a lot to me and one that has had such an outsize impact on music history and, like, American music for 50 years.
GROSS: The dedication of your book says, (reading) for dad - thanks for the music, the greatest gift, and for braving the mosh pits. Did you go with him to the Stone Pony? Did he actually come in?
CORASANITI: He did. I have a amazing dad who instilled a love of music in me, you know, when I was born really. But, you know, he was willing to go to - when I said, I want to go to this concert - it's called the Warped Tour - in the back of the Stone Pony, he didn't think twice about it. And so, you know, we were standing in the crowd with a bunch of, you know, mohawks and tattoos and mosh pits going on. And as a 12-year-old, you don't really know - you know, or a 13-year-old - what the dangers are. And he stood with me through all of those.
There's a very memorable moment, not at the Pony but at - down the boardwalk in convention hall, where we saw Blink-182. And, you know, we were in the middle of the crowd for the whole show. When they played their encore - their most famous song - it's a song called "Dammit," the entire floor turned into just a massive circle pit. And everyone just kind of scattered. My one friend, Mike (ph), joined it. My other friend, Andrew (ph), was running to the back. My dad just kind of was looking for all of us like, how do we keep them safe? And so, you know, he was in there in the crowds. People were trying to crowd-surf him at some shows. And it didn't matter, I think, because he's a lover of music, and he loved that I had taken that on as well.
GROSS: Bruce Springsteen wrote the intro to your book, and he says that he spent time at the Stone Pony right through the height of his popularity. And he writes, (reading) staying local through the crazy high times was the smartest thing I ever did. Did you see him one of the times when he returned to the Stone Pony and actually played there?
CORASANITI: I did, and it's a show that my family still discusses with reverence. It was a Southside Johnny show. You know, they always play a big show on the Summer Stage, you know, so over three or 4,000 people in the parking lot behind the Stone Pony. And we saw Garry Tallent, you know, the bass player for E Street Band, had a side project that was opening for the show. And it was like - you know what? - I bet if he's there, we're going to get - you know, there's a motto around Asbury Park. It's on shirts, and it says, Bruce might show up.
(LAUGHTER)
CORASANITI: And it's kind of the unofficial motto of the Stone Pony. I also think it's, like, this wonderful saying of, like, kind of always having a degree of hope and a degree of surprise when you go to see live music. And we had that, you know, in spades that night. And sure enough, with Garry Tallent out onstage, he comes out and does a song with him, and we knew he would come back out with Southside.
Now, it was a little lucky in that there was some weather patterns - you know, an outdoor show in the Pony Summer Stage. So he came on a little early, then the weather cleared up. So he ended up staying on stage for, like, a full hour, playing Asbury Jukes songs, doing some Springsteen covers. And it was just, you know, one of the most incredible live music moments of my life.
GROSS: There's a great story in your book about how Steve Van Zandt got the band a gig there. The policy had always been that bands had to play top 40 covers. And so how did Steve Van Zandt change that?
CORASANITI: Yeah, I think Stevie called it one of the greatest coups in rock music history. But the way all Jersey Shore bars worked at the time was you came in and - exactly - you played top 40. You did cover band music. You couldn't do originals or your own versions. And so there was a band called the Blackberry Booze Band. And a guy named Dave Meyers had originally gone to the Pony - because he had some family connections with Butch - and said, you know, hey, give us your worst night, and, you know, we'd love to play whatever we want. And so that was their way in.
And then so Stevie goes back to them and says, how about this? You take the bar. We take the door, which is a great deal for bar owners, right? They don't have to deal with anything, to pay anyone - pay the band in advance. We're just going to take all the alcohol sales. But we get to play whatever I want. That's the hitch. And that meant some soul, some R&B and, you know, some of their original music as the Jukes. And Jack and Butch were like, sure. What's the risk to us? And while it wasn't a mega-hit immediately, it instantly showed that it had potential.
And, you know, within weeks and months, there was hundreds inside. And the kind of music they were playing was getting people dancing. And as Stevie points out in the book, if you're dancing a lot, you're going to get thirsty. You're going to drink a lot, and then you've got happy bar owners. And that's how that first flag was planted to get a different kind of music, which would really come to define the Jersey sound for most of the '70s and part of the '80s. You know, it took root in the Stone Pony.
GROSS: What did it do for you personally to be writing this book about the club, the Stone Pony, in Asbury Park while at the same time covering elections and politics for The New York Times?
CORASANITI: I think it was a wonderful refuge 'cause sometimes, you know, what we cover in politics can get very dark, contentious. You know, I get emails that can be pretty harsh. And so to be able to step back into this world that I love so much and had been learning so much about was a kind of wonderful way to look at what happens when - the rare time that, you know, things go right. And so many small towns that were like Asbury Park in the '80s and '90s never came back.
And I also think it's nice - you know, I mentioned earlier that - those shirts that say, Bruce might show up. It instills with you a hope all the time, you know, of this special moment. And it doesn't even have to always come true, but it can bring you out of your shell a little bit in, you know, the desire to go see something different with that idea. And so having that hope, you know, in a time when sometimes what you're doing during the day is the absence of that or can really undermine that I think was a really nice place to return to.
GROSS: Let's take a short break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Nick Corasaniti. He covers elections and voting for The New York Times. And he's the author of the new book "I Don't Want To Go Home: The Oral History Of The Stone Pony." The Stone Pony is a club that Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt called home in Asbury Park, and it's also the club that launched the career of Southside Johnny. We'll be right back after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN SONG, "SHENANDOAH")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Nick Corasaniti. He covers elections and voting for The New York Times. He's also the author of a new book called "I Don't Want To Go Home: The Oral History Of The Stone Pony." That's the club in Asbury Park that Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt called home, and that launched the career of Southside Johnny.
You know, in some ways, writing this book about the Stone Pony, the club in Asbury Park, and also covering elections and voting and democracy for The New York Times, seems like two really different things. However, there's a lot of music groups who have gotten into the game of endorsing candidates. That seems to be happening more and more. And you write about that - like, right after the debate, like minutes after the debate on Tuesday, Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris, and you wrote about that. You've written about other groups who have endorsed political candidates. Tell me more about how those two parts of your life are intersecting now.
CORASANITI: Sure. I mean, I think especially in the social media era, there's pressure on artists with a platform and with a voice to use it. And that has often resulted in, you know, political endorsements. I think a lot of people were expecting this endorsement from Taylor Swift. They weren't sure when it was going to come. But it was almost like, you know, there was a lot of, I think, Democrats or some of her fans who might have been upset if it didn't happen. And then when you tie that to just decades of rock and roll activism. You can go back to the Live Aid concerts, the Rock the Vote tours in support of John Kerry, Bruce Springsteen telling Ronald Reagan he doesn't understand the lyrics to "Born In The USA" - you just see how closely intertwined they were.
And there's a moment in the book that I think really gets at this kind of realization for Springsteen. And, you know, throughout his career, he wrote so much about the struggles of working class America, blue collar jobs, and the drain and the difficulty that can put on a person and his family. But, you know, as he says in his Broadway play, I never worked a day in my life. He was never, you know, in those factories.
But in the mid '80s, the 3M factory in his hometown said it was going to close, and it was going to lose a bunch of union jobs. And so the leaders there got involved or got in contact, I should say, with Springsteen, he agreed to speak out about it, paid for some ads in The New York Times, and then did a show at the Stone Pony. And this is, post-"Born In The USA." He's one of the three biggest musicians in the country with, like, Michael Jackson and Prince. And here he is in this tiny club in the Stone Pony talking about the factory in his hometown being closed down.
You know, I asked him about that and some of his bandmates, and Max Weinberg, who, you know, has known him for a long time, the drummer in the E Street Band said, I think that's when Bruce was really starting to realize what his power could be if he were to, you know, kind of use his voice. And so you see that throughout the book. I talked to a very well known outspoken artists like Tom Morello and how they view that role, having that platform and talking about issues, even if it's not specifically Democrat or Republican politics, but issues that are important to them. And it's continuing to this day, and I think Taylor Swift's endorsement after the debate is the most recent example of it, but it's something that we're going to see for the rest of this cycle, and certainly, I think, as politics moves forward.
GROSS: Since you think a lot about musicians who endorse candidates and the music that candidates use in their own rallies, can you explain how Trump decided to use the Village People's "YMCA" as one of the songs that he always played at rallies? I mean, they were kind of like this - I don't know who the members of the group are as people, but the image of the band was this very gay group and their songs had various gay subtexts or texts depending depending on who you were and how you read the lyrics. But it just seemed like such a strange choice.
CORASANITI: I think one thing that, you know, Trump is very into, believe it or not, is playlists. If you talk to a lot of his supporters who talk about their experience with him in Mar-a-Lago, he's constantly setting the music or picking songs. And I think he - you know, as we can tell in his speeches, he's very into reading the room and reacting off how his supporters are reacting to his speeches. If he gets huge applauses, he goes on with it, if it's dying, he moves on. I think he's tried to do that with his campaign playlist or at least, like, you know, the rally playlist, that's a lot of songs that are designed to either create a sense of euphoria or sometimes rage. He uses, you know, everything from opera to the Rolling Stones to the "YMCA." And that dance is, I think, just meant to add some levity and some connection with his supporters.
But what's been kind of undermining that, really since his campaign started in, you know, late 2015, is a lot of these artists are upset about that. You know, there's been dozens of artists who have told the former president, you're not allowed to use my songs. Some have even filed lawsuits saying you must cease and desist. Some are using it to continually criticize a former president if they don't, you know, align with his views or agree to his usage. And, you know, we're continuing to see that to this day. So it's certainly, I think, his unique ability to really understand a room and react to the crowd and what it needs. And that's where he's coming up with his playlist. And then also the artists being like, how dare you - that's, you know, our music, our message and we don't want you using that.
GROSS: Finally, I would like to end with a Springsteen song that has personal significance for you. So what would you like to choose?
CORASANITI: Oh, my God, that's such an intense question. I think what I always revert to is "Atlantic City" because I love the storytelling in it. I think it's just so important to kind of understand how much of all the layers of Springsteen's meaning are built into that song, both his storytelling, his thoughts about, you know, small-town America, blue-collar life and what that's like.
But the other thing I love about this song is how many artists have made it their own. It's, you know, one of the more malleable songs that Springsteen's written where everyone from, you know, Levon Helm to Brian Fallon have covered this song and made it their own - and changed it in a way that still preserves the initial meaning but adds just that much more personal touch to it. So I always - I think it's impossible for me to pick a favorite Springsteen song. Like, the one I'm most excited to hear live is "Badlands." But if I were to pick one that I think has the most meaning, I think it's got to be "Atlantic City."
GROSS: All right, let's end with it. Nick Corasaniti, thank you so much for talking with us.
CORASANITI: Oh, thanks for having me.
GROSS: Nick Corasaniti is a national politics reporter for The New York Times covering voting and elections. He's also the author of the new book "I Don't Want To Go Home: The Oral History Of The Stone Pony." That's the club in Asbury Park that Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt called Home and that launched the career of Southside Johnny. Here is Bruce Springsteen.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ATLANTIC CITY")
SPRINGSTEEN: (Singing) Well, they blew up the Chicken Man in Philly last night. Now, they blew up his house, too. Down on the boardwalk, they're getting ready for a fight, going to see what them racket boys can do. Now, there's trouble busing in from out of state, and the DA can't get no relief - going to be a rumble out on the promenade and the gambling commission's hanging on by the skin of its teeth. Well, now, everything dies. Baby, that's a fact. Maybe everything that dies someday comes back. Put your makeup on. Fix your hair up pretty and meet me tonight in Atlantic City.
GROSS: If you'd like to catch up on FRESH AIR interviews you missed, like this week's interviews with comic Taylor Tomlinson, host of the late night show "After Midnight," or with the authors of the new book "Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter," or last week's interview with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of FRESH AIR interviews. And to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers' recommendations for what to watch, read and listen to, subscribe to our free newsletter at whyy.org/freshair.
FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Ann Marie Baldonado, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Nyakundi and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producers are Molly Seavy-Nesper and Sabrina Siewert. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ATLANTIC CITY")
SPRINGSTEEN: (Singing) Now, our luck may have died, and our love may be cold, but with you forever I'll stay. We're going out where the sands turn into gold. And put on your stockings, baby, because the night's getting cold. Everything dies. Baby, that's a fact. But maybe everything that dies someday comes back. I've been looking for a job, but it's hard to find. Down here, it's just winners and losers, and don't get caught on the wrong side of that line. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
