23-Aug-1975 Atlanta,GA Electric Ballroom, USA
..About three years ago me and Steve, guitar man and my bass player, Garry, we had this, we had this band in Asbury Park. We were working this little bar. It was this place called the Student Prince. We was playing all the time right?
And it was like this little club, you know. It was this little place we played at there. We'd been down playing in that area for six or seven years and we're playing this
club.
We were in about fourth or fifth month at this club and we was trying at the time, we was trying to get this, like, get this, get some kind of record deal or something, you know. We was trying to figure out how we was gonna get into the big time and stuff, you know.
So...so we had these cats hustling for us in New York and these cats promising to bring down these managers you
know:
"...Man I'm gonna bring the manager down from...these guys are gonna come down and listen to youse tonight so you better be real good."
and stuff, you know, so we'd play our...listen boys.
So it's like, so me and Steve sat around late one night figuring out why we wasn't getting this break, you know. What was the matter? What, what we was missing? You figure you're always missing something, you know, if you can't get something going so we was going over it...we figured we had the right repertoire and stuff. We was playing like a lot of Chuck Berry songs and things and we figured we had the teen appeal, you know, because we had the bass player; had long hair and stuff right?
Everybody...every...figure...all, all the girls liked the bass player with the long hair, you know, (giggle). So we couldn't figure out what, what was the matter right?
(some guy in audience yells out)
This man knows already what was the matter...you blew my whole thing. Where you from?
(guy answers)
Go back.
There. I don't know blew rap(?) (laugh).
Anyway (laugh ) anyway it was late; late as hell, right? It was late, nasty night (more laughing) and me and Steve was walking down the street.
We didn't get, you know, we didn't care about nothing. We didn't, didn't, was doing nothing. We was just trying to get home. Gonna watch some TV or something you know. So we was walking down the street like this; just the way we always walk. Steve always walks with his guitar cause he don't trust nobody with his guitar. So like, so like he always had his guitar with him, you know, so we was doing this thing. All a sudden way down the end of the street we seen something coming.We didn't know what it was.....
(guy yells "In a white suit!")
Give me a break! Give me a BREAK! Gonna get punched out.
Anyway we didn't know what it was at the time so (laugh) so we got a little closer and could see it was, it was some, some, big, the biggest, the biggest thing we ever seen coming down on us at four in the morning out in the middle of Asbury Park. It was dark, it was raining and the guy was obviously carrying some appendage of malfeasance which appeared to be a saxophone. So we duck in the doorway and from way down the end of the street we heard somebody playing a few notes there and didn't know what it was.
(Sax notes)
Then there was nothing. There was no sound at all.
We heard the footsteps coming closer; the footsteps coming closer and the guy turned and started walking right at us and we started walking right at him. Was at this point I slowly took all the money out of my pocket and put it into his pocket. Didn't move. I hung my hat on what appeared to be the saxophone which I figured at any moment I was going get whipped over the head with it but all the guy did was...Steve...it was like nothing
but man when we touched.......Sparks fly on E Street......
(Monty Smith)