Early Springsteen site sells for $1.1m
ASBURY PARK, N.J. - Owners of the Asbury Park, N.J., building that housed the Upstage Club where Bruce Springsteen played in the late 1960s and early 1970s agreed to sell it for $1.1 million.
The buyer was an individual from northern New Jersey who intends to use the property for his own business, said Eric Kaufman, agent for seller Sheila Strauss, a New Jersey retiree. He declined to name the buyer or identify his business.
The bid preempted a planned auction that was to be held yesterday at the three-story building at 700 Cookman Ave., a shopping district in the Jersey Shore town. Kaufman went ahead with the auction of other properties owned by Strauss held on the building’s first floor.
Springsteen, a New Jersey native who named his first album “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.,’’ performed at the Upstage with musicians such as Southside Johnny Lyon and Steve Van Zandt before it closed in 1971.
The Upstage “was the seed that started it all,’’ said rock historian Robert Santelli. The after-hours club, where then-owners Tom and Margaret Potter invited musicians to engage in jam sessions, was where future E Street Band members Danny Federici and Vini “Mad Dog’’ Lopez first saw Springsteen play, and then pursued him to form a group, Santelli said. 