The following Eddie & The Cruisers Soundtrack album review by William Patrick Tandy was published in Used Records & Tapes #5 [2025, RoosterCow Press]
Eddie & The Cruisers Soundtrack Album Review
My old man was stationed in Cape May, New Jersey, at the Coast Guard Training Center when Eddie and the Cruisers entered heavy rotation on a fledgling cable network called Home Box Office. The 1983 sleeper tells the story of a fictional Jersey Shore bar band that implodes on the brink of early-‘60s stardom with the disappearance of its enigmatic leader.
Why a family of our comfortable but modest means living in government-subsidized housing had HBO at that time I can’t say; for all I know, it came with the frame. In any case, the network presumably got its money’s worth, playing the hell out of Eddie day and night for months on end, in the process turning a box-office dud into a beloved cult classic. At nine, I pedaled up Pennsylvania Avenue to the on-base PX and dropped my entire allowance on the soundtrack — the first album I ever bought.
Based on P.F. Kluge’s 1980 novel of the same name, Eddie and the Cruisers is a small, character-driven piece by the blockbuster standard of its day, inhabited by a barely known Tom Berenger, Ellen Barkin, Joe Pantoliano, and, in the titular role, newcomer Michael Paré. Director Martin Davidson draws just as much presence from his tapestry of South Jersey backdrops — most notably, Tony Mart’s legendary Somers Point nightclub, where Levon and the Hawks were playing their summer ‘65 residency when folksinger Bob Dylan called with his decision to go electric.
But the Fourth Estate to Eddie’s story, setting, and talent is the soundtrack, arguably the most vital component of any great rock ‘n’ roll movie. Davidson tapped singer/songwriter/producer Kenny Vance of Jay and the Americans fame to serve as the film’s music supervisor. Rhode Island natives John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band had nearly a decade on the East Coast bar circuit to their name when Vance enlisted them to bring the Cruisers’ sound to life.
The resulting soundtrack is a wonderfully anachronistic brew of early I-IV-V rock standards (“Runaround Sue”), gritty, blue-collar soul (“Tender Years”), and guitar-driven angst (“Season in Hell (Fire Suite)”) befitting a pre-Beatles bar band ahead of its time. Its breakout hit, “On the Dark Side”, put Cafferty and Beaver Brown (named for the paint color of the band’s early practice space) on the national radar, peaking at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in August 1984. Across the album’s 33 minutes, Cafferty’s lyrics ably straddle the chasm between the sun-kissed romance of youth (“Gears are power-shiftin’ down the old escape road / All the kids are dancin’ as the jockey spins gold / Everybody’s fakin’ that they’ll never grow old”) and the smoldering siren’s call of something more (“Love is a fire, burning / And I want to burn”).
The film intertwines with its soundtrack in unusual ways. Beaver Brown saxophonist Michael “Tunes” Antunes pulls double duty onscreen as Cruisers sax-man Wendell Newton. The Brooklyn-born Vance, who lends his own doo-wop bona fides to tracks like “Those Oldies But Goodies (Remind Me of You)”, also appears in the movie, as Lew Eisen, the Satin Records executive who does not share in Eddie’s creative vision for the band.
As for Cafferty, fans and critics alike have long drawn thematic and stylistic comparisons to a better-known contemporary: Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen. Indeed, both men cut their musical teeth in the same Salt Belt honkytonks founded on weekend dreams and shift-work despair. Still, being the voice of Eddie Wilson undoubtedly proved a mixed blessing for John Cafferty. While the movie undeniably brought him wider fame and further film work (including Cobra, Rocky IV, and the 1989 sequel Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives!), his plaintive masculinity, for many, continues to conjure images of Paré’s brooding Jersey Shore greaser.
Today, 40 years and a three-hour drive stand between me and that small Jersey Shore town where I bought my first record. Yet, over time, Eddie and the Cruisers has become so much more for me. Of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of albums I’ve purchased over the last four decades, it stands as the only one that I’ve bought on every format that’s come down the pike since — a personal touchstone, of sorts, a direct conduit between who I was and who I am today.
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About William Patrick Tandy
William Patrick Tandy grew up in various locations along the New Jersey Shore, including Manahawkin, Long Beach Island, Ocean City, and Cape May. He has published the award-winning Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore! series as well as the storytelling zine Fire Pit under his own imprint, Eight-Stone Press. A graduate of Southern Regional High School, he holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from Stockton University.