ASBURY PARK - It was the week before Christmas in 1973, and Bruce Springsteen and his bandmates were broke.

The Boss had two albums out by December 1973: "Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J." was released in January that year, while "The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle" had come out in September.

But neither album had sold well.

Springsteen and his band – which at the time included David Sancious on piano, Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez, drums, Danny Federici, organ, saxophonist Clarence Clemons and bass player Garry Tallent – had toured steadily throughout the Northeast in 1973, but times were still tight.

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So on Dec. 17, 18 and 19, 1973, the band returned to its old stomping grounds, the small Kingsley Street club called The Student Prince.

"The Student Prince was filled to the brim," Asbury Park Press music writer Marty Packin said in a story he wrote about the Dec. 17 show. "There was an argument going on at the door between a young woman the bouncer. It seems the young woman had a 'Student Prince card,' and didn't want to pay the $2 cover charge."

Packin said the bouncer explained that the money was going to the band, not the club.

"'This isn't for the Student Prince,' the bouncer told her. 'It's for Brucie and his band – their Christmas money.'"

Playing at the Student Prince right before Christmas was a sort-of homecoming for Springsteen. The Boss and his band had made the club their home in 1971, after downtown Asbury's Upstage Club shut its doors.

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In his 2016 autobiography, "Born to Run," Springsteen said that he and Steve Van Zandt visited every bar on the Asbury Park oceanfront on a summer Saturday, looking for the one with the fewest people inside.

Their theory: the bar doing the worst business would be more likely to hire a band that played mostly original music.

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"We worked north to south and around midnight, we walked into a bar called the Student Prince," Springsteen wrote. "It had just been purchased by a bricklayer from Freehold. He was bartending, and with just Steve, myself and one other bereft patron haunting a stool down the far end of the bar, we figured this was it."

Bruce and band got the gig. They agreed to play for the door, charging $1 a person to get in. Hardly anyone showed up. The Prince was small; perhaps it held 150 or 160 people at full capacity.

"We played to 15 people. Five fifty-minute sets, from 9 to 3 a.m. We made $15, three dollars apiece, and went home," Springsteen said.

This was a far cry from the hundreds of dollars each band member received after performances by Springsteen's previous outfit, Steel Mill. But as the weeks went by, more and more people began to crowd into the Prince.

For nearly four months, the band played steadily at the Prince, usually at least twice a week, sometimes three times.

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"We'd found a small core of fans who gravitated to the only independent music in town," Springsteen wrote. "They kept us alive."

Springsteen has continued to play in Asbury Park. Watch the video above to see his latest appearance in the city, when he joined Little Steven Van Zandt and the Disciples of Soul at the Paramount Theatre.

Drummer Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez first started playing the Student Prince in 1967 with the band, "Moment of Truth," which included another future E Streeter, Garry Tallent.

"The Prince was always fun for us," said Lopez, who also played at the small club with the Sundance Blues Band, which included Steve Van Zandt, Southside Johnny Lyon, Talent, and, eventually, Springsteen. "When we got off the road, and had a few days, we would play at the Prince."

Albee Tellone, an Upstage club regular, sometimes played a song or two at the Prince during the Bruce Springsteen Band's breaks.

One time, his band, Albee and the Hired Hands, filled in for Springsteen's band when they played a concert at Rutgers University.

"Much to my chagrin, only about 10 people showed up," Tellone remembered. "The regulars all went to the concert!"

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But eventually, the crowds dwindled.

"Unfortunately we lived in Asbury Park, so it was hard to get people to come out," Lopez said.

By 1973, Van Zandt was no longer with Springsteen's band (he would rejoin them in 1975), but in spite of a recording contract and two well-reviewed albums, Springsteen and his bandmates were, for all intents and purposes, still broke.

"And so the people Springsteen is so fond of putting on paper – 'the street people,' as they've been called – came to pay their respects to the homegrown hero, most of them only too happy to fork up a couple of bills for Brucie's Christmas money," Press writer Packin wrote.

Lopez said he and the other band members desperately needed the money they made from the three Student Prince gigs.

As Packin described it, "It's been said better before, but for the sake of brevity, we'll say it quick – you can't eat words; at least not for a prolonged period and expect to survive. The words implied have been those the critics have been spouting for more than a year now about Bruce Springsteen. As one critic recently put it, Springsteen has received 'the most extravagant and outrageous praise I've ever encountered in the Rock Press."

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But, "He wasn't just whistling Dixie," Lopez said of Packin's description of the band's finances. "We were poor."

"One would think all that praise would put some meat on the table," Packin wrote. "Maybe soon, but not yet. Springsteen's radio play is minimal and his album sales aren't breaking any records. It's really a shame, too, because Springsteen has talent minus gimmicks. He's all up front music and words. The young people in Asbury Park know that. Rock critics know it, too. But there are a whole lot of people who don't."

Of course, that was all about to change. Less than two years later, Springsteen would be on the covers of both Time and Newsweek shortly after the release of his monumental third album, "Born to Run."

"Meanwhile he's got a new album out entitled 'The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle,' Packin wrote 44 years ago. "From what's been said about it, his second record surpasses his first. Buy it and maybe next year he'll do a free Christmas concert."

Jean Mikle: 732-643-4050, @jeanmikle, jmikle@gannettnj.com