Springsteen bartending at The Stone Pony: 'Handing drinks out to whoever wanted '

In the close to five decades he’s been playing at the famed Stone Pony, Bruce Springsteen never asked the bar for a dime — but he sure cost them a pretty penny one night.

The Boss jumped behind the bar of the iconic Asbury Park, NJ music venue — and made sure patrons drank till they got their fill.

“I walked in the front door and saw people around the front bar and there he is behind the bar, handing drinks out to whoever wanted ’em, drunk as a skunk and having the ball of his life,” Jack Roig, the Stone Pony’s owner from 1974 until 1992, told The Post.

And since the Boss didn’t know how to make cocktails, choices were limited and cash sales plummeted.“Beer and shots, he knew how to do that,” said Roig, 82, laughing at the memory.

The rock-n-roll god has long been a patron and performer at the iconic Jersey Shore watering hole, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.It is even the subject of a new book, out June 4, by New York Times correspondent and Garden State native Nick Corasaniti, “I Don’t Want to Go Home: The Oral History of the Stone Pony.”

In the book, Springsteen, 74, confesses, “I wasn’t much of a bartender, but I’d serve up the beers and just have fun with the fans, and just enjoy myself. [My signature] was beer. With a Jack Daniel’s on the side, maybe.”

Roig said Springsteen would usually come by unannounced, but would call ahead if he was bringing the E Street band along.

“He said, ‘Can we come down and play?’ — Can you believe that? ‘Can we?'” Roig recalled.

"Springsteen would never ask for money.  Never, it was never even suggested. And the building’s maximum legal capacity was 556. Now, tell me how I’m gonna pay a guy that can fill up MetLife Stadium,” said Roig, laughing. “One summer, he played here 11 out of 13 Sundays.” He even tried to pay the bar’s then-$3 cover charge.