Little Steven & The Disciples Of Soul
The E Street Band guitarist strikes out with his own band.
Also known as Little Steven, Stevie Van Zandt is a member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. The guitarist, who also played the part of Silvio in TV series The Sopranos, looks forward to playing some rare UK shows with his ‘other’ group, the Disciples Of Soul.
Last year, as part of the Disciples Of Soul’s first UK tour in a quarter of a century, you surprised fans by playing at
The Cavern in Liverpool.
We were the first band to play a lunchtime set there since The Beatles [laughs]. It was impossible to have the full fifteen-piece band on that stage, so we put the horns and the girls in the hallway.
The YouTube footage of
Paul McCartney joining you to sing I Saw Her Standing
There at the Roundhouse last November went viral.
That experience was as incredible as it gets. We weren’t entirely sure that it would happen, so when it did there was no time to be nervous. [As a lifetime fan] that was so meaningful for me – it felt like an endorsement. Did you get to have some ‘hang time’ with Macca?
Not on that night, but my wife Maureen and I have had dinner with Paul and Nancy [Shevell, wife] several times. Those have been some incredible conversations.
What gave you the idea for the initiative TeachRock?
My foundation The Rock And Roll Forever Foundation has been working for ten years on a curriculum for schools. There are over a hundred and twenty lessons at our website and they’re all completely free. I wanted to celebrate teachers, who are really under fire.
You’re offering a limited number of free tickets for your shows to teachers, aren’t you?
Yeah. If they attend a workshop during the afternoon, they can come to that night’s show as my guests. When I read about teachers trying to make a living on thirtyfive thousand dollars a year,
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, especially when America has just given another thirty billion dollars to the military, which in my opinion really isn’t needed. Eight years ago in Classic Rock you were disparaging about America’s then president Barack Obama. How, then, do you feel about his successor in the White House?
It’s gone to some place that nobody could even have imagined. I’ve stopped talking about politics because [the situation] is so obvious now. My show is now two-and-a-half hours of pure music to escape from all of that. The problems within the Republican Party are so obvious I don’t know where to begin, so I don’t bother. Even Ronald Reagan wouldn’t recognise that party.
The final episode of The Sopranos aired in 2007. When you see the show re-run on the vintage TV channels, what does it make you think?
I’ve never watched that show all the way through, and I really should. Truthfully, I haven’t seen it in years, but I’m guessing it still holds up very well. It certainly influenced so many other shows – the list is endless. DL The last date of the tour is in London on July 27.