STEVE VAN ZANDT
How The Sopranos’ Silvio saved Paul Simon from South African assassins and keeps Bruce Springsteen’s soul-rock on track. “My ears are just better,” he shrugs, winningly.
From the window of his central london hotel, steve Van Zandt points to the building across the street, where a small plaque commemorates the former home of nems: from 1963-64, the workplace of Brian epstein. “i actually tried to rent it as an office once,” Van Zandt says. “thinking maybe i could pick up some good manager vibes. haha!” management is at the forefront of steve Van Zandt’s mind this late october morning as he sits down with moJo over coffee. in almost 50 years as a working musician, songwriter, producer and, latterly, actor, the e street Band guitarist has survived without a manager – until now. “i was never keen on being a businessman,” he says, disdainfully. this much we could have guessed, given his occasionally testy relationships with mike appel and Jon landau, the successive representatives of Van Zandt’s longtime friend and bandmate Bruce springsteen. the same impulsive streak which contributed to his departure from the e street Band in 1984 undoubtedly drove his subsequent political activism, producing arguably his greatest achievement: the 1985 anti-apartheid anthem sun city. But Van Zandt’s many and varied musical endeavours have suffered for recognition: his three ’70s albums with new Jersey barbusters southside Johnny & the asbury Jukes are under-appreciated, while none of the five albums he made as little steven remains in print. to the mass public he’s best known for his acting career, thanks to a gleeful portrayal of new Jersey mob enforcer silvio dante in the sopranos. now, at 66, Van Zandt, finally with a manager, plans to reissue his solo records, and is preparing a new one. there is, he’s saying, more to little steven than the eternal consigliere, be it to Bruce springsteen or tony soprano. “i just feel it’s time to come back. there are other things that i’ve done that are quite substantial.” his bond with springsteen, however, such an archetypal embodiment of rock’s fraternal promise, will always define him. the pair met as teenagers at a hullabaloo club in Van Zandt’s hometown of middletown, new Jersey, a middle-class suburb 20 miles nearer new York city than springsteen’s grittier freehold. Guitarists in their respective bands, each recognised a fellow music obsessive who offered something the other lacked. “we formed a mutual appreciation society of two,” wrote springsteen in his autobiography. “with steve and me, from the beginning, it was heart to heart and soul to soul.” Van Zandt has read his friend’s bestseller, and doesn’t dissent from this portrayal. “that’s the whole rock’n’roll thing, isn’t it?” he smiles. “inventing our own world, controlling our own destiny, ultimately,
writing our own scripts… Combined with this incredible work ethic, which is one thing that me and Bruce both share.”
You’re in London for a show as Little Steven & The Disciples Of Soul, a mere 27 years since the last time. What took you so long?
I just walked away from my career. It was short-sighted of me. I’m getting back to where I left off, connecting with my first album again [Men Without Women, 1982], and the Jukes stuff – that soul-meets-rock-music thing that I helped create. Every one of the solo albums was very conceptual and completely different, which I never would have allowed if I was producing somebody else. It’s not a smart move to do that, if you wanna have a career. But I wasn’t thinking career. I was strictly thinking about the adventure of learning about myself in the world. It was all about international liberation politics, and finding out who was pulling the strings, how life works, who am I… All those questions.
Where did your soul-rock fusion come from?
By the early ’70s, I felt we’d kinda missed it. Rock was kinda over. Things had stopped evolving. And I’m looking around for something original to be. [Promoter] Richard Nader had the oldies circuit starting, and you started to reflect on where things were coming from. You start going back: blues, soul, and R&B. We went and saw Sam & Dave – me, Southside, Bruce, a few others, in some weird little club in Jersey, must have been ’73, ’74. That was my second epiphany. So me and Southside were gonna be Sam & Dave, but with rock guitars. So that’s where we went. And I found I was good at it, and really liked it.
What was your first epiphany?
Up until the British invasion, I was just a kid. I bought a few singles. Duke Of Earl, Palisades Park, Pretty Little Angel Eyes… Didn’t relate the artist to the single that much. I didn’t need to see them or know who they were. Then, February 9, 1964: there was a variety show everybody in the country watched – a bit like your Sunday Night At The Palladium. Our whole family would watch it together on a little black and white TV. They had something for the older people, opera, and then something for the teenagers. And that night something for the teenagers was The Beatles. It changed my world and I think most of the world. We discovered The Beatles halfway through their career, so they were already way too sophisticated to actually relate to. So, in June, The Rolling Stones come and they made it accessible. Being the Stones seemed possible. Then suddenly The Kinks and The Yardbirds and The Who and The Animals, The Hollies… it was one great thing after the other.
What about this music did you relate to?
The fact that it was bands. It never had been before. There had been no such thing as a band in America. Other than The Crickets, briefly, which Buddy Holly emerged from rather quickly, but basically it was all individuals. Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley… There was doo wop groups, surf groups, girl groups, but not a band where they sang and played and eventually wrote their own songs. This was a whole new communication coming at us. It completely appealed to me, where the individual pop stuff didn’t. I wasn’t an Elvis Presley fan. I wouldn’t have wanted to be in a group until I saw The Beatles. All of a sudden it’s not about ‘me me me’, it was the posse – the friendship, family, ultimately communicating community.
Was “community” something you lacked at that formative time in life?
My mother divorced when I was young, but I grew up in my Italian grandmother’s house. I was their first grandchild, so I did not have any lack of love, believe me! Quite the contrary. So it wasn’t something I was missing, but maybe it was something about that family thing I grew up with that I wanted to emulate. The lacking leads one to want to be a star, want to be a celebrity, want to be the frontman.
There’s a hole to be filled…
Yeah, I think that is absolutely true. You have to need that spotlight to want to be in it. I never have. I learned how to be a frontman, and actually I got quite good at it. But it was never my inclination.
By the early ’70s, both you and Springsteen have been hustling on the Asbury Park scene for years, in and out of bands together. Some of the names suggest artistic confusion: Dr Zoom And The Sonic Boom; Steel Mill; Funky, Dusty And The Soul Broom… Were you Funky or Dusty?
(Laughs) I don’t know, we were just always making up these stupid names! We had the Sundance Blues Band, Southside Johnny & The Kid was a country blues thing, me and Southside, and then Davey Sancious joined that group for about a minute, right before Bruce got his record deal and then Davey went to Bruce. We did this stuff before we got into the music business.
You took jobs working on road construction before backing ’60s groups like The Dovells on the oldies circuit. By 1975, the Jukes are finally picking up steam – and then Springsteen hires you just as Born To Run is completed.
It was temporary at first. Bruce had seven shows booked. And his career was over. These were the last seven shows of his career (laughs). I’d ended up doing all the business for the Jukes. I was managing them. And I hated it. So when Bruce says, “C’mon, let’s get out of town and play, I wanna put the guitar down for a minute,” I was like, “Yeah…” I was gonna go for seven gigs – and I stayed for seven years. ’Cos one of the gigs was The Bottom Line [in
New York City, August 1975], which really broke the thing wide open. I joined the E Street Band and then the Jukes got their record deal at the same time. So I was doing both bands, balancing both.
Was that tricky?
A bit, yeah. I wasn’t playing in the Jukes any more, I got a guitar player to replace me. So I was just producing, writing the albums and arranging the albums and booking the shows. But the E Street Band weren’t that busy yet. We were still struggling. People think Born To Run was a hit – it wasn’t. And then Bruce got into a lawsuit, and there’s all kinds of problems during Darkness On The Edge Of Town. So we weren’t really able to work until our first hit, which was on the fifth album, The River, with Hungry Heart. At that point we started working really quite regularly, and I stopped working with the Jukes.
In his autobiography, Bruce wonders why you didn’t just perform the songs you wrote for the Jukes yourself.
I liked being behind the scenes. And then you find out, there is no in-between in this world. Oh, I get it now! You’re either the star or you’re not! I discovered this way too late. I’m really quite stupid (laughs). I remember I had two hit singles off one of my solo albums, in Italy. And my wife comes over. Y’know, Rome is one of the very few towns she loves other than London, and we were just gonna go shopping, whatever, walking down the street… Couldn’t walk down the street. I’m attacked by hundreds of kids. Now, how you react to that is up to you. Some people are like, “Oh what a thrill…” I was horrified by this! (Laughs) I was like, “This is what it feels like to be a star?! I don’t fucking like it!” People saying “hello” when you walk down the street? I’m fine with that. It’s nice. I can get into a restaurant without reservations – that’s nice too! I’m not gonna lie to you, there’s some perks! Half the time the cops know you and don’t give you a ticket, so that’s all right, I can deal with that. But the rest, I can live without it, man.
You left the E Street Band just prior to Born In The USA, the album that made Bruce a megastar…
A brilliant move. There’s a few of us in that Hall of Fame of Assholes: me, Mick Taylor… I had completely lived in a tunnel vision, wanting to try and make it as a rock’n’roll guy. Suddenly we did it – The River broke through. We had a hit. We sold three million albums, which I thought was the most albums you could ever sell. We were selling out arenas. So after 15 years of hard work, I’m making a living – what do I do? I quit. (Laughs)
Why?
It’s complicated. Basically, I felt I needed to educate myself. I was completely ignorant about history, about politics, about life in general. So I become obsessed with politics. At the same time, we have a falling out. We’ve only had three real arguments in our lives, me and Bruce, and it was one of them. Things started to go a little bit sideways. We’d always been very close, I really was a consigliere in that sense, and he kinda stopped listening to me for a minute. I thought, “To preserve the friendship it’s time to leave.” So I left. I started reading books about US foreign policy since World War Two and suddenly realised we weren’t these heroes of democracy I thought we were. I felt somebody needs to talk about this and nobody really was.
Sun City by Artists United Against Apartheid featured a remarkable cast – and remarkably, it worked.
I wasn’t a big enough celebrity to pull that off. It was pulled off strictly by willpower. I figured I need to politicise my big star friends, and then maybe we’ll get something done. That’s what happened. I’m very proud of that. We caught the bad guys so much by surprise they couldn’t defend themselves. We took down a government. We got Mandela out of jail. Just in time – I found out all kinds of things about that, by the way, from my ANC friends. There needs to be a real Mandela movie. They were feeding him drugs, to destroy his brain. Fascinating stuff.
You went to Soweto for research – wasn’t that technically breaking the cultural boycott?
Yes. Which the Azanian People’s Organisation reminded me with their fucking machetes as they were considering whether to kill me or not, in a private meeting in Soweto. They put me on trial that night and I talked my way out of it. But it was one of those things that you get engaged in slowly. I’m in a cab and a black guy stepped off the kerb a little bit – and the cab driver swerved to hit him. For sport: “Fucking kaffir.” I’m like, “Did I just see that?” Here was racism at its peak, right in front of you. I’m
“I love Paul Simon, most of the time, but he violated the South Africa boycott, for publicity.”
“I was gonna join Bruce for seven gigs – and I stayed for seven years.”
like, “I can’t just write about this.” So I thought, “I’ll get a few artists together and get more attention to it than I would ever get putting it as a song on my Freedom – No Compromise album,” which is where it would have been.
The first voices you hear on the song are Run-D.M.C. – significantly, because hip-hop was still off-limits as far as the mainstream media was concerned.
No doubt about it. The first line is “We’re rockers and rappers…” Russell Simmons said to me at the session: “Wow, great – but we’re thinking of changing the name of rap.” I’m like, “What?! People barely know what it is.” He says, “Nah, it’s just too limiting. We’re thinking of calling it ‘hip-hop’…” I said, “That’s the stupidest fucking name I ever heard! What’s wrong with ‘rap’?!” Shows you what I knew… Anyway! Gil Scott-Heron was the most important guy – we got him. Miles Davis, it was very important to get him.
Did they require much persuasion?
I had to explain to a few people what was going on. I remember explaining it to Lou Reed and to Joey Ramone, who were not really political people at that moment but they became political people after that. Then again, I had to explain it to the fucking Senate. I was showing the United States Senate where South Africa was on the fucking map! It wasn’t an issue at all in America. People trusted me, thank God. Even in South Africa they trusted me. I’m in Soweto trying to explain to people that are basically blowing up radio stations, they’re killing civilians, and I’m like, “You can’t fucking win doing this. I know how you can win. I’m gonna win this revolution on TV!”
How did that go down?
Well, they didn’t have electricity in Soweto, never mind a fucking television. They’re looking at me, like “What?! OK, we’ll give you six months before we go back to blowing up radio stations.”
Is it true that you persuaded AZAPO to take Paul Simon off an assassination list?
Yeah. And I love Paul Simon, most of the time, but he intentionally violated the boycott, for publicity – which worked, frankly. He accused me, “How dare you support Mandela, he’s a communist! Look at where his money’s coming from…” I’m like, “Paul, go and make your fucking music and stay out of politics…” He says, “My art transcends politics.” I said, “Art doesn’t transcend politics, art is politics.” To this day he won’t admit he was wrong! Anyway, I didn’t want him to be a distraction. I had my eye on the ball. I think like a revolutionary, OK? I’m not a liberal, I’m not a nice guy.
And I didn’t need the fucking distraction of some little fucking weasel talking about how (dreamy artist voice) “We’re gonna spread South African music around the world…” Fuck you and your South African fucking music, people are dying! It’s life and death. Every day that this thing goes on, another person dies, you understand?! This ain’t about fucking selling records. Let’s get this thing fucking done. And that’s what happened.
When you got Springsteen onto the Sun City record, you’d been out of the E Street Band for a couple of years. Clearly your fallingout was only temporary.
Because I left the band, the friendship survived. Very quickly thereafter we became just as close. He went back to asking my advice, and listening.
According to his autobiography, you had serious conversations when you left the band and then when you rejoined in the mid-’90s. He says he’d been “gently playing” you and Jon Landau off one another. Does that seem a fair assessment?
It’s a little hard to imagine now, because I think me and Jon are good friends. And I always liked him and I always felt he had an extraordi- narily important role to play, especially as a manager. But at a certain point the balance shifted a little bit. And I just felt I wasn’t getting quite as much attention. So yeah, some of that was certainly true. We had differences of opinion.
Musical differences?
Again, looking back now, I don’t see the musical differences as much as perhaps the methodology, the style of production. And very simply, my ears are just better. (Laughs) I’ve got really good ears. And they were necessary at the time. ’Cos I was hearing problems in the production style. Born To Run was magnificent, but they got away with it. It was a bit mechanical for me. And then Darkness… was just a mess – some of his best work and it sounded terrible. So when it came time for The River, Bruce was like, “I want you to co-produce this,” and I came in, saying “OK, we’re gonna make this thing sound like a band. We’re gonna finally achieve that thing that we get live.” And we did. Because that’s just the way I think – I think like a band guy. Bruce partly does, and Jon partly does, but they also have that solo thing in their minds. I saw no difference between ‘Bruce Springsteen’ being the headline name and making a record that sounded like a band. I think they both had some, let’s say, relationship or responsibility to the solo aspect of it. Which I just never did. I’m just not interested in that. But it was fascinating to watch him evolve. He’s the greatest example for people to look at and realise that you’re not born with greatness. It’s not innate. Nobody’s born great. He fucking worked and worked and worked, and suddenly… OK, he got a little bit lucky, luckier than most, but then he opened the fucking dam.
E Street Band live shows are legendary, both for their intensity and length. Never mind Bruce, how do you all do it?
These things don’t happen overnight. You don’t go from doing a 90-minute show to four hours. You gradually get there. In the end, it’s the job. You’re doing a job. The work ethic is what’s foremost in your mind, in your actions. And you follow the leader. If Teddy Roosevelt’s going up that hill you better be close behind him (laughs). He’s very inspiring. And he pushes the envelope. I appreciate that. ’Cos I’d never do it in a million fucking years. No way. Not for four hours. That’s two of my shows. Any Bruce fans coming to my show might be disappointed, ’cos I say 90 minutes is just fine! You’re physically limited by your mentality. He has infinite mentality when it comes to the stage. He’s very comfortable there. I think it’s always been a bit of a sanctuary for him. What’s completely impossible is what Max Weinberg does. Bruce is crazy. But Max has twice the energy. Doing a drum solo in between every song, for 35 songs, over four hours – that’s just impossible.
What was the motivation for starting your Underground Garage radio show in 2002?
I put the radio on one day and I’m like, “What happened to music?!” I’m not hearing the great renaissance music. How are people going to aspire to greatness if they have no access to it? How did I become the only one playing the fucking Beatles?! So obviously there’s a necessity for this. My syndicated show is all over the world, I’m in a hundred countries. Just on BBC Radio 2 for the first time the other day – hopefully it’s gonna be a regular thing here.
Was acting a natural transition from performing on-stage?
Not so much that, as much as being an autobiographical songwriter. I found that to be extremely useful. I had to come up with my own theory of acting (laughs), very quickly, once [Sopranos creator] David Chase asked me to be in the show. I turned him down at first, I said, “I’m not an actor.” He said, “Yes you are, you just don’t know it yet.” My solo records were the same thing: digging very deep inside and really doing the research. That applied directly to acting in a contrary way. I wrote a lengthy biography about the character and went inside and found him.
Will it be another 27 years before we see The Disciples Of Soul back in the UK?
Bruce at this point seems more comfortable touring every other year, so if that continues I’m gonna come back and tour every other year. He’s not gonna tour for ’17, so I will. Being on-stage is so natural for me. The audience is part of the family at this point. I love the music and I love the band and I love the audience. It’s now – it’s here we are, in the same room, the same energy. Nothing is better than that, nothing’s more real. As long as you keep your roots there, you’re gonna be all right.