LITTLE STEVEN
Stevie Van Zandt has written his memoir, Unrequited Infatuations. We get the lowdown from the man himself on rock, soul, Springsteen and the buffoons still running the world.
“IWANTED IT to read a bit like a detective novel; like you don’t know where it’s going next,” declares Stevie Van Zandt of Unrequited Infatuations: A Memoir. “It’s about all the insights I’ve picked up and the little bits of craft I can pass along,” adds the bandana-clad E Street guitarist, chatting from his NYC home via Zoom. “If I can make the book useful then it becomes a valid artistic enterprise.”
Clocking in at 371 pages, Van Zandt’s illuminating, vivid and funny tome has been percolating for years. But it was only after making 2017 solo album Soulfire and 2019’s Little Steven And The Disciples Of Soul LP Summer Of Sorcery that he felt ready to commit. “Those records and the touring of them reconnected me with my own life’s work and gave me a kind of closure,” he says. “Plus, I was waiting for Bruce’s book to come out. He was the first person I sent my book to, actually, and he didn’t ask me to change a thing.”
From his temporary addiction to ménages à trois to his account of Frank Zappa rudely declining to be part of anti-apartheid protest song Sun City, Van Zandt’s book is nothing if not candid. It also has its revelations, not least that, prior to casting him as consigliere Silvio Dante in The Sopranos, the drama’s writer David Chase had Van Zandt down to play Tony Soprano. The book also reveals Van Zandt planned to open a restaurant with the late James Gandolfini, who famously did play Tony. “As you can imagine, me and Jimmy had the greatest Italian food on the Sopranos set,” Van Zandt explains. “Maybe that was our inspiration.”
Amid thoughts on Tchaikovsky’s ballets, why the British Invasion bands put US sax players out of work, and the all-important identity Springsteen found circa Darkness On The Edge Of Town, Van Zandt’s account of his own political awakening and landmark, mostly ’80s-situated activism is another of his book’s key threads. Does he feel politicised rock music has lost its bite?
“I do. I think it’s partly because the rock era is over and rock had different rules, different cultural and social aspirations. We’re in a pop era now, and pop doesn’t always have the same urgency. Plus, you have buffoons like Trump and Boris Johnson attempting to run the world, so people are off-balance and struggling and don’t seem to have the willpower to organise themselves.”
One thing Unrequited Infatuations makes clear is that Van Zandt likes a project. Next up, he says, “It’ll be E Street or The Disciples Of Soul or more TV. And if not, I’ll get myself a piña colada and a canoe and move to Hawaii.
“I really miss acting, and I’m looking at five completed scripts and 25 treatments. Then we’ll see what Bruce wants to do next year, virus permitting. We made a wonderful new album [2020’s Letter To You] just before the pandemic, and we’d dearly love to play that thing live.”
Stevie Van Zandt’s Unrequited Infatuations: A Memoir is published by White Rabbit on September 28.
“I’ll get myself a piña colada and move to Hawaii.” STEVIE VAN ZANDT