A Vulture series in which artists judge the best and worst of their own careers.
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A Vulture series in which artists judge the best and worst of their own careers.
Rock and roll as a genre has never had a better consigliere than Steven Van Zandt. The 75-year-old guitarist, producer, and actor has maintained an exuberant grip — with an even more exuberant wardrobe — on the industry ever since joining Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band in 1975, first proving the skills of his counsel by cracking how a little ditty called “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” should be arranged. He became a made man on E Street soon after and served as Springsteen’s invaluable ears for the album trifecta of Darkness on the Edge of Town, The River, and Born in the U.S.A. Van Zandt took a hiatus from the group for over a decade to pursue solo work and be his own boss with the Disciples of Soul, and you know exactly what happened in 1999: He assumed a new alias, Tony’s mean-mugging right-hand man Silvio Dante, in The Sopranos. “Every singer is an actor,” Van Zandt says about bridging his worlds together. “You’re just acting out the script, which is the song.” His favorite scene, to this day, is when he got to tell James Gandolfini’s character that he “has a problem with authority.”
Van Zandt carved a nice chunk out of his year to tour with Springsteen for their politically charged, lose-the-audience-be-damned Land of Hopes and Dreams Tour. Now decompressing from his time on the road, Van Zandt continues to advocate for his TeachRock music-education program — which encourages every school to have their own version of Dewey Finn on staff — all while serving as an honorary ambassador of sorts for the Garden State. (This blurb that Bob Dylan wrote for Van Zandt’s memoir has always stuck with me: “In the New Jersey state of mind, somewhere between Bruce Springsteen Stadium and the Bon Jovi Arena, is a little-known street called Little Steven Boulevard with hundreds of endless souvenir shops and gift stores.”) During our recent conversation, Van Zandt even realized that the 60th anniversary of his first professional band, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, was approaching sooner than he thought. “Man,” he says with a sigh, “if you take care of the craft, the art takes care of itself.”
“Two Hearts.” The song can be interpreted for a brotherhood theme, which is how we’ve been interpreting it. The strength of a band is very different from communication with an individual. The thing that made the entire culture change, E Street Band aside, was when the Beatles came in 1964. They led the way from all the other British Invasion bands and then our own. We had never seen a “band” before. Bands who sang, played, and eventually wrote their own songs were not a typical thing you saw in those days. We were used to individuals and singing groups — but to see a “band” communicating with their gang, posse, and themes, it eventually becomes community. That’s what the audience responded to back then, and I think that’s what it responds to right now. “Two Hearts” just always makes me think of that. Bruce was on a real streak back then. It grew to become more important as the years went on.
For my catalogue, most of my solo songs aren’t “rated” at all. I’ll say “The Time of Your Life,” which I’m not sure how many people may have heard. It was written for Chris Columbus’s movie Nine Months. It ran in the credits. It’s a song that’s going to be on an album by my group that hasn’t been released yet. It’s one of the only albums I have on the shelf ready to come out from my group called the Lost Boys. “The Time of Your Life” will be on that album, which I’m hoping will finally be released for next summer. I always felt this song sums up my philosophy of life. I’m quite proud of that one. The chorus is, “This is the time of your life. What are you going to do with it?” In other words, live in the moment and treat every moment like it’s the first and last. Don’t waste your time, as we all tend to do. What are we on this planet to do? To try and realize our potential and make it a little bit better of a place for the next guy coming along.
To do that, one must try and keep your eye on the ball. There’s so many distractions now. I really feel bad for this generation. It was tough for us, and we only had three channels on television. Or maybe four channels and pinball machines. That’s all we had. Now, I have to tell people you’ve got to put that device down and spend an hour or two working on your craft, whatever your craft is. It’s just about doing things with purpose. Write with purpose. What do you want that song to do? It’s not just writing — it’s living with purpose. You get up every day, and sometimes it’s good to do nothing, have nothing in your mind, and kind of drift. That’s okay, too. But sometimes it’s good to have a plan and utilize every minute you can in a useful way. All of that somehow got distilled really well in “The Time of Your Life.”
My favorite song of his, which is “Youngstown.” It’s an incredible song. The fantastic detail in it, the transportation to another place — it just feels so real. The poetry in it is phenomenal and the choices of his words. I think it’s his greatest song. It’s funny: I don’t often catch words until much later. I think most people are that way. Critics and intellectuals tend to focus on the lyrics, but I don’t think the audience does. I say this even though I spend a lot of time working on my lyrics. But in the end, 90 percent of the time, it’s the music that matters. That applies all the way to Bob Dylan. He’s known for his lyrics, but if he were one of the greatest singers of all time and had the greatest chord changes and melodies of all time, no one would’ve cared about his lyrics. That’s just a fact.
But anyway, a song like “Youngstown” grows on you. Then you start to look at the lyrics. And that could be years later, but you notice them. And as a songwriter, you’re just like, “Wow, that is as good as it gets.” It’s telling an interesting story, has a bit of history, shares a bit of reality, and includes a bit of emotional turmoil. That last verse? Incredible. “Long Walk Home” also would be, I think, a close second for some of the same reasons.
I’m not a typical musician in that sense. My guitar playing is dedicated to complementing the song. That’s what matters to me. I consider 1960s pop music to be the highest evolution of our art form. In those days, it was that transition from pure pop into rock. Post-Beatles when all the saxophone solos suddenly became guitar solos. Those poor, old, great sax players all went out of work overnight. There would still be a typical two-and-a-half-minute song, which was the pop “rule” in those days. You had to pretty much stay under three minutes. But when the solo came, instead of it being a sax, it was suddenly Jeff Beck doing an incredible 20-second guitar solo. That, to me, was the ideal to shoot for. That’s what I aspired to be able to play well enough: having that cool solo in the middle and complementing the song for the rest of the time.
I mean, I didn’t really play much lead guitar. I had a couple sprinkled through my solo albums over the years. “Lyin’ in a Bed of Fire” from my first album and “Los Desaparecidos (The Disappeared Ones)” on my second album were good solos. But I didn’t really play a lot until Born Against Savage, which was my hard-rock record that I released in 1999. That’s the guitar playing I would’ve done in the 1960s, had I been able to, and the songs I would’ve written back then. It’s that combination of all the hard-rock guys I loved: Jeff Beck Group, the Kinks, the Who, and Jimi Hendrix. You hear all of them on the album. So that was really the “guitar-playing album” of mine. I don’t think there’s any one particular solo that exemplifies my style. I’m not sure I have a style in that sense. I’m not really a musician’s musician. I’m just a guy complementing any particular song.
My mind goes right to Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, which was the definitive Jersey bar band and garage band. “Coming Back” from the Better Days album is a nice reminder of the state. The “Jersey Shore sound” is a bit of a fiction, though, because in the end you have to end up including Bon Jovi, which is quite a different thing. You know what I mean? My stuff, the Jukes’ stuff, and Bruce’s stuff is a bit more integrated and similar. The Jukes introduced the horns through the bar band. They changed the identity of bar bands, maybe nationwide, but certainly on the East Coast. So after that, people needed to have horns, which wasn’t the case when I grew up. I think the soul-meets-rock thing defines that Jersey sound, which is exemplified by the Jukes. It’s very different from the pop-rock of Bon Jovi. But even Jon, if you think deep enough, has similar roots. He just took a different path more toward the pop side of things.
I wrote a lot of autobiographical stuff up until Soulfire, which was basically an album of songs that I wrote for other people. And then Summer of Sorcery was the first record I ever did that wasn’t autobiographical at all, really. It was literally fiction — 12 songs of different and individual movies, with different and individual characters. That was the first time I ever did something that was completely fictional. That took some guts, even though that’s what everybody else always does. I finally did a “normal” type of record. It was different to do something that had nothing to do with me.
I would make them play “Restless Nights,” “Loose Ends,” and “Fade Away” for me. The latter is why I really enjoyed it when we did the River Revisited Tour. Playing “Fade Away” and those other The River songs every night really made for a fantastic show. And Bruce sings differently on that record. That’s where most of his more soulful type of singing is, which he takes for granted. He’s one of the great white soul singers of all time, but you wouldn’t know it because he doesn’t do that that often. But on that record, it’s there a bit more prominently.