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Steve Van Zandt is so busy touring with Bruce Springsteen, running his own record label and hosting his "Underground Garage" radio show that he postponed his interview with Rolling Stone four separate times. When he finally did get on the phone, he more than made up for it. During the wide-ranging interview, the E Street Band guitarist discussed everything from the odds of a Sopranos movie to why he'll never cut a solo album to why the band never plays his favorite Springsteen song.
Bruce has been dragging out some pretty rare songs on
this leg of the tour so far.
You never know what's gonna pop out, you know? It's kind of fun to
have so many songs to choose from.
What motivated him to open up the first show with
something as random as "So Young and In Love"?
I don't know how many songs he has right now. Two hundred and
fifty? Three hundred? He just flips through 'em, and says, "Heeeey,
remember this one?" No particular reason other than just he hadn't
done it very often, or hadn't done it for a long time. The
wonderful... freedom... that our audience allows us is
something that's fairly unique, We're able to do almost anything at
any time and people seem to dig it.
Are they moments when he calls an audible — say
"The Detroit Medley" and you guys just can't remember
it?
We take a vote amongst us very quickly as to what key it's in.
That happens. The nice thing about having so many people in the
band is that no one person has to know everything. I might catch up
on the second verse, you know what I'm saying?
You've played "Badlands," "Born to Run" and "Promised
Land" at nearly every gig you've done over the past decade. Which
one are you the most sick of?
We play those every time, huh?
Pretty much.
I know it sounds like an odd thing, because I used to think this
about people in the theater: "They have to do exactly the
same thing every night." There's not one single word different. I
used to think, "How do you do that?" We probably change things more
often than almost anybody. Maybe there's a jam band or two through
history that maybe changed things more often than us, but I don't
think it's very many. Even if you're playing the same song, if
there's a different order or a different context, then it sort of
changes a little bit because of what's before it or what's after
it. And so it has a funny kind of "newness" every night.
I've heard you say before that your favorite Springsteen
song is "Fade Away."
Yeah, that's one of 'em.
Why does Bruce never play it with the
band?
I don't know! It's just one of those funny, lost little gems, you
know?
Do you ever say to him, "Bruce, I'd like to play this
song tonight?"
You know, I really should do that more often. I guess it's just
kind of a slower one and we don't play that many slower ones
anymore, so maybe it's just hard to fit it in. But I should bring
that up. My other favorite is "Held Up Without a Gun." We never
play that one, either.
You and Nils are singing a bit now on "Long Walk Home,"
which you didn't on the first leg of the tour. How'd that
happen?
It just spontaneously happened one night. It was one of those
songs I thought we weren't quite getting the most out of it
somehow. Songs are funny. You record them one way and then
sometimes live they need to be adjusted or expanded or changed
slightly to capture the essence of it. Sometimes it doesn't quite
translate literally when you do it precisely the same way. And that
just struck me as we were playing it, you know. I thought, you
know, it's not quite going to that place it needs to go to, which
the lyrics in it suggest. Sometimes something is just great on
record and never quite translates live for some reason. It can be a
bit of a challenge and that's just one thing I love to do. I'm just
a natural-born arranger and always have been. I just love it. I did
a lot of the stuff on Darkness and, of course, The
River and Born in the U.S.A., that was sort of my
thing before I started co-producing with him.
You know, I was reading that you were almost a part of
the 1992 tour. Could you tell me about that?
We were talking about doing something and I think we just decided
to kind of wait on it or I got busy doing something. I honestly
don't remember now. I think we just maybe decided to wait and get
the E Street band back together.
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How's Danny Federici doing?
He's doing great at the moment. It's a bit miraculous. I talked to him last week and he sounds great. I just hope it lasts. In a month or two we'll hopefully see him back.
Great. It's pretty incredible to think the same lineup
of people who played on "Born to Run" are still in the
band.
Yeah, I know. That's why it was so hard when Danny had to drop out
for a minute. It was like the first time we were on stage without
him. I love Charlie, he's doing a great job, but you can't replace
Danny. You know what I mean? I look over there and it's like "Oh
man." You know? It's just weird. Honestly, Charlie has an
impossible job of trying to replace a legendary cat like Danny. He
certainly is doing a great job, but you can't replace Danny.
People are concerned Max isn't going to be allowed on
tour after Conan moves to 11:30.
The Conan show ends somewhere around New Year's Eve this year.
Then there's a good five or six months before they take over
The Tonight Show. There's still plenty of time before that
happens and we'll see. Through the years Max has absolutely become
an integral part of that show. It's not like he's just the music
guy. He's the second banana, as we used to call it. He's the foil,
the Ed McMahon. He's great being that straight man. So for Conan to
give that up and say "Okay, man, I know this is important, I'll do
the show without you," I mean it's radical, man. I really don't
think Conan gets enough credit for being so amazing, and everybody
else at NBC are just terrific — from the chairman on down,
honestly. So we'll see. There may come a day when it's all over,
but, not yet.
So the tour is going through October?
I don't know. We're all gonna certainly be around and not take any
other major projects for the rest of the year. Let's put it that
way. There may be some time off. I'm not sure it will be every
single week, every single month right through October. I think this
year, we certainly have carved out for this and we'll see what
happens. I haven't really seen a schedule to be honest. I just know
we have to be available this year.
I'm wondering if you ever think about making a solo
album that's backed by some of the garage bands you champion on
your show?
Nah, I really haven't. I haven't really had any time to think
about that at all. I'm just trying to get our business on solid
ground, which may never happen. But I'm hoping it does. We're kind
of reinventing the whole music business at this point, not to
mention trying to bring back the whole basic genre of rock &
roll, which disappeared off the face of the Earth. Our two-hour
syndicated show is over a million listeners in over 200 cities. And
the Sirius satellite thing is going great and then we're spanning
into Europe. We're expanding very well but now the next level is to
get some TV going and get these new rock n roll bands actually
seen, whether it's on YouTube or whether it's on regular TV.
So that leaves you no time for an album.
Yeah. I'm hoping I even get a chance to maybe produce a song or
two for some of these bands. Or maybe write a song or co-write a
song and get a little bit involved in getting into a studio —
which is like a fucking vacation, man. To walk into a studio, for
me, is just like walking onto a beach or something. I haven't
really thought of doing a solo record although it probably would be
a good one honestly because I've done nothing but listen to good
rock music for six straight years. It's probably getting into my
head somewhere. But I kind of said what I needed to say with the
five solo albums I did. I didn't really want to make a solo album.
I don't believe in solo albums. I'm a band guy anyway. The only
reason why I made solo records was because I got so obsessed with
politics and that is quite personal, I don't really philosophically
believe in solo records. So that's why I don't play my own records
on my radio show. I'm just strictly a band guy.
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If you had to give a number of the percent odds of a Sopranos movie, what number is that?
I'd say you gotta one out of ten shot. And that's three years from now. Not likely, but slightly slightly slightly possible.
Good thing you survived.
Silvio's still breathing. So that's all I care about, but I don't
really don't expect a movie.
The fans are always curious about the Nebraska
sessions. Were any of them attempted with a full band? What
happened there?
It was an interesting moment. If I recall correctly he started
cutting them as demos for the band. This was before Born in the
U.S.A. right?
Yeah.
I remember him playing them for me one day and said "Here's my new
songs. We'll start rehearsing them as a band soon." And I listened
to this thing and I thought to myself, "I gotta say there's
something extraordinary about this." There was no intention of it
being a record and no intention of it being released, but there was
something just extraordinarily intimate about it. And I thought
"What a wonderful moment has been captured here just accidentally."
And I said to him, "Listen, I know this is a bit strange but I
honestly think this is an album unto itself and I think you should
release it." And he was like "What do you mean? It's just demos for
the band." And I'm like "I know you didn't intended for this to be
recorded but I just know greatness when I hear it, okay? It's my
thing, it's why I'm a record producer and that's why I'm your
friend and I'm just telling you I think your fans will just love
this and I think it's actually an important piece of work. Because
it captures this amazingly strange, weirdly cinematic kind of
dreamlike mood. I don't know what it is. All I know is I know
greatness when I hear it and this is it, okay? And this deserves to
be heard I think people will love it and I think it's a unique
opportunity to actually release something absurdly intimate."
So the band didn't even try to record
them?
We may have cut one or two. I don't know if they ended up on
Tracks. I think it just sort of became it's own thing and
then he just wrote Born in the USA. I must say, again, the
record company in that case, and I forget who it was, was very
surprisingly and shockingly understanding about it. It was like
"Well, we got this really cool electric album coming. So don't
think we're gonna do this all the time. But we kind of want to put
this thing out." I guess Bruce's manager Jon just managed to
convince him that it was cool and then he went along with it.
I think "Trapped Again" is one of your few co-writing
credit you had with Bruce.
There's a couple more. "Love on the Wrong Side of Town," from the
second album. "This Time It's Real."
It would be great if you guys wrote together more
often.
We really should have done more of that. We brought back Gary U.S.
Bonds, which was an amazing success. It was totally Bruce's and he
probably intended to produce it in the end, co-produce the single,
then produce the rest of the album. I tried to convince him to buy
the Power Station and start a record label. I really wish we had.
Then we could have co-wrote and co-produced a bunch of legendary
60's cats. I thought we could build a whole label around that and
just kind of have fun with it. I wish we had done that. But it was
not the right time.
Do you think the tour is going to end here in New York
as the last two tours have?
Jeez, I don't know. I have no idea. No idea. Really, I mean, I
don't even know where we are this week.
I think you're playing in Nebraska in two
days.
[Laughs] Oh, speaking of Nebraska! My life is on a need
to know basis. I literally only get my schedule maybe the night
before. So that's about as far in the future as I know.