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Little Steven Van Zandt sits in a Lincoln Towncar on Fifty-seventh Street in Manhattan, waiting to go to lunch. "We're not going far," he says, rubbing his hands for warmth. "But we might as well drive. It's too cold out today." The car travels half a block, turns a corner and stops at the back door of an Italian restaurant. Steven exits in true rock-star style: walking briskly with his head down, not looking up or stopping until he's safely inside. The restaurant is one of Van Zandt's favorites, and he is soon at a quiet table in the back warming up with some soup, antipasto and a slice of high-grade parmigiano cheese. Staffers come by to offer congrats on his career renaissance as the man recounts his first dry spell: the Nineties.
"I literally spent years walking my dog, wondering, 'What am I
going to do for work?' " he says in his nasal New Jersey tongue. "I
had no place in the world. I knew something was over, and I didn't
know what was next. 'Do I cease to exist? Am I dead now?' Feeling
that way really makes you check yourself. You second-guess every
decision you have ever made. And, man, I was feeling kinda stupid
to be in that place. How did I get to a place where I couldn't
work? I'm a working guy -- I love to work."
Since the late Sixties, Van Zandt had been working nonstop. The
Boston-born, Jersey-bred, Italian-American guitar player started
out on the Garden State club circuit, playing bars with his friends
Bruce Springsteen and Southside Johnny Lyon. In the mid-Seventies,
he joined up with Springsteen's E Street Band, helping to shape
Born to Run and one of the most beloved rock & roll
outfits still rocking.
In the mid-Eighties, he moved away from E Street to pursue a solo
career and become a freedom fighter: In 1985, Van Zandt co-produced
the Sun City album, a scathing indictment of South African
apartheid. The project transformed him into an activist, and Van
Zandt spent the following years as an emissary, frequently risking
his life to meet with revolutionaries in South Africa, Nicaragua
and El Salvador, and raising awareness of U.S. military involvement
in Central America. All the while, Van Zandt produced a variety of
bands and put out a series of highly political, uncompromising solo
records that, by the early Nineties, had alienated him from the
record industry. He spent the rest of the decade continuing his
activism and struggling with an unfinished rock-musical version of
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, an unfinished book on
politics and mixes of his fifth album, Born Again Savage.
And then, just when he was ready for the unemployment line, he
landed two jobs: Bruce Springsteen reunited the E Street Band, and
David Chase cast Van Zandt as an old-school hitman in a new-school
mob world on HBO's The Sopranos.
"I'm living proof of 'It ain't over till it's over,'" he says,
laughing. "It was a strange convergence. If it didn't happen to me,
I wouldn't believe it." Actors are discovered in many ways, but
never on an awards show: "I was inducting the Rascals into the Rock
& Roll Hall of Fame, which I initially refused to do -- I told
them to get a real celebrity. But the months went by, and they kept
asking me, so I did it. David Chase happened to be watching." Chase
contacted Van Zandt, who had no previous acting experience, and had
him come out to L.A. for a screen test.
"They had to make sure that I could act, that I could memorize
lines, that I could put three words together in a row," he says.
"That first season was a big investment for HBO -- they thought
David was crazy for even considering me." Chase stood behind his
decision, and Van Zandt was added to the roster. It is easy to see
what Chase spotted: Van Zandt's soft-spoken but direct manner and
shuffling, animated gestures are like a wiseguy's without the
wisecracks -- like a good fella who's actually good.
Van Zandt and Chase thought up the family-values hitman Silvio
Dante together. "He's a friend of Tony Soprano's, a trusted
lieutenant and a bit of a throwback," Van Zandt says. "He thinks
the heyday is over and they missed it. He and Tony see a
romanticized vision of the good old days, when everyone could be
trusted. And I wanted Silvio to look like that -- Fifties hair, the
whole thing."
Like Silvio Dante, Van Zandt is a throwback whose values are
steeped in another time, one that he pines for. He's been married
to his wife, Maureen, for seventeen years. Where Silvio misses the
honor of the old days, Steven misses rock & roll's glory days.
"The only thing Silvio and I have in common is that we're both
alienated from modern culture," he says. "I kept remixing my album
partly to fight the whole digital thing. It's a disaster. CDs are
the most outrageous scam that has ever been perpetrated on the
public. The sampling rate on them was established in the Fifties or
something -- basically you're hearing one-third of what was
actually recorded."
Though his new album is available on CD (in stores and through the
Web site for his record label, Renegade Nation,
RenegadeNation.com), Van Zandt took great pains to defeat the
medium's limitations. "I kept everything analog right up to the
last moment," he says. "My record is bigger and healthier and
fatter than almost any record you'll hear. I think that has a
serious effect on how the music affects you -- and partly why music
touches people less now."
Van Zandt's album signals the end of a cycle he began in 1982, when
he thematically conceived five albums, each dedicated to a
different subject: the individual, the family, the state, economics
and religion. The first four albums -- Men Without Women,
Voice of America, Freedom -- No Compromise and
Revolution -- ranged musically from the soulful rock of
the Jukes to world and dance music. "I knew they would all be
political records that were truthful, artistic adventures, rather
than smart career moves," he says. "I knew their musical
inconsistency would kill the possibility of a career -- you can't
ask that much of an audience. Looking back, you could say it was
stupid, and I might agree with you. It was a bit naive, because I
forgot to think about how I was going to make a living. But I was
compelled to do what I had to do." Born Again Savage, the
fifth album, is the end of the cycle and, fittingly, reflects the
religion that Steven has followed all his life: rock & roll.
"After the other albums, I just came out the other side and really
missed rock music," he says. "I actually wrote this album as world
music that would have a lot of religious, ritual music in it."
Though he's glad to finally release the album, Van Zandt realizes
it will be his last solo effort for some time. "I don't know if
I'll ever do another one," he says, watching the afternoon outside
grow darker. "I'll have to find the time and energy and discipline
to get back to Little Steven. On the spectrum of my personalities
-- and I've got four or five -- Silvio Dante is the extreme right,
Little Steven is the extreme left and the guy in the E Street Band
is somewhere in the middle. Right now, Little Steven has to take a
back seat, as important as he is to me." Certainly for now -- there
are Sopranos to film and a Springsteen tour to do.
"Bruce hasn't talked about doing a record yet, but I hope we will,"
Van Zandt says. "It seems like the last logical step in the whole
reunion process. First we have to finish the cities we missed. We
only did half the country."
The tour, which grossed $53 million last year, will continue
through May and end in the summer, leaving Van Zandt more time for
his other family. For the second season, he taped his
Sopranos parts on his days off, flying in from around the
country to make his 5 a.m. calls and sometimes flying out evenings
to play with the band. "I could make the transition between the
two, but it was a little unsettling," he says. "I couldn't have
done it if I didn't love both."
Judging from the acting skills he has recently discovered, the
Little Steven slice of Little Steven may find himself even further
on the back burner, obscured by a pile of scripts with names like
Silvio Dante's Inferno and GoodFellas 2001. "If I
don't do any other acting in my life besides The
Sopranos," Van Zandt says, lighting an
apres-antipasto Marlboro Light, "that's fine with me. If a
great director hands me something, of course I'd consider it. But I
know how lucky I am." He exhales some smoke. "How often are you
going to get a situation where you like everyone you work with? I'm
still adjusting to just working. And I have three jobs."
Excerpted from RS 835, on newsstands this week.
ANTHONY BOZZA
(February 10, 2000)