Steven Van Zandt talks career and future plans

Steven Van Zandt, a founding member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, visited the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications Monday evening as part of the David M. Rezak Music Business Lecture series, part of the Bandier Program. But before his speaking engagement, The NewsHouse sat down and talked one on one with him about everything from his career as a musician and actor, to politics, to receiving an honorary college diploma.

You played in a number of bands during your early career and you even bounced out of the industry and into construction work for a little bit. At what point did you decide that you wanted to make a full-time career out of music?

Steven Van Zandt: When I had to pick up the jackhammer every day. Somewhere in that period, I’m like, you know what, maybe showbiz is not such a bad idea after all. I kinda quit. I got into an early depression, my first of many and I decided that all of the great music had already been made. I was very wrong about that by the way. But I said, we missed it – we missed the boat and the renaissance is over. Just out of whatever, of not wanting to be in construction for the rest of my life, I came back in by accident really.

I was playing flag football on the weekends and broke my finger, which is still bent, and got on-the-field surgery by a guy who just popped it back into place almost. To exercise my finger when it was healing, I joined a band as a piano player. I couldn’t really play piano, but, you know, a little bit. And I slowly got back into it that way and fell into what they called the oldies circuit at the time which was ‘50s and ‘60s artists who had been put out to pasture by the British Invasion, which was a tragedy, because that’s the only generation it really happened to.

Everyone else, the audience grew up with them and to this day the biggest acts in the world are the Beatles and the Stones, right? But that first generation, you know, whatever record they had when the British Invasion started in ’64, that was it, they would never really record again. They were all kind of miserable.

But I was just happy as hell meeting all of my heroes in the early ‘70s. That’s where I met Little Richard who eventually would become the preacher at my wedding and Gary U.S. Bonds. That was it, and I got back in and came back in and started Southside Johnny & The Jukes and that was the beginning of becoming public. Actually I joined the E Street Band right before Southside Johnny recorded so I stayed as producer of their first three albums and then didn’t really appear on a record until Darkness on the Edge of Town.

It took a long time to succeed at this craft. I started when I was 15 and didn’t really have any success until I was 30 really. It helps keep you grounded though. When you succeed early, you see all these kids really getting screwed up. They don’t know who they are, they don’t have an identity yet and they get into drugs and drinking. They have success and they have money. You tend to get screwed up, I think, when you’re young and successful – you see it in the pop world today. So, when you succeed that late in life, you’re kind of over it. It’s like, okay, I’m just a working class celebrity now.

You’re getting ready to release Summer of Sorcery with the first original music you’ve recorded in over 20 years. Why now? Why is this the time period to release your own music again?

SVZ: I didn’t plan that. Most of my life is not planned. I work really really hard trying to do this over here and then my life comes through the back door.

This all started three years ago or so at the end of the last E Street tour. We were ending in England and this English promoter says: “When are you coming back to England?” and I say, “Well me and my wife come back for her birthday every year in November and this year we’re coming a little earlier because Bill Wyman, the original bass player with the Rolling Stones, invited us to his 80^th birthday party, and wants me to play, do a little jam with him.” And this promoter, Leo Green, says, “You know, that’s the same week as my blues festival. Why don’t you throw a band together and headline one of the nights?”

So I was like, “Well I haven’t done that in like 25 years, so I don’t know.” I thought about it and I was like, you know what, maybe it’s time. So just by accident, I threw a band together and made a list of songs, some covers and some blues things, and made some of my own songs and I kind of became reacquainted with my own music at that point.

I was really kind of surprised how well it held up and that has value. It’s different than I expected. It kind of became it’s own genre through the years, this rock meets soul thing that I created with The Jukes. So it felt like an album already and I wasn’t ready to write a whole new album but I’d do an album of covers. I’d do an album of things I had written for other people and see how it goes, you know, kind of slip back in a little bit because Bruce is on Broadway all year so he’s not going to do anything.

And we did Soul Fire, which was a way of reintroducing myself. Not only was it written for the people, but I threw a couple of cover songs on there as well and really made it an introduction that included my own roots. For the first time in my life, I recorded a doo-wop song, a blues song, you know, early early influences as well as the rest of the stuff.

Suddenly, I was back in and I thought to myself, you know, you really write differently for other people than you write for yourself. I thought, I want to write those kinds of songs for me. And that’s what I accomplished with Summer of Sorcery, which I’m very proud of because all of my records were extremely autobiographical and extremely political.

I was the most political guy in the world and I just stopped all politics like 12 years ago when I started my education program. I didn’t want some teacher in Alabama that says, “I’m not going to use this because this guy’s too liberal.” I wanted to make sure that that was not the case. So I stopped really being partisan, well partisan politics.

This record is quite driving because it’s not really about me. It’s like little movies, it’s cinematic and there’s a lot of different characters. It’s fictionalized. There are traces of me here and there and traces of politics here and there but mostly not. I’m very happy about that. It’s a whole new kind of rebirth.

In the end, I figured, enough about me already, I’m sick of me. I don’t want to think about me ever again [laughs]. I’ve thought about me for years and years, analyzing myself and learning about myself and learning about the world and I’ve had it with that. I get it. I know what’s happening, I understand myself and I just want to make some great music.

Philosophically, I want to bring people together now, I think that’s my usefulness. Not being partisan.

The entire Soul Fire tour was about that. This whole new album starts off, the first song is called Communion and the chorus is, “Harmony, unity, communion,” which says it all in those three words. That’s what the whole album is about, variations on that theme. I’m very happy about the new album. ‘

I’m very happy about being reacquainted with my own work. It is my life’s work after all which I just completely abandoned and then I was like, wow, where did 20 years go?

Other than your new album, are there any projects that you’re currently working on?

SVZ: The main thing we’re kind of integrating now is my foundations work with this music history curriculum we created. We worked on it for the last 10-12 years and just went public with it this last tour. I didn’t want to go public until I had at least 100 lessons online so now we have 150 lessons at teachrock.org.

It was time for teacher outreach. How are we going to do this? Yea we could go to administration and school boards and do that thing. But I want to get right to the people on the frontlines. I want to go straight to the teachers. We put aside 500 tickets a show and invited teachers to come, register for the curriculum when they came free to the show, the curriculum is free and we do a workshop.

I found out that teachers have to do 20-25 hours of professional development every year just to qualify for their certificate and then pay for it out of their $40,000 a year salary. I thought, my god, what a world we live in, so let’s give one hour for free that counts towards their certificate.

It’s been very successful. We only did the last three months, if that, and we registered 25,000 teachers. They teach about 100 kids a year. So that’s 2.5 million kids a year right now. That’s a good start. So that’s my main thing. I’m going to keep doing this, this year.

We’ll see what Bruce wants to do next year. If we go out, that will be another year or two. Then eventually I’ll get back on TV I hope, which is my real passion at the moment. I had to put it aside for music right now. 2020-2022, I might be back on TV, or not, we’ll see.

Speaking of which, the 20^th anniversary for The Sopranos is this year. Reaching this milestone, what do you remember most about that experience?

SVZ: It was a gift for someone to give me another opportunity and a whole new craft. I got a phone call out of the blue asking, “Do you want to be on my new show?” And I said, “Thank you but no. I don’t want to be in your new show. I’m not an actor.” He says, yes you are, you just don’t know it. So I gave it a shot and it turned out to be something that was a lot of fun.

I took everything that I learned on the 7 seasons in 10 years of the Sopranos and really applied it to Lilyhammer. I co-wrote it. I co-produced it. I starred in it. I did all the music. I directed the final episode. I was really able to move that craft into multiple crafts. I love learning, I want to learn.

Are you currently more often recognized as a musician and a member of E Street Band or do more people remember you from your acting roles?

SVZ: It’s probably about equal. It depends what’s happening at the time. Some people just know me as a DJ on my radio show. Sometimes it’s from Lilyhammer. Sometimes it’s the Sopranos. Sometimes it’s this or that. When I’m touring with E Street, it’s all about that. When The Sopranos has another anniversary, it’s all about that.

The power of TV though is amazing. Two weeks after that show was on, that’s all people wanted to talk about – two weeks. 25 years of being a rock star, forget it. Gone. So I think, wow, this TV thing, this is intense.