Miami Steve Van Zandt
USA Today, May 15, 2017
Somewhere around 2006, I barraged the good folks at Country Weekly Magazine with ideas for freelance assignments they could send my way. None prompted a positive response until I learned that the editor was a fan of Shooter Jennings. So I tried one more pitch, and within an hour or so I was informed I would be flying to New York City to chronicle a typical day with the outlaw country rocker.
The day in question turned out to be not so typical, since it encompassed an afternoon appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman and an evening show at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Off I went, coming back with a lot of material and one unexpected encounter.
Back then Shooter was dating the actress Drea de Matteo, whose performance as Adriana La Cerva on The Sopranos won her an Emmy along with instant recognition pretty much anywhere in America. Certainly she was easy to spot backstage at the Hammerstein along with Shooter and a few of their associates. I joined the conversation, which as I recall was about music. After a minute or so another voice chimed in from my left. I turned and saw Steve Van Zandt, a.k.a. “Little Steven” or “Miami Steve.” I’d seen him several times before, from a distance, riffing on guitar, mugging and rolling his eyes and shout-singing harmonies onstage with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. And if there was anyone left on the planet who hadn’t seen him with the Boss, surely they knew him with de Matteo and the rest of the Sopranos cast, in the role of mobster Silvio Dante. (In one of their most memorable scenes together, he executed her in the New Jersey Pine Barrens for ratting on the guys in Tony Soprano’s crew. It wasn’t personal, just business.)
Up close, Van Zandt seemed a little shorter yet larger than I’d expected — overall, a strong physical presence. More to the point, he was an easy, accessible conversationalist. His face was mobile, quick to smile but sometimes intensely serious when talking about something especially engaging. The initial jolt I felt at seeing him in person dissolved as we shared thoughts on music and whatever else came to mind. So when USA Today accepted my suggestion that I speak with Van Zandt more than a decade later, I had no doubt that we’d pick up where we left off, except in that we’d focus predominantly on his new album, Soulfire. From there, of course, our dialogue could roam free and far … and in fact did.
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You’ve been doing lots of stuff over these past nineteen years. But why was doing your next solo album lower in your priorities?
I don’t really have a good excuse for it, other than I got into this whole new craft with acting. That led to multiple crafts of writing and producing for TV. I even directed the final episode of Lilyhammer. So it was a new adventure. At the same time, Bruce decided to put the band back together and tour. Honestly, before you know it, twenty years go by. I consider it a mistake. I should not have done that. I should not have walked away from my life’s work and been distracted from it so thoroughly. I should have kept both things — all things — going on.
Looking back, I never had a manager until now. This is the first time I’ve ever had management in my life. Without that back then, it was really difficult. I did not really imagine myself as a businessperson. I never really enjoyed that part of it. So it started to become a bit much. I guess it was time to get away from it. I wish I’d kept things going. But life is what it is, man.
The good news is that I was able to do this record with a sense of reintroducing myself — to me, first of all, but also to the audience. And I was able to put some things in there that I never had done — a blues thing, a doo-wop thing, some jazz, a little bit of hard-core R&B with James Brown. I was actually able to do a fairly definitive version of who I am as well as going back and reinforcing my identity as that soul-meets-rock thing that we kind of invented with Southside Johnny. So I was able to relive that part of me that’s unique, which is that genre of white soul or whatever you call it — and at the same time introduce some elements I never had before. It’s actually been very satisfying, extremely rewarding.
So that long layoff gave you time to think more about expanding your horizons.
Without a doubt. It certainly did artistically. But also, as a producer, on most of my early records the artist part of me was doing the producing. I didn’t produce myself per se until Freedom, No Compromise. So the artist Little Steven benefited from the producer Little Steven being more experienced, especially after doing the Darlene Love album last year, which is the best work I’ve ever done with one of the greatest artists of all time. Coming off of that into this felt very organic. Let’s face it, you tend to get better.
Back to the Blues
We’re premiering “Blues Is My Business” on USAToday.com, so let’s talk about that one.
It’s actually an integral part of the whole story. At the end of the European tour, this promoter in London, Leo Green, said to me, “When are you coming back to London?” I said, “Well, me and my wife are coming back for Bill Wyman’s 80th birthday. Bill wants me to play at it.” He says, “Well, that’s the same week as my blues festival! Why don’t you put a band together and play it?” It just felt like the right time to do that.
As part of getting it together for a blues festival, I started to do some things that were different from what I normally would have done, one of which was to look at a bunch of blues songs. I knew the chorus to this one; it’s one of the great chorus lyrics. Then I came up with the idea of the arrangement, changing some of the chords around. It really felt quite good.
Another part of time going by is that I’m able to have my own identity. I’m doing a blues song but it still sounds like me. You’re not just going from one genre to another without any connective tissue. It fit very much on the album. It sounds like it’s another part of this album. Experience also comes in handy when you’re doing something so genre specific as blues. Being able to make that your own identity is quite satisfying. You do want your identity on there but you also want to honor the source.
That’s exactly right. It’s a nice balance between the two. The bonus of course is that you get the chance to show your gratitude and have a tribute to Etta James, one of the great artists of all time. It was the same thing with the James Brown cover I did on the album. I hadn’t really covered anybody else on my own albums. Time allows you to find a way to make them your own enough to fit.
“I feel very secure in who I am. I know I’m not stealing or impersonating anybody.”
The blues thing was a lot of fun. It brings me back to where it starts. We were all jamming blues in bands when we started. That was our generation. It was nice to revisit that world.
And that’s you playing the guitar solo.
Oh, yeah. I play all the solos on the record.
Who are some of the guitarists you might have channeled as you played that solo?
There are three or four guys in that one. Albert King, certainly. There’s some Hubert Sumlin in there. There’s a little bit of Buddy Guy. I’ve been revisiting early B. B. King lately, which I hadn’t done in a long, long time. We tend to know B. B. King from his later stuff, but the early stuff is just fucking amazing. So there’s a bit of that in there as well.
You play the “Crosstown Traffic” riff at the top of the blues. Then when the band locks into the verse, the bass and rhythm guitar suggest “Tramp” by Otis Redding. Were these references made consciously?
I was very conscious of both of those things. I love both of those things. There’s certainly a momentary tribute to Jimi Hendrix, who of course I just adored. And that whole thing with Otis, that stuff with Booker T. & the M.G.’s, that’s an integral part of my life. I like to put my influences right on my sleeve. I feel very secure in who I am. I know I’m not stealing or impersonating anybody. So I don’t mind paying tribute to as many people as I can as often as I can. I did that from the very first moment I went into a recording studio to produce Southside’s first album. I got Ronnie Spector and Lee Dorsey out of retirement. For Southside’s second album, we reformed the Coasters and the Drifters. Me and Bruce worked with Gary “U.S.” Bonds for a couple of albums. I’m always very conscious of showing my gratitude to the great masters and turning other people onto that stuff whenever possible. That’s really the whole reason for my radio show.
So now you feel you can do covers a little more often.
Exactly right. That can only come with time. Plus, as I’m rightfully criticized that this is my first thing in 20 years, on the other hand a few good things come from it as well [laughing]. Artistically, you get a chance to appreciate where you’re at and be a little bit more confident with it.
“I turn on the radio and I don’t get it. I don’t hear anything that speaks to me.”
You wrote in the liners that you’re not really that connected to or interested in the modern world. I assume you do email and stuff like …
Recently [laughs]. Once in a while I tune into it. I’m not afraid of it. I make an attempt occasionally to understand what’s going on and tune in for a minute. But for the most part, it doesn’t really speak to me. It holds no relevance for me. There’s nothing I relate to in any meaningful way. That’s not a criticism, by the way. I’m not making a value judgment. I’m just saying that as far as my own identity, it’s established. It is what it is. So when you’re looking for entertainment or just escape, you tend to go to things that have a context that you can relate to. Honestly, I’m not saying that we’re better or worse. It’s just that I turn on the radio and I don’t get it. I don’t hear anything that speaks to me.
By “the modern world,” then, you’re speaking only about music.
Yeah, that’s true. As far as things like TV, I’ve been at the forefront of two of the major evolutions of TV, with The Sopranos on HBO and Lilyhammer on Netflix. I happen to have been on the first groundbreaking shows in both of those areas. I watched the entire New Golden Age of television be born. I told people this was coming before it even happened. Fifteen years ago, I guess, I said, “Right now, movies have always been number one, way above TV in terms of the hierarchy of art. But that’s gonna change. Movies are now becoming strictly for kids’ comic books and video games. All the adult entertainment is gonna be on TV— and I mean that in every sense of the word, not just sex and violence and language but also complexity and character study and the more artistic endeavors.” That’s what happened. And it’s only gonna get bigger.
Passion & Desperation
On “Coming Back” you write about “those wild and desperate times … I started running. I never asked the cause.” Even the title “Right the Night Away” has a kind of passionate desperation. This seems to be missing from contemporary music too.
I think that’s truth. Me and Bruce both grew up in that renaissance when the greatest music being made was also the most commercial. That intensity was built into our stuff, just as it was built into the radio that we listened to all day long.
That is one thing I did notice when I started playing these songs live. I realized they are intense. They’re built to be intense. They’re organically intense. It’s in their DNA. I think things are less intense by their nature in the music that’s going on now. They’re constructed to almost be disposable. It’s partly that and partly the age at which you first heard these things. Your teenage years is when you’re really getting all that [unintelligible]. You are what you like, so you’re forming your own identity by the things you like. We had the most glorious, amazing, magnificent input for those years. One minute it’s the Beatles, then it’s the Stones and it’s the Who, the Kinks, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson — it was one great thing after another. You absorb it all.
What it all had in common was that their roots came for the most part from the gospel church or from country/blues, where it was nothing but intense. You’re talking about life and death and the spiritual love of God in gospel. And then with blues you had the most romantic, down and dirty catastrophes [laughs]. So you’re dealing in genres that are a hundred percent intense! Even though that got diluted a little bit when it turned into soul music, R&B and rock ’n’ roll, it was still quite intense.
That’s the one thing you notice when it comes to my show. When we played in London at that blues festival, the first large show I’d played in over twenty years, I realized we were winning the people over song by song because I don’t have any hits. I don’t have a lot of familiarity with my stuff. So we’re winning the people over every single song. That’s what we had to do, so that’s exactly what we did. Each song has that independent intensity. They were built that way.
You hadn’t played any large solo gigs in twenty years?
I haven’t fronted a band in at least that amount of time. I’ve been touring with Bruce the whole time but not fronting. Let me tell you, it’s a very different job. When I look back at the point I got to as a frontman in 1987 or whatever, the concert in Sweden, I had become quite a good performer. It’s going to take me a while to get back there. It’ll come in stages. We’ll see if I ever get back to being a performer of that standard. But right now it’s all about the music. Here it is, man; it’s all in the music.
Modern music has kind of an ironic, cynical quality. It’s the antithesis of the kind of passion, honesty and emotion you’re talking about. Modern audiences must be surprised by the kind of intensity you pump out.
I think that’s true. They do respond to that. We’ve certainly seen it with Bruce’s audiences. In certain countries, it just gets younger every year. We go to Italy and Spain and you barely see anybody over thirty. It’s bizarre. We’re certainly having that effect on European audiences. It’s a bit of a different tradition in Europe, where the young kids will come out to see what their parents like. They respect certain values and traditions, their parents and grandparents. That’s why blues and jazz and now rock ’n’ roll have found a home there. It goes generation to generation; another generation picks up exactly where the old generation left off.
It’s not quite that way in America. It’s harder to reach younger people here. It’s much more separate and segregated here. We’re always trying to find ways to get younger people to come to the show because once they come, we get them. I’m gonna be introducing a lot of this music to people for the first time. They’re gonna find it’s very satisfying in a way that’s unusual.
Did you talk about all this before you began recording the new album?
You know what it is, man? Maybe this will change through the years, but right now I can’t use younger musicians to play this stuff. They cannot handle it. Right now I’m gravitated more toward the experienced session guys. It’s funny, actually, because when I started the live rock world was one thing. The session world was another. The two did not mix. My first twenty years in the business, I never met a session guy. You make it a point to meet some of your heroes. But suddenly I realized that as my music became more sophisticated, I now had to find session guys who could perform live rather than just rock guys, especially when you want to pick your twenty songs from fifty or sixty. The ability to learn that much is gone. I need Richie Mercurio, who did most of the Darlene Love album for me, or Shawn Pelton — those kinds of drummers that are at the top of their profession. It’s not just wanting that; I need that in order to do what I need done on these records — the Funk Brothers of Motown, Booker T. & the M.G.’s, the Wrecking Crew in L.A. That’s the kind of stuff we’re doing, that level of musicianship. It’s built in to feel spontaneous in many cases or certainly very live. We captured the excitement of this stuff. We did the whole record, top to bottom, in six weeks. It was very fast because we still felt that excitement from doing the London show. You can’t necessarily find twenty-year-old musicians who can do this stuff. They don’t have the history.
It’s clear why you call the band the Disciples of Soul. But in your role with them is more of an evangelist.
Not consciously. I’m basically out there, playing my new album. I don’t have any projections beyond that. But it is in the great tradition of where it comes from. This stuff does come from a place that I believe in. In that sense, I am bringing it to people. If you don’t listen to my radio show, you’re not going to hear it anymore. So coincidentally it is as you say. There is a bit of evangelism going on here, more by circumstance than design. The radio show is by design. This is who I am. This is how I got to where I am. Hopefully I’m gonna connect not only with my old audience but with a newer audience as well.
“The fewer notes there are, the more intense those notes have to be.”
Is there anything else you wanted to say about the album?
The whole experience gave me a new appreciation for my past work and also for the other artists who did it. “Growing Up on the Wrong Side of Town” is a very, very simple song. It gives you a whole new appreciation of Southside Johnny because the fewer notes there are, the more intense those notes have to be. You really learn the economy of emotion, having a contrary effect on the actual intensity. In other words, the more economical the melody line, the more intense it needs to be. That was a bit of a revelation.
Part of what’s gone wrong with so-called soul music is that the soul has been taken out of it by people not sticking to the melody and over improvising. Every single note of a melody is there for a reason.
Other projects?
I’ve got the Rock ’n’ Roll Forever Foundation writing the curriculum of rock ’n’ roll right now for schools. We go all the way back to the early twentieth century and talk about where all the music comes from. We’ll teach kids history at the same time because we teach the context of what was going on in the world when those songs were out. That’s very satisfying.
There’s a hundred things I’m into but I won’t bore you [laughs].
Coda
The interview officially ended there. I thanked Steven for his time and candor, switched off my recorder. But there was one more question I had to ask.
Okay, this is not for the interview, but I have one Sopranos question I’ve got to ask.
Fire away.
When the show ended, did you and the rest of Tony’s gang get to keep those amazing Italian suits you wore?
Sure, if we were fast enough [laughter].
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