{"id":1463,"date":"2010-09-12T17:22:03","date_gmt":"2010-09-13T00:22:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=1463"},"modified":"2010-09-12T17:22:03","modified_gmt":"2010-09-13T00:22:03","slug":"little-steven-van-zandt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2010\/09\/little-steven-van-zandt\/","title":{"rendered":"Little Steven Van Zandt"},"content":{"rendered":"

LITTLE STEVEN VAN ZANDT<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Bruce Springsteen\u2019s right-hand man is on a rockin\u2019 crusade<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Little Steven Van Zandt has diagnosed America\u2019s ills\u2014and he has the prescription. \u201cWe have no great art to replenish ourselves,\u201d he says. \u201cArt is not a luxury. We\u2019re the only country in the world that thinks art is a luxury! There\u2019s no spiritual nourishment going on right now. That comes from great art.\u201d<\/p>\n

Van Zandt is doing his part to get great art to the people who need it, through a dizzying variety of outlets. For almost eight years he has presided over the popular radio show Little Steven\u2019s Underground Garage, <\/em>which is now bringing whip-cracking rock \u2019n\u2019 roll new and old to stations all over North America and Europe. He signs promising new garage-rock acts to his Wicked Cool Records label, and is now expanding his empire to a social-networking site called Fuzztopia. He drew raves as an actor for his supporting role on TV\u2019s acclaimed The Sopranos,<\/em> plus he\u2019s become an in-demand public speaker known for his razor-sharp analysis of the modern music industry.<\/p>\n

Oh, and there\u2019s also the day job Van Zandt\u2019s held down off and on since 1975, as a key member of Bruce Springsteen\u2019s juggernaut E Street Band. The Boss and company completed a massive two-year world tour in November that found the group playing at the top of its game and attracting record crowds, but also facing several tragic losses\u2014most visibly the death in April 2008 of keyboardist Danny Frederici. We recently spoke with Van Zandt about the ups and downs of rock, radio and life on E Street.<\/p>\n

Looking back, what are your <\/strong>feelings about the most recent <\/strong>E Street Band tour?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Creatively, artistically, in many ways we\u2019re the best we ever were. It just kept getting better and better. It was a terrific tour, maybe the most fun ever. The business, for us, has shifted a little bit. For many years we were two-to-one bigger overseas, now we\u2019re probably three-to-one. We did fine here, we have such great fans here, but overseas we\u2019re bigger than we ever were. We\u2019re bigger than Born in the U.S.A.<\/em> big! I don\u2019t really know why. It\u2019s fascinating.<\/p>\n

How did losing Danny affect <\/strong>the sound of the band?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That was not fun. Over the course of this last couple of tours we lost three very important people: Terry McGovern, who was Bruce\u2019s personal [assistant]; obviously Danny; and we just lost Lenny [Sullivan], our road manager. That was three very, very big shocks. That was the downside of these past few years. Sound-wise, Charlie [Giordano, Frederici\u2019s replacement] came into a very tough job. Danny\u2019s an impossible act to follow for many reasons, but Charlie came in and did terrific. Musically, if you\u2019re an organ aficionado and you really understand the details of what it takes to be an organ player, then you\u2019re going to miss Danny, because nobody plays like him. Overall, musically it was OK\u2014but emotionally that was difficult.<\/p>\n

What guitars have you been <\/strong>playing onstage lately?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I mostly play Stratocasters. I also play a Rickenbacker 12-string\u2014usually the Tom Petty model [the 660\/12TP], which has a wider neck. I don\u2019t know how Roger McGuinn from the Byrds and those old guys that played Rickenbackers did it. It\u2019s very hard to fit your fingers on that neck. During the show I might play 10 different guitars, but mostly it\u2019s the Stratocasters and the Rickenbacker.<\/p>\n

Do you use a lot of effects? <\/strong><\/p>\n

No, I don\u2019t. I use occasional delay, an occasional Leslie pedal, an occasional vibrato and a power boost, like a Fuzztone. That\u2019s about it. I keep it simple.<\/p>\n

The band has expanded quite a <\/strong>bit over the years\u2014near the end <\/strong>of the tour there were 12 people onstage. How have you adjusted <\/strong>to that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an army, man! (laughs<\/em>) It makes it even more versatile, musically. It\u2019s not a rock \u2019n\u2019 roll band, exactly\u2014we\u2019re an orchestra of a sort. It\u2019s rock-based, certainly. A typical five-piece rock band absorbs all kinds of other genres, but when you have more instruments you can do that a little more literally. Instead of hinting at a classical influence or a country influence or whatever, you can go in that direction more explicitly. That\u2019s what we\u2019ve been doing. We\u2019ve got nothing to prove as a rock band. We\u2019ve always been a good rock band. Everybody knows that. It\u2019s just another dimension, a bigger playground to play in.<\/p>\n

How has the radio show <\/strong>evolved over the years?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The rest of radio has tightened up since we started. The oldies format has moved almost entirely into the \u201970s, so we\u2019re the only ones playing Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis now\u2014in addition to being the only ones playing the Ramones and the Clash and a whole lot of the \u201950s and \u201960s stuff. Even the early British Invasion\u2014we\u2019re the only ones playing album cuts from the Beatles, the Stones, the Kinks\u2014and as far as I\u2019m concerned that\u2019s the best stuff. We\u2019ll play The Who, but we\u2019re not going to play \u201cWon\u2019t Get Fooled Again.\u201d We\u2019re gonna play \u201cPictures of Lily\u201d or \u201cThe Good\u2019s Gone,\u201d something from the earlier days. Why play a song if some other format is playing it?<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

With all these interrelated ventures, have you been forced to learn more about being a businessman? <\/strong><\/p>\n

A bit, especially in these last three years. The music business is a combination of art and commerce but the commerce side has\u00a0gotten kind of weird. It\u2019s not something you can ignore because everybody wants to\u00a0get their music to the people. You\u2019ve got to say, \u201cHow is this business going to survive?\u201d Because if the business doesn\u2019t survive, then the art is going to have a harder time surviving. Great art isn\u2019t made out of the kindness of people\u2019s hearts. Sometimes great art is made for the most mercenary of reasons, including paying the rent! (laughs<\/em>) These last 10 years have been rough, and it\u2019s getting rougher.<\/p>\n

How do you run the business <\/strong>side of things while on the road?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I work constantly on the road. You\u2019re onstage for three hours, and there\u2019s soundcheck\u00a0and you\u2019re in the air maybe for a few hours. The rest of the day I\u2019m working on other\u00a0projects. I\u2019m listening to records, reading proposals, writing proposals, writing speeches, whatever I have to do. We\u2019ve done the radio show from the road when we\u2019ve had to. It doesn\u2019t matter where you are, you can get a lot done. It helps if you love it, OK? If you really didn\u2019t like what you were doing it would be difficult. My only frustration is that I don\u2019t get the chance to do more.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Chris Neal<\/p>\n

Jan\/Feb 2010 Issue of M Music & Musicians<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LITTLE STEVEN VAN ZANDT Bruce Springsteen\u2019s right-hand man is on a rockin\u2019 crusade Little Steven Van Zandt has diagnosed America\u2019s ills\u2014and he has the prescription. \u201cWe have no great art to replenish ourselves,\u201d he says. \u201cArt is not a luxury. We\u2019re the only country in the world that thinks art is a luxury! There\u2019s no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[976,969,975,983,973,32,982,740,971,970,980,979,978,977,974,981,972],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1463"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1465,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions\/1465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}