Little Steven on The Sopranos, Springsteen, and his dislike of 'Satan' Trump
Little Steven says his tours are 'more like Broadway shows'.
When Bruce Springsteen put the E-Street Band on hiatus five years ago it allowed his right-hand man Stevie Van Zandt, better known as Little Steven, to pick up the threads of a solo career that had been on hold for 18 years.
In addition to his commitments with ‘The Boss’ the bandana-clad rocker, sporting a trademark paisley pattern shirt during our interview, has also enjoyed a second career as an actor, most famously in The Sopranos as Silvio Dante. More recently he appeared in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman based on the book by Charles Brandt.
“It’s one of my favourite mob books and I’ve read every single one, it’s a hobby and an interest of mine; that’s probably why I got into Sopranos,” suggests Van Zandt who didn’t waste time in getting the word out that he was interested in a part.
“I told everybody if I am ever in a movie, and only one, then that’s the one I want to be in. Of course, the big parts were all taken by terrific actors, but in the end, I got a cameo playing (singer, actor) Jerry Vale which was fine with me I just wanted to be in it.”
Van Zandt’s dream of being in the picture alongside the likes of Al Pacino and Harvey Keitel was almost dashed while he was on set with Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, and it’s easy to deduce from his tone that this was a cause for concern.
“I was on stage doing my thing and there was a lot of smoke in the room, I had a phone call saying filming had to stop that day because of Scorsese’s asthma. I only had one more day and my tour was about to start, I thought: ‘man I’m going to miss my scene here.’ We got it done early the next day and I got right on a plane.”
With the E-Street Band parked indefinitely, Little Steven was about to take Disciples of Soul on the road. Kicking off with an appearance at the Roundhouse in London, he would soon be rubbing shoulders with another of his heroes.
“I arrived late and only had a few minutes for soundcheck with a big crowd waiting outside when suddenly I hear that Paul (McCartney) might be coming down to the show. I thought: ‘my goodness we have to prepare something just in case’. I threw together this Little Richard style arrangement of I Saw Her Standing There, I knew Paul was a fan because I would never have heard of Little Richard had it not been for Paul and The Beatles. When he arrived I told him just to enjoy the show but when we were getting ready for the encore one of the roadies said: ‘Paul’s coming on'. He’s a real musician’s musician, he came on without a rehearsal not knowing what we were going to do, that takes some balls man, especially if you are going to get noticed because if you’re him you can’t sneak around and do these fun things without anyone knowing but it came off really well.”
So well, in fact, that Miami Steve was inspired to play a Beatles set at The Cavern Club in Liverpool later that week.
“In the early days they would play these lunch-time shows, I thought what a crazy thing to do, so we called up The Cavern and arranged a lunchtime gig before our show in Liverpool that night.”
The experience with McCartney, which he describes as “one of the thrills of my life, to tell you the truth” coupled with the Cavern show in 2017 was released earlier this year as Macca to Mecca! “My religion is basically rock n’ roll and Liverpool is my Mecca so that’s why we called it that!”
In November 2019, Van Zandt wrapped over two years of touring with a performance at the Beacon Theatre in New York. His set delivered an extensive repertoire that included Bruce Springsteen’s Tuscon Train taken from his Western Stars solo album released earlier that year. Perhaps some fans and critics were growing weary of waiting for an E-Street Band tour when Van Zandt detected a “tepid” response from some.
“I really liked the record and I was in the middle of the tour when I was talking to journalists and some had, I don’t want to say negative but there was this confused or tepid response. I was hearing this every single day, I thought this is fascinating because it was the first time I’ve encountered anything like this with a Bruce record. People usually like everything he does so I wanted to promote it a little bit in my own small way. I thought let’s do what Jimi Hendrix did with Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding record because nobody liked that when it came out. I don’t mean to relate the two situations but when Hendrix covered All Along The Watchtower, suddenly this album was not so uncool.”
The forthcoming release also features bonus tracks, including a rousing version of Van Zandt’s landmark protest anthem Sun City featuring Springsteen. How does the experience differ from E-Street when the “best friends” perform under Van Zandt’s leadership?
“Yeah, it’s not really very different; it's happening with my songs instead of his, he’s coming into my world so it's obviously whatever I've chosen to do but it’s not really ‘I’m the Boss now’ kind of thing, we’ve been friends so long (since the age of 15) we don’t need to categorise or formalise everything.
“My tours are more like Broadway shows, every song has a purpose, I have connecting tissue in between the tracks. It’s the opposite of an E-Street show which is spontaneous and constantly changing.”
Speaking of which, are there any tentative plans to bring the E-Street band back to Europe in the foreseeable future?
“It’s really hard when you look at the world to finally say it’s safe, especially with this new Delta strain. I’m not worried about us, we’ve had the vaccine, but most of the world is not vaccinated yet. In America, we have another problem where 40% of the country are saying they don’t want to be vaccinated.”
He adds that 40% don’t believe Joe Biden is a “legitimate president” while referring to Trump as “Satan”.
“Him and Benjamin Netanyahu can share a cell as far as I’m concerned and until that happens we have a problem. We have 15% of people who believe that Democratic celebrities are cannibalistic paedophiles…you know?”
An indefinite period away from the live circuit has allowed some time to finish a forthcoming memoir, Unrequited Infatuations, which will cover his time in E-Street as well as a journey towards political activism that began during Reaganomics and Reagan’s policy of “constructive engagement” with South Africa. The Artists United Against Apartheid project and popular single Sun City strengthened global awareness of apartheid in South Africa and was a significant cultural event that recruited the likes of Springsteen, Keith Richards and Bob Dylan. It’s fair to say it wasn’t just about the big names: when U2 front-man Bono was invited he was still an emerging talent explained Van Zandt.
“We really chose people on the nature of their work and who by their nature were political and socially active, they all had to have some reason to be on it. We had people like Miles Davis, Gil Scot-Heron and we were all recording in the basement of John Lennon’s house as there was a studio down there. Bono just happened to be in town and got into the looseness and the craziness of it all. In the end, we ended up with an artistically valid album which came from the single.”
- Little Steven & The Disciples Of Soul Summer Of Sorcery Live! At The Beacon Theatre is released July 9th on 3CD box-set, 5LP Vinyl box-set and Blu-Ray with 5.1 Surround
