A conversation with Little Steven Van Zandt from 2013

The E Street bandana man talks about reviving The Rascals, his accidental acting career, the unseen side of Tony Soprano, and his choice for "the single greatest piece of music ever written"

Apr 04, 2025

Welcome to stübermania, where I dig into my box of dust-covered interview cassettes from the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s to present bygone conversations with your favourite alterna/indie semi-stars (and the occasional classic-rock icon). This is a newsletter in three parts: The Openers (links to recent writings, playlist updates, and/or other musical musings), The Headliner (your featured interview of the week), and Encores (random yet related links).

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THE OPENERS

There are cruel April Fools Day jokes, and then there are fake Kyuss reunion-tour announcements. But at the very least, this got me listening to …And the Circus Leaves Town for the first time in a long while, and I can confirm that “One Inch Man” still slaps.

RIP early rock ‘n’ roll icon Nick Rivers.

On a related note: just a day before we learned of Val Kilmer’s passing, I was reading this great Hearing Things interview with Dan Bejar where he defends the Doors biopic, which seems like a very Dan Bejar thing to do.
Notes on this week’s new additions to the stübermania 2025 jukebox:
- Click here for the Apple Music version of the playlist.
- Stephen Vitiello, Brendan Canty & Hahn Rowe, “Last Minute Guitar”: When I posted my Brendan Canty interview a few weeks back, I received a message from my Pitchfork colleague Philip Sherburne informing me that his label, Balmat, would soon be releasing Second, the aptly named sophomore effort from the Fugazi drummer’s trio with ambient sound artist Stephen Vitiello, and violinist Hahn Rowe. The album’s opening track spends a good three minutes in tentative tune-up mode as the three friends get musically reacquainted after an extended absence—but once Canty’s drums kick in, the song blossoms into a propulsive post-rock jam that’s launched skyward by Rowe’s otherworldly string-scraping improvisations.
- Lotti Golden, “Get Together (With Yourself)”: Best known as a pioneering producer in the early ‘80s NYC electro scene, Lotti Golden was also once a 17-year-old phenom who recorded a debut album for Atlantic Records, Motor-Cycle, that flopped upon its original release in 1969, but has gradually acquired a large enough cult of admirers—Stephen Malkmus among them—to prompt a recent vinyl reissue. It’s easy to understand why Motor-Cycle failed to turn Golden into a pop star—its sprawling eight-minute set pieces effectively serve as the missing link between ‘60s soul and ‘70s progressive rock. But this standout track is the closest she got to becoming an Aretha Franklin for the post-hippie age.
- Girl and Girl, “Okay”: The Aussie indie-rock quartet responsible for one of my favourite albums of 2024 is back with a suitably sardonic new single, and rarely has a threat “to crush your fucking brain” felt so warm and welcoming. Bonus points for a twinned-guitar outro that verges on Thin Lizzy territory.
- Kali Uchis, “Sunshine & Rain”: This woozy psychedelic-R&B reverie (a teaser from the upcoming Sincerely, out May 9) makes for a perfectly disorienting soundtrack to a week in the GTHA where we went from a snowstorm to t-shirt weather in less than 12 hours.
- Perfume Genius, “Left for Tomorrow”: I can’t say I’m a hardcore Perfume Genius fan, but each of his albums has at least one or two songs I absolutely adore. This jazzy folk-rock lullaby from Glory is the latest deserving addition to a hypothetical Perfume Genius best-of compilation that, in a perfect world, would put up Eagles Greatest Hits 1971-75 numbers.

THE HEADLINER:
A conversation with Little Steven Van Zandt

The date: August 6, 2013

Publication: The Grid

Location: In a lounge inside Toronto’s Royal Alexandra Theatre

Show being promoted: The Rascals: Once Upon a Dream

The context: Little Steven Van Zandt may be best known as Bruce Springsteen’s long-time right-hand man, but at the time of this conversation, the E Street Band were playing second fiddle to another crew of Jersey boys: The Rascals. Formed in 1965, the group are best remembered today for feel-good golden oldies like “Good Lovin’” and “Groovin’.” But to the young Van Zandt, they were a revolutionary force that combined the raw energy of British Invasion rock and the grit and grace of American soul music, a fusion that would form the foundation of the E Street sound. And as their No. 1 fan, Van Zandt was the only person who could convince the Rascals’ original lineup to re-form after a 40-year estrangement. But it was going to take more than a simple money-grubbing, nostalgia-baiting reunion tour to get the band back together. So Van Zandt sunk $2 million (including $100,000 in Kickstarter proceeds) into Once Upon a Dream, a theatrical presentation that interlaced a live Rascals performance with a multi-media reenactment of the band’s history.

The role of Broadway impresario added yet another new layer to a personal brand that had expanded far beyond the E Street ecosystem. By 2013, Little Steven was just as well known for playing Silvio on The Sopranos and for hosting Little Steven’s Underground Garage, the syndicated radio show that eventually became the only Sirius satellite-radio network where you’ll hear The Ronettes and The Creation alongside Rain Parade and Primal Scream.

This interview happened just a few weeks after the sudden death of fellow Sopranos star James Gandolfini, who came up late in the conversation. But we began on a more cheerful note, with some chit-chat about his other big acting role—as Noo Yoik mobster Frank Tagliano on the early Netflix series Lilyhammer. After complimenting him on a successful first season of the show, he revealed that his job description would be expanding to soundtrack composer for Season 2.

So what’s your concept for the soundtrack?

It’s half New York jazz, half Norwegian folk music. It’s an odd juxtaposition, but I like the idea of both those things being sort of infused. The challenge is to marry the two and have it work… I think I’m gonna pull it off!

So legend has it that The Rascals are indirectly responsible for your acting career…

It sounds like a ridiculous story, but it’s true. [Sopranos creator] David Chase happened to be flicking around with the remote one night, and it was the first time that the Rock & Roll Hame of Fame was televised, and destiny was at work. He saw the montage come on and he thought, “What are The Rascals doing on TV?” And then I came on and did my three-four minute induction speech and he said, “let’s get him on my new TV show!”

Is doing this Rascals musical your way of repaying that debt to the group?

It’s a way of repaying the first debt: They were an enormous influence on me musically—the first blue-eyed soul rock band, really. Their records were enormously influential, and so great live, so amazing. The second debt was icing on the cake.

Do you feel like The Rascals are ill-served by golden-oldies radio, where they’re only survived by their greatest pop hits?

With the classic-rock genre, they’ll play a few of the hits, but not so much the songs that provide the depth. I think this show kind of corrects it. That’s why I put 28 songs in it, and only half of them were hits. I say “only”—they had 15 hits, which is hard, but the other half of the show is not hits, and I did that to show just how deep the great musicality is.

How did the band feel about doing such an exhaustive overview of their repertoire?

They bought the whole concept. They weren’t going to reunite just to reunite, or just for the money, or just to go on some oldies circuit. They were always very idealistic, very protective of their legacy in a way, so I had to come up with something that was artistically interesting and valid and credible and maybe a bit challenging for them to take part in it.

Do you find that staging a musical is antithetical to rock ‘n’ roll? There’s months of rehearsals, and there’s all this pressure to make sure every detail is right…

I’m a detail guy even with productions I’ve done live. I’ve produced a lot of live bands, and I enjoy the detail. I think it’s important to have that, and not treat live performance in a casual way—I never have. So it wasn’t a big stretch for me to do this. This was a new idea, so you wonder, “Can we make it work or not, and will the audience buy it if we can make it work?” And that first night was the most thrilling night of my life. I was very, very nervous, and I thought, after 40 years, they’re going to do three songs, and the stage is going to go dark, and this huge screen is going to light up, and they’re going to start talking to the audience. And I’m like, “What if the crowd thinks, ‘Oh my god, they’re interrupting my concert experience?’ After 40 years, I’ve come to see the damn Rascals, and someone’s interrupting the show!” I was really in a pretty serious panic about that. The minute the first bit of humour came and everybody laughed, I was like, “Wow, that’s a relief.” And then the first narration takes place, and everyone was just totally transfixed. And I knew we got something here. Three, four standing ovations later, people dancing in the aisles—the response has been incredible.

I had never done a show like this, and [co-director/producer] Mark Brickman said the same thing: We had never done a show where there wasn’t one single bad review anywhere. And Mark was the first person I called obviously, when I had the idea—I thought, I need a very significant visual component to this in order to pull it off, and who better than one of my best friends. And he put aside everything he was doing and came onboard for three years. So we both took a bit of a risk—certainly, artistically, it’s already paid off. Financially, we’ll see. But I never do things for money, it’s never a big consideration of mine. You hope things will break even so that you can continue doing things and keep creating interesting artistic adventures like this. You can only do so many things and lose, lose, lose, lose until you run out of money.

The show is partially funded through Kickstarter—was that something you planned all along, or was it a Plan B?

It was a way of doing an underground publicity campaign, simultaneously with asking people for a vote of confidence about the idea. And that’s why we said, “You can give as little as one dollar, because we’re not really raising the money.” We raised $100,000, which was a lot for Kickstarter at the time—only a couple of things had raised more. So that was a very big vote of confidence, but the show cost me $2 million. It wasn’t like we were funded by Kickstarter, but the suggestion that it was a good idea to do it came from the initial feeling-out of the people. It didn’t feel right to just announce it as a show-business thing.

Were you a fan of musicals growing up?

My wife was, but for me, only one musical made an impression, and it made a huge impression: West Side Story. I consider West Side Story—and I know people go crazy when I say this—the single greatest piece of music ever written, and I mean that. And I’m quite familiar with all the classical music of the world, and it’s wonderful too obviously. But for me, nothing—I’m talking about Tchaikovsky, I’m talking about Beethoven, I don’t care who you want to pick—nothing is better for me than West Side Story. It is the most amazing music ever written. So I didn’t need more than that. You’d occasionally have something else just for fun—like, a Bye Bye Birdie would come across my consciousness, but I was not a big Oklahoma fan, I wasn’t big on the more standard/popular Rodgers & Hammerstein-type stuff. But I could go on for months about West Side Story—the melodies, the textures, the voicings, everything from the arrangements to the use of the combination of instruments… it’s just the most emotional music I’ve ever heard. And intellectually satisfying—it’s brilliant. And constantly brilliant. Leonard Bernstein—it was his finest moment.

I imagine being in the E Street Band is good practice for staging something like this.

Yeah, yeah, there is something in common there, you’re right.

Did you always aspire to have this role as a music historian?

I’m not sure I look at myself that way, I’m not very academic about it. I was just sort of there—I lived through half the [rock ‘n’ roll] renaissance and I studied the other half, because I had to for the radio show. I wasn’t doing it to be an expert, I just had to listen to everything ever made in order to make sure I had every cool song ever written on my playlist! That was my goal, and I think I pretty much succeeded. I went back to 1951—I play mostly ’51 to ’71, which is what the renaissance period was. And really the heart of the format is British Invasion—’64, ‘65, ‘66. You become a bit of a historian just by listening and reading liner notes, and just having been there.

Were The Rascals responsible for opening you up to the political potential of rock ‘n’ roll?

Not specifically. It was just in the air in those days. They had “People Gotta Be Free,” which was one of the anthems of the civil-rights movement, but Jefferson Airplane had “Volunteers,” and just a little bit after that, of course, was the most political song ever, “Ohio” by Crosby Stills Nash & Young, and then “What’s Goin’ On” by Marvin Gaye—you had that ’68-to-’71 period where it was just in the air. A lot of turmoil in the air and in the streets. The Stones had “Street Fighting Man”…

Was music your gateway into politics?

Oh yeah. Music was my gateway into everything. Religion, politics, philosophy, history, geography—you name it. It all came from music. I had no interest in anything else, which is why I started going about educating myself a bit, finally, in the ‘80s, and writing about it on my five solo albums. Up until then, I was a terrible student in school, I couldn’t care less—I just wanted to play rock ‘n’ roll and get laid. And not necessarily in that order!

Before I go, I was wondering if you could share something about James Gandolfini that people may not know…

Aside from being a good friend, aside from immediately accepting me as an actor when he didn’t have to, and setting the tone for the rest of the cast to respect me even though I had never acted before, and aside from being a mentor in terms of the acting, we bonded on another level of both being more comfortable as sidemen, being character actors, being a little bit out of the spotlight, just to the side of it. And at the same time, we’d both find ourselves occasionally—through circumstance and through life—in the starring role, in the celebrity role, in the spotlight. And we both became comfortable to some extent. We both became good at it, at being the front guy, but never comfortable. And I think that’s something that kept him very soulful and very humble, and very much that working-class sort of guy. We both had that working-class ethic and mentality and way of going about our lives. He never changed and became the asshole superstar celebrity—he didn’t have in him. Every day on the Sopranos set, he’d look in the mirror and say, “Look, look at the mirror, look at this guy—is he a star? Would you cast him as the star of your show? I don’t think so!” He had that humility about it. That’s how he really was.

ENCORES

I have to admit, I wasn’t a huge Springsteen fan growing up—my 10-year-old tastes leaned more toward Shout at the Devil than Born in the U.S.A. To me, Bruce seemed no more profound than Bryan Adams or John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band or any other hokey heartland rocker on the radio in 1984. It would honestly take hearing the Constantines cover “I’m on Fire” the first time I saw them in 2001 to make me reconsider The Boss. But even as a kid, I always admired Little Steven for spearheading “Sun City,” the 1985 all-star charity single that essentially taught my Grade 4 self what apartheid was, and showed me that protest music could be fun and funky. On top of raising over a million dollars for anti-apartheid efforts in South Africa, the video also initiated a rare onscreen reunion between Lou Reed and an artist who opened for him at Massey Hall in 1974.