Not that a few hits haven't been put on him lately.
He's on tour with Bruce. He's one of the kings of Bada Bing on one of television's
most critically acclaimed series, "The Sopranos."
The second season debuts at 8 p.m. Sunday on HBO.
But on a cold winter day before Christmas, he's behind the wheel in Jersey, playing
both roles to the hilt. And face it: Van Zandt riding through the streets of his
hometown is like seeing Elvis stroll through the grounds of Graceland.
The fanatics come out of the woodwork.
The bandanna-wearing
Van Zandt rolls down his car window. He puts down his cell phone, which has the
reporter dangling on the other end. "Yo, Miami Steve," screams a bystander. "Where's
Bruce?" But forget his day job. "Silvio Dante!" says another worker, referring
to his TV character. "Say hi to Tony Soprano for me."
It's the mobster in Van Zandt who shows up when asked about plot secrets for the
second season of "The Sopranos."
"I don't know
nuthin'," he says. And then he adds, with menace, "You will not break me down!"
OK, he will go on the record with one tidbit.
Will Van Zandt ever wear his trademark bandanna on the show? "Nah," Van Zandt
says, but his voice remains hopeful. "First, I never could get away with it. Actually
what helps me leave music behind completely is taking the bandanna off. I need
to look in the mirror and see another guy."
His
fellow mobsters agree.
"There are two Stevies
I know," says Tony Sirico, who plays Paulie Walnuts on "The Sopranos." "There's
the Stevie who shows up in the morning and we fool around a little bit. And then
there's the Stevie who puts that hairpiece on and comes walking out of the trailer
and he is Silvio Dante. I don't think he's ever playing it. I think that hairpiece
just takes him over."
Silvio, the mobster who
loves quoting "Godfather" lines, is also getting a rep as a sex symbol of sorts.
Tell Van Zandt and he starts whooping with laughter. "All riiight!" he says. "I
love it!" Now he wants you to rat people out. "Who exactly said I was sexy?"
Quite thoughtfully, he puts it all in perspective. "On the show I do work in a
strip club. If some of the sex appeal rubs off in that way, then what can I do?"
Speaking of the Bada Bing, it must be awful for
Van Zandt spending those 15-hour shoots in a strip club. "Let's just say Silvio
has a good job. He loves his work. And it requires an enormous amount of acting
on my part because obviously I have never seen a real strip club before so I have
to really act." He clears his throat. "It's very difficult."
So are the scenes when Silvio has to rough people up. The peace-loving Van Zandt,
who has staged anti-apartheid benefits, says the violence bothers him. Take the
episode last season where he nearly bashed in a hotel clerk's head with a little
bell at the front desk.
"It's a lot of work--especially
for the person getting beat up," Van Zandt says. "One guy got beat up by me for
three days straight. I mean, I beat him up in the hotel. I beat him senseless
and then stuffed him in a trunk. I beat him in the backroom at the pork store.
The poor guy. It was tough because people do get hit to keep it real."
Acting actually came easy for Van Zandt. He recalls that "Sopranos" creator David
Chase called him out of the blue one day. "That was very cool because I wasn't
really sure what I was going to do with my life at that point," Van Zandt says.
"Acting was something I would have never even considered.
"It
was a lot of fun because I love learning. To be honest, at this point there is
not much about the music world that I don't know. So this is a whole new world
to learn about."
But then his old world interrupted.
Last year, his other boss, a guy named Bruce,
called and invited his old pals to go back on the road. The E Street Band was
reborn to run.
Van Zandt welcomed the reunion.
"We stayed friends all along," he says. "We talked all the time. But getting back
together wasn't exactly an overnight decision. It was something that was coming
for a while. And it just felt like the right time."
The E Street Band Reunion Tour has been a smash hit, selling out in city after
city. "It's gotten a little tricky juggling the two things. Thank God, HBO and
the `Sopranos' people went out of their way to schedule my scenes on days off,
which was really, really nice of them. They've bent over backward. And Springsteen's
people did what they could to make sure it all worked out."
Is it easy to go from rocker to racketeer?
"The
mental transformation was difficult, but not impossible. It took some concentration,"
Van Zandt says.
He says working with Springsteen
again requires him to just let go and feel like that 16-year-old kid who met Bruce
on the Jersey Shore years ago.
"You saw the show,
right?" Van Zandt asks. "You can see how much we enjoy it. Nobody is that good
an actor."
And no acting is needed for Van Zandt,
who took more than a decade off from the band. "But we came back together very
naturally and easily. It was effortless. We pretty much just fell back into our
old roles."
It's the enthusiasm from fans that
has stunned him. "I mean, we expected a pretty enthusiastic response. But it's
even more than we expected."
Van Zandt says this
tour, which is on hiatus, is a love story. Onstage each night, he says the love
he feels for Springsteen and other E Streeters cannot be masked. "That love was
always there," he says. "I think that's what people notice right from the beginning.
This always was a real band of friends. That sense of friendship and community
immediately translated to the audience.
"And
let's face it, everybody wants more friends. Everybody wants that sense of community.
Now they know they can come to a show and they've got a whole audience full of
people who feel the same way about something. It's real. And it's rare.
"Those three hours, man, are a real community. Hopefully,
people will take that back into their lives."
The fact that fans often sing louder than the band delights Van Zandt. "It's just
wonderful. I could just go on and on. As wonderful as it looks to you, it feels
10 times more wonderful to us."
So do the songs.
Van Zandt says from the start, Springsteen was determined "to keep it from being
a nostalgia act." The hits are sprinkled with new cuts off the recent box set
"Tracks." Still, Van Zandt says the classic "Out in the Streets" is a band favorite
each night.
"I think it's been the most fun doing
some of the songs off `Tracks,' which we had never really done live," he says.
"I think `Youngstown' stands out for me as a cool song. Basically, there are so
many songs. The tough part is picking which ones to do each night. But Bruce came
up with a great theme for the show."
The show
will go on again this spring. Van Zandt, who was also a founding member of Southside
Johnny & the Asbury Jukes, has released four solo albums, including 1982's "Men
Without Women," along with his anti-apartheid "Sun City" project in 1985. He is
known for his social and political consciousness.
A new solo album, the pulsating "Born Again Savage," his first release in a decade,
came out last month. But his heart is as an E Streeter.
Will they stick together this time? "It feels rather permanent," he says. "But
who knows? We'll see how it develops."
Are the
groupies older this time? "Oh, I wouldn't know about that stuff," Van Zandt says,
laughing. "I have no idea." Van Zandt has been married for 17 years to wife Maureen.
"No kids, just a spaniel named Jake," he says. "And a lot of friends."
Speaking of which, isn't it time to get Clarence Clemons on "The Sopranos." He
would make an excellent mobster from Asbury Park. Van Zandt laughs merrily. "Yeah
man, he'd be great. He has that look," he says.
But could Clemons stand the heat?
Last month
Van Zandt was in San Francisco at the City Lights bookstore. "It's a historically
important place and the home of the beat generation. It's also a very serious
and quiet place. Everybody feels sort of like you're in a church. The place is
so important.
"So I get a few things. I go up
to the clerk, who has that intellectual attitude about him. He's silently ringing
the things up and all of a sudden he shouts out, `Is Pussy coming back?' " Of
course, `Sopranos' fans know Big Pussy is the missing mobster, and the controversy
over his whereabouts is reaching "Who Shot JR" frenzy.
So is he coming back? "No comment, babe. No comment," Van Zandt says.
