There was a time when Steven Van Zandt was known as ``Miami Steve,'' a funny
guy who liked booze and broads and gambling; a guy who refused to
acknowledge winter and instead wore flowered shirts and hats in the middle
of the New Jersey snow.
``He was just the wild part of me,'' Van Zandt says with a laugh. ``Now, of
course, Jimmy Buffett has taken my whole act.''
Which is OK with Van Zandt, who currently has so many other acts to contend
with there's no time to mourn the ones that got away.
There's Little Steven, the songwriter who just released Born Again Savage,
his first solo album in 11 years. And there's Van Zandt, lead guitarist for
Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band who is back on the road with the group for
the first time in almost 15 years.
And, finally, there's Van Zandt the beginning actor, who plays Jersey
mobster Silvio Dante in the HBO hit series The Sopranos.
``I'm three or four or five different people,'' says Van Zandt, 49, speaking
on the phone from his New York office this week. ``It's a little difficult
to talk about, but I know very well who I am. I tend to be the personality
that is appropriate for that particular situation. But inside it's all very
integrated and it's all me. I am Little Steven, the artist, I am Stevie Van
Zandt the actor. I am all these things, but I know who I am and what I
believe.''
Van Zandt will say that he is first and foremost an artist -- albeit one
with a strong social conscience who has been careful and methodical about
developing every one of his five solo albums around a specific theme (Born
Again Savage, released initially through the Internet and now in stores,
centers on spirituality and religion, for example).
But thanks to his most recent incarnation as Silvio Dante, a whole new
generation knows Van Zandt simply as one of the stars in The Sopranos.
`A NEW THING'
``It is a strange thing,'' admits Van Zandt, who, unlike the tough-talking
Dante, modulates his Jersey accent to a proper, clearly articulated clip.
``But acting is such a new thing and it's so much fun to work with new
people and learn new things. I wasn't learning anything new about music
anymore.''
The whirlwind of activity surrounding Van Zandt would have been difficult to
predict two years ago when, having produced a few records for other people
and having grown slightly disillusioned at the state of pop and rock, Van
Zandt went into semiretirement.
``I was just, like, walking my dog,'' he says. ``I didn't know what to do.''
SHOWS FLAIR
But when The Rascals were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in
1997, they asked Van Zandt to make the presentation speech -- which he did
with typical Van Zandt flair, infusing the five-minute talk with Jersey
wisecracks. Sopranos' creator David Chase saw the whole thing, and decided
this was one of his wise guys.
And so Van Zandt, who had never acted in his life, was asked to read for the
part of Tony Soprano (played by James Gandolfini), ``probably because he had
so many lines and they wanted to see if I could memorize them,'' he says.
Van Zandt says he was mortified by the thought that he -- a guitar player
who had never set foot on a theater stage -- would get an acting job that
should belong to, well, an actor. To appease him, Chase created a whole new
character: Jersey mobster Dante, a close friend and confidant of Tony
Soprano, who is as passionate about defending his friend as he is about his
daughter's soccer games.
TOUPEE HELPS
Van Zandt donned a heavy-handed black toupee, thickened his accent and drew
from his love of mobster movies for the role. And in between dates with the
E-Street Band, he flew back to New Jersey and became Silvio Dante.
``There are two Stevies I know,'' Tony Sirico, who plays fellow mobster
Paulie Walnuts on the show, said in an interview with The Newark
Star-Ledger. ``There's the Stevie that shows up in the morning, and we fool
around a little bit. Then there's that Stevie that puts that [toupee] on and
comes walking out of the trailer and he is Silvio Dante.
``I don't think he's even playing it. I think that hairpiece takes over
him.''
TRUE PERSONA
But Van Zandt, the peace-loving political activist who has led crusades
against apartheid and championed other causes, insists his true persona is
far removed from his character's. Still, as you root for Tony Soprano, you
can't help but root for Dante, even when he's beating up on people or
pumping them with bullets.
``He has funny things about him,'' says Van Zandt of Dante. ``When it comes
to life and death, it's very cool and very professional.
``But when it comes to his daughter's game, it's very serious. And in the
context of the show, usually when there's violence, it's directed toward
someone that's within the Mafia itself.
``You don't feel this guy is killing indiscriminately. Once you jump into
that world, you almost start to think along their value system.''
The mobster world, purposefully unglamorized in The Sopranos, is only a
small part of the show.
``The bigger part of the show is the fact that you have an individual with
two families, one at home, one at work, and everybody has that,'' says Van
Zandt, whose wife Marilyn has been cast as his on-screen wife for the show's
second season, which began last week. ``And the difficulty in balancing
those two things, I think, is a universal challenge. And people relate to
the stuff at home much more than the stuff with the gangsters.''
BALANCING ACT
As it turns out, Van Zandt has been dealing with a delicate balancing act of
his own in the past several years -- his miniretirement notwithstanding.
During the past two decades, he has produced a five-album cycle that's gone
from soul to the hard-rock guitar of Savage -- a series which addresses
everything from social ills to religion, hard-to-sell themes few musicians
dare deal with nowadays.
``I think you have a social responsibility because you are a citizen,'' says
Van Zandt. ``You have the responsibility to pay attention, to participate,
to understand what the government does.
``The fact that you're a celebrity doesn't change that, but it puts you in a
much stronger position to influence people, and that's why you have to make
sure you do your homework before you speak.''
Van Zandt is still working on certain issues, notably campaign-finance
reform (``the single most important issue in America,'' he says), the
dangers of media monopolies and threats to the ecology.
STILL ANTSY
Still, he remains restless. Even after going from Miami Steve to Little
Steven to Silvio Dante, Van Zandt may be ready for yet another change.
``I don't know what I'll do next,'' says Van Zandt, who has one of his older
tunes -- Inside of Me, a 17-year-old Motown song -- featured on The Sopranos
soundtrack album. ``Maybe love songs. I haven't written a love song in 20
years. There was too much on my mind.''
