He wears a bandanna, likes to talk about eastern philosophies and thinks
that the third world should buy the western world's myth about the roads to
happiness.
Steve van Zandt, guitarist in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, really is
the odd man out in a "big band".
He now completes his mission for a better world with his fifth solo album
"Born Again Savage" with the help of two not completely unknown musicians:
U2-bass player Adam Clayton and drummer Jason Bonham, son of Led Zeppelin
drummer John Bonham.
-I really try to fit into the E Street Band and we certainly have the love
of music in common, Steve says on the phone from a Stockholm hotel room.
"Born Again Savage" is a rough and heavy, bordering on hard rock, album,
where Steve seem to have rediscovered the guitar as the driving force in a
band. The ten songs are a homage to the bands and the guitarists who once
inspired the Steve in his youth.
-Yardbirds was the beginning of everything for me. In those days guitarists
were kings. You followed them as they moved on to new projects: Clapton in
Cream, Jeff Beck in the Jeff Beck Group, and Jimmy Page in Led Zeppelin. I
still think "Good Times, Bad Times" (the opening track on LZ's first album)
is absolutely fantastic.
-But I was still a teenager when these bands started their careers. The
music I wanted to make later in life had been made already, so to speak. So
I had to discover something new and I found it with the help of rhythm and
blues, soul and "rock-pop", Steve says about the first albums he made with
Southside Johnny. With The Disciples of Soul Steve made four albums in the
eighties, albums that reflected the current of the decade, in the things he
sang about and also musically.
-The last album, "Freedom – No Compromise", was an international
postmodernist cyberfunk album, very different from what I am doing now. But
I missed rock music and I missed playing guitar and that's the whole point
with "Born Again Savage", Steve says. And he's absolutely now rediscovering
old heroes.
-I simply never stopped listening. I'm not in the least nostalgic – I never
left rock behind, he says laughing.
He has neither the time or the energy to take in all the new artists and
bands and can only name two new artists that he cared about: rapmetal group
Rage Against the Machine and Canadian folk rock artist Loreena McKennitt.
RATM impresses Steve for taking a political stand, which has been his own
trademark the last fifteen years.
-I read lots of books as I was making my first solo albums, to learn more
about the world and about how things work. I still read but not at all as
much, and I don't feel the need to read three newspapers every day to keep
up with developments everywhere. The big picture is clear to me anyway. Once
I used to know exactly what was going on in 30 or 40 different countries,
but I don't have to do that now.
He describes the world as an "insane asylum" in need of vast improvement,
not least his own county, which is in the middle of the primary elections.
Republicans and democrats elects their presidential candidates who'll run
against each other in the election in November.
-There's really not that much difference between their opinions, maybe one
or two percent or something like that. We don't have the wide spectrum of
political opinions that you have in Europe. The will to change anything
outside of the given framework of how the world's "supposed" to work is
almost non-existent, and Steve's very pessimistic.
Steve talks about the spiritual bankruptcy among the leaders of the western
world and how religion is the only way forward.
-My philosophy is based on two scientific truths that I learned in fifth
grade: all matter is in motion, and everything that happens triggers a
reaction. In other words: Everything you do will have an impact somewhere
else, says Steve, who's not a follower of any special God or religion, but
rather just talks about "the concept of the existence of a higher spirit".
-But I'm certainly inspired by eastern signs and symbols, he says, and he
opposes the view of the western world that other countries and peoples
religions are "lesser" than its own.
-We brush them off as primitive religions or as with many of the Indian
tribal religions as "ignorant barbarism". But everyone has a right to his
beliefs, whether you're a catholic, a Hindu, or a shintoist.
It wasn't always easy for Steve, being the first hippie in his block and one
who talked about things that no one used to talk about. His father, William
Brewster Van Zandt, was a former marine soldier and in the election 1964 he
voted for republican candidate Barry Goldwater, who was on the extreme
political right.
-My father and I really got into a conflict, he just didn't understand what
I was on about. But it got better and during the last years of his life we
were very close, Steve says. His father died in 1998 after having suffered
from Alzheimer's for about six months.
Steve's father never got to experience Steve's latest career as an actor. He
plays gangster Silvio in the television series The Sopranos, aired on HBO,
one of many cable networks in America. Silvio is an old friend of Mafia boss
Tony Soprano who is a leader of the New Jersey Mafia.
-I have no idea of why they thought I would fit the part of a gangster,
maybe just because I'm from New Jersey. We're shooting the third season as
soon as the E-Street Band tour is finished this summer. I think the first 13
episodes will be aired by one of the Swedish channels this fall, Steve says.
-Silvio is something of a nostalgic. He remembers the golden age of the
Mafia in the forties, fifties, and sixties. That's why he combs his hair
back, dresses like men did in the fifties and listens to Frank Sinatra, Tony
Bennett, and Dean Martin. Silvio's ambition is to get into the legitimate
entertainment business and he thinks he's quite a success, even if he really
only manages a striptease bar, The Bada Bing, says Steve.
Steve watched a lot of old movies and read a lot about gangsters like Frank
Costello and Benny Siegel to get into the part – because he's never actually
met any real gangsters.
-No, only the people I ran into in New Jersey who ran the rock clubs. But if
they were "the real thing" or just "wannabes" I don't know.
-So which boss would you rather work for – Tony Soprano or Bruce
Springsteen?
-Ha! Bruce of course! I think it's healthier working for "the boss" – he
doesn't kill nearly as many people!
