So this is what it looks like when worlds collide: A casually dressed, middle-aged man in a mauve doo-rag sits in the first-floor restaurant of a posh Philadelphia hotel, nibbling scones and sipping Earl Grey out of a proper china teacup.

On this particular afternoon, Steven Van Zandt is a few hours away from a gig at the First Union Center with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, and he seems even farther than that from the Bada Bing, the strip club his alter-ego Silvio Dante runs on HBO's "The Sopranos." But as shooting continues for the show's second season, he's spending three days this week on the North Jersey set, squeezing in his scenes around shows the band's currently doing in Philadelphia.

And yes, he's aware that you may be confused by the two faces of Steven Van Zandt.

"My mother didn't recognize me," he said of the transformation from rock musician to low-level mobster. "She said, `I recognized the voice and rewound the tape.' I really look quite different."

With his trademark scarf covering his head, it's impossible to see exactly where Van Zandt's hairline begins, but from the tendrils curling down his neck, it's clear he and Silvio go to different barbers. And while the usually serious, not terribly articulate Silvio dresses like a guy whose heart is with the mob bosses of yesteryear, the more light-hearted - and very talkative - Van Zandt dresses like a guy whose workday is spent, well, backing up the Boss.

Not that that's kept fans from stopping him on the street to talk about Silvio.

And after 30 years as a musician, much of which time he's been moderately well-known - either for his association with Springsteen or as a solo performer - Van Zandt still can't quite grasp the difference his first role as an actor has made in his day-to-day life.

"I think that every cliche you've ever heard about television is true," he said. "It was actually quite extraordinary how quickly it happened - just a couple of weeks after the show was on. I'm always on the street, so a lot of people come up and say hi. So, if 10 or 15 people a day come up to say hi, immediately, like eight out of 10 would talk about `The Sopranos,' " he said.

"It was really shocking, actually, to me."

But not as shocking, perhaps, as finding himself on one of television's most acclaimed dramas on his very first try.

"Even when we were filming it," he had doubts, he said. "Its eccentricities, which are now celebrated, were not an absolute sure thing. It was quite the contrary. I thought it was really crazy. I loved it, but. . .I thought it would take quite a while for people to get into it. I was thinking as much as end of the first season, maybe into the second season. Or that they wouldn't get into it until the reruns, that sort of thing. So I was very, very pleasantly surprised, as was everybody, [at] how quickly" it caught on.

And caught on with all sorts of people.

"If you're from New Jersey or New York, you know somebody who knows somebody - you know?

"Well, I've heard from guys who know guys, that yes, we are very realistic," he said, laughing. "Talk about tough critics. Let's just say that we're successful pretty much across the board, with a wide spectrum of critics."

So how does a rock musician named Van Zandt end up playing a mobster and hanging out with the likes of James Gandolfini, Edie Falco and Lorraine Bracco?

For the record, he's Italian. Birth name: Lento.

"My mother remarried when I was young. My father adopted me, and I got a Dutch name," he said.

As for how he ended up as an actor, he promised "the short version, because the long version's too incredible."

"Sopranos" creator David Chase had been a fan of Springsteen's and was familiar with some of Van Zandt's solo work - his fifth solo album, "Born Again Savage," is out this month - and happened to be watching VH1 in May 1997, when the cable music channel showed the induction ceremony for the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.

Van Zandt was handling the induction duties for the Rascals that year.

"I did a little bit of a comedy routine, you might say. . .and [Chase] happened to be watching. Something clicked, I guess. I don't know. It still required an enormous amount of imagination on his part," he said.

"They found me, which wasn't easy to do," because at the time he didn't have a record company, an agent or a publicist. "They found through me the corporate papers of my foundation," he said. (Van Zandt established the Solidarity Foundation in 1985 to "promote the sovereignty of indigenous peoples and to foster economic development in harmony with the earth," according to his Web site, www.littlesteven.com.)

"Is that a Hollywood story or what? Not really. It's a New Jersey story," he said, laughing.

And the story doesn't end there.

Ever the social activist, Van Zandt told Chase he wasn't comfortable "taking an out-of-work actor's job. . .so he ended up writing the part in for me."

After that, he never really worried about the acting.

"For some reason, I felt I knew this guy. And we kind of created him together. I thought I could do it - I don't know. I'm a fan of that whole genre. I've always loved mob movies, all the way back to Cagney," he said.

"I obviously did a lot of work. I went back and rewatched all the mob movies. I reread all the books. I wrote a biography of my character. . .I made sure I had the right clothes and the right look, and that's very important to me," he said.

"We have a very good wardrobe person now, but like for the pilot, I got all my own stuff" from stores in North Jersey that had "some of those old materials that are very hard to find," he said.

"When I look in the mirror and I see him, then I can be him. I don't know how real professional actors do it without that external factor. I have to start outside and work in, you know what I mean? I can't just change personalities just like that."

Told that Falco, the "Sopranos' " Emmy-winning lead actress, had remarked that anyone with the right hair and nails could play Carmela Soprano, Van Zandt looked pleased.

"It's nice to hear she said that. It's not just me."

Still, he's not brave enough to think - yet - about formal instruction.

"I didn't feel good enough to go to acting class," he said, laughing. "My wife goes to acting class, for years, and she tells me what goes on there. And I couldn't do it."

He and Maureen, a former ballet dancer to whom he's been married 17 years, live in Manhattan with their dog, Jake. He describes his wife, an actress, as "a real New Yorker in the sense that she does the work. . .for its own sake."

Work for its own sake appears to be one of the musician's bedrock values.

"The one thing about me is that I'm pretty picky about what I do," he said. "Which means I don't work very often. I've done like three things in the past 30 years."

As for his first acting experience, "I love it. I can't tell you how much I love it," he said. "To get into something this interesting, at this stage of the game. . .it's a whole rebirth, it's a whole second life, or in my case, a third or fourth or fifth life. It's really fun. And I got to tell you - this particular group of people, I don't think there's ever been anything like it, and maybe never will be again."

With the E Street Band's plans still up in the air (the tour ends in November, and Van Zandt says they haven't decided whether they'll record together again), he may have a few months off after "The Sopranos" goes on hiatus.

"If something comes my way, obviously I'm going to look at it," he said, but "I don't know what else I'm capable of doing, to be honest. If I never did anything other than `The Sopranos,' and it ran forever, I would be perfectly happy."

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Van Zandt vents on 'Sopranos' & the Emmys

Want to get Steve Van Zandt started? Just ask him about the Emmy Awards.

Nominated for 16 Emmys, "The Sopranos" last week walked away with just four, including one for lead actress Edie Falco.

"Well, I think most everybody was pretty philosophical about it. Except me," "The Sopranos" actor said, laughing. "I was very surprised how angry I got. You know, I never get emotionally involved with these things. I never judge my work by what somebody else thinks, be it a critic or be it an award. . . And I heard that the voting system is strange, and certainly I would hope every TV writer in the country would be writing an editorial that the voting system should be re-examined because it's just absurd."

The E Street Band member, more used to the behind-the-scenes machinations of the Grammys, said he understands that Emmys are political and that the voting's done by "a hundred guys who are out-of-work network executives - I don't know who they are, nobody knows - but. . .I did not think they could deny Jimmy Gandolfini" a best-actor Emmy.

"And it's nothing against Dennis Franz, who I love. And I love 'NYPD Blue,' " he said. But "I've been watching TV a long time. I may not have been on TV, but I've been watching it. To me, [Gandolfini as Tony Soprano is] just the most refreshing and interesting character on TV. . .since Jackie Gleason."

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